-Chapter Three-
"You spin a nice story, but I hope you don't honestly expect me to believe you." Avery picked at her cuticles, allowing herself to look offended for a moment before she gave up the charade entirely. "Now, the truth, if you don't mind."
"Look Nick…"
"Director Fury."
"I don't really think I'm going to tell you, so you might as well give up now before you waste any more of your time." Avery said very plainly.
Director Fury nodded his head, thinking something over. There was an awkward silence, during which Avery did her absolute best to look unfazed by the situation she found herself in. In general, and Avery tended to be a person who relished in generalities, interrogation rooms were not comfortable. This one seemed like it was ripped right of the screen of a cheesy buddy cop movie. She even thought she picked up the smell of stale coffee and outdated cleaner lingering. How unoriginal.
"Miss Gudrun, if you don't start cooperating things will go very badly for you, very quickly."
"Like things are going so well for me right now? Look, I have rights. You can't keep me here for no reason. It's unconstitutional, inhumane." Even as she said it it sounded flimsy and pathetic.
The only response Fury deemed appropriate was laughing at her. She failed to see what was so damn funny, causing her to shift uncomfortably in her seat. He leaned back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest as he continued laughing in a deep baritone that in other circumstances would seem pleasant. As it were, Avery thought he looked very much like a stereotypical super villain, eye-patch and all, laughing at her for even suggesting something so stupid.
"We aren't the U.S. government, Miss Gudrun. Our scope is a bit bigger than that, and we are a hell of a lot more resourceful."
"You don't have to laugh." Avery hated how much she sounded like a toddler. "It's not like I use flash cards to brush up on my secret agencies every night just in case it's a Jeopardy question."
"I was under the impression that you already knew. You said so yourself. 'They told me everything.' I believe it was."
"I'm not a mind reader. It doesn't work that way."
"Explain, then." Fury prompted. His face was devoid of expression despite having just effectively laughed at her stupidity. "Tell me how it works."
"Do I get to leave?" She asked, hoping he would say yes. With every moment that passed it became more and more clear that her usual stubbornness wasn't going to work. No matter how long she sat there, refusing to tell them anything, they could sit there longer. They had a bathroom after all, and she didn't. One could only be stubborn for so long before it switched towards being outright stupid. She thought it might be time for self-preservation above everything else. Even if the idea made her feel dirty to tell him anything at all. "If I tell you how it works, will you let me leave?"
"Depends on what you tell me."
"I guess I'll start when I turned seven then."
"Avery Marie Gudrun!"
Seven year old Avery looked up from where she was currently melting plastic aliens on the steamy sidewalk. The blue one, the one she had dubbed Arthur, was already losing shape. His little fingers ran together in a small plastic puddle, sticking to the cement. She dropped the pink one next to the blue one, hoping that eventually they would melt together and create a blob of purplish plastic. She had lost track of how long she had been sitting outside in the blazing sun. Long enough to be missed, apparently.
"Avery! You stop ignoring me this instant!" Avery looked down at the little aliens and contemplated pretending she had spontaneously lost the ability to hear, before she lifted herself off the sidewalk and turned to look at the angry woman stomping towards her. Her teacher, Mrs. Hibley, did not look impressed. She marched over to her, fanning herself with her large hand and stopped in front of Avery, floral skirt flapping. "We have been looking for you for hours. We almost had to call your mother."
Mrs. Hibley said it as if it was a threat.
"Well?" She crossed her very large arms over her equally large chest. "What do you have to say for yourself?" Avery looked down at the little aliens again. "Oh, Avery. Why must we go through this every time?" Avery didn't have an answer. Mrs. Hibley reached down to grab her by the hand. She squirmed, hating the feeling of Mrs. Hibley's sweating hands on her own. It was the middle of September in southern New Mexico and impossibly hot. Avery could see the ever present moisture on her teacher's upper lip increasing with every extra moment they spent outside. "Timothy doesn't mean anything by what he says, Avery. He's just being a boy."
Avery did not have the guts to tell her teacher that she was wrong.
"Honestly, its children like you that make me regret becoming a teacher. My husband, the lazy so-and-so, is emotionally needy enough." Mrs. Hibley didn't realize she had said anything wrong. Avery instantly removed her hand from her teacher's and took a few steps back before turning around and sprinting in the direction of her house on the other side of town, ignoring Mrs. Hibley's screaming.
"It started with touches?" Fury asked, opening up her file to take notes. He started scribbling things down, which caused her to peer over and see what he was writing down, which in turn caused him to move the papers back so she couldn't see.
"I guess. The boy, Timothy, had been pulling my hair so I reached a hand over to shove him, and he told me something pretty awful when I touched him." Avery said, feeling her discomfort level climbing.
"Elaborate."
"No." It was hard enough for Avery having to divulge something she had been guarding for so long to a man that apparently had never heard of wearing anything that didn't come in black leather. She was not willing to start spouting out all of the horrible things she had heard over the years as well. "He was a creepy little kid and he said creepy little kid things."
"So, when you touched them they started telling you the truth?" Fury asked, clearly unimpressed with her unwillingness to tell him everything.
"I thought that at first." Fury sighed at her unhelpful answer, to which she responded with a glare. "But, I was only seven so I was bit taken by the idea that I might have been a human lie detector."
"But you weren't, aren't."
"No. Not in the slightest."
"Miss Gudrun…"
"I'm getting there. Calm down."
"Mom! It happened again today!" Avery dropped her backpack on the ground. She kicked off her worn out converse and started walking towards the kitchen, hearing the sound of her mom singing, like she always did when she was alone. The sounds of Starship, her mother's favorite band for some odd reason, played from the old radio in the crackly way that Avery was convinced her mother liked the sound of. We Built This City, a song that Avery was sure she would be able to recite in her sleep, was drowned out by her mother's obnoxiously loud singing.
"Mom!"
"What!" There was the sound of frantic steps, followed by a click that killed the music. Avery rolled her eyes, leaning against the wall as she waited for her mother to come bolting from the kitchen. "You aren't bleeding are you?" Her mother slid into the hallway, slipping on her mismatched socks. Her ratty t-shirt was covered in what appeared to be a very large amount of paint, and she was wearing her self-dubbed 'creativity pants'. She visibly relaxed when she saw Avery looking at her with a snarky look on her face.
"Why would I come home if I was bleeding?" Avery asked, walking towards her.
"Avie, you know better than to scream at me while I'm painting." Her mother, La, as she had apparently named herself when she was three, reached out a paint covered hand to Avery. "Now what was it you were on about?"
"It happened again today."
"It? Like It It?"
"What else would I be referring to?" Avery moved past her mother into the brightly lit kitchen. She wished she hadn't. It was a true disaster zone. Open paint containers were on every flat surface available. A canvas that seemed to take up half of the room was perched on a rickety easel. Avery almost turned around to walk out when she was stopped by her mother's hands on her shoulders. She was certain she would have blue hand prints, but she decided to ignore that.
"We need a name for it."
"Like what? Avery's freakish talent? Or, what Avery always seems to be in the middle of uncomfortable situations? Or, even better, why is everybody so disturbed?"
"What happened?" Her mother opened the fridge as Avery perched herself carefully on the dirty paint stool. She was looking forward to when her mother moved on to a less messy way of expressing herself. Last month it had been interpretive dance. She hoped for something like didgeridoo lessons next time. Avery had already sat in enough paint buckets for a lifetime.
"Same old, same old." Avery took the cookie her mother was plying her with, shoving it into her mouth moodily.
"Avie."
"Cameron, you know that weird kid with glasses?" She held her hands up to her eyes and mimicked his glasses, making her mother smile a little bit. "He said he walked in on his mother having an affair with his uncle. I wasn't even touching him. We were sitting next to each other in the library and he just starts babbling about it." Her mother was unusually quiet. "It's never happened like that before. I've always had to touch people."
"I wouldn't worry about it, Avery."
"But mom, it's progressing!" Avery stood up from her seat. "What if it keeps getting worse?"
"And your mother didn't have an answer?" Fury was writing things down in her file so fast he didn't bother to look up at her. "She had nothing to tell you about your odd powers?"
"No."
"How old were you?"
"Thirteen." Avery remembered, very suddenly, how much she had hated being thirteen. It was the worst year of her life, for more reasons than one. She dug her fingernails into her palms, forcing her attention to move away from the painful memories.
"Why did you suddenly not need to touch people?" Fury asked, gaze drifting down to her clenched hands.
"I don't know. It just happened. One day I was avoiding touching people like the plague and the next day it didn't really matter."
"Is that what happened to Jane Foster?"
"Excuse me?" Avery squeezed her hands even tighter.
"When you encountered the scientist Jane Foster in New Mexico did you use this power on her? You no longer need to touch people in order to get them to tell the truth. Is that what you did to Jane Foster?"
"First of all, I didn't do anything to Jane. Second of all, I don't compel people to tell the truth." Avery said through gritted teeth. She glared at Director Fury with all the malice she could muster, but didn't seem to have any effect on him. "I already told you I wasn't a human lie detector."
"I am not playing games with you. I want answers, and I am no longer in the mood to wait."
"Were you ever in that mood in the first place?"
"Jane Foster, along with Darcy Lewis and Eric Selvig encountered you on the evening of January the 23rd, 10:30 p.m. They divulged top secret information that only a limited number of people are privileged enough to know. And yet, they told you without even knowing your name. Why is that?"
"I was in the middle of telling you the story. You don't have to get snappy."
"You're a very real threat, Miss Gudrun. Playing innocent will not help your case. Now you either start telling me the truth about yourself, or I will be forced to take more drastic measures." Director Fury closed the folder and threw it on the table. He tossed the pen on top of it with so much force the cap bounced off. Avery took that as a physical representation of his general attitude towards her.
"What sort of measures?"
"The kind that you could easily compel me to tell you."
"I suppose." Avery saw Director Fury's upper lip twitch slightly. "Maybe."
"Can you control it?" He finally asked after a long moment. His one uncovered eye was appraising her in the sort of manner that people usually did when they trusted you about as far as they could throw you. She thought he might be able to throw her farther than he trusted her, but that was hardly relevant. Avery pondered for a moment about how to answer him. She hardly felt comfortable telling him the truth, in whole, but she felt even less comfortable keeping information from him. He seemed like he had the means to carry through on his threats, violent or otherwise.
"More than I used to be able to." She finally said, fully hating herself for even talking about it.
"Were you controlling it when you encountered Jane Foster?"
"No. I didn't think I would have to." Avery felt like the lights were suddenly much brighter than before. "I am right now though."
"And why is that?"
"People tend to dislike me. Something about spilling their secrets involuntarily makes them a bit touchy."
"I can imagine." Director Fury leaned back, recrossing his arms over his chest. "Here's what is going to happen. You will tell no one what you conversed about with Miss Foster, you will not write it down, and you will not think about it from this point forward."
"You can't exactly control my thoughts."
"I can damn well try."
"Fine. Can I go?"
"No. I'm afraid that's no longer an option for you Miss Gudrun." Fury stood up, scooping up the folder to tuck under his arm as he went. "As much as it pains me to say, and I am sure I will regret not locking you up here and now far away from any and all human interaction, it appears your encounter with Miss Foster was your official application for employment."
"Excuse me?" Avery leaned back in her chair to get a better look at him.
"Welcome to S.H.I.E.L.D."