A/N: Please read and reivew!
Tony was staring at where Loki's cell once was, and he barely even acknowledged us standing there. It was a quiet moment. Each of us was mourning the fallen agent in our own way.
"Was he married?" Steve asked the man who knew the agent the best. Or maybe not. You never know with Tony Stark. All of that information about Coulson could have been told to him when he was very busy or thinking about his work and inventions.
"There was a cellist," Tony said, not even looking at us. He did know the agent better than any of us, and his grief did sound to be pretty genuine. "I think."
I closed my eyes, remembering the blood pooling around my hands when I tried to stop the bleeding. It was the memory of feeling someone else's life pass away through my fingers. When I opened my eyes, I noticed that steve was giving me a look of concern, and I only shrugged like I wasn't going to talk about anything to him like that.
"I'm sorry," Steve ended up saying to Tony. "He seemed like a good man."
Tony quickly turned around to look at us. "He was an idiot."
"Why? For believing?" I asked.
He grimaced at what I had said. "He could have waited. . ."
"He was just doing his job," Steve remarked, but when tony never really responded to him, he wore a thoughtful and serious expression. "Is this the first time you lost a soldier?"
"We are not soldiers!" Tony snapped, but he realized he showed too much emotion to complete strangers. "I'm not marching to Fury's fife."
"I'm not," I snorted. "None of us are."
"He's got the same blood on his hands as Loki does," Steve said.
Tony was thinking really hard as he looked at the spot on the wall that still had Coulson's blood on it.
"He made it personal," he quickly said.
"That's not the point," Steve said.
"It is the point," Tony replied. "He hit us all right where we live. Why?"
"To tear us apart," I said, slowly and not too sure about it. If that was the case, he probably didn't think that one through all the way.
"Divide and conquer is great, but he knows he has to beat us to win right?" He started to pace around and really think. It was pretty clear that he was one of the world's greatest minds just by watching him in action. He was basically a true genius at work. "Loki's a full tilt diva. He wants parades, flowers, and a monument built to the sky with his name. . ." He stopped short, and it was pretty clear he realized something pretty important. " Sonofabitch."
Tony walked quickly out of the room. He was on a mission, in his own world completely, needing to find a way and a reason beyond all of that.
"I don't get it," I said, and I pointedly looked away from the stain on the wall. "I mean. . ." I had issues telling my real opinions, especially to strangers.
"He figured it out," he told me, and when I looked up at him, I nodded to tell him I understood that.
"Yeah," I told him. "But, he's only drawing us all together and making it easier for us to fight him. It's going to blow up in his face. . ."
"You assume we'll actually work together," Steve remarked, giving me a strange look.
That was not what he had expected me to even say, but that look melted away when he realized that it would have made more sense if that was pretty obvious. He didn't seem like he didn't want to believe something like that, ignoring the obvious facts to fit his world view. It was like he was trying to give me a chance to speak about it out loud.
"It's just us three," Steve was saying. "Maybe Thor. . ."
"When we work together. . .why am I even telling you this?" I snapped, probably more irritated than I should have been. He did already understand that, and that fact was something he lived through during World War II.
"Maybe I want to hear you say it." Steve was giving me the chance to really speak my opinion. Very few people would even bother to give me that chance, least of all complete strangers.
"When we work together," I actually managed to say. My voice wasn't shaking or very quiet. "We become a part of something bigger than ourselves. . .something greater."
"Then we can do wonders," he finished for me.
Clint Barton was drinking water out of a paper cup, quietly talking to Natasha. He was still dealing with the effects of having Loki deep inside his mind as his puppet master, and he was probably remembering the deaths that were done by his hands because of Loki. His eyes quickly looked at me when I walked into the medical bay room.
He was surprised to see me, and that surprise turned to a small amount of anger. I was still in high school, even though I was a senior, but I was legally an adult. I had every right to be there if I wanted to. Clint ran in the same circles as my youngest uncle when they were both young hellions.
Life sort of happened. Clint joined S.H.I.E.L.D., using his bow and arrow skills to his advantage and becoming one of the best. My uncle was sent to prison and married his first wife before life sort of made him realize he needed to get his act together. After his. . .probably. . .second or third attempt at college, he was able to become a productive member of society. Despite their differences, they still tried to keep in touch over the years, and it was a friendship that could withstand the tests of time.
"Don't you have school?" He finally asked, and he knew that nothing he would say would make me want to stay to prove him wrong or something like that.
"The college is on fall break," I told him, starting to wash my bloodied hands with some relief. That physical reminder would be gone. "And, the rest of my schedule's a joke."
He shrugged, seemingly choosing to accept that. "Still skipped school."
"Point," I told him, rolling my eyes as I dried my hands. "But, I don't cause too much trouble."
"You can get away with anything."
I quirked up an eyebrow at him. "I keep my head down."
We looked both ridiculous and bad ass as we walked to one of the few remaining jets that were still in one piece. People were giving us strange looks. It might have had to with the red, white, and blue guy next to me. Maybe. I was wearing all black, so it couldn't have been me.
The pilot working on the jet quickly got to his feet when he saw us walking towards his jet, and he wasn't happy about us being there."
"Hey," he was trying to stop us, but he wasn't too sure about it. "You're not authorized to be here."
"Son," Steve told him, raising one hand up, and his voice was pretty serious. "Just don't."
The pilot could not get away fast enough.
That was how I ended up in the middle of New York City during what would later be called the Battle of New York. I was there. Look for the bright blonde mess of hair and lost of fire. That's me.
We were in New York City when that bright blue light shot up into the sky to create a black hole for the aliens to go through.