Disclaimer: I don't own anything Marvel, Avengers, etc. I just own Anna.

Chapter 24
Blame Game

Nothing had been simple or easy since waking up in the medical bed in one of the few private medical rooms in the Helicarrier. Anna hadn't been alone when she woke up, though she had wished she had been. She pretended to be asleep for several good, long minutes, but the man sitting in the chair with his legs crossed, data pad in hand, was too good of an agent to know that Anna wasn't really asleep as she claimed to be.

All she wanted was to be left alone to wither away and die. After everything she had done, after everything she had wanted to do under Loki's control, that was the tamest thing she deserved. After all, as Anna recalled, she had killed seven agents while escorting Loki out to the cargo bay. And that wasn't including what she had done to…

"Am I fired?" she asked, lying in bed with her gray eyes staring up at the ceiling.

Director Fury glanced at Anna before looking back to his pad. "Now why would you say that, Agent Carr?" Fury asked as he closed out of all of the highly classified material he had been sifting through.

"Because," Anna muttered. She sighed and pushed herself into a sitting position, the pillow behind her giving her enough support to be comfortable.

"That's not really an acceptable answer and you know it," he said, placing the pad on the table next to him. "Would you fire Agent Barton because of what happened?"

"No, but-" Anna started to protest.

"Then why should it be any different for you?" Fury pressed.

"Because I…" Anna muttered, shaking her head. She bit her lip, preventing herself from saying the words that kept repeating themselves in her head. The tears welling up in her air burned, desperate to slip out and be free, but Anna wouldn't let them. She didn't deserve to be upset. She didn't deserve anything. Not after everything she had done. "Because I killed Phil…"

"That wasn't your fault, Anna," Fury said, his voice the most comforting she had ever heard it. "You weren't yourself, and you weren't in control of our actions. There wasn't anything you could've done."

Anna scoffed and angrily spat out, "Of course it's my fault!"

"No, it isn't," Fury protested. "If you're going to blame anybody, it should be Loki."

"Loki? I don't blame Loki," Anna growled surprisingly. "I felt that thing take control. I could feel it. Even though Loki had ahold of it, he was no exception to its influence. Dr. Selvig asked me what it had showed me, and that's what it showed me!" Anna rambled. "I don't blame Loki. I blame myself. I did those things. I did it myself. It's my fault. Everything is my fault!"

"It might take time, but I think you'll come to realize that it isn't," Fury told her, patting her leg over the blanket covering her. "There's one thing we have to make clear though. I've classified Agent Coulson's death. There are only a handful of people that know what really happened in there, that you shot him. As far as anybody else is concerned, Phil just died before the battle of New York, and it was from the stab wound through the heart. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Why don't you help with the city clean up for a little while, then head back up to the cabin for a breather? Take some time to get your head on straight and to figure out what it is you want."

"I don't think-"

"That wasn't a request, Anna," Fury pressed.

Anna sighed and nodded her head. It wasn't like that was much else for her to do anyway.

At one time, Anna felt that helping clean up a disaster SHIELD was unable to prevent had helped her cope and deal with guilt of not being able to stop it. That had been the exact case in Puente Antiguo after the Destroyer had arrived and nearly leveled the whole Town. Now, with the Battle of New York, Anna hadn't felt any better helping clean up. She did it for a while, doing what she actually could before she left to go to the cabin, her brother driving.

Just seeing the destruction caused by Loki's Chitauri army, what Anna had been a part of, just made her feel even worse. She hadn't know there had been that much destruction at the time. She had spent most of the battle up on the Stark Tower, the first part conscious and then the second half unconscious.

There was so much death and destruction and Anna hadn't even been aware of it. How horrible was that? She had just watched in amazement as they Chitauri descended upon them, happy that they were there. She had been happy about it!

The whole ride up with her brother she had been silent. He tried to talk to her, asked her how she felt, how she was doing, and even asked her about simple things like what kind of music she wanted to listen to on the way up, which was definitely a rarity for him. He always hogged the radio. Always.

And that, of course, made Anna upset. She didn't deserve that concern or kindness.

The first week at the cabin had been spent in absolute silence. Anna barely did anything. She stayed in the bedroom, laying down in bed staring at the wall or the ceiling, or the inside of her eyelid. She didn't eat. She didn't speak. The only time she got up was to use the bathroom, and the only way she slept was by passing out from exhaustion.

Clark was freaking out. He didn't know what to do. Anna had been in a bad place after the death of their parents, but that had nothing on this. Anna, then, had blamed herself a bit, but she came to realize that it hadn't been her fault. They had been compromised and there was nothing she couldn't done to stop that. And there was no way she could've made it out, taking on all of the mercenary, to save her parents and make it out alive.

This was vastly different. Anna wasn't doing anything she had done before and he didn't know how to react. Everything he said went in one ear and out the other. She didn't even acknowledge anything he said.

It wasn't until the following week that Anna was able to pull herself out of bed and eat in the living room with her brother. Her eyes looked hollow, the black circles making her look far older than seventeen years old, and in great contrast to how pale she looked.

Anna barely finished the two plain pieces of toast he made her. He was sitting next to her, arm resting on the back of the couch, one foot propped up on the coffee table. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Exactly how I deserve to feel," she answered, staring at the plate in her lap.

"None of it was your fault, Anna. You have to know that," Clark insisted.

Anna huffed, shaking her head. She turned her head, looking out the back windows to the trees. "I still did it," Anna said. "I'm the one that wanted to do those things. And I enjoyed it. That's the worst part. I wanted to do it, so I did it, and I liked it."

She remembered killing all of them. Every single one. She not only had to watch herself kill innocent people, killing friends, but she remembered doing it too. And maybe that's why she wasn't worth the SHIELD anymore. Because she was drowning in the blood of the innocence and the pain that she created. It doesn't matter to her that she wasn't in control. She still did it. She still directs the blame towards her entire being.

"I spoke to Barton a little bit about what happened. He won't tell anybody, and he barely gave me anything, but I think he did because he knew you would need help dealing with it too. He said that that thing," Clark said, "it took everything you were and shoved it out the window, then put something else in its place. It rewrote your brain and forced you to be someone different, someone you're not. That's why you were feeling all of that."

Anna didn't know what to say to that. So instead, Anna brought forth something that had been plaguing her thoughts. "How am I supposed to go back to SHIELD after I killed our own people? They didn't like me there in the first place…"

"They don't blame you for any of that. Most people don't know you had any involvement," Clark said.

"So that's just another thing classified," Anna muttered. "What if I'm not welcome? What if I don't deserve to be there? What if I can't do what I'm supposed to do anymore? I mean, Phil trusted me and…" Anna nearly opened her big fat mouth and gave away that bit of classified information.

Phil trusted me to do what was right and to be the agent he knew I could be, and I went and shot him, Anna thought.

"You remember what Dad used to say? "Whenever you're afraid of something, you go right at it or it'll control you for the rest of your life." You're never going to be ready if you put it off too long, and the longer you wait the harder it'll be to go back," Clark told her. "A hero's not someone who's unafraid. It's the guy who's scared to death and does what's right anyway."

"I'm not a hero," Anna said.

"You're my hero," Clark told her. "You're so young, and yet, you have the biggest, purest heart I've ever seen. You've been through hell and back, over and over again and you're still such a good person, Anna. You're my hero. You're the person I strive to be. Heroes aren't always the ones who win. They're the ones who lose sometimes. But they keep fighting. They keep coming back. They don't give up."

Shortly after that day Clark was called back in to take up the undercover work he had been on before the Battle of New York, leaving Anna alone at the cabin. Anna was left with so much to think about, and Clark's words kept playing on repeat in her head.

Anna had always wanted to be a member of SHIELD to do good and fight the good fight, but now she didn't feel deserving to hold the SHIELD. She had been the danger that they went up against and fought. But now, she wasn't, but all of the death and suffering she had caused wouldn't leave her head.

She found, after days of contemplating, Anna knew that those thoughts wouldn't leave her unless she could prove to herself, and to the memory of Phil, that she could, in fact, protect people just as she had before. So later that day Anna contacted Director Fury to inform him that she wanted to get back in the game.

They made another deal. As long as Anna spent some time training with Agents Romanoff and Barton, he would allow her full access and privileges that came with the level six clearance she had been working under while shadowing Coulson. Anna readily accepted the terms of the arrangement, and the following morning Anna made her way back to New York.

She was choosing to strongly believe that there was a point where it all became too much, when she got too tired to fight anymore. That's where she was at now. And choosing to give up wasn't an option. That's where the work really began. After all, when we hit our lowest point, we're open to the greatest change.

Anna, though not one hundred percent like she was before being controlled by Loki, Anna was a lot better once she started training again. Getting to feel physical pain instead of mental was a lot easier to deal with, and a much welcomed distraction, plus, being around Natasha and Clint really helped her feel like she was a part of something again.

There was a routine, and again, it was something Anna detested. At least as of late, the routine didn't involve office work and dealing with annoying people sitting at the desks behind her. Training was a lot more fun and unpredictable, but there was pretty much the same outcome each time: with Anna getting laid flat on the mats.

She was learning so much from Natasha and Clint. Natasha with all of the different fighting styles and with Clint the different uses and kinds of weaponry, as well as improving her marksmanship. There were some other things thrown in here and there like situational theories they'd run by her while simultaneously beating her ass to a pulp, but that just helped her improve her mind and the rate at which she thought. Now, she was thinking three steps ahead instead of simply the one that came next.

Everything was going well until that night on July 11th, her birthday, when Director Fury showed up at the apartment door. Anna instantly knew what it was about, there was only one thing that it could've been. After all, there was only one thing big enough to get him to show up there at her apartment outside of work hours.

Clark was dead.

"There was a fire while he was undercover," Fury told her. "He ran in to get some people out and… he didn't come back out. He died a hero."

Of course he did. Clark was a hero. Always putting others first, dedicating his life to something bigger which denied him the normalcy and things entailed with such a concept. Anna was upset, of course, but there wasn't much she could do about the situation to change it. Her brother was gone.

It was obvious by the look on Fury's face that he was afraid she'd relapse into the state she had been in before coming back to work. He couldn't afford to do that, not after everything the Carr family had done for SHIELD in their years of working there, and even before when it was still the SSR. No, Anna deserved better. She needed better.

"Sometimes the future changes quickly and completely and we're left with only the choice of what to do next. We can choose to be afraid of it, to stand there trembling, not moving, assuming the worst that can happen or we can step forward into the unknown and assume it will be brilliant."

Assuming brilliance was a great notion, but unrealistic. Anna knew that, but she went along with it anyway. She needed to believe it.

So when Fury suggested a job that would put her back into the field, Anna readily accepted.

It would be brilliant, she told herself. She needed it to be.

So, a lot of stuff happened in the last, and this chapter. Avengers movie is over, and now Clark is dead. Anna doesn't have anybody anymore, and that's specifically the point. She has to reach the lowest point in order to be open to the greatest of change. Its here where Anna really starts to develop into her own person, not who everybody else wanted her to be.
On an unrelated side note, I think it's so funny how far you guys into Anna's story you are, and the point I'm at writing it. Every time I look to update, I'm like, "Whoa, I'm that much more ahead of them?" It's so funny, and I just can't believe how much I have written. It's so hard not to spoil things.

I hope you guys liked it, and please let me know what you think!

Thanks go to the following for their reviews on the previous chapter:

Fangirling007- Lol I know. Terrible, right? And this one just pushes Anna even further.

CJ/OddBall- Yes, exactly. Anna is going to have points where she's okay and not okay with herself and her actions, but she'll always have a spot in her heart that is effeted by it.

fanfic smiles- Yes, I've always wanted to play with the OC seeing Coulson die, and for the most part, that's what I've always done. But I never thought about actually having them commit the deed, so that's why I was so excited to do this in the Little Miss SHIELD series. And it definately takes a long term toll on Anna.

Jedi Jelsa777- Thank you! I wanted it to seem a bit more plain, so that's why there wasn't as many details. There will be more later when she reflects on things, nightmares, etc, and its because even though it was her, its still like viewing a movie right through your very eyes.