A/N: Okay! So hey there everyone (: This is my first Avengers fic, please bear with me if I struggle I bit with characterizations, and if you've got some constructive criticism to help me out with that, that'd be fabulous ! This first chapter's pretty long, but I needed to fit in a lot of background. The rest will be at a more manageable pace, and all of the Avengers will have much greater roles in the coming chapters. Unfortunately, I own no one and nothing but Miss Saintclair and her story itself.

I walked down the halls of SHIELD headquarters feeling ambivalent. I didn't necessarily want to be here, but the Director had done enough to me that I felt I owed him as much to join his team. He was entirely supportive of that sentiment.

I pushed my aviators up on my face, tugged the single glove I wore on my left hand. Despite it being made of the most durable fabric available, its delicate weight worried me. It made me feel like every secret I'd ever kept and every horror I'd ever lived was flimsy and see-through.

"Lane." I turned to meet the distant stare of Nick Fury, the culprit himself. Under the cold recognition in his gaze, I felt the seed of pity and empathy.

This was another thing I did not want.

"Fury." I acknowledged, tilting my head in greeting. I stopped walking until he met up with me in the grey hallway. I wouldn't have him catching up to me. Nick Fury is not one to 'catch up' to people. He's one to lead, to command, to administer like a drug.

"Avengers. Assemble in the central board room in five." He spoke aloud, addressing his earpiece.

"Are you sure you want to go through with this?" I asked, my tone uncoloured. I wouldn't admit I wanted an easy out.

"Absolutely." He measured me again with his eyes and I wondered what he saw in me. "Are you ready to go through with this? I don't want this to turn into a soap opera because I plugged you in too soon."

"I'll cope." I said shortly. We continued in silence until we reached the room. I let him enter ahead of me, by the space of a few seconds. I wouldn't be trailing at his flank. I didn't owe him that.

Already the Avengers were settled in around the table in the center of the room, each one relaxed in various poses and points of conversation. There they were: Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Thor. I'd read all the files Fury had sent to me on them. They were something impressive, but they were something else entirely, too. It unnerved me to be in a room with certified heroes, given my own gateway into this vaguely supernatural life.

All eyes turned to Fury as he walked in. It was magnetic, automatic. And then their sights flowed off of him and onto me, the stranger in their midst. I felt them analyze, hypothesize. I knew nothing they came up with would be any sort of perfect fit with who I was and what brought me there.

"Lady and gentlemen." He addressed them with a voice made of iron, the rumble of the head lion in the den. "Today I'd like to introduce Lane Saintclair to you. She will be joining the operation here at SHIELD."

The atmosphere in the room shifted perceptibly. I knew the Avengers hadn't been together for long enough to become a family, but they had been through enough to become a clan. I felt like an outsider peeking in. But I brushed it off, because that feeling was settled under my skin since long before I'd run into Fury between bullets and bloodshed.

"Well, then. What's your story, gorgeous?" Iron Man asked. Underneath the metal and lacquer, I knew that man was Tony Stark, head of Stark enterprises. The cocky, philanthropist genius.

I slid a convoluted glance towards Fury, knowing full well he'd understand every censoring thing I meant to convey even though my glasses shielded his view.

"Tell them." He said simply. "About the operation."

I leveled him with a scathing look. Then I slid off my aviators in a fluid motion, pocketing them. So they could see the fragile scar slicing through my right eye. I removed my glove with the flick of a wrist, pocketing that as well.

"My name is Lane Saintclair." I began, flexing the metal hand. It was compact, not even a molecule more than an organic one would have been. I brushed aside my feathered hair, proving the part was as versatile and delicate as a real hand. "Three years ago, I was stolen and involved in a slash-and-sew bionic operation by an underground faction called the Apocalypse Project. As far as I know, there were four other girls who were put into my subdivision of the project." I swallowed imperceptibly, not wanting any of them to know the depth behind what I knew of what had become of some of those girls, and the uncertain futures of the rest. I was one of those uncertain girls. "They strapped us down and…applied…these prosthetics without any anesthesia."

A deeper hush filled the room, as if space and stars had grown inside their lungs rather than oxygen. Only Fury's face remained impassionate. He'd heard this story many times before. The others' faces held a gambit of disturbed expressions, from Black Widow's drawn eyebrows to Iron Man's rigid face.

"The pain caused me to pass out before too long." I said in way of trying to calm their horrified revulsion. "That was for the better. Part of the training, anyhoo. It made the next six months easier. It makes now easier. I have…a very developed sense of pain tolerance. This hand, though. I don't know the technical terms for it. I wasn't qualified for this life in any manner. I'm a mediocre field doctor, but I was studying to be a doctor of the arts. As best as I can describe it, it just…manipulates its molecules. I haven't found its limits yet. Primarily, it's designed as a weapon." I spanned my fingers. There wasn't an on or off switch to the thing. It was a part of me. And whatever primal thought process that connected to my brain knew to change. I willed it into three extendable claws, stroking them with my one good hand.

The others maintained a silent composure, but I knew that everything I spoke of and showed them was out of their comfort zone and waters, by many miles and a thousand degrees.

I flicked my wrist and my hand became just a metallic mockery of life once more. "Along with that, the Project installed a management program connecting the hand and a warranty in my skull. We've tried every remote or exterior technology available, even experimental kinds, to remove it, but there's no way to safely operate on it. It's been integrated with my spine." This part was easy. Factual information. I dealt well in facts and data. I could pretend it was impersonal.

"I don't know the extent of the Apocalypse Project or their aims. I know I was built to be a kind of supersoldier, and my personal objective was much like that of a berserker, but with more intelligence and longevity." I paused. "I can regenerate. They wanted me alive for the next level of the project, I think. But." I gestured to the Director with an ambiguous expression. "Somehow SHIELD caught wind of the types of things going on in the Project, and were able to infiltrate it. They only managed to extract me and a few other…experiments. They found me when I was in the process of being upgraded." I pointed to my scarred eye without inflection.

"Obviously I'm too much of a question mark to integrate back into normal society enough to go back to school and do with myself what I will. The Director offered me a position on this team as I had few places left to go. I hope neither of us chose wrong."

I settled back into the silence. After a beat, Fury took over. "Saintclair's been deprogramming for the past year. She's reached the point where I feel confident in having her integrate with the team and putting her at the disposal of the public. She comes with a few warning labels, however. I don't expect to put her into direct combat until she knows all of you to some minimal extent. I won't have strangers fighting alongside strangers. When this team started, that was enough of a mess as it was. I also don't expect this to be an issue with any of you in particular or collectively, but you need to know her handicap in battle."

I swallowed a little hard, then. There's nothing good or enjoyable about admitting your weaknesses.

"There's a spot on the back of my head." I turned sideways just long enough to point it out, a place about dead center where my spine and skull connect. "Don't hit me there. Don't let me get hit there."

"Because…" Fury prompted.

I sent Fury another ugly look. "Not even you can force trust."

"No. But I can force knowledge. You tell them or I will, Saintclair. I'm not gonna have you walking around with a handicap like that like a pansy little breeze will push you over the edge."

I gritted my teeth. "It's the place the programming is. All I know is if it endures x amount of trauma, there's a high chance the back-up security systems in the program will initiate. And you'll have a killing machine on your hands, which seems a little counterintuitive to this team's goal, so let's try not to let that happen."

I took a deep breath. "You can call me Agent Saintclair or Arcade—that's the name I'll be going by to the public."

"Arcade?" Iron Man asked. It seemed he was the one that had the strongest tongue. Unnerved as he seemed by my history, he bounced back pretty quickly. Maybe I wouldn't hate him as much as I thought I would. "Does that have something to do with your abilities?"

"No. It's because my life's been a game for somebody else to play for a good long while now." I turned my attention back to the Director. "I'm done here. Come find me when you have something for me to work on." With that, I turned on my heel and in one motion put my glove back on and walked out of the room without glancing at any of the others.

I'd bared enough of my soul for one day. Besides, I had some interior decorating to do.

Yay! Now we can get on to all the team drama and self discovery and pretty, happy things, and horribly not so much ones. :DD Let's go ~!