Because Natasha leaked all HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D. files on the internet, I was absolutely free. Free of work, which wasn't the greatest situation, however, it also meant I was able to use my portals within the public eye. I didn't have to worry about being exposed anymore. My only worry was prying eyes seeing where I was headed. I tried to remain careful about it. Avoiding potential attacks was my single potential scenario.
I was especially careful on the day Steve, Sam, and I left the hospital. Fury requested our presence at the graveyard he was 'buried' at as soon as Steve was awake and able to walk without assistance. We used a portal to enter the graveyard. I ensured to close it before any nurses came to clean the room.
It wasn't difficult to find Fury in the deserted graveyard. He stood at his headstone, awaiting our arrival. Footsteps caused his hooded head to turn. He nodded.
Steve, Sam, and I stood shoulder to shoulder behind him. I moved to the tips of my toes to look at the stone itself. It read:
Col. Nicholas J. Fury
"The path of the righteous man..." Ezekiel 25:17.
"We've been data-mining HYDRA files. Looks like a lot of rats didn't go down with the ship," explained Fury. He spun to face us, crossing his hands over his front. "I'm heading to Europe tonight. Wanted to ask if you'd come."
Steve was the first to answer. "There's something I want to do first."
"What about you, Wilson? Blake? Could use people with your abilities."
"I'm more of a soldier than a spy," declined Sam.
"You remember what happen the last time you used me as a spy, don't you?" I asked Fury, a smirk on my lips.
"Unfortunately, I do."
"Then you definitely don't want me back."
"Perhaps you're better suited here, kid," sighed Fury. He shook our hands, then pointed to his headstone. "If anybody asks for me, tell them you can find me right here."
"Will do," assured Steve.
A final nod was exchanged between the four of us, then Fury left my sight, for what I thought might be for the rest of my life.
"You should be honored," said Natasha, sauntering up behind us, "That's about as close as he gets to saying thank you."
She and Steve stepped away for a private talk together. Sam and I did the same.
"Surprised you didn't go with Fury. I thought you would be all for a mission," said Sam.
The answer to his question was given when my gaze accidentally lingered on Steve for longer than I planned.
Sam chuckled, amused. "I get it. Your place is near him."
"That's where I'd like it to be," I mumbled.
Natasha took a few retreating steps. She found my attention and exchanged a polite wave. Another smile was thrown to Steve, and she was gone, off to an unknown location. She earned it. A leave of absence was something we all deserved.
The remaining three stepped together to close the distance between us. Steve scanned the contents of the manila folder, given to him by Natasha, as he did so.
"Why do I have a feeling that file contains information about Barnes?" I asked.
"You're going after him," said Sam.
Steve's focus remained in the folder. "You don't have to come."
"We know," I said.
I caught Sam's eye. He, too, wore a determined smile. And it was he who uttered the line that began it all: "When do we start?"
• • • • • • •
I started immediately with a move from D.C. to New York City. I figured that with the whole Potomac ordeal, if I was on any HYDRA Agents' hit list, finding my apartment wasn't going to be exactly difficult.
I'll admit, though, protecting myself wasn't the only reason I moved. Steve moved to New York, offered a room rent-free in Avengers Tower, and he asked me to come with. I lived in a small apartment twelve blocks from the Tower.
Friday nights we gathered, despite our busy lives, to catch up. I don't know that Steve and I spent time together because we automatically clicked. I believed it was due to the fact that we needed familiarity. He and I were familiar with one another. Experience with being ripped from the people we once knew was an ideal we shared. Allowing it to happen again wasn't likely to happen, but in fear of it, we stayed near each other, building memories to look back on.
I found more in Steve than a friend. I found someone who made me feel as though my worries were non-existent. Within him, I found a physical embodiment of my happiness. Additionally, I found a distraction from the troubles I faced in the real world.
Finding a job was harder than I believed it was going to be. A resume was a necessity when doing so, and a resume was something that I never had, since my only employment was working at S.H.I.E.L.D.
Steve told me to create a list of things I was qualified for. It wasn't long. Luckily, I knew him, and he was incredibly famous, so he was able to contact a member of the NYPD and employ me for a little while. I helped the cops to hunt criminals. It didn't take much. City criminals weren't half as trained as the people I was normally after. At the very least, it kept my fighting ability at its peak.
I wasn't with the NYPD for long. I was forced to quit, or else Natasha threatened to make Tony Stark evict me and force me to live at the Tower. It wasn't a hard decision to make. I stayed at my apartment, although I practically lived at the Tower anyway. I spent every single day from dusk until dawn in the place, using my researching skills to find leftover HYDRA bases for the Avengers to take down.
One Avenger wasn't present at first. Thor did join the party, eventually. He reached Earth through a transportation called a Bi-Frost. Wherever he touches down brands what can only be described as an Asgardian stamp on the ground. He appeared in a show of lightning and smoke, which I normally would have been impressed with, if I had the background knowledge that it was Thor and not an intruder. When it started, I dove through a portal faster than one could utter, "Midgard."
Thor's arrival altered the search to finding both HYDRA bases and Loki's scepter. According to Thor, the scepter contained traces of the Tesseract. He hailed from Asgard to retrieve it and return it to a place where it could be well protected.
Tony, always looking for an excuse to party, took Thor's arrival as such. He leaped into an Iron Man suit and flew out of the balcony to find take-out.
The remaining Avengers and I sat on the couches.
"Wait, wait, you have the ability to access portals?" asked Bruce. "Why weren't you called in for the first Avengers task? You would have been incredibly useful."
"The Council wouldn't allow it. Believe me, I begged Fury, but it wasn't his choice," I explained.
"Oh, and Bruce, don't tell Tony about her powers," said Natasha.
"We're seeing how long it takes him to notice she's more than just a former S.T.R.I.K.E. team leader we keep around," said Steve.
As sad as it may seem, Tony truly took an entire month to notice my sudden spike in appearances in the first place. Barton decided to take it a step farther and keep track of the number of days it took for Tony to realize that I wasn't a normal human.
"He hasn't seen her on the news? Or searched through any of the S.H.I.E.L.D. files?" asked Bruce in astonishment.
Passing by, Pepper had called, "The only way Tony watches the news is if it's about himself!"
"And I meant to ask, Blake, are they cool?" asked Barton, taking a short sip of beer.
"Hm?" I wondered.
"Your portals," he clarified.
"Oh, uh, I suppose so."
"Come on, Blake. Show us, show us," he chanted.
I looked at Steve. He stared at Barton, eyes hard, brow scrunched, lips in a straight line. He wasn't content with the obnoxious insistence. Steve happened to be one who was comfortable showing his dislike in a situation. I was not.
I curled my hand, creating a small portal in front of me. I pushed it across the couches to Barton. He stuck his hand in. In his drunk state, he giggled profusely when his hand didn't come out of the other side of the portal. His eyes flickered to me. He started to return them to the portal, but his head tilted.
"Since when did your eyes change color?" interrupted Natasha, stealing the words straight from his mouth.
"My eyes do what?" I asked. My head snapped to Steve. "What is she talking about?"
"I mean, I noticed them change after we took down Hydra. But it's not a bad thing, at all, they're very nice," he assured.
"And they are beautiful, Lady Clara. Your eyes resemble a blue galaxy," Thor had complimented.
Thor never failed to make me happy. Actually, we spent an excessive amount of time together while he stayed at the Tower. When Steve wasn't near, or my computers were searching a certain area on the planet for traces of gamma radiation, Thor and I participating in various games to avoid being bored. A quite memorable time included Bruce joining. Our target was Tony.
Bruce engaged Tony in a conversation. Thor casually entered. I lingered in the doorway, pretending as though I was on my cell phone. In reality, I recorded as Thor asked, "Tony, would you hold this for a moment?"
Distracted, Tony held out his hand, without looking. Thor dropped the wristband of the hammer into Tony's hand. A feminine squeak echoed the room as he fell to the ground, trapped by the hammers weight. I caught the entire exchange on video.
It wasn't all fun and games all of the time, despite popular belief. Four months of finding HYDRA bases for the Avengers to destroy had passed. I was invited along a few different times. I declined each time, much to Steve's dismay. My priority was finding the base that stored the scepter. Thor liked it here, but there were clear moments we were let it on a feeling: he missed his home. I needed no more motivation to search harder.
The night I found it wasn't different than any other night we spent together. Tony, Steve, Natasha, Barton, Thor, Bruce, and I were casually lingering throughout our unofficial floor. It was the gathering spot everyone retreated to without saying. Tony and Bruce fumbled with experiments in their lab. Natasha and Barton laughed at the bar together. The remaining three lounged on the white couches.
Star Wars, by no one's surprise, was a phenomenon Steve and Thor hadn't seen before. I ordered Jarvis to turn it on while I used my laptop to search for the scepter. Hanging out with those two when I needed to work was similar to babysitting children. If I distracted them with a movie as complex as Star Wars, it kept them quiet and entranced, leaving me the silence I needed to work. Plus, we were all still, technically, hanging out.
My fingers clacked against the keyboard, an hour of waiting commenced, then the cycle would repeat. Every place I searched in the U.S.A had no trace of gamma radiation. I started scanning Europe.
"This movie!" shouted Thor, once A New Hope ended. "I want to see another!"
"You heard him, Jarvis," I said.
"As you wish."
Steve stretched as the movie loaded. When he took a seat, he was beside me, five entirely noticeable feet away from his previous position across the couch.
I chuckled. "Smooth."
"Oh, be quiet," said Steve, rolling his eyes. "I've been meaning to ask if you--"
"You know what, Smiles?" asked Tony, strutting into the room, "I haven't heard anything about your back story."
"You haven't really heard any about our past lives," said Barton. He winked when I sent him a thankful smile for relieving me of the spotlight.
"Besides," stated Natasha cleverly, "If you wanted to know things about us, you could check the internet."
One by one, the team retreated into the living room. Getting the message that his movie watching was over, Thor pouted. He slouched in his chair.
"Yes, and anyway, you'd have to be a Level Nine friend to unlock my tragic backsto..." I stopped. My jaw dropped. My eyes were frozen on the laptop screen.
"Clara?" asked Steve gently. I didn't respond. He reached over my chest and extended the screen. "Oh, my..."
"What?" inquired Barton impatiently.
"She found it," announced Steve, at the same time I said, "I think found it."
The news turned Thor's frown upside down. "You have located the scepter?"
"Some place in Eastern Europe called Sokovia," I stuttered. I was so amazed my search had received an actual result; something that could lead to Thor's return.
Tony clapped his hands, jogging to an open spot on the floor. "You heard her, J," he shouted to the ceiling.
The A.I. responded by projecting an interactive map of Sokovia.
Steve pushed himself to his feet, falling into Captain mode. "Avengers, you have thirty minutes. Gear up," he ordered.
"No, I will not be joining you," I protested when he turned to me.
"Clara, we could need you," he begged.
"I won't do it. I have the training, the advantage with my power, but you are a team. I can't join on a whim. I'll be the rookie, you'll be distracted by keeping an eye on me--"
"I'm always distracted by you. I've learned how to cope."
"Steve," I said, failing to hide my laugh, "I don't know that I can pull my own weight on a team that kicks so much ass by themselves."
"You'll never know until you let yourself try it. You've fought with a team before, you know that together--"
"--is easier than apart. I know. I'll join when I'm ready."
"And when is that?" he asked hopelessly.
In my head, I thought it being the last second possible. Joining the Avengers, an already crafted, seasoned group of heroes, seemed out of place. I was an equal, when weighing our abilities together. I just didn't know if I could live up to the expectation of an Avenger.
"I'll think about it while you're gone," I promised. I kissed his cheek. "Stay safe."