To embrace the extraordinary
Summary: Leanne Barton has never been what you would class as normal. She is very good at pretending she is an ordinary girl but she's not and with her big brother in danger it is time for her to stop hiding. The time has come for her to embrace the extraordinary
Disclaimer: I don't own anything that you recognise. The idea is the only thing that's mine.
AN 1: Hey guys I have been gone a long time again, I know, I'm sorry. I have just come back from a family holiday in America so I am all inspired at the moment this is the first of my stories to benefit from that but hopefully not the last. So without further ado here comes another chapter.
Chapter 9
Leanne Barton liked to think she knew herself pretty well. She knew where her strengths lay and played to them; likewise she was aware of her weaknesses and tried to avoid them as much as she could.
She had never classified her fighting ability as one of her strengths but she sure as heck didn't see it as a weakness either, to her it was just another random skill she had picked up as she made her way in the world.
While some of what she could do had been drilled into her by a deadly assassin (Clint) the rest she had learnt form a circus performer here or a collage friend there. Leanne had never really believed that her body could be just as much of a weapon as one of her knives, not until she found herself face to face with Pips on the sparing mat and found that for the first time in her life she actually wanted to physically hurt someone.
There was something about the sadistic twist of the woman's lips that reignited all of the anger and hate that Leanne had been keeping at bay for the last few days. Had she been thinking more rationally she would have realised just how wrong it was to aim all of her Loki/S.H.I.E.L.D related fury at one person, but as Pips charged towards her she stopped being a person in Leanne's mind and became a target.
Something inside Leanne shifted dramatically in that moment. Her anger that usually burnt inferno hot in her chest turned deadly cold and all of her thought processes seemed to stop. Unfortunately for Pips Leanne was now running purely on anger and instinct.
Natasha Romanoff was a hard woman to surprise but Leanne's performance during her sparing mach with Pips came very close. The young woman had suddenly talked on a deadly grace that Nat had never believed she could process. Pips had attacked again and again with an ever increasing rage and never landed a blow while Leanne was completely cold as she easily took the agents legs from under her more than once.
It took Natasha a moment to realise Leanne was acting like a cat with a mouse every time she let Pips up, it was just so the youngest Barton could put her down again. Clint's sweet little sister was playing with a fully trained S.H.I.E.L.D agent and winning.
When Pips went down the final time it was because Leanne had thrown her to the floor. The agent who had been so bent on punishing the new comer for all the problems she had caused wasn't sure that she could have gotten up if she wanted to but the younger woman made sure that getting to her feet again wasn't an option. As soon as Pips had touched the mat Leanne was upon her, she pinned the agent's body with her own using only one hand to hold both of the older woman's. Her other hand quickly retrieved one of the many daggers from her boot and held it to Pips neck.
"We are done now Pips" Leanne hissed as her brain slowly began to kick in again. "Whatever you think I did to you is over and you are going to stop trying to make me pay for it, am I clear?" she asked pressing the blade fractionally closer to the woman's jugular.
"Yes" Pips gasped out unable to say anything else.
"Good" said Leanne, she got up and stalked off the mat without looking back at the shaken agent. Truth be told Pips wasn't the only one shaken Leanne couldn't believe what had just happened she had never given herself completely over to her instincts like that before. It was something that Clint had urged her to do in every training session they had ever had but she had never been able to do it until today. She was sure she would have made her brother proud with her actions out on the mat but Leanne wasn't sure it was an experience she ever wanted to repeat.
"Are you good?" Nat asked as Leanne reached her side, by that point the adrenalin rush had begun to wear off and Leanne could feel herself begin to tremble but she was not going to admit that to a woman as strong as the Black Widow.
"I'm fine" she told her brothers partner who almost looked concerned, before she pressed her fingers to the com in her ear to talk to those who had been observing her. "If you guys are done testing me I'm going to head back to the lab and make myself useful" she told them.
Up in the observation room Fury exchanged glances with a satisfied looking Hill and a completely shocked Steve before answering her. "Go right ahead agent Barton" he told her smugly.
"Agent Barton is my brother Director, I'm just Leanne" she corrected him before sighing off.
"That girl is not just anything" Fury said to himself before turning his attention to the still slightly bewildered Steve "You wanted to know what I saw in her that you didn't" he said to the young captain as he watched the girl in question from the huge window. Steve just nodded "I saw her brother as he was years ago, I see the same spirit in her now that I saw in him then and I knew that Barton wouldn't have left her untrained" the director explained "She probably never knew just how dangerous she really could be" he commented almost sadly.
"Until we made her see it" Steve said comprehending what he couldn't before, Fury had always had Leanne's best interest at heart, in his own strange way. All Steve had wanted to do was protect the young woman from the violence of battle but Fury had wanted to protect her from the violence that she didn't know she held within herself.
He suddenly felt guilty for the part he had played. If he had just trusted Natasha when she said Leanne could handle herself perhaps the whole test of her abilities could have been avoided, but he had been so sure that he knew best and now Leanne was the one that was going to pay the price. Sooner or later she would realise that she was no longer the person she thought she was, she never really had been and never truly could be.
Steve knew he couldn't stop Leanne from eventually seeing what he a Fury already did that ship had sailed, but he could attempt to make up for the unhappiness his apparent lack of faith was bound to have caused her. With that thought in his mind he bolted from the room leaving both Hill and Fury to stair after him.
Leanne was just exiting the gym when Steve caught up to her. He noticed she was moving far more slowly than she had in the whole time he had known her, he could only assume this was due to the fact she was coming off of an adrenalin high.
"Leanne" he greeted her with his brightest smile, the smile that he had begun to think of as his Leanne smile.
"Hello Captain Rodgers" She shot back in her coolest tone and Steve was hit by a sudden realisation of his own, he hadn't upset her, he had hurt her.
"I wanted to tell you how impressed I was with your skills" he quickly said desperately trying to fix the damage he had inadvertently done.
"I'm glad I meet with your approval" she said crisply before she turned to leave once again.
"I'm sorry" Steve blurted to her retreating back. Leanne looked back over her shoulder at him in a way that seemed to say she was giving him a chance and he better not blow it. "I'm sorry if you think I didn't trust you to be on the team or that I didn't have faith in your skills" he said in a rush "But I just wanted to keep you safe and I was sure your brother would want that too, I was only trying protect you" he explained to her sadly.
Leanne's inner feminist was demanding that she stay mad, curtly remind Steve that times had changed and flounce off but she didn't have it in her. Maybe it was because of her dwindling adrenalin but it was more likely the fact that in the short time she had known Steve she had come to think of him as her friend and Leanne was never very good at holding grudges against her friends, even if they deserved it
"Look Steve" she sighed turning fully to face him "I get that you wanted to keep me safe and your right that that's what Clint would want too but Clint's not here and I going to do everything I can to fix that" she said with a slightly shaky smile. "Your a good friend Steve but please don't try to be my big brother I already have one of those" she stated firmly. The point she was making was clear to Steve she was happy to have him as her friend but he needed to respect that she didn't need or want him acting as her big brother and protector.
Steve had no problem excepting he would never be Leanne's stand in big brother because truthfully he had never seen her as his sister but not looking out for her was something he just couldn't do. Protecting people was what he did and asking him not to was like asking him not to be himself but he wasn't sure how to explain that to her. "Friend's watch each other's backs" he finally told her.
"I've got yours if you've got mine" She said giving him a proper smile this time, the look in her eyes told him she understood all of the subtext that he didn't think he would be able to convey.
"Sounds good to me" Steve agreed offering her his hand not only to shake on their deal but to reaffirm the friendship he had feared was all but lost moments ago.
Leanne couldn't help but smile brightly at Steve as he took her much smaller hand in his and gave it a gentle shake smiling all the while. The whole interaction felt kind of weird to her, it didn't feel like any of the disagreements she had ever had with her friends, it felt more like the first fight she had had with her one and only boyfriend a few years back. Releasing Steve's hand she let the odd and slightly inappropriate thought slip away. "Well now that's all sorted, I have a Lab to get to" she told her huge friend brightly before turning away from him once more, this time he let her go uninterrupted and all the way the Lab Leanne was telling herself she was not disappointed about that.
The Lab was eerily quiet when Leanne entered particularly considering it had been a hive of activity when she left despite there only being two scientists working in it. The silence lasted for a few minutes after everyone had exchanged greetings and Leanne had reclaimed her previous perch on the unused work top, Finally Tony cracked and spoke up.
"I'm sorry" he practically yelled into the quite air "I have got to say it" he said snatching up a small remote and pointing it at one of the blank walls. "That was totally awesome" he crowed as a film of Leanne taking Pips out again and again filled the wall.
"Tony we agreed not to mention that" Bruce scolded his Lab partner in a hushed tone.
"But it's cool" Tony protested childishly.
Tony Stark maybe a genius but he was also a very very big kid, it took Leanne reluctantly agreeing with him that she was indeed awesome (three times) and a few firm words from Bruce (well as firm as words from Bruce got) before Tony would turn off the recording and get back to work. Once everything was back to normal Leanne couldn't help but wonder how Tony had managed to even see what was going on in the gym let alone film it but in the greater scheme of things it didn't seem all that important.
Leanne had always felt there was something oddly soothing about working in a Lab she assumed that it was because whenever she was in a Lab she was just the help, no one judged her or graded her on how well she was doing. Working in the same Lab as Bruce Banner and Tony Stark was about as far from soothing as you could get but she knew it was a learning experience many would kill for. Not to mention they were working on finding the Tesseract which would (hopefully) lead them to Clint, so Leanne was going to be the best assistant that either of them had ever had, even if her duties where limited to note taking.
Watching Tony and Bruce interact was interesting to say the least; they were like two school boys who had just been given their own privet play ground. Something about the two of them together just made Leanne want to smile but she really did wish Tony would stop trying to surprise or stress Bruce; his last attempt was interrupted by the arrival of an indignant Steve.
Leanne knew she shouldn't find the ensuing faceoff between Tony and Steve funny, Steve was 100% right, provoking Bruce (even jokingly) was a very bad idea but she still had to fight the urge to giggle at their male ego antics. Every accusation that Steve tossed at Tony was dismissively brushed aside while Steve remained stalwartly earnest in his representation of the facts at hand.
The whole situation stopped being even a little funny to Leanne when Tony began to question Fury's motivation for bringing them all together. She had never thought of it before but it was a valid question, why hadn't Fury formed this team years ago. Both Steve and Thor would have been absent from it of course but surely an alliance of Clint, Natasha, Tony and Bruce would have been better than nothing.
Bruce obviously wanted to avoid having to express his opinion but he didn't have much of a choice. First Tony practically demanded to know his thoughts on the matter and when he tried to politely side step the question Steve had gently pressed him for a truthful answer. Wanting to hear what Bruce had to say was the first thing Leanne had seen the two men agree on. It was clear to her that if they could agree more often they would make a very good team.
As the three men began to dissect every word that Loki had said Leanne got the strangest feeling that they had forgotten she was even there.
"A warm light for all mankind" Bruce quoted their resident pain in the butt "Loki's jab a Fury about the cube"
"I heard it" Steve confirmed.
"Well I think that was meant for you" Bruce said speaking to Tony. Of course it was meant for Tony, Leanne internally kicked herself for not getting that sooner, maybe she had missed it because Tony had not been in the room.
Tony obviously agreed with the Doc because he held out the packed of blue berry's that he had been zealously guarding up until now "Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the tower-" Bruce tried to press on whist helping himself to the offered berry's but Leanne cut him off.
"Barton did tell him" she stated "it is a safe bet that anything Clint knows Loki now knows" she said sadly.
"Loki's three ring circus comment" Bruce said realizing what had bought the young woman to her conclusion. Leanne just nodded while both Steve and Tony looked at her in confusion.
"Clint and I were raised in the circus" she explained "we are not ashamed of it and we don't hide it or anything but-"
"It's not the kind of thing you willingly tell your latest enemy" Tony concluded for her.
"Yeah" Leanne nodded. She knew how great the implications of what she had said were. She had just confessed that her brother, one of S.H.I.E. top agents was out there spilling all of their secrets. She held her breath and waited for the back lash to begin but none of the men reacted in the aghast manner she expected. They simply shot her that sympathy look that she hated so much before going back to their previous discussion.
"Even if Barton hadn't told Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news" Bruce said returning to his original point.
"The Stark Tower?" Bruce was interrupted once again this time by a question from Steve "That big ugly building in New York?" the young Captain finished his statement in a slightly uncomfortable tone when he realised that the building's owner was in the room.
"It's powered by an arc reactor, self-sustaining energy source" Bruce explained while pointedly ignoring the death glare that Tony was sending Steve's way. "That building will run itself for, what, a year?" he asked.
"It's just the prototype" Tony said with an undertone of pride "I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now, that is what he's getting at" he said more for Steve's benefit than anyone else's.
"So why didn't S.H.I.E.L.D. bring him in on the Tesseract project? What are they doing in the energy business in the first place?" Bruce concluded. The pair of scientists had bought up another good question that Leanne was wishing she had thought to ask herself, if she hadn't respected them before she certainly did now.
When Tony announced that he would find out the answers to all of their questions once he had finished hacking into S.H.I.E.L.D.s computers systems Leanne wasn't sure whether to be impressed or horrified.
Steve however was clear on his reaction; he was quick to jump to S.H.I.E.L.D.s defence and tried to persuade Tony to focus on only the tasks the secret agency had given him.
It seemed that Tony only knew one way to do things and that was his way, he couldn't have followed the Captains advice even if he wanted to, he just wasn't made that way. Leanne watched in shocked fascination as the two men threw insults at one another, Tony was too hot headed to back down while Steve was so loyal that it seemed even Bruce's calm intervention couldn't get thought to him. The confrontation ended the only peaceful way Leanne could imagine, Steve marched out leaving a frustrated Tony in his wake.
For a moment the young woman was torn on what to do now, should she stay put and continue to fool herself into believing she was still of some use in the lab now Tony was here or should she follow that man that had been going out of his was to look after her ever since they met. The first option would make her feel better about the Clint situation while the second was actually the right thing to do. As if sensing her internal struggle Bruce caught her eye and made a swift head motion towards the door that Steve had just exited. She wasn't sure if he was giving her permission to go with Steve or ordering her to follow him but either way she hopped of her the work top she had been perched on and raced out of the lab door.
AN:2 Hey it's me again, I just wanted to say I hope that Leanne still isn't coming over as a Mary Sue. The perfection she achieved in her fight with Pips is a one off, I promise it won't happen again but Pips deserved it (he he). I had half of this chapter written before I went on holiday but I was kind of scared to post it because this story is going quite well and I am a bit worried I will screw it up plus I am still without a beta reader. So if you guys could tell me what you think I would be very grateful.
Thanks for reading Millie