wow wow wee wow, I did not expect people to actually like this. Thanks so much for taking the time to read the first chapter. I hope you like this second chapter as well, it gave me a bit of trouble. I wanna thank my beta Susan again, I made her read this twice. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own The Avengers, Marvel does. I, however, do own my character Emma.
Emma blinked. "Oh, um, alright." She looked back at Steve. "I'll see you later, maybe?" Steve smiled, nodding his goodbye as Emma followed behind the agent to Director Fury's office. The agent opened the door for her, letting her into the well-furnished room. Fury swiveled around in his chair to look at her.
"Have a seat, Sgt. Friedman," He gestured and Emma sat down in the plush chair in front of the large mahogany desk. Emma tried to not feel intimidated by him, but she felt his only eye stare into her soul.
"How have you been holding up since you got here?" Fury asked. The question caught Emma off guard.
"Um, fine. Still a bit jet lagged, though." Fury nodded, taking a file out of one of the drawers and sliding it over to her. Emma looked at the folder curiously, raising an eyebrow when she read the name printed on the front: Friedman, Emmanuelle L. She already started flipping through it before Fury could begin to explain.
"That's your file," He began. "It has all the information on you that we've been gathering for the past few months."
Emma looked back up at him, then back down at the file that she was skimming through. Everything was there; her birthdate, her blood type, height, weight, even her parent's occupations. The thing that caught her eye was an Israeli newspaper clipping of the event that caught SHIELD's attention. The headline read 'Bombs planted by Palestinian spies uncovered in Jerusalem' in Hebrew; she remembers buying this exact same newspaper months ago. Other global newspaper clippings with similar headline followed after. Emma closed the file.
"How could you have possibly known?" She asked. "There was no indication of me anywhere in the article. I thought I-"
"You underestimate me, Friedman," Fury completely dropped the Sergeant honorific. "I knew something was fishy, so I sent some of my agents out posing as journalists to interview some of your fellow officers since you were there during the interrogation. Many of them spoke highly of you. Even you sister, Col. Sophia Friedman."
"You spoke with my sister?"
"Yes, and she admirably refused to give anything away." He said. "Said you weren't involved in the affair at all."
"So how did you find out?"
"One of my agents witnessed you training the soldiers on the shooting range. Everything seemed normal until you suddenly ran over to a Private Amir Rosenberg, accusing him of wanting to shoot one of the female officers, Private Neta Harel, and you proceeded to take his gun away from him. He did later confess to planning to shoot the girl, something about a bad breakup. There was no possible way you could have known that he had such an intention." Emma froze.
"You didn't lie when you said to not underestimate you." She chuckled nervously. "Won't do it again."
"Better not, Friedman." The corner of Fury's lip twitched up.
"Is there anything else, sir?"
"Yes," Emma sat up straighter in her seat. "You will be transferred over to Stark Tower, along with Captain Rogers, seeing as how your current living arrangements are a bit…confined. You have a few hours before someone comes and gets you." Fury waved his hand, dismissing her from his office. Emma saluted him, walking out and heading back to the room that she would be leaving soon. She wouldn't miss it, she was never a fan of hotel rooms to begin with. Since her earlier goal of going to the gym was interrupted, she decided to go there now to let off some steam since she had time. After changing into something more appropriate for working out in, she found the gym after asking someone.
Unlike Steve's gym, which Emma would later discover, which was modeled to look old-fashioned. This was the more high-tech gym that Emma was used to. She was originally going to run on the treadmill as a warmup for about 15 minutes, but 15 minutes morphed into 2 hours of endless running. Emma was too caught up in her own thoughts to notice until someone walked in front of the machine.
"Mr. Stark?" She stopped the treadmill, looking down to notice that she had run nearly 10 miles.
"What's this Mr. Stark nonsense?" He looked offended. "Just call me Tony."
"Ok…Tony." Emma wiped her face and neck with a towel before grabbing a water bottle and downing half of it, letting out a loud burp.
"Jesus, where did Fury find you. In a cave?" Tony joked, pretending to look offended at Emma's unladylike behavior.
"Actually, he found me atop of my mountain riding my pet goat Nancy." There was a moment of silence before Tony started laughing.
"I like you. You've got a sense of humor, unlike the stiffs here." His eyes looked down to her exposed left shoulder, noticing the prominent scar which looked like a bullet wound, then flitted down to the hebrew characters tattooed around her bicep. Before he could open his mouth to comment on both these things, Emma beat him to it.
"I've been informed that I will be living in your tower," She asked, covering her shoulder with the towel. "Have you come to pick me up?"
"Fury thought it was a good idea to have you and Rogers freeload in my lovely abode. But I don't mind having a pretty girl such as yourself living there, but I could make do without Captain Freedom pants." Emma rolled her eyes, finding his reputation of being a playboy quite accurate. "And no, I'm not the one picking you up. I just came by to tell that I may or may not have hacked into SHIELD's database and read your file."
"May or may not have?"
"Ok, I did." Tony grinned, not a trace of guilt on him. "I've heard about that bomb fiasco months ago, didn't think a telepath was involved."
"Yep, that was me." Emma said softly, swiping hair out of her face.
"So listen, Sarge-"
"Emmanuelle."
"What?"
"Emmanuelle. That is my name."
"Right. So, Sarge-" Emma sighed. "How about you use that parlor trick on me?" Tony grabbed her non-scarred shoulder, Emma's left arm shot up to his neck, digging her index finger at his throat, with her thumb up to imitate holding a gun. The nail just slightly digging into the skin under his adam's apple. If only she actually had her gun, maybe her position would have looked more threatening. Tony's hand fell away from her, calmly staring down at her as if this were a normal occurrence for him.
"Feisty, aren't we?" Emma remained silent, putting her arm down and walking away. Tony only just caught a glimpse of another tattoo on her shoulder blade that was obscured by the strap of her tank top. But from what he could make of it, it looked like a dreamcatcher.
No Steve in this chapter, sorry! He'll be back next chapter, promise. Hope you liked it!
