A/N
Well this is exciting! This is my first Published fanfic. I've written loads more but this is the first I've thought... you know what? Imma publish this!
So you guys have probably noticed that I've got song lyrics at the beginning of the chapter. I'm gonna do that with all chapters in this fic, so look out for that!
Enjoy guys, and please review! I want to know what you think!
*Teddy Bear Hugs*
~ The Teddy Bear
P.S. This fic starts just after Iron Man two! and I will be doing some time skipping in this... sometimes months and sometimes years... so beware of that!
God help the outcasts
Hungry from birth
Show them the mercy
They don't find on earth
God help my people
We look to You still
God help the outcasts
Or nobody will
~ God help the outcasts, Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Picture this: a classic day in England. Cold, rainy and just miserable. A bleak, dull, grey building stands on the corner of a small, cobbled high street. The local orphanage. Inside the orphanage, a teenage girl sits, with her younger friends, watching the television, as it plays a news report of an incident in California, thousands of miles away from them.
Its contents: destruction, madmen, billionaires, robots, chaos and electronic suits. The girl has dark brown hair that falls past her shoulders, and even darker brown eyes, with pale skin and a normal figure for a girl her age. Not perfect. Just normal.
"Laura?" the girl looks up, and smiles as Hannah, a sweet girl of just six, address her.
"Yes sweetie?" Laura says.
"Will the mean men that hurt the millionaire-"
"Billionaire." Laura interrupts.
"Oh, yeah. Will the mean men who hurt the billionaire ever come here?" Hannah said, with the classic look of a scared, naïve girl, with an overactive imagination on her face.
Laura smiled. "No. They won't hurt us Hannah. What have we ever done to them?" Hannah shrugged, smiled and turned back to the screen. Laura watched her small figure carefully, as she stared avidly at the television screen, like it was made of gold. It may as well have been, with the massive strain it put on the orphanage's notoriously tight budget.
Hannah had come to the orphanage a few years ago, when her parents had died in a car crash in the area. She had been here ever since. Laura wasn't even lucky enough to have even the faintest memory of her parents. All she was told was that classic 'Hard-done-by orphan' story. She had been left on the doorstep of the orphanage when she was only a few hours old. And that was all they knew about her.
Laura had always dreamed, when she was Hannah's age, of a beautiful woman, and a handsome man coming to rescue her from the orphanage, and taking her away to an unknown place, that was all hers. Her visions of a grand life, with loving parents had slowly faded with her age, and now that she was seventeen, she knew that this dream was nothing but that. A dream.
But although Laura saw no happy past, she was already looking ahead to a brighter future. Her eighteenth birthday was tomorrow, and she was leaving the orphanage for good. She had been accepted by a secret military organisation called S.H.I.E.L.D., and on her birthday, she was flying to Washington D.C. to join this organisation, and become an agent. And if she could somehow find out anything about her true heritage along the way, perfect.
Her eyes opened to an empty room, drawn to the light that was streaming through the small window, landing upon a small suitcase that was mostly filled with books and clothes. That was all she really owned, other than a small, beat up copper-coloured teddy bear. Aside from her being left on the doorstep that day, the volunteers had found this bear, and she had been allowed to keep it, all this time. It was really the only thing she had left of her non-existent parents. So she had treasured it above anything she owned. Even her Harry Potter books. Laura looked around the now bare room. All her life she had lived in this room, stared at the same view from her window; a Costa coffee shop and a pre-school. The room was small, and the walls were painted a, now faded, blue. They were painted this way at her request several years ago; after it was made clear that she was not going to get adopted. By anyone. She swung her legs around and hopped off the bed, and trudged across the landing to the shower room on her floor. She was lucky, as she was up early; the water was still scorching hot. Just the way she liked it.
Laura dressed into a pair of black leggings and a T-Shirt that had a picture of the Hogwarts logo on it; her favourite top in the world. She took a deep breath, grabbed her suitcase and dragged it down the stairs, to the first floor, where the kitchen and living space was. She poured herself an apple juice; grabbed a bowl; filled it with coco pops, and sat down at the small table in the middle of the room. She started to eat slowly. It was still 7:30. She had an hour to kill before she even thought about going.
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" screamed six small girls, who all ran out from around the corner of the living room. They were all between the ages of five and ten. Laura sighed.
"Thanks, guys!" she smiled, and walked the way that Hannah, and her best friend, Holly were dragging her. Inside of the living room were all the staff that worked at the orphanage, plus the rest of the residents of the orphanage, mostly all in their early teens. They were standing behind a small pile of gifts.
Laura was suddenly filled with so much compassion for these people, who had taken care of her her whole life, as tears started to fill her eyes. Laura sat down next to the gifts, as everyone sat down around her, most seemingly on the verge of tears at the prospect of finally saying goodbye after eighteen years. After and hour of her being presented with more and more gifts, she realised that it was time.
Time to say goodbye. They had all been very generous, even buying her an IPhone, so she could contact them whenever she wanted. Laura stood by the door, hugging everyone one last time, as her taxi pulled up, and honked its horn. She started to cry, and uttered one last tearful:
"Bye guys…" And that was it.
She walked down the steps of the orphanage, and slipped into the taxi, winding down the window and waving frantically out of it. As the orphanage slipped out of sight, Laura wound up the window and slipped down into her seat, tears running down her face.
"You alright, love?" the taxi driver asked, a look of concern on his face
"Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks." Laura sighed. And for the rest of the journey, she looked aimlessly out of the window, staring at the other cars, many with parents and children in them, all happy. A family. She tore her eye away, as Heathrow airport came into view. Laura was nervous; she had never been on a plane before, and this was an eight hour flight halfway around the world.
When they pulled up to 'terminal 5', she thanked the taxi driver, and made her way into the terminal, through security and onto the plane.
As the plane started to take off, Laura started to feel sick. Was this the best idea? Should she have just accepted the offer to work at the orphanage instead? There was no turning back now. Laura looked out of the window, and saw the country she had never left before falling away beneath her. Slowly the airport was a speck on a retreating horizon, as she saw land, and soon, a never-ending ocean.
At some point, Laura must have fallen asleep, because she was suddenly jolted awake by massive turbulence over, what she assumed was the west of the Atlantic Ocean. It was dark outside, almost like she had left the sun back in England. All she could see was darkness. Then, something on the horizon; a light. Probably artificial by the looks of it, and suddenly the outlines of a sleeping city came into view.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, we are about to begin our descent. Please fasten your seatbelts."
Laura began to feel sick again, as she felt the plane slowly dipping and pointing towards the foreign soil.
The plane landed, and she heard a voice over the intercom state in a brisk, chirpy tone:
"Welcome to Washington D.C. I hope you enjoy your stay here."
After that, her day was a bit of a blur. The sun started to rise, and as she exited the plane, and she got her first glimpse of the USA.
'Wow. Nice view.' She thought to herself as she walked into the airport. Inside the departures lounge, she checked the letter she had received from one "Agent Coulson", telling her that someone would be waiting at the airport to collect her. As she looked up, and around at her surroundings, she saw a tall, muscular man, with short, black hair, holding a sign that said 'Laura We-don't-know-your-second-name' on it. Laura openly laughed, as she had never bothered with a surname, because she had no family to inherit one from.
"Uh, Agent Coulson?" She asked, looking at the man.
"Nah, Coulson couldn't come, he's a bit busy with something down in New Mexico at the moment, so they sent me instead. Hi, I'm Agent Grant Ward. Nice top, by the way. I love Harry Potter!"
"Oh, hi! Yeah, it's kind of the only thing that got me through eighteen years of solitude inside an orphanage" smiled Laura
Ward smirked, and Laura decided that she liked this guy. He seemed cool.
"Shall we?" he asked, and Laura nodded, and picked up her bag, then followed Ward into a black jeep, which drove away as soon as the door shut. Laura closed her eyes for a moment, and sighed; remembering her old life. That was done. She was never going back.