Finally took the time to re-write this chapter and make it more serious. I will be re-writing the next two chapters and then hopefully, I'll be able to put up new chapters as my college career winds down.
This story roughly straddles the movie, but this chapter takes place just before the movie starts. I'm trying to get the Marvel plot out of my way so I can stop leaching off of Joss Wheedon's wonderful script. You know what the major Avengers plot points are, they belong to Marvel, as does the characters.
I own Julia.
She woke up slowly, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. As the outline of her dresser finally came into focus, she pulled the sheets back up around her chilled body. The soft hall light finally reached her eyes and that was when she remembered, forcing the nerves to set in like a mass of butterflies swirling around in her stomach. She glanced over to the clock to read 3:47 am, and her anticipation continued to churn unwillingly in the pit of her stomach. She could feel her fiancé's arm draped over her hip, so she carefully eased herself onto her side, rolling his arm off of her. She lay enveloped in her own thoughts for a while, facing away from him, and wrapping her arms around herself in a lame form of self-comfort. She couldn't tell him, not until after tomorrow. But, her sigh of relief caught in her throat as he shifted next to her and woke up. Regardless, a smile quickly spread across her face as he pulled her backwards, deep into his arms and spoke softly into her ear,
"Whatever happens tomorrow, know that I never could have gotten this far without you. What we have discovered will change everything. Nothing will ever be the same after this."
His soft breath caressing the nape of her neck definitely helped to distract her. But she couldn't decide on a response, so her fiancé pushed himself up on one elbow to lean over her and she tilted her head up to meet his determined gaze. Slowly, she watched as he faltered for a moment, his face changing to reveal his sweet underlying nature of uncertainty and nervousness.
"I know I'm not very good at this, but…" he started hesitantly. She intervened, rolling over, and flipping him onto his back again. She held herself carefully over him, letting the tips of her hair rest in curls on his bare chest. She frowned,
"Stop apologizing."
"Well, I…I love you." He said breathlessly. She smiled again and whispered,
"I know."
Slowly, she leaned down and pressed her lips against his. She eased herself down onto his chest, her bare skin tingling where it met his. His arms snaked up around her as he caressed her soft curves. Carefully, she made herself pull away from him, and with a light tug she rolled out of his arms and back down onto her side to face him as sleep slowly drifted over her once more,
"I love you too, now get some sleep. We have a big day tomorrow."
Julia pushed her glasses up her nose again, blinking harshly as she pushed back that distant memory. Even though several long years had passed since that night, Julia had to remind herself once more that she had moved on. But the sudden burst of anxiety she felt had triggered one of her vivid memories. She rarely felt anxious, so the memory had come on quite fast. But there was no time to deal with old memories, she had a very pressing deadline to meet. Director Nick Fury was rather specific when he gave the research team their goals. The Tesseract's power must be harnessed for safe and immediate use. Everything had to be kept top secret, under wraps, and for the team's eyes only. They worked furiously and almost around the clock, sometimes lunches would lie on tables, forgotten.
Not surprisingly, Fury soon assigned an assassin to their secret underground desert lab, to keep a vigilant watch over their progress. The scientists just accepted the Agent's presence as a perk of working for S.H.I.E.L.D. Julia suspected the Agent was put there for her, just weeks after Fury had finally cleared her for interaction with other S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel, a reward for her fourth year without an incident. But Fury did leave a cryptic message in an attempt to ease her suspicions. Julia didn't believe it for a second.
The agent was introduced to the team as Agent Clint Barton, codenamed "Hawkeye," and he kept his nest somewhere high above all of the scientific equipment in the highest vantage point the room offered. She barely saw anything more than glimpses of him and that was enough to annoy her from time to time. Once, a blur of black fabric, another time she managed to see the back of his head, but sometimes she would glance up at the catwalk and see the faint outline out his body barely separating from the shadows. Part of Julia wanted to climb up to his perch to see the lab from his lofty perspective, but she knew she would never get away with it.
Clint was already positioned up on the catwalks when Fury introduced him to everyone. He usually stayed up out of sight and preferred it that way; he could see the lab best from his lofty vantage point. Referring to the dossiers Fury had supplied him with, Clint went to work comparing the scientists below him to their pictures and started learning their roles in relation to the layout of the lab as efficiently as possible.
He took a special note of one scientist, a Dr. Julia Connors. She was a tall, thin, woman with wavy red hair that settled down around her mid back. She was in her late 30s and had a very strange dossier. Clint made a mental note of her relation to the head scientist of the unit, Dr. Eric Selvig. He was her uncle on her mother's side. Her mother was deceased and her father was a genetic scientist working in New York. Other than her family relation, schooling, and various degrees in physics, chemistry, and molecular biology, the dossier was strangely barren. She lived under her uncle's guardianship for most of her younger years, and seemed to be estranged from her father. The dossier was filled with only a few vague accounts of her movements in the several years before her assignment to this underground facility. Something was being covered up. Since the dossier bore the S.H.I.E.L.D. seal, Clint knew Director Fury was on the take. One family relation was not enough to earn a place in this organization; she had to have some unknown skill set.
He observed her the longest of any scientist. He was not encouraged to engage with any members of the team, other than Dr. Erik Selvig, for any reason other than an emergency. So, Clint kept his scrutiny of her as short as he could bear. He had to suppress an urge to climb down from his catwalks to see her up close and investigate her, in the hope of gaining some insight on her mysterious dossier. But orders were orders. He finally tucked her into the back of his mind and continued to survey the rest of the cavernous room.
Something clicked in Julia's head, the algorithm actually worked. She ran up to Dr. Selvig with a smile on her face,
"Dr. Selvig, I may have something." He looked over her results and his mouth opened in surprise at his niece,
"Incredible. Help me run some tests with this, good work Julia."
"Let me run the diagnostic first." Dr. Selvig nodded at her with a proud smile and started pouring over her new findings.
Julia walked up to the Tesseract in its containment field. It was her turn to run the afternoon diagnostic scans on the device. She held the scanner over it and never let her eyes leave the readouts pouring across the screen; everything checked out as always. Typing her observations as she walked away from the Tesseract, something made her stop and turn back to the pulsating blue cube. A faint blue sphere formed around the Tesseract and started to expand, slowly at first, but as it started to gain momentum it began to emit a strange acoustic hum. Julia called out,
"Erik!"
Dr. Selvig looked up at her startled tone of voice and started walking quickly in Julia's direction, picking up speed as he saw the growing sphere. He waved his arms at her and yelled out,
"Julia, get down!" She was already turning away from the cube and just as she started to let herself fall, the Tesseract released a shockwave of energy. It slammed into her, adding momentum to her fall and forcing her towards the ground. Julia felt her head whip into the stone floor and pinpoints of light flashed across her eyes, but her focus was elsewhere as a familiar surge of energy rose from within her and white began to block out the edges of her sight. She nervously took in a deep breath as Dr. Selvig reached her and helped her off of the floor. Just as Julia started to think she was in the clear, she started shaking softly and she moaned as her skin started to itch. Julia kept her head down as she took in more deep breaths to steady herself. Dr. Selvig looked down at her and frowned, fearing the worst.
When Julia finally looked up from her uncle's supporting embrace, she saw his face turn grim and she knew that she was losing control over herself again, years after her last unconditioned mental failure. Absentmindedly, she realized that Agent Barton was standing before them. She stared at him blankly for only a moment before her uncle whisked her away from Barton's piercing gaze. Selvig started yelling out commands to the team while he helped Julia out of the lab,
"Shut the power down, now! Start evacuating the entire compound, and get Director Fury on the line!" The team jumped into action and darkness flooded the lab. The Tesseract glowed in its stand, caressing everything near it with a soft blue light. The blue light intensified for only a moment before the power flickered back on in the lab. A technician yelled out to Selvig,
"Power is back on in the entire compound Dr., the Tesseract seems to be powering everything around it."
Dr. Selvig cursed under his breath and continued to help Julia out of the lab. He paused just inside a hallway and leaned Julia up against a wall with one hand on her trembling shoulder. He glanced at her red hair and cursed again as he saw white spreading very slowly from her scalp. Dr. Selvig grabbed her chin and checked her eyes again before accepting the truth. Then he asked Julia a question to which he already knew the answer,
"Are you ok Julia? Can you handle yourself?"
She nodded quickly in denial, but as Agent Barton came into view her neck arced strangely for a moment and pain tore across her face. She tried to move away from her uncle, but he held her fast. Agent Barton fixed his curious gaze on Julia as he spoke to Dr. Selvig,
"What is going on Dr.? The Tesseract looks secure for the moment, but we need you to stay here." Dr. Selvig quickly pulled Julia off of the wall and hurried down the hall, simultaneously shielding Julia from Agent Barton's view, and talking loudly over his shoulder,
"I'll only be a minute Agent, go back to the lab and make sure no one starts to panic."
Agent Barton started back to the lab, glancing back at Dr. Selvig and Julia. He frowned at the way she was shaking, and he could have sworn that her hair was changing color from red to an obvious shade of white. His eyes had never failed him, but he made himself continue into the lab and start calming down some of the more rattled scientists.
Erik had laid Julia out in the middle of her secure room and was backing away from her shaking body. Automatically, she curled herself into a fetal position in a self-comforting gesture. He walked out the doorway and started pulling the thick metal door shut. Just before he could close it all of the way he spoke to her,
"Julia, I'll be back in a little while to check on you. I'm so sorry I can't stay."
"Go," she croaked, and she smiled up at Erik in a feral way that made him shiver. Then as a tear rolled down her cheek, she turned her head and waved her trembling hand at him absentmindedly as he continued to shut the door. Dr. Selvig watched her for a moment through the small glass window as she finally stopped resisting the change. White cascaded down the length of her hair, her body started to change its shape, and she opened her mouth to scream, but he couldn't hear anything through the soundproofing. He lowered his head gloomily, took a deep breath, and reached up to close the thick metal cover over the sliver of glass. He locked the deadbolts and was once more grateful for the precautions Fury had put in place. He pushed the keys deep into his pocket and hurried back to the lab.
Erik Selvig reappeared in the bustling lab and walked up to the scientist holding a phone rather nervously and as far away from himself as he could manage. Erik took it and brought Director Fury up to speed.
Agent Barton saw Dr. Selvig return to the lab flustered and without Julia. After Selvig took the phone, Clint slipped unnoticed back down the hall and started scanning the windows set into most of the doors, listened for any indication that she could be inside of one of the rooms. Walking faster and faster, Clint could find no trace of Julia until he turned the corner and a giant metal door, covered with high tech padlocks and biometric scanners, loomed in front of him. A strange feeling told him that Julia was behind that door, and he almost didn't want to know why. Clint stared at the door for a long moment and suddenly turned on his heel and walked back towards the lab. He had to see her. He couldn't explain the urge he had to see her shining silver eyes again.
Please review! Any feedback would be appreciated.