A/N: Big thanks to everyone who has faved, followed and reviewed, it means the world to me! I'm going to be in London for a few days, so I'm not sure how much time I'll have or if there will be wifi, I will try my hardest to get at least one chapter up but it might not be possible. I promise Loki will come into the story very soon, but I'm not sure exactly what chapter. Although I have a god idea of the plot of this story, and the character development, a lot of the details I'm kind of working out as I go along. Touch wood I think it's going pretty well so far. Please please PLEASE review, even a few words will make my day, you have no idea how much reviews mean to me. A big virtual hug to Puella Pulchra who was my first (and only) reviewer. (I felt immensely proud of my Latin skills when I immediately knew what your name meant;) )

"Coulson? What… How… Huh?" I could hardly believe my eyes. If I had anything other than nightmares anymore, I'd think I was dreaming.

"It's good to see you Belle, but explanations will have to wait. We have a lot to get through, and I have a meeting with Pepper Potts in twenty minutes."

"Err, sure, well it's good to see you too Agent Coulson." He smiled and continued on,

"Now, for the moment, you will be working in a special branch of research, you can work mainly from home, but when we need you here, we'll send an email. Please try to suppress your nature and try to be on time for once."

"Wait," I said, confused, "Research? What about my team?"

"Your team was an evac squadron, something which we have little need for at the present. Besides, we need time to train up all the members."

"Train them? They're some of the best field agents I know!"

"I'm sorry Isabelle I thought you knew."

"Knew what?" I had a bad feeling about this.

"When I said training, I meant the new members. The rest of your original team, they were all killed in the Battle."

"What? I… All of them?"

"I'm sorry. You're the only surviving member."

"Right. Thank you for the information. Goodbye Agent Coulson."

Before he had the chance to reply, I left the room, took the elevator and hurried out of HQ towards the car. I got in and told the driver to take me back to my apartment, not even thinking to wait for Agents #1 and #2.

During the drive back the apartment I thought about my dead teammates. True, I hadn't been that close to any of them, but most of them were good people, and certainly didn't deserve to die. The first half had obviously died in the diner where we were trapped, but this didn't surprise me, I wasn't expecting many survivors there. But the other half of the team? I wondered what had happened to them, did they get the people we rescued from the diner to safety or did they die too? I wished I had stayed to ask Coulson these things, but maybe Evelyn and Tommy would know something, hopefully they would be back soon.

When the car pulled up outside the apartment, I got out and nodded goodbye to the driver, and then proceeded to enter the building and commence my ascent of the stairs. The walk up seemed much quicker now that I didn't have a load of heavy bags to haul up with me, and I soon reached the top, considerably less out of breath than I had been after my last climb, but still quite puffed, thinking that they had better get that or I would go down and try to fix it myself.

Pulling my keys from my pocket, I unlocked the door and it swung open. Shutting it probably harder than I needed to, I leaned back against it and sighed heavily, seriously wishing I was back in Japan. Thinking back to my team, I realised just how little I knew them. There were only twenty eight of us, including me, but I knew less than half of their names. I wondered how many of them knew mine, or was I as much of a stranger to them as they were to me? Probably, I hadn't been with them very long, only a few months in fact. I normally worked in finding people of interest for SHIELD, and occasionally looking after them in a safe house, but a while after the threat of other worlds was realised, more agents were enlisted as emergency field agents, meaning they would not be on active duty unless a serious threat arose, and obviously, one did. Loki.

Of course, I got more training when this was put in place, because although I was pretty good at hand to hand combat and had incredible talent at throwing knives, I couldn't shoot a gun to save my life, and my stamina wasn't great either. I trained with many members of my team, which I had already been placed with, and that was the start of the three and a half moths I spent with my team. Then of course, a while after my training was the Battle of New York. The first and most likely last mission I ever had as a field agent.

Now though, I was back on 'a special branch of research' I knew this would mean doing what I did before, finding people for SHIELD. This work was the main reason for my relatively high security clearance, as not many people were allowed to know what I was doing, mostly because of the somewhat dangerous people I dealt with, but also partially because 'finding people' often involved rather unscrupulous methods, hacking, fraud, infiltration of gangs, the works.

Sighing once again, I moved away from the door and looked for a kettle, to make some tea. Having lived in England before I came to SHIELD, I was raised to drink tea when in a bad mood, and given that I was quite an irritable person, I had become a compulsive tea drinker. I loved tea. There was no kettle, but I quickly discovered that this was because the house had a tap specifically for boiling water. Score. Instant boiling water without having to wait for a kettle, and therefore tea on demand. It seemed that seeing my friends wasn't the only good thing about coming back, I could now add 'tea on demand' to my admittedly short list of the perks of being home.

Speaking of Evelyn and Tommy, I heard them coming through the door and immediately ran over to greet them, newly brewed cup of tea in hand. As soon as Evelyn saw me, her face broke into a grin and she gave me a big bear hug; she was several inches taller than me so she was able to rest her chin on my head.

"It's so great to see you." She said quietly.

"It's good to see you too Eve. I missed you. Both of you." I said as we broke apart, smiling at Tommy, his pale blue eyes lit up at the reunion.

"Come here teabag," he said, and scooped me up into a fond embrace. Teabag was a special nickname Tommy had for me, it came from our first meeting, which was a very strange tale involving teabags and angry SHIELD agents, but that's a story for another time. Once our fond greetings were over, Tommy, Eve and I made our way over to the living room. I curled up with my tea in the comfy armchair and the other two sat on the big couch.

"So," Evelyn began excitedly, "Tell us all about Japan!"

"Oh, it was amazing, I've always wanted to visit, and my Japanese was getting a little rusty, so it really helped to speak it again. There were so many cool places, like in Tokyo, there was this Pokémon café, and all the food was themed, it was one of the coolest places ever! And I went to loads of anime conventions, you should have seen some of the cosplays they were totally awesome!"

"Wow, sounds like a nerd's dream come true." Tommy teased.

"It was, and I don't think I've ever eaten so much! Japanese candy is amazing I brought some back for you guys."

"Yes Isabelle!" Evelyn said in delight and punched the air.

I laughed and said, "So, anyway what've you guys been up to? Anything exciting?"

"Nowhere near anything as cool as you, the most excitement we've had all month was when the coffee maker broke and sprayed decaf all over Agent Winters." I burst into a fit of giggles at thought of stern, efficient Emily Winters covered in decaffeinated coffee.

"Oh dear what I wouldn't give to have seen that!" I managed to get out in between bouts of breathless laughter.

"Well you might be able to," Tommy mused, "If we could persuade Ethan from security to get us the CCTV footage from that day. I'll ask him when I go in to work tomorrow."

"Speaking of work, what was so urgent that SHIELD had to drag you in on your day off?"

Evelyn's face darkened ever so slightly, but Tommy was quick with an answer, "Nothing important, just some paperwork that we had to sign."

"Couldn't that have waited until tomorrow?" I asked sceptically.

"No, it couldn't." Tommy said shortly. There was a brief awkward silence until Evelyn spoke again, "It was a sign off on a report of a recent mission, and it had to be given to administration today. You know how SHIELD is, bureaucratic nightmare."

"Yeah, I guess so." I answered dismissively, still unconvinced, but far too tired to delve any further into the subject. "Anyway, I'm pretty tired so I think I'm going to head off to bed."

"Sure, you know which room it is?" Evelyn asked, brightening up again.

"Yeah, the one on the end right?"

"That's the one. You need anything?"

"No I should be fine, night guys."

"Goodnight Belle!"

"Sleep well teabag!"

With a faint smile, I padded down to my room, and was so tired I didn't even think about the strong likelihood of nightmares before I fell into the deep abyss of sleep.