Here we go with our Saturday update. Just an FYI to any Saturday readers that I did post a chapter mid-week, so make sure you read that if you haven't. Beyond that I have good news. I have about 5 more chapters of this fic to write, which would bring it up to about 30 chapters total. Once I have them all completed, I'll go to updating daily. So, enjoy this chapter, and keep an eye out for more as I'm hoping to be done (and therefore updating daily) before I move into college on Wednesday.
Enjoy!
Chapter 7
Daisy knew she should have been thrilled to see Nick Fury, but, surprisingly, she wasn't. (Not that she'd ever admit so to her father). She'd been in the middle of reading a book, a real life novel, when interrupted. Daisy used to love reading, but she couldn't remember the last time she read something from fun. She still read a lot. She read lots of books on coding, on S.H.I.E.L.D. Hell reading S.H.I.E.L.D files was what got her in this mess in the first place. Despite this Daisy truly didn't know the last time she'd read a book for fun. She'd probably been fifteen, maybe sixteen. She certainly hadn't read one since she joined S.H.I.E.L.D five years before.
It felt good actually, to just fall into a story. She was reading The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan, and devouring it fast. Percy Jackson had been one of her favorite series as a kid, and she'd read the whole first set. The Last Olympian was probably the last book she actually read. She read it the day it came out, only a few weeks before she'd met Natasha and joined S.H.I.E.L.D. A year and a half later when the new series started Daisy had been at the Academy spending all her time trying to be strong enough to pass Natasha's Operations class. She'd known the book came out, but never read it, or the next two books in the series after that. The fourth book was coming out in about a month, and Daisy figured it was as good a time as any to catch up on them.
Actually Daisy had assumed she'd start reading and not actually like it. She was no longer thirteen after all. When she first ready Percy Jackson she'd been a teenage orphan. There had been times actually when Daisy wondered if maybe, just maybe, as crazy as it might be, that she was a demigod. She'd come up with this story about herself actually, to explain how it all worked. She was a daughter of Hades, born despite it being against the rules. Her mother had died, but Hades had ensured she'd safely reach the orphanage. It was because of her demigod nature that everyone hated her, that she never fit in. People were scared of her because she was a daughter of Hades. She kept getting shuffled from school to school and home to home because that's just what happened to demigods. Her grades were bad because of that too.
Daisy had never really believed it of course, but she'd wanted to. There were some days, when she was feeling particularly lonely, that she just imagined a satyr coming in, revealing to her that she truly was a demigod, and whisking her away to Camp Half Blood where she'd not only have family, but a purpose. She'd be able to fight monsters, to help people, to be a hero.
In some ways Daisy's imagination hadn't been entirely wrong. There were many similarities between Hades and Tony Stark. Her mother really had died, but not before getting her to the orphanage. She had been shuffled around because it was too dangerous for her to stay in one place for too long. She actually did have something mysterious and different in her past, though she still didn't know quite what made her an 0-8-4.
The Percy Jackson books, like Harry Potter or any of the series she'd read as a kid, had been an escape. She'd had nothing then, no purpose, no friends, and certainly no family. Now she had both friends and family, but she wished she didn't because she was back to having no purpose. S.H.I.E.L.D had been her purpose, but that was gone now. Except it wasn't entirely, because Nick Fury was in her house, so Daisy wasn't quite sure why she was disappointed to see him. She was though. Despite the 'I win' grin she gave her father, Daisy wished she hadn't been interrupted from her tale of heroes to speak to someone who, undoubtedly, wanted to know about superheroes.
"Director Fury, this is a surprise," Daisy told the man as her father scowled and disappeared downstairs. "Is something wrong?"
Nick Fury gave her a hard look, and Daisy immediately knew why he was here. Dr. Garner must have told him, or someone else had, but Nick Fury knew Daisy was there when the Project Centipede lab exploded, and he knew her presence wasn't just a coincidence. "Miss Stark you know you were a great agent. You know I fought against losing you. So I hope that means you'll still be cooperative and you can just tell me about the man in the hood."
Daisy should have told him. She still thought of herself as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Hadn't she been investigating Project Centipede so she could prove she was still loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D, still worthy of working for them? There was literally no logical explanation for Daisy holding back information from Director Fury himself, and yet, and yet she replied. "I know nothing about him that you don't. I'm sure you've had Coms agents run facial recognition on any video that have hit the internet. Ask them who he is. I don't know. I didn't have a clue what was going to happen. Dr. Garner got me out for the day. We were just relaxing and then the thing exploded. I chased after the guy because that's what I've been trained to do, but he was enhanced. He was faster. I have no idea who he is or what he is. Sorry."
"Hmm," Fury replied, using his one good eye to stare down Daisy. "That's odd because your father seems to think it was something else. He seems to think you were running your own op."
Once again Daisy didn't know why she was unwilling to come clean, but she wasn't. "My dad is always paranoid. Ever since the Winter Soldier, the man who killed his parents, put me in a coma he's been extra paranoid. I really don't know anything."
"Just like you don't know how to hack into that GPS tracker on your ankle and confuse it into thinking you've never left the house," Fury replied, clearly not amused. (Then again, Fury was never amused. His eternal state was 'done-with-this-shit.) "Miss Stark I'm not stupid. You're the best hacker on this planet. If you're as upset about this house arrest as you pretend to be you'd just get around it. So what are you really doing?"
Daisy didn't know. Daisy just plain didn't know. She didn't know why she woke up in the morning. She didn't know why she should go to bed at night. She didn't know why she cared so much about finding enhanced and stopping others from finding them. She didn't know why she cared so much about getting her place back in S.H.I.E.L.D. She really just didn't know. Ever since she woke up from her coma she'd felt wrong. No, no, that was a lie. She had felt wrong her whole life. As Mary Sue Poots she thought she'd been missing family. As Daisy Stark she thought she was missing the chance to be a superhero. Now she knew she had just spent her whole life lying. She was missing something, that was for sure, but there was nothing, nothing that could fill it.
What was even odder was that Daisy had the strange feeling that she'd come to this realization before, but that wasn't possible. It was as if… it was as if she'd confronted this hole in her life while she was in her coma, but how? Had her brain been processing things while she was asleep? Had someone been talking to her and she just couldn't remember? Dr. Garner. Something about Dr. Garner knowing about the hole stuck in her mind, and she just didn't get it. Daisy just didn't get a lot of things. She didn't care if Nick Fury didn't understand them either.
"I have no reason to break my house arrest. If I got caught I'd go to real prison, and at least here I have full access to the internet. There is nothing out there in the real world worth giving up what I have."
"I would think that after so many years around S.H.I.E.L.D you'd know that was never the truth," Fury told Daisy, standing as if he was going to leave. A part of Daisy wanted to ask him to stay, a part of her wanted to let him go, but no part of her wanted to tell him about Mike Peterson.
"34-02-42.7200N slash 118-41-42.0500 W," Fury told her, fully aware that J.A.R.V.I.S would be noting the location as he spoke. "If enough of the young woman I know is in there, that's where you'll find what's worth risking incarceration for… I'm sure I'll see you again Daisy. I hope you're more yourself when I do."
Fury left but Daisy didn't move. What was wrong with her? Clearly something. She hadn't been acting herself in month. She'd felt more wrong than she always had. She hated being stuck inside, so why hadn't she snuck out. She could have. She really could have.
And what was at those coordinates that Fury thought would get Daisy to tell him about 'the man in the hood'? Clearly the two had to be connected; Fury wouldn't just give up that easily. What could be there though? What did Nick Fury think was enticing enough for Daisy to risk prison?
What did Daisy think was worth risking prison?
"Miss Stark, need I remind you that even if you use the signal jammer you developed back in January, any videos revealing your presence as outside this house would be a violation of your sentence and result in up to ten years of incarceration in a maximum security prison. Surely whatever is at this airport is not worth the risk."
Daisy smirked at J.A.R.V.I.S's objection. So it was an airport. Good to know. "J.A.R.V.I.S, do you still have protocols to scan all video surveillance for me and to delete my presence from them?"
"Why of course, your father programmed me to do that years ago, out of fear of the paparazzi… why Miss Stark surely you're not thinking…"
No, no Daisy wasn't thinking, but that was okay. Often times Daisy made her best decisions when not thinking. She needed to know what Fury thought was so important. She needed to know why S.H.I.E.L.D was so concerned about Mike Peterson that the Director himself was involved. Most of all she needed to get back into the game. Maybe it had been fun to read about heroes, but she missed being one herself.
