Once again, I don't own Marvel, I only own Lucie.

Chapter Eighteen- Disappointments.

Clint was the first one on the roof; he was always the first one on the roof. As his codename suggested, he liked being high up. As an archer he had the ability to see things from afar, he needed the perspective for his best judgement. So whenever it was quiet and they didn't have any orders; or they were just generally waiting around, Rosetta team would find our way up to the roof of SHIELD HQ and just stare out at New York. It was a little on the nose, to put a super secret spy organisation about thirty seconds away from Times Square but for a little while it was home.

In the early hours of one morning, after somehow all arriving back from their respective missions at the same time; Clint, Natasha and Lucie sat on the roof in complete silence. Clint had one leg dangling in mid air while he perched on the edge, as if he weren't a strong gush of wind away from death. Lucie lay flat on her back with her jacket bunched up under her head, staring up at the cloud flooded sky. She didn't trust herself to have the energy to stay sat up for any prolonged period of time while her feet rested on Natasha's thigh. Natasha was by far in the best shape out of the three and Lucie envied her for it. She also envied the fact that Natasha got to play eye candy come bodyguard while she had took a swim in the swamp.

"I don't think I can drive," Lucie admitted. She was sure she could smell the Bayou lingering on her skin from her dip in the water, but she wasn't sure if it was just because she had swallowed so much of it. Neither of her teammates had commented.

"Get an uber," Clint suggested, a tinge of outrage to his voice, as if this should have been her first thought.

"My cell is in the office."

"I'll take you, so long as I can sleep in your guest room," Natasha offered, sounding far more rested than either of her colleagues.

"Sold to the red headed Russian!" Lucie hollered with as much enthusiasm as she could muster, which wasn't much. It was more than enough effort to even come up with the joke.

"I thought you were giving me a ride?" Clint complained. He wasn't in the city enough to warrant an apartment, so he tended to crash in Lucie's guest room, they'd have breakfast and then he'd head home.

"You can sleep on the couch," Lucie yawned, stretching her arms above her head.

"I hate that couch."

"You picked the couch out!"

They bickered over nothing for a while until the fire escape door swung open and then bounced against the brick that prevented them from being locked out.

Coulson stood over them, staring at the trio like naughty school children who had been caught bunking off. It was a look that they knew. Rosetta was known for taking the risky missions and those were the ones that rarely went to plan.

"Do you realise how much trouble you're in?" he demanded.

Instantly they looked between themselves, trying to figure out who was the most likely to be in the most trouble. Lucie looked to Clint since he had had to salvage his mission. Nat looked towards Clint and Clint wasn't brave enough to make his guess obvious.

"Which one of us?" Natasha asked.

"All three of you."

"I can explain…" they all tried.

"Barton?"

"I couldn't change the location without making the target suspicious or blowing my cover." It was a fair explanation but, unfortunately for Clint, that wasn't what Coulson was waiting for him to confess to.

"The bird calls on my answer machine last week?"

"Yeah, I got nothing."

"Romanoff?"

"It was in the way and it was either the witness or the aircraft."

"A $1 billion aircraft Romanoff." A vein threatened to pop on Coulson's forehead at the sheer amount of money that her mission had chalked up to collateral damage.

"He was a really good witness?" she offered.

"James?"

"I mixed up North and South Korea. I forgot which one was the dictator with the bad haircut."

"I thought you were in Louisiana?" Clint said, he could have sworn that Lucie had been stateside for the past month.

"Black market genetics lab hidden in the Bayou, complete with trafficking ring," she explained. It had been more than she bargained for, the victims were a part of the enterprise nobody had been expecting, not until Lucie had stumbled on the animal cages containing humans.

"If it were anyone else then you would be up for review."

The three remained silent, not wanting to push their luck, more out of respect to Coulson than being afraid of the consequences.

"It's a good job that you managed to get out relatively clean with covers intact and complete the mission objectives."

"Does that mean that we're off the hook?" Lucie hoped, propping herself up on her elbows and smiling innocently over at their handler. He was not paid enough to deal with the antics of Rosetta at that time of the morning.

"Go home." That was as close as it got to him saying yes.

Steve and Tony were already sat around the briefing table, with a considerate around of space between them, by the time Lucie arrived. They didn't so much as look at each other, never mind speak and the bridge was quieter than Lucie had ever seen. Fitting really.

She had changed into another set of gear, carrying the heavy looking jacket in her hand rather than wearing it. There was already a nasty bruise forming on her shoulder her ribs were wrapped in such a way that it was noticeable underneath her form fitting tank top. Tony sighed when he saw her, rising from his seat and pulling her in for a hug, trying not to hurt her more than she already was.

"You okay kid?" he asked, trying to ignore the smell of disinfectant that clung to her hair that now hung in a lazy ponytail.

"Yeah. You?" Lucie pulled away and checked him over for damage.

"Suit did it's job. I'm fine."

Lucie smiled and took one of the seats between her father and Steve.

"Steve, you alright?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am."

Lucie's stomach sunk. Ma'am. Not Luce, or even Lucie, ma'am. She lowered her head and didn't press it any further, she didn't have the energy.

When Fury stood by the table, she sat up straighter, an old habit that she couldn't quite shake from her academy days.

"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket. I guess he never did get you to sign them." Fury threw a handful of bloodied cards onto the glass table. The trading cards that Coulson had been collecting as long as Lucie had known him.

Fury followed up the cards with something wrapped in fabric, she didn't need to open it to know what it was. He didn't say anything this time, he only stared at Lucie until she forced herself to take hold of the bundle and slowly unwrap it.

"We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye." He let the silence lay for a moment, using it to his advantage.

"Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something much 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. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes."

Lucie sat quietly, unable to concentrate on anything but her building rage. She knew Fury, she knew that he was spinning things to his advantage. Everything had been designed to send a message, even exploiting Coulson's death to further his own ideas. Lucie couldn't stand it. She pushed her chair away from the table with a screech as it scuffed along the floor, for a moment she stood with her palms flat against the table. She took the knife, scrubbed clean of Coulson's blood, flipped it once so that the blade was between her thumb and pointer finger and then fired it into the chair that Fury was leaning against, barely a centimetre away from his thumb.

Fury didn't flinch, not even when she took her SHIELD ID from her back pocket and slammed it onto the glass table. He had expected an emotional reaction from her, another layer to his manipulation.

"I quit," she spat. "Put a kill order out on me and see what happens."

Her threat sat heavy in the air, even when she left the room.

Tony sat for a few more seconds, replaying what she had said in his mind. Put a kill order out on me and see what happens. She wasn't afraid, she was almost casual in the way she had phrased it. No, not casual, she was goading him. It had been a shock to find out that Lucia was a SHIELD agent but he hadn't thought ahead so far as to consider what that actually meant. He followed her.

The handcuffs were still in place from where she had been restrained to the console. The detention centre empty and useless without it's only cell. Still, she had found herself there by accident, let her feet take her where ever they needed to go, so long as it was away from Fury.

"He was a good guy," Tony said, disturbing her from her own thoughts.

Lucie scoffed, shaking her head. "You didn't know him, not really."

"I know he meant a lot to you."

"I mean what I said, about resigning. I'll even take that job at S.I. you wanted me to take."

Neither spoke for a moment, allowing time for Steve to catch up with them. His time with Coulson had been limited but he had heard stories from Lucie and for him that was enough.

"Was he married?" he asked.

"No. There was a cellist, I think," Tony supplied, trying to pull more information from his memory.

"Audrey. The rest of Rosetta will tell her. She should hear it from a friendly face."

At the mention of Rosetta her mind jarred back into gear, dragging her partially out of her emotional haze. She hadn't heard from Natasha since Loki's escape, she had no idea what the situation was on Clint or even if they knew about Coulson.

"I'm going to find Nat, tell her what happened." She ignored Steve's look of concern, not wanting to add another layer of disappointment onto the already unbearable load. Instead, she headed back for the door and to the medical deck.

"He seemed like a good man," Steve offered.

"He was an idiot."

"For believing?"

"For taking on Loki alone."

"You don't know. He wasn't alone. Lucie was there."

Tony shook his head. He had heard very little detail about Loki's escape. Her reaction seemed to make more sense even though he hadn't quite figured out the relevance of the knife Fury had thrown down on the table. It made sense why she was so angry, it went much further than being upset that a colleague had died, she was furious with herself. She had been there and she hadn't been able to save him.

"Is this the first time you've lost a soldier?" Steve asked.

"We are not soldiers!" Tony spat, offended by the title. "I am not marching to Fury's fife."

"Neither am I! He's got the same blood on his hands as Loki does. Right now we've got to put that aside and get this done. Now Loki needs a power source, if we can put together a list."

Tony had found his gaze fixed on the spot of wall that was soaked with blood. "He made it personal," he almost whispered, yet still loud enough for Steve to hear.

"That's not the point."

"That is the point. That's Loki's point. He hit us where we live. Why?"

"To tear us apart," Steve realised. It made perfect sense, why Loki had used Clint and tried to go after Natasha in the holding cell and then later, Lucie.

"He had to conquer his greed, but he knows he has to take us out to win right? That's what he wants. He wants to beat us and he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience." At this point, Tony was just verbalising his thought process, somehow, speaking it aloud seemed to make it more coherent.

"Right, I caught his act at Stuttgart."

"Yeah. That's just the preview, this is opening night. Loki's a full tilt diva. He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument built in the skies with his name plastered…" the penny dropped. "Son of a bitch."

Steve waited for a beat for his thoughts to catch up with Tony's. Then it hit him. Stark Tower.

"You go and get Romanoff. I'll meet you in the hanger."

Initially it was like withdrawal and he was convinced that he would die if didn't follow orders. Natasha sat by his bedside, offering words of support and encouragement. They had both suffered after time in the field but this was a new low even for them.

When she entered, Lucie offered Natasha her hand, something which the spy gratefully took even if she didn't say a word; lending each other whatever strength they had. The worst was over by the time she got there, Clint neck deep in blame rather than Loki's control still painfully lingering in his mind.

"Did he hurt you?" Clint asked both women. An attack on SHIELD was one thing, but an attack on them was another level entirely. The thought that Loki could have asked him to kill either of them was stomach churning. The fact that he would have done it without a second thought made him hate himself.

Natasha shook her head and Lucie tried to do the same. She had put her jacket on before she came to see them, the worst of the damage was hidden from sight. Apparently not Natasha. The red head pulled Lucie to her feet and then pulled her tank top up high enough to reveal the bandaging.

"Loki did this?" Clint asked, he stared at his hands, his disappointment turning to rage.

"In the detention centre."

The interrogation was interrupted when the door opened and there stood Captain America in full uniform. Lucie pulled down her top and avoided eye contact.

"Time to go," he said.

"Go where?" Natasha asked, not used to being out of the loop.

"Tell you on the way. Can you fly one of those jets?"

Clint got to his feet, standing beside Lucie and trying to ignore the headache that was threatening to shatter his skull. "I can," he said.

Steve looked from Natasha to Lucie, trusting both their judgements when they nodded. Clint's ability as a pilot was never the question, Steve needed confirmation on which side of the fight Clint was on.

"You got a suit?"

"Yeah."

"Then suit up."

Yey we have Clint back, also a little flashback from when Coulson was Rosetta's handler, those kind of scenes will be flashing up every now and again.