I do not own Avengers or any of the characters.
Employment Extension
William smiled as he quickly counted his money. Beside him, three Olivias were counting hers as well. However, despite her advantage, William was faster at counting because he could use his energy to tell what the bills were and how many there were a bill fold at a time, each fold only taking three seconds. He could also check for marked bills that way in exchange for another second each. Olivia was looking for marked bills as she went. Finally, they both finished, both of them counting a million each, none of the bills marked. Both looked up at Fury as the extra Olivias fused with the main one again.
"That's double the amount we agreed on," William said. "Why?"
"Consider it a bonus," Fury said. "Or you could consider it a proposition."
"You want to keep us on?" Olivia asked. "Why?"
"You're extremely useful, you proved you both have some semblance of honor, and to be blunt, I'd rather pay you handsomely and have you working for me than to risk someone else paying you to kill me. I'm not sure my luck will get me through another assassination mission by you two."
"That's fair," William nodded. "So, what's the next job?"
"Security," Fury said. "We've got a couple of projects we want the two of you to oversee. You'll be going to the same place, so try to get along."
"How much are we getting payed?" William asked.
"A million dollars a year," Fury said.
"We'll play nice," William said.
Fury nodded, holding out a slip of paper, which Olivia accepted.
"You're kidding me," Olivia said.
"I kid you not," Fury said.
"Area Fifty One?" William asked. "Of all places, you're sending us to the most famous alien coverup conspiracy, in order to defend it from anything that tries to steal the alien tech that's actually there?"
"Yes," Fury said. "On the bright side, I'm giving you both permission to collect one souvenir each."
"What, an alien weapon?" William asked. "You do realize I can create any weapon I want with my powers, right? Hell, before I learned control, I was able to fire blasts from my hands. Then my master taught me control and precision. What would I need an alien gun for?"
"There are more than guns there," Fury said. "You'll see when you get there. Just remember, you have permission to claim anything not currently being studied as your souvenir."
William shrugged. "Fuck it."
Fury gave them directions to an airport where SHIELD was waiting to take them to their new job. A few hours of flying later, they were given the tour and saw all the potential souvenirs. There were dozens of guns of all kinds, many of which SHIELD still didn't know how to make work, there were suits of armor from different races that no one seemed to know how SHIELD actually got ahold of, there were even different living specimens of aliens. After a few minutes of trying to decide, what they wanted, Olivia decided on a sniper rifle that fired green blasts of energy, but which had to be charged before firing, being able to fire twenty shots on a single charge, each charge taking ten seconds.
"You can't use your powers to give that infinite ammo," William pointed out.
"That's true," Olivia mused, then turned to the head scientist, who had given them the tour of the facility they were supposed to be guarding. "Is there any way you can make a sort of generator that charges this endlessly so it doesn't have to recharge?"
"Frankly, we only have a handful of those types of weapons, and we've had no success with trying to figure out how they work as it is," the scientist said. "Upgrading it in any way is, at least for now, impossible."
William hummed thoughtfully. "Stark could do it."
"Probably," Olivia nodded. "He'd probably appreciate the challenge."
"Time to call in a favor?" William asked.
Olivia nodded and handed it to the scientist. "Send this to Tony Stark. Ask him to create a generator to keep it permanently charged."
The scientist nodded and passed it off to one of his underlings, along with the instructions, and that scientist left immediately. As they did, William and Olivia followed the head scientist to the barracks where they were given a room to share.
"This is probably the most boring job I've ever had," William said.
"Agreed," Olivia nodded. "The least they could do is put us on a strike team."
"Or allow us to train," William grumbled. "I can't believe they yelled at me for using a shooting range to practice my archery."
"To be fair, you did breach fifteen biohazard containment rules to do it," Olivia pointed out. "Not that anyone should be surprised you fucked something up that bad."
"You're no gem either, you know," William said, giving her a dirty look. "At least I'm useful without having to carry weapons around with me."
"If you want to call always needing to be saved being useful, then yeah, very useful," Olivia said.
"As I recall..." He stopped himself, then took a long, heavy breath. "Sorry."
Olivia blinked in surprise, staring at him. "What?"
"I'm not repeating it," William growled. "I'm sure the scientists can get you a hearing aid if you ask nicely."
Olivia rolled her eyes and shook her head. "I'll get a hearing aid the day you ask them if they have a way to make you look less plain."
William's eyes narrowed, but he managed to bite back his retort. Instead, he turned back to the window they were watching out of and fired a blast of energy out of his palm, killing a bird and making it fall onto the ground and set off a motion sensor. Instantly, the radio crackled to life.
"Movement," the voice reported.
"I'll check it out," William all but snarled. "Alone."
"Understood," the voice replied and went silent.
William walked out to the bird and knelt down, taking several heavy breaths to calm himself before reaching up to his earpiece. "Just a bird."
"Copy," the voice said.
He walked back to the room with Olivia and sat down against the wall silently. Olivia glanced at him before turning back to the door. However, after about ten minutes of silence, she finally sighed heavily, turning back to him.
"I'm sorry, alright?" Olivia said. "I didn't mean to piss you off. I shouldn't have insulted you over your looks. Why do you get that bent out of shape about it, though?"
William stared at the ground in silence for nearly a minute before speaking. "Because I'm jealous."
Olivia frowned. "What do you mean?"
Again he didn't answer right away. "I trained for years before we found you. I was the best in the organization, besides our master, and everyone knew it. And then we find you. Six months later, not only are you suddenly the best in the organization, but you're also the person everyone wants to talk to. You trained with Master once ever three days, and I trained with him every day until I could barely walk, and yet I was only barely able to keep up with your skill and power. The only advantage I had over you was that I was more discreet about my jobs than you, and even then, it wasn't enough. Still people were saying that you were the best. Your powers were more useful, your powers were more practical, and your learning curve put my own to shame. And then, to top it off, you're beautiful. You could put a supermodel to shame. On the other hand, I'm only average at best, both in appearance and in natural skill and powers. I thought that if I could just train hard enough to beat you, to prove I'm the best again, it wouldn't matter to me so much, but I could never surpass you, no matter how hard I trained. No matter how much I progressed, it seemed like you and I were always even. And then, in New York, I realized just how wrong I was. We were never even. You had surpassed me a long time ago."
"You mean my ability to duplicate myself?" Olivia asked, frowning.
"Yes," William nodded. "I can maybe beat one of you in a fight, as long as we don't start at sniper distance. But against five of you? You'd kill me in a second."
"Maybe not," Olivia said. "All you'd have to do is kill one of me."
"You said you didn't know if that would kill you or not," William said.
"I lied," Olivia said. "I was using a duplicate of myself to cook once, years ago, and the duplicate cut its finger. When we fused again, my finger was still cut. And unlike when I duplicate bullets or knives or anything, I can't just make duplicates of myself fade out of existence. I'd probably erase myself as well if I could. I have to fuse back together with them, which means gaining any injuries the others acquire."
"Still," William sighed. "I can't beat more than one of you at a time. And given how fast you learned to fight, and how quickly you got a handle on your powers, I'll never be able to match you. I'm never going to be anything but average."
Olivia sighed. "I suppose that explains why you went from being welcoming to me to suddenly hating me."
"You didn't exactly help matters, you know," William said. "Every time I tried to be nice, right from the moment we gave you a home, you were a bitch back."
"Well, what the fuck did you expect?" Olivia snapped. "I had just been tortured, raped, and..."
Both fell silent for a long few minutes.
"I'm sorry," William said, Olivia again staring at him in confusion. "I wish we had found you sooner. I'm sorry we didn't. I'm sorry that we couldn't save you both. I'm sorry that we couldn't stop that from happening to you. And I'm sorry for every time I've used it as an insult or to hurt you. I'm sorry I've been such an ass all this time."
Olivia stared at him before shaking her head and smirking. She opened her mouth, only to falter. Her face sunk slightly before she sighed heavily. "Thank you. It...Shockingly, it means a lot to hear you say that. I forgive you."
William nodded, frowning as a foreign, unwelcome warm feeling flickered to life inside his chest. What was wrong with him? First, he stopped himself from insulting him, then he felt ashamed of himself for having done it before. He had actually stooped so low as to apologize for it, and now, of all things, he was actually relieved she had forgiven him. There had to be something wrong with him.
William sat bolt upright, a bow and arrow forming instantly, the shining energy lighting up the room, only to find no attacker. However, he had definitely woken up because of Olivia's voice. He looked over at her, seeing a troubled expression on her face as she rolled over, her cheeks glistening in the flickering light of his bow. She whimpered, more tears leaking from her eyes and William sighed, letting his bow fade and flicking on his bedside lamp before walking over to her. He sat beside her and shook her awake gently. She sat bolt upright, letting out a strangled, sobbing scream, but he caught her in a hug. After she had taken a moment to adjust from her nightmare back to reality, she began to sob, clinging to William, who stroked her back gently, holding her and rocking slightly until she had calmed down.
"They can't hurt you anymore," William murmured soothingly, knowing full well that her nightmare, as always, had been about her torture with her sister.
"They hurt me every time I remember or dream about it," Olivia almost whimpered, still close to tears. "They hurt me every time I think about my sister." She tightened her arms around him for a moment. "Thank you for waking me up."
"You're welcome," William said, gently laying her back down and pulling the sheet up over her. "Rest. I'll wake you if you start to have a nightmare again."
Olivia nodded and drifted off again within seconds. William sat beside her for a long few minutes, gently running his hand over the hair on top of her head before standing and walking to the bathroom. He closed the door silently and relieved himself before flushing and turning to the mirror. His eyes fell to his reflection's shirt, and stared for a few seconds. Finally, he swallowed hard before pulling his shirt up to expose his chest. He stared at the dark bruise spread over his chest, centered over his heart, with jagged spikes of bruised skin reaching outward from it. It was about four and a half inches wide and circular, minus the spikes where it was spreading outward. He sighed as he let his shirt fall but stared at his reflection's chest. The mark had appeared a week after New York, and had been spreading since then. By his estimation, judging by the severity of the pain he felt in his chest when he used his powers, and the feeling of being sick that followed extended use of them now, he probably only had another couple years at best before he died. Maybe that was why he'd spent the last six months feeling so much like a pussy and finding himself inexplicably trying to be nice to Olivia. He sighed, shutting the light off and heading back to bed. He didn't care. All he needed was to kill Bullseye. If he could do that, he could die content.
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