Hey guys! Long chapter here!

I know certain people may seem a little OOC here but that will be explained in the next chapter. Which may come in one week instead of two.

I know I said I would revise. But I've had so much more inspiration to write instead so I'm almost done Chapter 16 and can now say this will likely be about 17/18 chapters long. Also, I've reviewed the guidelines about ratings and I think that I need to bump up the rating from T to M because these characters have such potty mouths sometimes and some of the violence is a little strong in places.

So keep an eye out for Chapter 12 coming maybe next Wednesday/Thursday people.

Now I'm going to go cry about all of the exams I'll likely fail. Worth it.

. . .

She was getting what she wanted.

She was going back into the field after a year of being trapped. She was getting the chance to prove herself to her family, to HYDRA and to herself. Prove that she was good enough. Prove that she was strong enough. Prove that she belonged on the team. She was getting exactly what she wanted.

She was going to finally earn her place on the team, in the family. She was going to earn the trust that Bucky and Sam had already placed in her with no reason to. She was going to earn the praise she had received in the media both before she had been taken and since she had returned. She was getting exactly what she wanted.

So why did she feel like it was all a huge mistake?

. . .

Quantum emerged to find everyone suited up and Falcon holding out a pistol to her. It was pretty similar to the one she and Bucky had trained with previously. "I know you can get out of trouble pretty easily but all of us would feel a lot better if you had this on you out there."

She took it and the thigh holster Black Widow handed over and secured them both. With that the others all headed to the quinjet, assuming she would be teleporting there like she always had and leaving her to pray her powers actually worked for just a little bit. Iron Man and Falcon were going to be flying and Thor was still off-world with business in Asgard.

She called Matt straight away, and when he answered she heard a lot of rustling and movement.

"Can I expect some assistance over here or what?" was his immediate question.

"Avengers incoming, I might be able to pick you up for speed purposes but the first teleportation is rough for a normal person and I have no idea how it will affect you with your senses."

"I'll risk it. The sooner we get into this the fewer people will get hurt. You remember where my place is?" Quantum almost smiled in memory of the night she had spent at Matt's, psyching herself up to return home.

She focussed everything on that memory of his flat and opened her eyes to find Daredevil just slipping his sticks - billy clubs he said they are called billy clubs – into their holster/pouch thing. He immediately frowned, tilting his head as he studied her with his senses.

"Something is wrong. What's going on with your abilities?" She remembered him mentioning being able to recognise her abilities by vibrations in the air.

"Kind of on the fritz," she replied as she approached him.

"You going to be okay in the field?" There was genuine concern in his voice but she brushed him off. She couldn't think about that.

"I hope so, otherwise the others will be so mad."

"Mariana," Matt placed a hand on her shoulder and his lips were set in a firm line. "I'm more worried about you than them right now."

"You've only known me like a week Matt."

"And yet you're a little sister to me in every regard."

She shook her head. "You ready?" He nodded.

She was surprised her abilities were working so well and naively she thought maybe they had fixed themselves somehow but the fact that Daredevil knew something was wrong indicated otherwise. She got them to an alley just a block away from the police perimeter set up and Matt immediately gasped, stumbling away from her.

"Shit, Daredevil!" Quantum reached out as though to steady him but he merely shook his head and straightened.

"Just a little weird, I'm good. Can you take us up to that roof?" He indicated where he meant and she gripped his arm, pushing away her questions at his quick recovery.

Once there he seemed to scan the area below with his senses while Quantum did the same with her eyes. They could see the majority of the attacking force and the attempts of the police to fight them off. There weren't many civilians around but the ones that were didn't seem to have an escape route free to them.

The robots were some kind of dog-like form, dark grey in colour and just a little under six foot in height. They were big but they were slow. She wasn't sure how strong they were but it didn't look like they were too interested in the police officers around them, their focus seemed to remain on civilians.

"You in touch with the others?" At Daredevil's gruff question Quantum realised her comms had yet to be turned on so she reached up under her mask to do so.

"Quantum online."

"Finally," Hawkeye breathed.

"I have Daredevil, we are at the site and it looks a little like someone switched the tranquilisers for steroids down at the pound. Robot steroids. Plan anyone?"

"Our priority is to get any civilians in the area out. Secondary objective is to draw the fighting away from the authorities, this is our fight." Mariana saw Daredevil's jaw tick at Captain America's orders and smiled to herself at his territorial nature. "ETA of three minutes, Iron Man and Falcon?"

"ETA is 60 seconds," Iron Man replied.

"About two minutes Cap," Falcon added, sounding frustrated that he was slightly behind Iron Man.

"Roger, we're going in."

"Quantum, wait for Iron Man!"

But she had already tossed a spare comm link to Daredevil, having adjusted the volume levels to as low as she could and was preparing to teleport them into the fray.

"Too late Captain," Daredevil announced with a smirk once the comm was secure and he was on the ground, charging at the closest dog-bot. Hound bot? Robo-dog? They could name them later.

Quantum went straight for the civilians, knowing she stood the best chance of getting them all out safely so long as her abilities played along. She took them only short distances but far enough from the fighting that they could get to safety themselves. She couldn't risk going too far and not getting back. She heard the familiar sounds of Iron Man fast approaching and saw his repulsors firing as she sprinted towards her third group of civilians.

She had to work fast and get them out of there before the real fight started. The Avengers may be effective but sometimes the damage caused by their battles was immense.

She heard Iron Man laughing over the comms. "There may be a lot of them but these are some cheap bots. Pro-tip: aim for the back of the head and it's lights out."

At that moment Quantum had just returned to see Daredevil slam one of his billy clubs into the back of one of the bots' heads. "Huh," he said. "Works like a charm."

"Did you doubt me, Horns?"

"Not for a moment Circuits."

"Guys, is the banter really a good idea right now?" Captain America questioned in exasperation and Quantum would swear that she had heard Hawkeye snort at that. Instead of engaging in the banter like she may have a year ago, Quantum took a deep breath and delved right back into the fight.

. . .

So far she hadn't had to go head-to-head with any of K-9's weirder cousins and was thankful that getting civilians out had been so easy thus far. Her luck stars were under praise for the fact that her powers seemed to be holding out just fine. It was weird to know that while she felt she had the full range of her powers at any moment they might not work.

It probably wasn't a good thing that she hadn't noticed the Falcon sweeping into the fight until he was freeing Daredevil from three bots that almost had him pinned. A terse 'thanks' was heard before one of the three bots received a billy club to the back of the head. At that moment a shadow swooped over them, two blurs dive-bombing out of the quinjet, one in a distinct red and blue and the other in black with a slight glint of silver.

By the time the quinjet had landed, Captain America and The Winter Soldier were picking their way through the bots and Hawkeye was asking Quantum for a trip. She dropped him off at his chosen vantage point before taking Black Widow to the ground.

After that they worked rather efficiently until Quantum had gotten all of the civilians she could see out of the vicinity.

"Civilians clear," she reported, somewhat out of breath after she had dropped off the last of the civilians just a couple of blocks from the fighting.

"Alright, give The Falcon a hand herding these guys south on his side. We have to get them away from the police and finish this," Captain America ordered.

"There are so goddamn many! Where are they coming from?"

Quantum was going to reply that from what she'd seen there were more of them to the east where The Winter Soldier and Black Widow appeared to be working their way through the stream of bots easily. Everyone else on the team, had stuck relatively close to a single area each. The Falcon - while flight over the entire 'battlefield' would have been relatively easy – was restricted to the north-eastern quadrant as while there were few police officers still there, Captain America had deemed it necessary to protect.

Speaking of Captain America, he was to the west with Hawkeye providing cover fire from his perch. Hawkeye who had chosen the best available vantage point but with the layout of this part of the city his view was still restricted. Iron man had been whizzing about at first but had settled near Daredevil to the southern edge of the field, providing aerial support and witty remarks as the Man fought valiantly below him.

Meanwhile, Quantum had been all over the show in her bid to rescue civilians and had noticed the discrepancies in the flow of the bots in each area.

She had been planning to relay all of this in much shorter order into the comms before she had caught a glimpse of a dark uniform that did not belong to any of the Avengers. The person had their back to her, casually strolling in the direction of the fighting but she could clearly see the bulk of a uniform and weapons as well as the ends of a mask that must have covered their face.

"We got a new player on the field here guys. Two blocks south."

"Friendly?" Black Widow questioned.

"Not sure," Quantum muttered before calling out to the guy. "Hey!" He didn't stop. She groaned. "Falcon, I'll be with you in a second. Going to check this guy out." Without waiting for his reply she teleported to intercept the un-identified male – she had determined this from how he moved and the bulk of his shoulders.

Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of him stopping in his tracks, though not like he was surprised to see her. She barely heard Iron Man quip in a joking tone, "If he's got an X on his chest and a bad hair-do shoot Wolverine on sight." Hawkeye snorted in response but it was all lost on Quantum as she stared in disbelief.

The guy had an X on his chest alright, but he wasn't one of the X-men.

Quantum barely heard Captain America reprimanding Iron Man or Bucky grinding out a request for an update of the possible hostile or Falcon finally caving and gasping out his need for her immediate assistance, repeat, immediate assistance - Falcon is down.

She heard it but it didn't register as she continued to stare at the man in front of her. She'd had the misfortune of meeting Crossbones only twice while she was held prisoner with HYDRA but before that she had known of SHIELD agent, Brock Rumlow.

Mariana barely managed to choke out a strangled "Hostile," before he punched her in the gut and wrenched off her mask, taking her comm with it. She had a sick feeling he was grinning behind his mask and as she struggled to remove his hand from her hair, she saw the father and daughter she had just saved bolting around the corner.

She was relieved that they got away but had to focus on doing the same herself.

Crossbones' grip on her hair was painful and as he used his hold to jerk her head backwards she let her left knee bend to drop with the movement to reduce the strain that kind of twist would have put on her back.

"HYDRA," she growled through gritted teeth. "Didn't know you Nazi's had the brains to build so many robots. Though, to be honest, we should have known considering the crappy quality."

With a grunt, he dragged her head down as he raised his right knee to smash her face into it. Somehow, she managed to get her hands up in time to shove his knee off target, twisting him to the right with the force and causing his knee to catch her previously sore shoulder instead. But she pushed through that and slammed her right foot down on the inside of his left knee, jarring him to the left instead.

The shift caused his grip to loosen and she stumbled away from him. Instead of teleporting away – because she still needed to know if this was a HYDRA driven attack - she surged forwards despite the twinge in her shoulder. He caught the weak punch aimed at his throat and twisted her arm, shifting his grip to her wrist and placing his other hand on the back of her shoulder to apply more pressure and force the movement. Mariana twisted with the movement and threw the elbow of her free arm into his face.

Well, his mask. She had kind of forgotten he was wearing that. However, she ended up knocking it off and forcing him to release her. Twisting, she aimed a spinning kick at his abdomen but saw he was going to attempt to catch her foot. He was much more trained than her so it was easy for Mariana to guess he would succeed. Attempting to change tactic would have thrown her off balance though and he would certainly take advantage of that should the moment arise. So she followed through.

When he caught her foot she knew he was going to flip her and slam her to the ground, having seen Rumlow execute the move often, so instead of fighting it she allowed him to lift her. At the same time, she kicked off the ground with her other foot to add extra momentum and slammed her foot into his chest.

The shock caused him to let her go and they both went down hard.

Mariana gasped for air as the breath was knocked right out of her upon impact. Crossbones recovered quicker and was on her immediately, hands around her throat, lips stretched into a snarl that made his already scarred face even uglier. She gasped, still having not caught her breath and now being unable to. Distantly she heard crashing and shouting getting further away indicating the Avengers were successfully herding the hound-bots away.

She made a grab for his hair while slamming her foot into the back of his knee as he hunched over her struggling form. He only grunted and shifted his grip to tighten it. Last time she had been with HYDRA they had wanted to use her not kill her but now several of their own were dead by her hands, she had called them out quite publicly and she knew the location of one of their bases, even if she couldn't get herself there. Feelings were sure to have changed.

Mariana managed to wriggle her knee free and connected it to his abdomen three times in quick succession. At the same time, she yanked forcefully on his hair with her right hand and landed an extremely sloppy punch to his jaw with her left. While she was pretty sure that was the weakest punch she had ever thrown, it had the desired effect of getting him to loosen his hold.

She immediately threw herself upwards, dislodging him from his position above her, and rolled to the side, heaving in deep breaths before pushing herself to her feet. Rumlow had done the same and was chuckling lowly to himself as he stood a few feet from her. He wasn't moving to attack her again just yet and she wasn't anywhere near ready to attack him so she waited with a glare fixed on his shaking form.

"HYDRA send their regards by the way," he finally spoke once he had sobered up. He took a slow and deliberate step forward. "Though Markus would have much preferred to do this himself after all of that hard work he put into you." Another step forward. Mariana refused to take a step back, to show any sign she was intimidated. "Tell me, how are your abilities faring? I was told he had expected some…side effects to your treatment."

Mariana was intimidated. Hell yes was she intimidated. She was also absolutely terrified. But then she was angry. And something inside of her just snapped.

She lunged at him from the front but teleported to that she made contact behind him. As soon as she did make contact they were at the docks. Rumlow stumbled from her sneak attack and twisted just in time for her to punch him in the face. Harder this time.

He laughed mockingly again. "And I thought you would react bad when I told you about our plans for the Asset."

Mariana hit him again. And again. And again. She threw blow after blow at him, not even pausing when most were deflected or hurt her more than they hurt him or when he got in his own few on her ribs. She just kept hitting him. Oblivious to the dock workers still hanging around - they were far enough from the fighting to believe they would be okay – she kept hitting him, stepping forward with each blow and forcing him back.

Until he hit the water.

And dragged her in with him.

Somehow, they still managed to trade a few blows under the water. But she had one of the straps on his uniform in a white-knuckled grip to keep herself steady and prevent them floating apart and his weapons were dragging them down. She teleported, hoping to get up for a little air but at the same time refusing to release him because they deserved it. HYDRA deserved it and he was HYDRA.

But it backfired. It seemed that after everything she had been able to accomplish that day with her abilities, now that it was life or death – her life or death – they failed her.

She teleported them deeper down.

They were caught and they both knew it. He had the upper body strength to pull himself and his weapons out but she would have to let go. If she released him then he might get away. Or he might try to gain the upper hand and drag her down further. If she didn't release him she would drown with him.

She let him go.

She didn't want to risk using her abilities in case they brought her further down or somewhere else entirely and her lungs were already on fire so she immediately swam to the surface.

With much effort, Mariana was able to drag herself out of the water, coughing and spluttering as she flopped onto her back and closed her eyes. Crossbones would most likely take the opportunity to get out of there because now she had noticed the audience they'd had the entire time.

When she opened her eyes and stumbled to her feet she noticed two or three of the dock workers readying themselves to rush to her aid but she waved them away. Instead, she approached the nearest guy to her and huffed out a single question between coughs and gasps for air.

"Big bad robot fight, where do I find it from here?" After he gave her some directions and she realised she really wasn't that far, Mariana staggered in that direction, right arm wrapped around her mid-section with her left hand pressed to her right shoulder. The burn had healed but had still been a little weak, the pain made her think she might have pulled something and she almost groaned at the thought.

. . .

Even unsteady on her feet, Mariana managed to make her way to the scene of the fighting relatively quickly. Her mask was long gone but her uniform and the fact that her face had been everywhere over the past few days got her past what remained of the police perimeter pretty easily. Judging by the lack of noise and the littered 'corpses' of the doggy-bots, the fight was almost over at the very least.

But with her comm gone there was no real way to know until she reached the others. Steve had removed his cowl, Iron Man's face plate was up and everyone was standing nearby looking incredibly tense and a little worse for wear in most cases. Mariana made an attempt to uncurl herself and stand a little straighter, anticipating what was to come.

Daredevil noticed her presence first. "Mariana!" he exclaimed before jogging towards her. The others followed behind. "What happened?"

"Are you okay?" Clint asked immediately after as he caught up to Daredevil.

"I'm fine."

"She has a cracked rib, a few bruised ones and her shoulder is nearly dislocated. Not to mention her hands," Daredevil immediately rebuffed. No one bothered to ask how he knew that.

"Okay so I'm not fine. But I'm not broken either."

Then Steve was there, frowning at her with his 'you are so in trouble' Captain face on. "I told you to stand down and go help Sam."

Mariana blinked because she hadn't heard that in the garble of voices before she lost her comm. She told him as much.

"You need to pay more attention in the field. We needed you focussed. Now Sam's wings are done and he's injured." Mariana's eyes flickered to the man in question who was leaning on Bucky. He gave her a small smile but he looked beat to hell with a potentially broken leg and various other injuries.

Mariana faltered. "I'm sorry," was about all she could get out.

"Steve…" Clint attempted to placate their leader who just shook his head.

"I let you out in the field today against my better judgement because I trusted you when you said you were ready but you refused to follow a simple order."

"There was a hostile in the area," she defended quietly.

"Mariana, you know that you could have dropped him off in the tower's interrogation room if you felt they were that much of a threat." Natasha was, albeit reluctantly, backing Steve up.

"Hold up a minut-" Mariana cut Daredevil off in his defence of her actions.

"No I couldn't." She looked down, not wanting to see the disappointment. "My abilities…they aren't working properly. Haven't been since I got back. The press conference was a fluke and I barely took the civilians more than a few blocks in case I couldn't get back again."

"Mari," Tony began, "Why the hell didn't you tell us? Even I know that you shouldn't be out in the field." He tried to be gentle, from Tony that meant a lot. Or would have, if it hadn't made her mad.

"I know! Okay? I know I screwed up!" Mariana's head snapped up to look at them all, the fire in her eyes doused by the tears threatening to spill. "But excuse me if after everything I had some twisted delusion that I needed to prove that I still belonged here! Forgive me if my head wasn't in it but I got the damn job done. The civilians were safe and I'm sorry Sam, truly I am sorry I wasn't there. But I was kind of busy getting my ass handed to me."

"And where is that hostile you mentioned now? The one you disobeyed an order for?" She knew Steve was only being the thorough leader he was, pointing out the flaws to be improved on. But in the moment she couldn't help but fixate on his disappointed tone and something in her mind twisted it until it reminded her of Markus, looking down on her and telling her she was delusional for thinking her family was going to come save her.

And for the second time that day: she lost it.

She stepped forward and swung at him.

Everybody froze.

Mariana stumbled backwards, bringing both of her shaking hands up over her gaping mouth as she stared in disbelief.

Steve remained with his head bowed and angled downwards to the right.

Everyone else was either staring at Mariana or were fixated by the blood on Steve's face that definitely wasn't his.

"I'm sorry," Mariana shook her head and took off sprinting away from the team.