A/N: Please read and review!


My ears were ringing after that explosion, and when I tried to stand, the world around me began to spin. I could barely keep my balance, so I almost faceplanted into the lab table. Steve caught me and steadied me long enough for the dizziness to go away. I blinked several times, trying to reorient myself to the world around me.

"You okay?" He asked me.

"Yeah." I numbly nodded, and I could smell some smoke from wherever the explosion had happened.

I pulled away from him and started to run towards the area of the explosion. The smoke led me towards it. He actually let me go, so he knew what I was capable of. There was not too much worry for my safety. I held out one of my hands in front of me, and I could feel the heat concentrate in the palm of my hand as the smoke started to attract itself to my hand. The area around me started to clear and become more breathable.

Then I could see the flames, and I held out both of my hands to hold the flames back and to start to use the fire for myself. Loki's goons tried to shoot at me, so I started to throw fireballs at their guns, making them very useless. They tossed them to the ground, and they were about to fight me. Too bad they became scared and ran off.

I could hear the Hulk bellowing off into the distance, and I actually started to shudder. There was something about the primal and guttural sound that could make anyone fearful. That fear was almost instinctual.

Things after that were a blur to me. I could only remember fragments. Like making the fire go away and leading the medics to the poor souls who were caught in the explosion. Something took me to the where Loki's cell was being kept. I was there to see the horrible sight.

Loki duplicated himself and stabbed Coulson through the back with his spear. Me and thor yelled out in outrage, and as Loki dealt with Thor, I was at Coulson's side, trying to keep him from bleeding to death. He was struggling to breathe, and my hands were covered with his blood. I was muttering a prayer for him. Loki glared at me when he was done with Thor. He could hear what I was saying which angered him tremendously.

"Your weak prayers will do nothing for him," he said, and his grip tightened around the spear.

"Shut up," I said, not even looking at him, and that angered him even more.

He struck me with the spear, hitting the side of my face, and everything became black. The next thing I could remember was two medics checking me out and making sure I was alright. They were cleaning some nasty gash down the side of my face or shining a light in my eyes to check for a concussion. I had a headache.

When I was sitting up, I could see Fury talking with the barely conscious Coulson. Fury took a step back from the fallen agent, wearing an expression of loss.

"Agent Coulson is down," he said to all of us.

I couldn't really say anything. I didn't know him personally, but my grandma thought highly of him. She believed that if every agent in S.H.I.E.L.D. had his spirit, then maybe the world would be a better place. I still had his blood on my hands.

"We're sending a medical team to your location," a woman's voice replied.

"They're already here," Fury said, motioning to one man with the T.A.H.I.T.I. symbol on one shoulder for him to look at Coulson. "They called it."

I slowly walked into a somber bridge. Tony and Steve were sitting at the table, being very quiet and thinking about what had happened during the attack. Steve looked at me when I walked into the bridge, and he saw the patched up gash and nasty bruise along the side of my face from Loki's spear. He seemed to be pretty furious when his eyes ran over those injuries.

I shrugged when I sat next to him. He didn't need to be mad for me. "I'm fine. Don't worry about it."

His eyes looked at my bloody hands, and I had them in my lap under the table, not wanting to talk about it. I still had Coulson's blood on my hands. Steve went to say something, but he stopped himself and shook his head.

His death affected all of us.

Fury had his back to us, and he was playing with the bloodied, priceless Captain America trading cards that Coulson so treasured.

"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket when he died," Fury said, tossing them to Steve. "Guess he never did get you to sign them."

Steve picked one up to only stare at it. He didn't really say anything. No one really mentioned how weird it was that Coulson kept his most priceless treasures with him on a potentially fatal mission, but we were all blinded by grief at the time. None of us asked too many questions.

"Yes," Fury was saying. "We were planning to build an arsenal with the cube, but I never put all my chips in that basket, though. I was playing something riskier."

"Playing with fire," I muttered very quietly, immediately understanding what was happening and his potential plans.

"There was an idea," Fury said. "Stark knows this. . .there was an idea to bring together a group of remarkable people to fight the battles that we couldn't." He allowed those words to sink into us and make us process them. It was a great idea if it was done right. "Coulson died still believing in that idea. . .in heroes."

Tony quickly stood to his feet, not taking any more of that and quickly left. Whatever Fury told him really bothered him, and he could not really talk about it or deal with it. The agent's death affected him much more than he was willing to admit out loud.

"Well. . .it's an old fashioned notion."