-Chapter Ten-

Avery was screaming. Or maybe she only thought she was screaming and she was, in fact, already dead and imagining the whole thing. The feeling of vertigo assaulting her body made her think otherwise and she immediately started frantically clawing at her seatbelt, desperate to get out of her seat before she died in her spot, turned into nothing more than a human pancake.

The plane flipped, sending her head slamming back into the metallic paneling behind the seat with a crunch. Every time she got close to unbuckling her belt the plane would dip, sending things flying at her, knocking her head and shoulders from side to side. She wasn't even aware a plane like this carried so much cargo, but she decided not to think about that too much when there were other more pressing things to focus on.

Such as not dying, for a start.

After what felt like hours, Avery finally snapped open her seatbelt, lessening her panic ever so slightly. As soon as she wasn't strapped to her seat, she flew upwards towards the ceiling of the plane. She threw her hands up to prevent her head from smacking into the top, crying out at the cuts she got on her palms from the rough metal. Now that she was out of her seat, she could see that her situation wasn't much better. There weren't any parachutes she could see and it wasn't like she could fly. She looked around frantically to see if there was anything that could help her, but found nothing. Tony and Steve were gone, that she could see, and the man carrying the hammer had disappeared with the prisoner shortly after the plane stopped working. As far as she knew, she was on her own. She had been wishing to be alone for months. This was karma somehow. She just knew it.

Avery wrapped her bleeding hands around one of the protruding metal beams, using them like monkey bars to move towards the hatch. She decided, without much thought in fact, that she would rather die outside the plane than in it.

Halfway towards the hatch, strong arms wrapped around her stomach from behind, startling her. "Don't let go." The person pulled her away from the ceiling, forcing Avery to shift around in their arms to actually grab onto them as well. She didn't know who it was, but she didn't care, for obvious reasons. She latched herself onto them like a lemur, arms and legs intertwining behind the person's back in a vice grip.

It only took them a few moments to exit the plane through the open hatch. Avery felt like dead weight but she didn't know what else to do beyond holding onto the person for dear life. It was probably Natasha, judging by the size of the hips, but she didn't dare look up to see if she was right. She supposed if they lived long enough to make it to the ground, in one piece most importantly to her, she would see. She half-hoped it wasn't Natasha just so she wouldn't have to deal with the debacle of owing her something in any way, shape, or form. Then again, she shouldn't be picky about the person saving her life. It was in poor form.

Avery peeked over the person's shoulder, watching as they cleared the lip of the plane. The sky above them, or it could have been the ground, spun in front of her like a kaleidoscope. Every time she tried to focus on one thing, they would flip and she would lose sight of what she was looking at, leaving her disoriented and nauseas.

"I need you to pull the chute."

"What?" Avery screamed against the wind.

"The chute!" They flipped again, Avery ended up upside down, staring at the ground that was getting closer and closer at an alarming rate. "I can't reach it!"

"I don't…" She thought she might puke. "I don't know where the pull is!"

"Find it!" That was definitely Natasha.

Avery grasped at the pack over Natasha's shoulders, desperately trying to find the little string. She knew they only had seconds, moments, before they would be nothing more than little splats on the ground. Her hands shook horrifically.

"Avery." Natasha actually sounded scared, which made Avery even more terrified. She didn't even know what point of afraid she was at. Hair turning white fear seemed like the right way to describe it, but even that didn't feel like enough. She moved her hand around Natasha's back, desperation making her movements sloppy and fruitless. "Avery, do it!"

Avery squeezed her eyes shut and pulled her body closer to Natasha's, freeing up a bit more movement in her arms. She almost screamed for joy when she felt the metallic charm at the end of the parachute pull hit her arm. She reached her other hand over and grabbed it, yanking it violently.

The whiplash from the sudden change in momentum almost made Avery let go of Natasha. She squeezed her tighter, feeling the tears that had been threatening to spill over finally explode. She buried her face into Natasha's shoulder and cried, from both elation at not being dead and residual panic from what had just happened. If the situation had been any different she would have been mortified at how she was clinging to the red-head. Natasha didn't seem to mind, considering she was holding onto Avery just as tight, although without all the messy blubbering.

"We're going to land soon." Natasha said over the sound of the wind. Avery noticed it had lessened considerably, although they were still falling faster than made her comfortable. "You need to unwarp your legs."

Avery tried to do so for a moment but immediately reattached herself, stronger than before, when she felt her body start to slip.

Natasha cursed in a language that sounded distinctly like Russian and tried to loosen Avery's grip from her, which caused Avery to cling tighter. Avery was thankful she didn't just drop her, which she easily could have. She thought she might deserve it after what had happened up on the plane. She knew it was her fault, although she didn't know why. When she looked at the man holding the hammer everything had exploded and she knew that it was because of her.

Natasha seemed to realize that Avery wasn't going to let go and tried shift them so that she would be able to land with her legs down, although that did very little to lessen their impact. Natasha's feet hit first, causing Avery to slam back first into the ground, taking Natasha with her. If Avery could breathe she would have told Natasha to get off, but she couldn't even manage to get anything out besides a strangled groan.

The plane, or at least part of the plane, landed next, catching on the canopy of trees. The parachute was in shreds from the falling debris, but it could have been worse. That could have been them. Natasha sat down next to Avery, fiddling with the parachute straps. When they didn't pop open, she pulled out a knife and sliced them off manually, muttering angrily to herself the entire time. Avery watched her, sucking in air greedily. She allowed herself a few moments rest before she sat up, using her elbows rather than her hands, and continued to watch Natasha.

The silence between them seemed to stretch on forever, making Avery more and more uncomfortable with each passing moment. She wanted Natasha to say something. She would prefer her yelling at her to the quiet. Her knife glistened dangerously, despite the fact that it was aimed at the parachute and not her.

She slumped back to the ground and looked up at the trees, glancing back at the knife occasionally.

It was quiet and peaceful for a moment before the trees above them groaned, causing Avery to narrow her eyes instantly. Another groan made more leaves spiral down towards them. Something snapped. Karma. This was definitely karma.

"Natasha, move!"

Avery grabbed Natasha around her shoulders and threw their bodies to the side. Her muscles, which had been jarred from their rough landing, strained with the effort of hauling both of their weights. She should have worked out a bit more while she was with S.H.I.E.L.D., but she had only done the bare minimum required of her, out of pride more than anything. She had always been told she was stubborn.

They landed with a thud; Avery's back slamming into a tree. It offered Natasha the leverage she needed to switch their positions. She shoved Avery down with one hand and brandished the knife at her with the other, causing Avery's throat to run dry. She tried to push herself back from Natasha, only to find that the tree was blocking her escape. Natasha moved the knife closer, the tip coming dangerously close to her jugular vein. Avery glanced down at it, wondering how she had managed to go from one deadly situation to another in a matter of moments. She was just lucky, she guessed.

"Natasha." Avery tried to hold her hand up in a placating way. "Please, don't."

The stuck piece of the plane crashed behind them, causing Natasha to jump at the volume it produced. She barely pressed the tip of the knife into Avery's skin, causing a small bit of blood to seep out. Avery's hiss of pain was enough to jar Natasha out of her shocked reverie. Avery took the moment to shove her hand away, not able to look away from her just in case she decided to stab her again.

"You saved my life." Natasha sat back, the knife falling down to her side.

Avery blinked rapidly at the dumbfounded tone in her voice. Of course she had saved her life. The statement was so stupid Avery didn't even know how to respond. "Well, yea."

Natasha seemed uncomfortable with the notion. Rather than say anything else, she stood up, sheathing her knife in her boot. Avery released the breath she had been holding, although she still couldn't bring herself to move out of shock.

"That was close." Tony Stark, face mask still down, landed next to them. He kicked up dust into Avery's face, causing her eyes to immediately start watering. "Anybody hurt?

Natasha glanced at Avery and the tiny cut on her neck, but chose not to comment on it, not that Avery expected her to. Avery reached her hand up and pressed a couple fingers against the spot, assessing the damage. She freaked out at the amount of blood for a moment before she remembered both of her hands were cut. She pulled her sleeves down over both of her hands as she stood up.

"Fine." Avery's voice came out like a squeak. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Fine, we're fine. What part of the plane was that?"

"The hatch. The electrical discharge must have caused it to detach."

The electrical discharged that she had caused. The unsaid part of that sentence hung over them heavily. She fiddled with the ends of her sleeves in a nervous manner and waited for someone else to speak, avoiding looking at either of them directly.

"Do you see any sign of the others?" Natasha asked, fixing the straps of her holsters. Avery must have messed them up when they were falling.

"No." Avery said, feeling no small amount of misery creeping up on her when the realization washed over her. "Have you seen them?"

"Nothing. Sky's quiet."

"Where's Loki?" Natasha was pressing her finger to her ear, trying, and failing, to get communication. She pulled the little black earpiece out and turned it over in her hand. Avery leaned closer, cautiously aware of the fact that Natasha still had her knife. "It's fried." She threw it at the nearest tree, shattering it on contact. That seemed like a little bit of an overreaction, but Avery kept her mouth shut.

"So we can't contact S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Avery asked, taking an immediate step back when Natasha glared at her.

"Are your communications still functioning?" Natasha asked Tony, completely ignoring Avery. He nodded, an action which caused both Avery and Natasha to visibly relax. "Contact them."

"Already have. They're a bit concerned, obviously."

"How long until they can pick us up?"

"They didn't say."

"Shouldn't we try and find the others while we wait?" Avery asked, looking down at the ground in the hope that neither of them would start asking about what had happened in the plane.

"I'll take the air and see what I can find. You two start heading towards higher ground." His face mask lowered and he took off immediately, leaving the two standing in an awkward silence.

The quiet between them extended for far longer than Avery would have liked in Tony's absence. She could feel Natasha staring at her, glaring at her, so she avoided making eye contact enthusiastically. She crossed her hands behind her back and started picking at a few wayward specks of dirt and twigs, ignoring the way it stung her hands. It felt like there were hundreds, which she was sort of thankful for as it offered her a decent distraction. Natasha didn't seem to care about the uncomfortableness between them. She grabbed Avery by the shoulder and started marching off into the trees, dragging her along behind her.

Rather than say anything stupid, Avery kept her mouth shut and gaze firmly planted on the back of Natasha's head. Her boots were not made for this sort of thing and already rubbed something awful, causing her to stumble occasionally.

"Keep up, Gudrun."

The tone of Natasha's voice was one that made the hair on the back of Avery's neck stand up. She sprinted to keep up.

"Do you think the others are okay?" Avery asked, despite her reservations about speaking with Natasha directly. This was the longest time they had spent together and she felt terribly uncomfortable. Their first meeting hadn't gone very well and Natasha hadn't been able to be in the same room without glaring at Avery since. She supposed it was a normal response, considering the first time they had met Avery accidently made Natasha talk about her past.

She still cringed when she thought about the murderous look on Natasha's face.

"Well, they were in a plane crash." The edge to her voice was gone. Avery moved a little closer, still out of the assassin's reach, so that she could hear her better. "Your guess is as good as mine."

"Who was that grabbed the greasy guy?"

"The greasy guy was Loki. I thought you knew that." Natasha stopped walking and turned to look at Avery. "The other one was Thor, his brother."

"Brother? Genetics are weird."

Natasha 'hmmd' and started to keep walking, but she decided to stop last moment. "How do you do it?"

"What do you mean?" Avery shoved her hands into her pockets. Natasha was staring at her and for once she could see that the unnatural amount of anger slowly leaving her eyes. That unnerved her enough to cause her to take a hesitant step backwards. Natasha immediately rolled her eyes.

"I'm not going to do anything."

"Are you certain about that?" Avery asked, eyes trailing down to the gun holstered at her hip and the knife strapped to her thigh.

"Stop looking like a puppy that just got kicked."

"You scare me." Avery leaned back against a tree, careful to keep Natasha, and all of her weapons, in her line of sight. When Natasha smirked Avery wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing. The small smile, which was altogether alarming, quickly left her face and was instantly replaced by the same look of questioning she sported before.

"So, how do you do it? What happened on the plane?"

"I don't really know, to be honest." She toed an exposed root, thinking about what reasons Natasha might have for suddenly finding Avery and her powers interesting. It wasn't as if she had ever bothered to find out what made Avery tick before. She didn't think Natasha truly cared. She was certain all she saw was a problem, a liability, that needed to be taken care of. Avery glanced down at her feet, debating her options before she decided to play along. "If you have any ideas, you're more than welcome to chime in. Maybe you could tell me why I was on the plane in the first place?"

Natasha was silent and Avery thought that she would be better off not trying to speak to her at all. Avery was just about to walk away when Natasha let out a heavy sigh and started speaking. "I'm only telling you this to prevent any further disasters. If you tell anyone what I'm about to tell you, I will…"

"Kill me? Lock me up in a facility that has a tendency to blow up?"

Natasha was not impressed by Avery's sarcasm, but she kept speaking regardless. "Director Fury decided it would be better if you were kept in the dark about things that you didn't need to know."

"That's worked out really swimmingly, wouldn't you say?" Avery snapped, wishing that that she wasn't still affected by S.H.I.E.L.D. in the way she was. She felt the bitterness rising up inside her and immediately pushed it back, waiting to see what Natasha told her before she got too angry.

"Obviously it isn't." Natasha snapped back.

"I'm tired of this shit, Natasha." Avery said, kicking the root a little harder than before.

"We thought what happened on the Helicarrier was an isolated event, that you and everyone else would be safe if we removed you from the situation. Clearly, that isn't true." Avery snorted derisively and returned her gaze to the ground.

"Obviously. I just caused a plane crash because I made eye contact with someone."

They fell into a silence that felt like it stretched on forever before Natasha finally started speaking again. Her voice wasn't as harsh as it could have been. There was still an edge to it, however, forcing Avery to keep her guard up. "You should have been told what happened with Dr. Banner."

"Yes, that would probably be a good place to start."

"Shortly after you woke up…"

"After being drugged by R-something."

"Agent Rumlow."

"Whatever."

Natasha's lip pursed, although she continued in spite of Avery's interruptions. "After you woke up you weren't in control of your abilities and you made Dr. Banner start to turn into…" She paused thinking her words over before continuing. "His alternate side. We had to remove you from the situation before it got out of hand."

"So you brought me along. What would have happened if I had stayed? What do you mean his alternate side?" Avery fired her questions at Natasha rapidly, unwilling to let the opportunity pass her up.

"Dr. Banner attempted to recreate the experiment that worked on Steve Rogers and was unsuccessful. It had disastrous results."

"Why didn't you just tell me that from the beginning?" Avery felt so irrationally angry at Natasha for a moment she thought about hitting her. She knew that wouldn't help anything. In fact, it would probably make things worse in that she would get punched in the face for even trying. She quelled her desire and turned her anger towards the root, kicking it until the toes in her right foot throbbed. "Is it because you're afraid of what I'm going to do, who I'm going to tell?"

"We had to be, have to be, careful."

"I get that." Avery wasn't an idiot, she knew that there was some logic in their caution around her. "I know you all think I'm a supervillain who likes to twirl my mustache and think about all the ways I can mess things up for you guys, but I've got a newsflash for you. I have no one to tell. I have nowhere to go. When I ran away after the facility accident I didn't have a destination, I was scared so I started running and I didn't really think about it. I just ran."

"We don't understand you. We thought if we observed you we'd be able to figure it out, how it works."

"Sounds like a really solid plan. Nothing bad could possibly happen, right?" Avery was surprised Natasha had let the conversation go this long.

"I'm not going to apologize."

"I didn't think you would." Avery said quietly.

"But we should have told you."

Avery gave a noncommittal grunt and started to walk again before she stopped, standing next to Natasha. "I didn't mean to do it. Any of it." Natasha assessed her, eyes narrowed. Avery noticed, in that moment, that she was only a few inches shorter than her. If they had been out in the real world, she wouldn't even be afraid of such a small person. "I'm sorry." Avery said after a moment of staring at each other. "For what happened when we first met."

Natasha stared at her and Avery thought her expression was on the verge of softening.

"We need to get to higher ground."

That was that, Avery supposed. She didn't think this could be counted as a moment, but it was something. A weird something, but something. Natasha started back up the incline, indicating that Avery should follow with a nod. She started hiking, ignoring the way her toes hurt more than they did before. She supposed that was bound to happen when one takes their anger out on an unmoving tree root. She tried not to limp, or complain for that matter, and continued to hike in silence behind Natasha.

Avery wondered what country they were in as they hiked up the hill. Germany would probably be a good guess, considering they had picked up Loki in Stuttgart, but they could be anywhere by this point. Europe. She settled on Europe in her mind and turned her attention back towards walking and not tripping and falling flat on her face.

The ground was starting to slope more as they got closer to the little plateau. The forest was silent, even though a plane had just crashed, making Avery think, more and more, that her, Natasha, and Tony were the only ones that survived. They should have heard something from the others by then. She turned to look behind her, hoping that maybe she could see something from the spot that the hatch landed, but was disappointed to find that it was already out of sight. The guilt was awful. It felt like someone had inserted a block of ice into her stomach and chest and it was slowly suffocating her.

"Did you hear that?" Avery blinked, almost running into Natasha. She had been distracted by her own guilt and hadn't notice Natasha had stopped walking. "Over there." Natasha pointed towards her left. Avery followed her gaze, focusing as hard as she could on the dark tree line. She strained to see if she could hear or spot what Natasha was talking about.

Nothing. Not even a ground squirrel. It was too quiet for a place that had just had a plane crash and that made Avery nervous.

Natasha didn't seem to feel the same way. She immediately stalked off into the trees, gun held in front of her. Avery had no choice but to follow. She picked her way through the trees, doing her best to keep up with Natasha, who was practically sprinting. Avery only started to hear what Natasha was talking about after a few moments of running. It sounded like people were fighting. There was yelling, shouting, things breaking. They were running down the incline by the time they reached the point where the trees started thin out, Avery wheezing like a chain-smoker. She knew she should be worried there was some sort of conflict happening and they were running right towards it, but she had quite the opposite reaction.

Those sounds meant there was something, someone, alive.

"Could that be them?" Avery called to Natasha.

"Who else would it be?"

She had a point. Avery refused to let herself feel hopeful, however, until she could see that it was them for sure.

They skidded to a halt at the edge of the tree line, both peering out at the scene in front of them. The tree line, which turned out to just be at the edge of a clearing that obviously wasn't naturally occurring, was littered with broken in half and uprooted trees. Natasha bent down behind one of the uprooted trees and almost immediately yanked Avery down with her. Avery waited a moment before she snuck a peek out from behind the tree to see what they were hiding from.

She instantly regretted it when something very large and metal came flying at the spot her head had just been. She threw herself backwards, running into Natasha with a smack.

"What the hell?"

"This is how they solve their problems." Natasha sounded like this had happened before, although Avery failed to see how that was possible. "Typical."

Avery waited for another moment before she decided to take her chances on seeing what was going on again. She laid down on the ground and wormed her way outwards, making sure her body was hidden and only her face up to her eyes was visible. She felt like even that was too much, but she didn't squirm backwards. At least they were all alive. And healthy. At least, healthy enough to fight each other. She watched Tony throw a punch at Thor, landing it right in his jaw. She cringed and wiggled backwards, sitting up so that she could look at Natasha.

"Should we try and stop them?"

"Be my guest."

Avery dared another glance around the tree they were hiding behind and immediately decided against doing it again. Tony fired in their direction, not on purpose she was sure, and narrowly missed hitting her directly in the face. Natasha grabbed the lose fabric of her jacket and hauled her backwards just before she was hit. The wood of the tree they were hiding behind splintered into a million pieces, forcing them both to shield their faces from the debris.

"So we wait." Avery said, blowing out a little bit of air, throwing a glance over her shoulder at Natasha to confirm.

"We wait." Natasha confirmed.

It was another five minutes or so before something interrupted Thor and Tony enough to make them stop. "Hey!" The fighting stopped immediately at the sound of the new voice. "Enough."

Natasha gave it a few seconds to see if they were truly done before she stood up. Avery noticed she holstered her gun, indicating to her that it would be sort of safe to follow after her. She stood up, keeping most of her body hidden behind the mangled tree just on the off chance Thor and Tony decided to resume. She reached a hand down and grabbed one of the larger pieces of fractured wood and held it behind her back. She could feel the rough edges digging into the cut on her palm but ignored it in favor of having something to defend herself with just in case they decided to start throwing punches again.

Steve had positioned himself between Tony and Thor at some point, arms tensed and jaw tight. He was looking around at the decimated clearing, still visibly coiled, ready to intervene once again.

"Are you three done having your pissing contest?" Natasha asked, sidestepping the tree so she could stand in front of the three men. Even though she was substantially smaller than the three of them, there was something about her presence that demanded their attention. "Where's Loki?" Apparently they had forgotten about Loki. Avery snorted at the looks on their faces. She covered her mouth with her hand almost immediately so they wouldn't notice that she was laughing at them. Natasha noticed, despite her best efforts. "That isn't helping." She shot Avery a scathing look. "Stark, find Loki."

"I will not permit this metal man to lay hands on my brother."

"I didn't ask you." Natasha leveled her glare at Thor, silencing any further arguments before he could say them. "Go, Stark." Tony's facemask snapped shut and he took off, kicking up more dirt in his wake. Avery closed her eyes to avoid getting more dust in them, although it didn't do much good.

"How dare you…"

"I'm going to cut you off right there. We can have this little fight later once Loki is back in custody and we aren't stuck in the middle of nowhere without any transportation."

"You are too bold, woman."

Avery knew her mouth was open but she couldn't help it. These people were all crazy, she decided, or suicidal. She gripped the sliver of wood in her hand tighter and shifted on her feet, glancing around to see if Tony was on his way back. She didn't like being trapped in the wilderness with them. It gave her a major migraine just trying to keep her powers under control. She could already feel her temples throbbing. Steve wasn't so bad, and she was starting to think Natasha wasn't either, but she questioned being around Thor, for obvious reasons.

"Are you alright?"

Sometime during her observations of Natasha and Thor, Steve had sidled over to stand next to her. She noticed he looked more nervous to be around her than before. She tried not to take it personally. "I'm fine. You?"

He smiled slightly and nodded, readjusting his shield in his hand. "It isn't the first time I've fallen out of a plane."

"Really? How does that happen more than once? I mean, I feel like the first time would be enough to turn you away from the idea for good."

"You would think." Avery smiled and looked at her feet. He followed her gaze down and, incidentally, the chunk of wood she was hiding behind her leg. "You can drop the splinter."

She looked at the makeshift weapon in her hand and blushed, dropping it instantly. She noticed the blood from her hand had stained it. "Yea, I guess it wouldn't do much good against you or Thor." She said, feeling his gaze on her.

"You think you'd need to use it against me?"

"No!" Avery said immediately, a bit too loudly. Thor and Natasha looked back at them, pausing mid-spat to see what was going on with them. "I mean, yes, but no."

Her little outburst seemed to distract Thor enough to get him to focus his attention solely on her. He was a very large man, with very large biceps that looked liable to snap her in half, should he get the itch to. Her eyes flashed back and forth between his biceps and the hammer in his hand before settling on his face. "You are the woman from the plane." Thor took three large strides towards Avery. Steve immediately stepped in front of her, holding out his arm in a placating way towards the advancing man. "Where did you obtain such of powers?"

"Umm…" Avery bent her knees, trying to be subtle about grabbing her discarded weapon. The motion caught Steve's attention "Yea, about that, I didn't know that was going to happen."

"Who are you?" Thor advanced closer, seemingly oblivious to the glare on the Steve's face. Avery peeked around Steve's hulking form and made eye contact with Thor. She sidestepped him and held her hands out in front, very much aware of how stupid she was being. It was her goal, a very stupid one perhaps, to show him, all of them, that she meant no harm. She almost took a step back when she saw how closely Thor was looking at her, observing her features. "I know your face."

"No, I don't think you do." She kept her hands out, feeling that the placating motion was misplaced.

"Take a step back, Thor." Natasha said from behind him. She was holding her gun, although she wasn't pointing it at him. Not yet. Avery thought that if Thor kept at it, however, Natasha might just change her mind. "We can't afford her losing control again."

"I'm fine." Avery said, shooting a dark look over at Natasha. "Now that I know I need to control it all the time, I won't do anything. No lightning, no nothing. You have my word."

"I think the plane would beg to differ." Tony was back. He landed loudly next to Natasha, depositing a very disgruntled looking Loki at Natasha's feet. His hands were bound behind his back and there was a cut on his face, but otherwise he still looked smug and unharmed. Avery felt the sudden desire to punch him in the face, for some reason that she wasn't quite sure of. She thought he might have that effect on everyone. Tony's mask pulled back with a clicking noise, revealing his less than amused expression. The tone he used when he spoke, however, was still flippant. "Avery, care to share with the class."

Everybody turned to stare at her simultaneously. It was a bit creepy. Avery bit her lip and looked between all of them, choosing to look at Steve, who, unsurprisingly, was the least accusatory.

"I didn't mean to do it." Avery said, hoping that eventually she wasn't going need to preface things about her life.

"Quiet, Avery." Natasha snapped, eyes flashing down to Loki.

"Hold up." Tony walked up until he was standing right next to Avery. She fought the urge to immediately step back. "What can you do?"

She glanced at Natasha once more before she spoke, thinking it best to tell them the truth now, rather than waiting for things to get worse later. "I can make people reveal their secrets. Which in this case, means powers, I guess. I would like to point out, however, that I never knew I could do that."

Silence. Avery expected them to shout at her, say something about staying away from them, but they didn't. She winced, waiting for the inevitable. When the awkwardness stretched on, Avery cracked open an eye. In fact, instead of turning their anger on her, like people always did, Tony rounded on Natasha, anger written on his handsome face.

"Let me guess, this was Fury's idea."

"Director Fury…"

"Is she even an agent?" Tony turned his attention to Steve next. "Did you know about her?"

"I saw what happened with Dr. Banner." There was a bit of regret in his voice. "They never told me anything about what she could do."

"That's because it's classified. Neither of you needed to know."

"Director Fury didn't think we needed to know about her?" Steve folded his arms over his chest. "Someone who can force people to use their powers against their will…kind of a big deal."

"We've never dealt with someone like her before. There isn't a protocol for this. S.H.I.E.L.D. is doing the best it can."

"So, let's make our own protocol." Tony said, taking a few strides so that he was standing directly in front of Avery. "Did you mean to crash the plane?"

"No." Avery said instantly, latching onto this new course. Tony was blaming S.H.I.E.L.D. Avery could hug him. She would have if she didn't think it would instantly make things weirder than they already were.

"Will you do something like that again?"

"No, not if I can help it."

"Good enough for me." Avery smiled brightly at him, feeling the coils in her stomach loosening. "Good enough for you, kid?"

She nodded ardently. "Yes."

"Good, then why don't you ask Voldemort over there where he hid the tesseract?"