PANDORA
I had never been a good actress.
When Emerald asked me to lie for her, I debated laughing in her face, except for the concept that the situation was grim. I knew I was going to be the one to blow this.
Why was it always me.
That was how I found myself in the bathroom, splashing water in my face and rubbing my eyes to make myself look a lot worse than I was before. I still hadn't found a paramedic to take a look at my gunshot wound, but it finally stopped bleeding. That was one success today.
I allowed for the dull throbbing in my shoulder to add more tears to my eyes. If this really worked, Emerald owed me big time.
"Where the hell have you been?" Maria questioned, pushing away the medic tending to the cut on her head.
If I wasn't supposed to be pretending that my best friend was dead, I would have snapped at the paramedics, asking where the hell they had been. However, I stuck to my numb expression, hoping that I could at least pull this off for Emerald's sake.
Steve noticed the water streaks on my face first, getting to his feet and heading over to my side. "Pandora?" he questioned.
"She's dead," I said softly, not sure if anyone could actually hear me.
As it turned out, they could.
"What!" Phil exclaimed, pushing his way towards me. "Did the medic team-"
"They called it," I interrupted.
The irony of Phil asking me the very same line that Fury once said about his own death was lost on him. As much as I was overjoyed to see him alive and well, minus a few cuts and bruises, I knew this wasn't about to be pretty. This was about to be much worse.
As if the universe read my thoughts, Tony and Natasha came bolting into the room at the same time, the panic clear on their faces. I had a horrible feeling I knew where that panic stemmed from.
"Have any of you seen Emerald?" Tony asked, his eyes darting around the room in search of my blonde friend. I hated her more with every single minute that passed. "I haven't seen her since-"
"Tony."
I forced myself to look up at him, the tears springing to my eyes real as ever. "She's gone," I whispered before I looked away, unable to watch his reaction.
Whenever Emerald did come back, I was going to kill her for real.
"No," Natasha muttered, shaking her head. "There wasn't supposed to be-" She ran her hand through her hair. "I was the one who sent her to talk to him," she said, surprising me with the sadness written on her face. "He targeted her because of that."
I wasn't about to argue with that one, if that was what everyone wanted to believe.
Turning away from everyone, I buried my head in Steve's chest as he wrapped his arms around me in a hug. I wasn't going to subject myself to this.
"We won't let this all be for nothing," Steve promised, initiating exactly what Emerald expected it to.
I couldn't hear what anyone else was saying for several minutes as they all processed what I had told them without question. I half-wondered if anyone was going to ask for proof, but another part of me knew that they believed Phil's death too. This had to work, for the Avengers' sake.
Steve pulled away from me when another pair of footsteps entered the room behind me, causing me to spin around. Tony was sitting in a chair, staring straight ahead expressionless. Natasha was leaning against the doorframe, regret filling her gaze. Steve still had his hand resting on my shoulder while the other SHIELD agents and Thor were standing behind me in a state of shock. It wasn't a great scene to walk into.
Especially for Nick Fury.
He caught the tail end of our conversation, putting the pieces together. "She wasn't what you all thought she was," he announced, earning everyone's attention in a split second.
"What are you talking about?" I snapped.
Fury folded his arms across his chest. "She worked for me."
Even Natasha's head shot up towards Fury at that statement. "What?" she questioned the director, suspicion now overcoming the regret on her face. "She wasn't SHIELD."
"No, not SHIELD," Fury continued. "Just me. Emerald was here because of me." He paused, beginning a slow pace around the room. "I approached her the moment I first met her, as soon as my sources confirmed her story. She used to work for the World Security Council before she was… removed from their program. She ended up in California where she found herself in the company of Stark. That was when I found out she knew about the Avenger Initiative."
Thor tilted his head to one side. "The Avenger Initiative?" he questioned.
"We're dead in the air up here," Fury answered without really answering, tossing his hands in the air. "Our communications, our location of the cube, Banner, I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming."
If I had my thoughts settled, I definitely would have snapped back at the director for that comment.
"Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract," he continued. "I never put all of my chips on that number, though, because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea, Stark knows this, called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more, see if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could." Fury paused, looking me dead in the eye as he spoke. "Emerald agreed to give me information on Stark and anything he was working on that could assist this program in exchange for a seat for both of them at this table. She was a part of the Initiative from the beginning."
I had it.
There was no one here to dispute Fury even if he was lying. The only person who could justify what he was saying was pretending to be dead.
"Are you kidding me!" I finally broke my silence, wrenching myself towards the director. "She just died in this battle that wouldn't have happened if you didn't order Loki to be on this damn Helicarrier. Have a little respect."
"I should be telling you about respect, agent."
I clenched my jaw, feeling the insinuation in the air. I opened my mouth to say something else I probably would have regretted later, but Steve put his hand on my arm once more. It was a warning, I knew that much.
"Is that really true?" I heard Tony ask, and my heart physically broke at the hurt in his voice. If this had been any other day, I knew for a fact that he wouldn't believe a word that Fury was saying. But today, Emerald was pretending to be dead.
Great.
"As true as the scars on my eye," Fury stated.
Tony's gaze shifted to the ground once more, and I longed to go over and tell him the truth. Instead, I chose to glance around the room, pleading with my eyes for everyone to believe in what I was saying instead.
"She wouldn't do that to us," I begged everyone to listen. "She would have… She would have…" I trailed off as everyone dejectedly left the room, their heads hanging in discouragement.
So much for grieving.
Tony shot to his feet, unable to process this for any longer, following the rest of the crowd out. Soon, it was just Steve, Fury and I left in the room. I looked back at Steve desperately, not sure what to do next.
"Well, it was an old-fashioned notion, anyway," said Fury before he, too, left us alone.
Steve patted me on the back softly, trying to change the mood of the non-existent room. We were screwed.
It was about an hour later that I walked by Bruce's laboratory, still trying to find a damn paramedic in this place. I was half-looking for my weapons scattered around the place, half-looking for someone to stitch up my shoulder and get this crusted blood off of my jacket. It was a nice jacket.
What I wasn't expecting to find was Tony sitting in the explosion-ridded laboratory, his head in his hands. Great. Now, he was my responsibility.
"Hey."
He lifted his head up as I spoke, his dull gaze meeting my own. "She's really dead, huh," was all he said before he lowered his head again, staring at the creases in his hands.
I sighed loudly, pushing myself away from the door frame that I was leaning against. I made my way over to his side, taking a seat on the bench next to him. Shifting awkwardly, I wasn't sure how I should try and comfort him, despite the knowledge hanging over my head.
"I know you knew her for a long time," I started to say, but Tony wasn't here for it, it seemed.
"It wasn't real."
I shook my head, turning my head to look at him with the most serious gaze I could manage. "No, it was more than real," I promised, thankful that I was able to speak the truth for once. "Even if Fury is telling the truth, he wanted her there to protect you. Everyone knows how reckless you can be. He thought she would be good for you, and she was. She was good for all of us."
Tony didn't say anything for several minutes, the silence lapsing between us. I knew the last thing he wanted was to reveal to me the pain he was currently in.
"I…" he started to say before trailing off, his voice cracking. "I… I never got the chance…"
"I know," I cut him off, unable to hear anymore of his mumbling. "I saw the way she looked at you. It wasn't one-sided, buddy."
I only wished Emerald were here to hear his confessions in person. It was something that I, for one, knew all along.
Tony looked up at me with dead eyes, shaking his head as if I couldn't understand what he was going through. "I made her a suit," he said softly.
"What?"
I definitely heard him wrong.
"I built her a suit," he repeated himself. "She was my partner. She deserved it, probably more than me, and now she's gone."
I closed my eyes, wanting to save Tony from this pain more than anything. "Save it," was all I said, glancing up to meet his eyes. "She would have loved it. I know she would have."
"You were her best friend."
It was a statement, one that I wasn't expecting, but a statement nonetheless.
"Yeah, I know," I answered easily, patting his knee once for support. "And you were her partner… in everything. Don't give up on her just yet."
If I stayed in that room a second longer, I would have lost my mind.
I headed back into the Helicarrier, leaving Tony alone to process everything that I said to him. Rounding the corner of one of the hallways, I flagged down a paramedic carrying a bag by his side. The least I could do was get this wound looked at.
It didn't take long for the paramedic to stitch the wound as the bullet went straight through. He was just tying up the final knot when I laid eyes on Natasha and Thor walking past the room I was perched in.
"What's going on?" I called out, earning both of their attention.
Natasha turned towards me in surprise. "Rogers called a meeting," she commented. "Said it was urgent."
That was all I needed to hear.
"That's good enough," I told the paramedic, pushing him away reluctantly. I swiped a cleaning wipe from his bag, throwing him a grateful glance and mouthing a quick thank you.
I followed behind the pair of future Avengers, rolling my shoulder around experimentally. Natasha's face had hardened from before, the determination and anger fueling her movements. As much as I wanted to kill Emerald for putting everyone through this, she was right.
She was always right.
As the three of us entered into a new room in the Helicarrier, I laid eyes on Steve first, his arms folded across his chest. That was when I saw Tony, his energy renewed from before. All of the sadness seemed to fade from his eyes, hopefully due to our conversation. Everyone was itching for revenge.
"Emerald was an idiot," Tony was saying, his back facing all of us.
"Why?" Steve questioned, his eyebrows skyrocketing to his forehead. "For believing?"
"For taking on Loki alone."
Steve shook his head, noticing our presence in the room. "She was doing her job," he pointed out.
Tony spun around, his gaze shifting from Steve over to my own. Something passed between us, and I knew for certain that the grieving period had passed. This was something else.
"He was out of her league," he said, throwing his hands up in the air. "She should have waited for backup. She should have-"
Steve threw him a sympathetic glance. "Sometimes there isn't a way out, Tony."
"Right, and how did that work out for her?"
Steve asked, "Is this the first time you've lost a soldier?" and I winced slightly, predicting Tony's reaction to the harsh question.
I was right.
"We are not soldiers!" he exclaimed, marching over to Steve's side. "I am not marching to Fury's fife."
Steve shot a glance in our direction once more, nodding towards Tony. "Neither am I," he said softly, metaphorically treading on ice. "He's got the same blood on his hands that Loki does, but right now, we have to put that behind us and get this done. Now, Loki needs a power source and if we can put together a list-"
Tony wasn't even listening anymore. "He made it personal," he interrupted. "Not just to me because-" He broke off, glancing in my direction. The unspoken words hung in the air, and I gave him a tiny nod of approval. I wasn't the only one who understood what he was saying.
"She was one of us," he continued before anyone could say anything else. "No matter what Fury or Hill says. She fought beside us, and she gave her life for us. Why should it matter her initial agreement?"
Oh, he did actually listen to me.
A tiny smile appeared on Steve's face as he shook his head in disbelief. "That's not the point," he agreed with Tony's statement. "That's what I've been trying to tell you."
If the situation wasn't so grim, I could have laughed.
"That is the point," Tony said. "That's Loki's point. He hit us all right where we live. Why?"
Thor took a step forward, his fists clenching and unclenching with every move he made. He was grieving too, in another way completely. "He believes that he deserves a throne," he put in. "And he shall do whatever he deems necessary."
"To tear us apart," I inserted myself into the conversation.
"Yeah, divide and conquer, but he knows he has to take us out to win," Tony added, resuming his pace around the room. "That's what he wants. He wants to beat us, and he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience."
Steve scratched his head. "Right," he approved. "I caught his act in Stuttgart."
"That's just previews, this is… this is opening night. And Loki, he's a full-tail diva. He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument built to the skies with his name plastered-"
Tony broke off, coming to the realization that I hoped he would. I exchanged a glance with Steve before moving back to Tony, the idea dawning on him.
"Son of a bitch."
I was wrong. Everyone wasn't itching for revenge.
They were itching to avenge.