Disclaimer: I do not own the world of MCU or its characters.
What the hell had she been thinking?
Sophia's heart clenched as her crate was jostled, carrying, she assumed towards the storage unit in the Helicarrier. There was no way she was going to get out of this without being caught. If they checked the crates before unloading, Fury would have her on the first quinjet back with a demotion and probably orders to keep her locked in her dorm. If she managed to stay hidden in the crate all the way onto the Helicarrier, what was she going to do? Approach Fury right away and offer to help?
Either way, Fury was going to be, well furious.
Sophia could hear voices as the crate continued to rock but couldn't decipher what they were saying. She thought she heard the roar of the Helicarrier preparing for lift off. Sophia tried to keep her breathing calm and steady but God was she nervous.
The minutes ticked by slowly as the crate was jostled and shaken. Surely, it didn't take this long to carry and deposit her in the storage bay, right? Sophia froze, clenching her backpack as the movement stopped, holding in a gasp when it was suddenly dropped down with a THUNK on a metal floor. This was it, she realized as the latches were released, the lid slowly lifted open.
Sophia blinked at the light, trying to adjust her eyes, recognizing that she wasn't staring at a roof she assumed would be a storage roof. Where had they taken her?
"You might as well come out," Coulson called. "We know you're in there."
She winced, fingers curling tighter around the fabric of her backpack. "How?"
"Weight was off. Plus, image scanners."
Taking a deep breath, Sophia moved the weapon off her lap and carefully stood up, clambering out the box. She took a moment to look around, knowing she probably should focus but not finding it in her too. This must be the bridge. There were computers everywhere, Agents all staring at her, but she ignored them all in favor of admiring the tech. And then her eyes caught sight of the windows, the big, glorious windows with the very real clouds outside.
Outside.
She had made it.
She was outside of the facility.
Someone cleared their throat and Sophia dragged herself back to reality, holding her backpack to her chest as she met Coulson and Steve's amused gazes. She gave them a sheepish smile. "What excuse will you accept?"
Coulson shook his head. "Nothing good enough."
"Agent Doe." Slowly, Sophia turned to face Director Fury, who was indeed furious. She never could understand how someone with one eye could glare so effectively. You would think that the effect would be diminished but somehow, Fury managed to get by.
Sophia raised her shoulders, trying to project meekness and innocence, even though she knew that wouldn't save her, and muttered a quiet, "Oops?"
Fury crossed his arms. "'Oops' doesn't even begin to cover it."
Sophia sat on the cot in her cell, glaring at the wall across from her. Apparently, it would have taken too much time and effort to send Sophia with an Agent back to the facility and Fury need all hands on deck. That meant that Sophia would spend the remainder of the mission in the detention level, like she was nothing more than a common criminal.
Like she was a threat.
"Well, you did disobey orders and stowaway on a government vessel," Coulson had muttered matter-of-factly on their way to her cell.
She just wanted to help, she had said, but she knew now that that wasn't completely true. She wanted to see what was so great outside of the walls. She wanted to feel real wind across her face and through her hair, real sun against her skin.
She wanted to be treated like a normal person, though she knew she wasn't.
When she heard footsteps, she turned her glare in that direction, knowing who was coming to bother her. "Does this prove it then?"
Fury stopped in front of her bars, hands in the pockets of his long coat. "Prove what?"
"That I am a prisoner of SHIELD." She knew she was being petty but she wanted to know why. Why couldn't she leave the base? Why didn't they trust her on her own?
Fury didn't berate her by telling her what she did was wrong or how in the wrong she was. He took a deep breath. "You've never been a prisoner, Doe. You are an Agent of SHIELD and just like any other Agent, you are expected to follow orders and protocol."
"I have followed orders, I always follow orders. I spent twenty-three years of my life following your stupid orders!"
"A life that you owe to SHIELD, to the foundation that raised you."
"You aren't my parents! I didn't ask you to keep me!"
"Where else were you going to go, Sophia? We were as good as you were going to get."
The words stung as if she had been slapped. She had made Fury irritated before, annoyed, but he was obviously very pissed with her, to talk to her like that. She decided to not let that deter her, not this time. If he could be an asshole, then Sophia could stay angry. She rose from her seat, wrapping her fingers around the bars. "Why not send me to live with the other mutants? I'm a burden, aren't I? Isn't that why you keep me locked away? Why not let me have a life? You made me an Agent but don't treat me like one. I deserve to know. I deserve to be given a chance to help."
"And you will help, by staying in this cell."
Sophia noticed that Fury avoided all her questions and she tightened her grasp on the bars, glaring at him. "These can't keep me in here. You know that."
Fury quirked an eyebrow. "Are you threatening to become a threat?"
"I'm not a threat!" Sophia cried out, tears building in her eyes again, hitting her hands against the bars. "I'm not dangerous!"
"Then don't act like it. You'll stay in here until we are back at the base. Then we can discuss what you'll be doing to make up for your disregard of authority." With that, Fury turned and left her alone.
Taking a few deep breaths, Sophia unfurled her hands and plopped down on her bed, pressing her fingers into her eyes, ignoring the now bent metal bars.
Steve watched all of this in one of the monitors on the bridge. "How – how did she do that?"
"Sophia's sort of – strong," Coulson answered.
"'Sort of'? She bent those bars like they were made of tinfoil."
"You should have seen her handler's face when she'd break her denser toys."
Steve stared at the fragile girl sitting on the bed, arms wrapped around her legs, face pressed against her knees. "What is she?"
Coulson shook his head, crossing his arms. "An Unknown, which is just a simple way to say we have no clue. We've tested her blood dozens of times but she doesn't have the X gene. Her blood proved mostly normal."
"Mostly?"
"There were – a few discrepancies."
"I'll say. What about her parents?" Steve knew he probably didn't have a right to ask all these questions, things Sophia herself didn't even seem to know. He was curious though, wondered how it was possible for a girl who couldn't weigh more than a buck twenty to crush metal bars in her hands. This explained why she wasn't allowed in the gym.
"Her mother was a civilian SHIELD picked up after we heard she was claiming to have had some sort of Alien encounter."
Steve raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Really?"
"We don't take chances, Captain Rogers." Steve and Phil turned as Director Fury came back on the bridge. He walked past them to stare at the monitors, at Sophia. "Especially when her mother started showing interesting signs during her pregnancy. Unnatural healing, glowing blue. . . . She was seven months pregnant when we picked her up and by that time, she had nearly destroyed her apartment building during her more – hormonal outbursts. We monitored her, noted the signs but she passed away when Sophia was born. Babysitting isn't something SHIELD is normally known for. Had this been any other situation, we would have found her a home but Sophia could create force fields around herself when she cried. When she turned three, she created a cat out of thin air and when it disappeared, she threw her handler across the room with a scream."
"And you still can't figure out how?"
Coulson and Fury exchanged a glance. "We have some suspicions," Coulson answered.
"So, you treat her like a criminal until you understand her," Steve supplied with a frown.
"Contrary to what Sophia may think, she is very dangerous," Fury answered. "Her abilities are uncontrollable, especially during highly stressful times. I can't knowingly risk the lives of Agents or civilians by letting her run rampant."
Steve glared at the screen for a second before turning his gaze on the Director. "I don't know about you, but that doesn't look like a girl that's going to 'run rampant'."
"What does she look like to you?"
"A girl who just wants answers. And maybe someone not ordering her around all the time to talk to." Steve grabbed a bottle of water an Agent had given him and walked off the bridge.
It wasn't hard to find the detention level, not with people eager to please. Nor was it hard to find Sophia's cell. He could hear her crying, muffled as it was. He stopped in front of the bars and wrapped his hand around one of bent bars. There was a slight imprint of her hand, smaller than his own, the fingers slimmer, but if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he would have never thought that someone as slight as Sophia could have done this.
"I don't want another lecture," Sophia mumbled, her face still pressed against her knees, dreadlocks loose and dangling around her head to just above her ankles like a curtain.
"Fresh out of those," Steve said, causing her to look up. "I've got a bottle of water though."
He held it out to her through the bars. Hesitantly, Sophia got up and took it from him, whispering a 'thank you'. As she returned to sit on her cot, he leaned back against the wall across from her cell. Again, he wondered why he was down here, with her, for her. He still didn't even really know the girl and he couldn't say that one breakfast made them friends, but looking at her now, he knew she could use someone like him, someone who didn't know her or the supposed damage she might have caused. With a small smile, he gestured at the bars. "That's some hit you have."
Sophia choked out a laugh, taking a sip of water as the corner of her mouth tilted up. "Subtle."
"I've never been very good at that. . . . Have you always been that strong?"
"As long as I can remember. . . . It's, er, one of my mutations."
Steve didn't really know what that meant, just as he hadn't been completely sure what an X-Gene was but it was obviously something that affected a person's DNA, just like the serum did to him. "One of?"
Sophia shrugged one shoulder. She dragged a finger across her sheets, avoiding his eyes. "I can do some other things but I can't always control them. I heal quickly and, I can, very rarely, create, like, shields. Barriers, I guess. And, equally very rarely, I can move things with my mind. That's the part that's . . . that's dangerous. I've broken things when I get angry or scared, hurt people. That's why I'm not allowed to use the gym equipment. That's why I'm not allowed to leave the facility. That's - that's why no one will come near me. They're all scared of me."
Steve moved closer to the bars and Sophia seemed to shrink back, trying to make herself as small as possible. He squatted down a bit so that he could look her in the eye, so that she could know he was serious. "You don't look that scary to me. I'm not going anywhere, Sophie."
And he found he meant it. He could understand what she was going through in a way. When he first became Captain America, people wanted to be around him but not for the reasons he would have liked. They wanted to study him, they wanted something from him, they wanted everything he or his fame could do for him. It got lonely, being surrounded by all those people with not a friend in sight. And now here he was, in a place he didn't recognize, again surrounded by people who thought they knew him and out of all those people, Sophia was the first to really talk to him and that meant something to him.
Even if it was just a simple invite to breakfast.
"PAGING CAPTAIN ROGERS TO THE BRIDGE. CAPTAIN ROGERS TO THE BRIDGE."
"You were saying?" Sophia asked. There were still tears in her eyes but Steve thought she looked a bit happier than when he had first come to visit, a small smile on her face.
Steve shook his head, standing up straight. "I'll be back to check on you. I promise, alright?"
Sophia bit her bottom lip, looking unsure, as if she didn't trust him, but then she nodded. "Alright."
He nodded back before he left her, headed back to the bridge.
A/N: Hello all! Thanks for waiting so patiently for this chapter! I would really love to get your feedback and what you like (or don't like) about this story and Sophia. Thanks! S/o to new readers: Robyn-in-the-air, walters1, and Evaline101. Thanks!
