Disclaimer: I own nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Author's Notes: Who else is excited for Agents of SHIELD Season 3 tomorrow? (Actually "later today" by the time I post this.) This fic was born out of my pre-game excitement, and it is set between Seasons 2 and 3, though it will obviously be very AU. This is just how I think it should happen. I can almost guarantee that nothing like this will happen, though. This is definitely going to be a short fic, and I hope to finish within the next day or two.

CHAPTER ONE

As always, the morning news was peppered with a smattering of Hydra news, including a couple of their latest attacks. The one that caught Tony's eye over his bowl of Cap'n Crunch was an assault on the Portland Symphony Orchestra where no one was confirmed dead but one cellist was missing. For most men, that would've meant nothing, but most men didn't store data like Tony Stark did.

The pieces clicked together from brief conversations several years ago, and he frowned as he pondered the possible implications. To him, Portland + cellist = memories of a day he tried to forget as often as possible. "Hill," he called to the woman on the other side of the lounge who was pouring over papers of some kind, "what was Coulson's girlfriend's name?"

"Audrey Nathan," she replied promptly. "Yes, that's the same woman who was kidnapped."

What was Maria Hill doing in the lounge anyway? Usually, she did her paper shuffling in the privacy of her office. Was she watching him? To be fair, Tony always assumed that everyone in the room was watching him, and when they were doing something else, he had to assume that they were secretly watching him.

Breaking his train of thought, Hill continued, "Don't worry, Hydra didn't get her. SHIELD got to her first and put her in hiding."

"Why did Hydra want her?"

She hesitated a fraction of a second but responded, "The Director told me he would explain it to you if you asked about it." So she had been watching him, to see if he'd pick up on that news story.

Explanations were rare for Nick Fury, but Tony eagerly grabbed at them when they came. "Great. When will he be here?"

"He's not coming here. I have to take you to him."

This was also unusual, since Fury normally favored dramatic entrances, but Tony would willingly make a trip in exchange for some answers. Before either Hill or Fury could change their minds, Tony set aside his cereal and jabbed a button on his tablet that connected to the PA system throughout their base. "Avengers, assemble in the hangar bay."

Hill opened her mouth to say something but then shut it and nodded. She thought for a moment and said, "Meet you there."

Tony figured she was going off to call SHIELD to give them the heads up. When he got to the hangar, he saw that she'd also detoured to grab his assistant, Pepper Potts, and invited her along on the trip. "Isn't this an Avengers mission?" Pepper was asking, her voice laced with concern.

"You're visiting a SHIELD safehouse," Hill reassured her, steering her into one of the two quinjets that would be used to transport the growing horde of Avengers. "Trust me, you'll be more relevant on this trip than most of the Avengers."

She nodded and nervously buckled in for the journey, taking a seat between Tony and Rhodey. "What are we all doing here, Tony?" Rhodes asked, echoing the sentiments of all the other hastily-assembled Avengers, most of whom were clad in morning workout clothes.

"I'm not sure exactly what's going on," he told them all, "but something big enough is happening that Fury is offering to tell us things. I figured you'd all want in on the road trip."

He figured correctly, and the Avengers divided themselves between two planes and made for the coordinates provided by Maria Hill. They arrived at a small woodland cabin just as a third quinjet was touching down next to them. "I know this place," Steve told his teammates after they all piled out to the peaceful lakefront. "I stayed here once.

"Me, too." This came from Dr. Bruce Banner, who the Avengers had recently re-found, and who'd been remarkably quiet ever since then. He'd hardly even looked at Natasha that whole time, which she completely understood but hadn't quite accepted.

"Me, three." This time, the voice came from a young woman with short hair, who was exiting the quinjet with Erik Selvig, Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis, and three other unknowns. The Avengers figured the four newcomers were SHIELD.

"Yeah, I had to came here to find you," one of the other SHIELD guys replied in a thick British accent. "Too bad you weren't here. You missed some fun, by which I mean whiskey and a gunfight." He turned back to the two tall black men who were taking up the rear of the party and addressed one who was clad in black leather and metal and covered in scars. "Right, Mike?"

"It wasn't a party 'till I showed up."

"Too right. I guess that just leaves Mack." This was to the fourth SHIELD agent. "Never visited?"

"Nope."

The girl who'd spoken first had long since broken into a wide grin. "Okay, I know we were all trying to play it cool, but wow. These are the actual Avengers. Like, all of them. How awesome is that?" Her voice rose into almost a fangirlish squeal. "Can I, like, get a picture with you guys? Just so you know, I'm not some random weird person. I'm in the superpowered club, too. I'm Daisy, by the way."

"Not now, Agent Johnson," Hill reprimanded. "We're here for a reason."

"Thanks for that, former Commander Hill, but the Director's not here yet, so we've got time to chat."

Jane and her party clustered around Thor, thoroughly bemused. "Do you have any idea what's going on?" she whispered. He shook his head just as Hill started herding them all inside the small cabin, which housed Audrey Nathan, whose face Tony recognized from the news story, and three other people – again, probably SHIELD.

"Bobbi," Hawkeye greeted a blonde woman, who gave him a welcoming smile in return.

"Hey, Clint. Good to see you again." The British man snorted, and Bobbi rolled her eyes. "Easy, Hunter."

Looking around at all the unfamiliar faces, Pepper asked, "Would introductions be in order?"

They agreed and went around the room starting with the Avengers' party, which consisted of Pepper, Hill, Jane's group, Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk, Hawkeye, Black Widow, War Machine, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, and Vision. These last two seemed to be standing awfully close to each other, as they seemed to be doing more and more these days.

It was an impressive roster, and the SHIELD contingent looked a little ill at ease as they announced their much less famous names. These were Daisy Johnson (or Quake), Bobbi Morse (Mockingbird), Mike Peterson (Deathlok), and a few of people without code names: Lance Hunter, Leo Fiz, and Alphonso Mackenzie. "Call me Mack," he told them a little uneasily, conscious of the lack of weight his nickname possessed.

That left Audrey Nathan and a man who turned out to have arrived with her. He had an unassuming middle-aged face but some indefinable magnetism around his expression or his personality or something about him. "I'm Professor Elliot Randolph," he said, "I'm not SHIELD."

Audrey held up her hand. "Wait, I'm confused. I've known you for about a year now. Yesterday, you told me you were with SHIELD and that I was in danger, and you brought me here. Now you're saying..."

"I'm with SHIELD, my dear. Not a member. I was keeping watch over you as a personal favor for the Director. He saved my life once, and he said this would make us even."

"Who's the Director now that Nick Fury's dead?"

"He's not dead," Pepper told her. "Hi, Audrey, we met at Phil's funeral. I know you saw a lot of people you didn't know there..."

"No, of course I remember you."

There'd been a funeral? Tony felt a stab of guilt for not knowing and not attending. Uncomfortable looks passed around the room suggested the other Avengers hadn't known, either. "What funeral?" he asked accusingly.

"I tried to tell you at the time," she said with an apologetic half-shrug, "but you weren't paying attention. You were still pretty distracted by... everything, and it all happened so quickly."

Finding the past a little less relevant than the present, Audrey was now pressing Hill for answers. "When Fury gets here, will he tell me what Hydra wants with me?"

"Fury's not coming. Actually, he doesn't even know about this little convention."

Her forehead wrinkled in confusion, and she glance back at Fitz and Bobbi. "But they said..."

"They said the Director would be here to explain. Fury may be alive, but he's not the Director of SHIELD."

"Then who is?" she sighed, tiring of all this secrecy.

The door swung open at that moment, and Tony's first thought was that not many more people were going to fit in this little cabin. He even opened his mouth to say as much, but then the open doorway revealed a very familiar and supposedly dead man in dark clothes, silencing the whole room. Phil Coulson nodded a quick greeting and answered his ex-girlfriend's question with two simple words. "I am."