Disclaimer: The Avengers, its characters and The Marvel Cinematic Universe belong to Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company, among many others. Marvel's Agents of SHIELD and its characters belong to ABC Studios, Marvel Television, Mutant Enemy Productions, among many others. What If…? belongs to Marvel Studies and The Walt Disney Company, among many others. I'm only a fan, writing this for my love of this film/television franchise.

Avengers Initiative: Reset

06. Reintroductions

Natasha walked out of the interrogation room so intent on checking the information on Skye's microchip that she completely forgot the wheelchair that had been parked outside the door, taking long strides and heading back to the medical bay and her laptop. Except that when she rounded the corner she ran into someone coming the opposite way. Someone tall, blonde, with bright blue eyes and a very firm chest that she'd braced herself against for a moment to regain her balance.

"Oh I'm sorry," he said, immediately extending a hand to her elbow to steady her figure as well.

"No, it was my fault. I wasn't looking where I was going," she said easily as it was the truth, even if it was rare for her to be caught off guard like this, especially by something so trivial as running into someone else. Maybe Simmons was right and she still needed more bedrest.

"I see you've finally met each other," Coulson said as he walked out of the interrogation room and Billy Koenig went inside to take his place and start the registration/orientation process with Skye. "Captain Steve Rogers, this is Agent Natasha Romanoff."

"Ma'am," Steve nodded at her in greeting.

"Hi," Natasha said with a small smile. "I'm surprised I didn't see you around before now. Where have you been all this time?"

"Captain Rogers was upstairs in my office," Coulson explained briefly.

"I've been doing some reading and catching up on what I've missed in the last few decades," Steve added.

Natasha let out a low whistle then shook her head a little. "Sixty-plus years of information. That's a lot of ground to cover."

"I'm a fast reader," he said with a small smile. "And the recordings helped with making it interesting."

"We gave him a few highlights and areas of interest to our upcoming mission, of course, such as notable political situations and current climate, wars, medical and technological developments." Coulson commented. "Anything else outside that scope I'm afraid you'll need to manage on your own, but I'm sure the team will be happy to pitch in and make suggestions for things like popular culture and foods."

"I'll make sure to keep a list," Steve said easily in reply.

"Speaking of pop culture, has Coulson asked you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?" Natasha asked as she aimed a smirk at the man in the suit standing with them.

"Trading cards?" Steve repeated, his eyebrows going up in surprise and turning with a curious look to their team leader as well.

"It's nothing," Coulson said quickly, waving his hand around dismissively as a blush crept up his neck and face.

"They're vintage," Natasha said in a stage whisper, her eyes twinkling up mischievously as her words were obviously meant to be heard by both men.

"They are," Coulson admitted after a beat, a small proud smile coming to his lips as he took her provocations mostly in good humour. After all, a lot of people knew about his Captain America trading card collection and at some point he would've asked Steve to sign them anyway.

"He's very proud," Natasha added conversationally, leaning closer to Steve. "I'm surprised he hasn't asked you yet."

"It wasn't exactly up top in my list of priorities, Natasha," Coulson said, marginally narrowing his eyes at her. "What with putting this team together, going out to grab one more person for you and ─ oh yeah, making sure you didn't die on my watch."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Natasha replied with a smile, crossing her arms over her chest.

"And speaking of which, shouldn't you be back in your wheelchair?" Coulson said, raising his eyebrows at her. "I don't want Simmons on the warpath in case you overexert yourself and cause us to rush you into surgery, again."

"Surgery?" Steve repeated, also raising his eyebrows at her now.

"God, you suffer a collapsed lung and a re-bleed once and no one will let it up anymore," Natasha said sarcastically with an eyeroll and a smirk. "I tell you, I'm fine. My stitches are almost completely closed and my vitals have been stable for the past two days. I'm ready to start on my physical therapy."

"Just like I told Dr. Fine," Coulson commented, shaking his head a little though there was a smile on his lips. "Two days after surgery and already up, bossing me around."

"You had surgery two days ago and you already want to get back to training?" Steve said, frowning in confusion and concern at that. "How is that possible?"

"A lifetime of extreme physical conditioning and a watered down version of the Soviet super serum," Natasha answered promptly as she turned her eyes to him, shrugging a little when he seemed taken aback. "You asked."

"Oh yeah, if you were concerned about me not being a good sparring partner, Natasha and May can more than make it up on that front," Coulson told him with a chuckle. "Although May doesn't have a super serum as far as I'm aware, she could still put you through a good workout."

"I can attest to that," Natasha said, making a quick sideways tipping motion with her head in a conceding gesture.

"Okay, let's move this party to the lab to involve the others and let them know where we stand, shall we?" Coulson said, motioning with his hand at the bend around the corner and down the hallway, then he turned to Natasha. "You deal with Simmons when she comes ready to bite your head off for not using the wheelchair."

"Okay, fine." Natasha rolled her eyes and doubled back to the wheelchair, dutifully sitting down and letting Coulson push her, Steve walking in step with them down the hallways of the base.

As they entered the R&D lab, Jemma made a beeline for Natasha and instantly started fussing over her, asking quite a number of questions about how she was feeling and her well-being in general while getting her back on the bed in the medical bay. Steve watched the scene with some amusement, as he still couldn't quite believe someone as young as Agent Simmons could be in charge of their medical care ─ but she had been overseeing his recovery for the past two days and he had grown to appreciate she was very competent at her job.

Coulson then introduced him to her partner Agent Leo Fitz, who he hadn't yet met then Steve just stopped and stared at the hologram of Tony Stark in the middle of the lab, its shape contoured by a light blue light with the features of a man he'd seen in photographs and footage upstairs at the office.

"So this is the man of the hour," Tony said, walking up to him with a slight grin on his face. "It looks like they found you at just the right time, huh? Although not sure if you'd agree with that assessment. The right time for you would've probably been right after your crash back in '45, right? I'd shake your hand, but it would go right through you." He added, waving his hand around for emphasis.

"Right," Steve replied, simultaneously thrown by Tony's propensity to overtalk and still a little stunned despite all the preparation that had been given to him and all the reading and researching he'd done to get mostly caught up to the current technology. "And you're Howard's son."

"Yep," Tony said, eyeing him with a critical eye now. "Good old dad wouldn't shut up about you. Well, if he could see us now. I'd say we're looking pretty good for a couple of guys who are supposed to be dead."

Steve could only blink his eyes at this, not entirely sure how to take Tony's flippant remarks on life, death and matters concerning resurrections (or something to that effect).

"Don't worry," Natasha murmured from her place in her bed where Jemma was measuring her blood pressure. "You'll soon get used to his idiotic blabbing. I wish I could say it was some sort of malfunction with his AI, but he was just like that in flesh and blood, too."

"Don't listen to her," Tony said with a dismissively waving hand. "She's just upset because she killed me and all."

"For the last time, I wasn't the one who killed you." Natasha huffed out with a pointed eyeroll.

"Don't lie and say you never thought of doing it." Tony said with an accusing finger pointed at her.

"I'm thinking of doing it right now, if I could." She muttered under her breath.

"Is this normal...?" Steve asked, leaning closer to the others as he trailed off and gestured with a hand at the pair bickering lightheartedly, receiving simultaneously spoken replies from Coulson and Fitz-Simmons.

"Yep."

"Unfortunately."

"Pretty much."

Before Tony and Natasha could get too carried away with their antics, they were interrupted by the rest of the team joining them. After Billy put Skye through orientation (with May overseeing the interrogation process with the lie detector through a two-way mirror), they were satisfied that she had been truthful about what she'd told them and her intentions so she was taken back to the R&D lab. They could see the young hacktivist realized she had no idea what she'd gotten herself into when she saw not only Captain America, alive and well (and looking damn fine by any definition in her book), but also a hologram of Tony Stark walking about.

"Wait, hold on a sec," she said, pausing in the middle of being introduced to Fitz-Simmons when she noticed just who else was in the room with them. "You're telling me Captain America and Iron Man are alive?"

"Well, yes and no," Tony himself answered, bobbing his head left and right for a moment. "I mean, he's definitely alive." He clarified, pointing at Steve. "Frozen and then defrosted after spending a few decades as a Capsicle in the arctic. Now this here," he said, gesturing at himself, "is actually new territory and somewhat of a gray area, but for the sake of simplification, let's go with yes, I'm alive." He concluded with a bright grin.

"I'm just finding out about this myself," Steve commented, arms crossed severely over his chest as he frowned at the hologram.

"Holy shit," Skye whispered, her eyes shining brightly in excitement. "This is huge. Why are you keeping this in the dark? Shouldn't the world be aware of this? It's the sort of news that seems like it would be relevant for the moment we're going through, you know."

"We're keeping this quiet until we are ready to face Loki and reclaim our planet," Coulson explained. "We don't need him knowing about it and destroying any chance we have to make a stand before we're ready."

"Yeah, but this sort of news would spur people to fight back," Skye insisted energetically. "I mean, I know you're aware that there are people forming resistance movements in those countries that Loki has taken over."

"We are," May said gravely. "But until we are all ready to fight, there's no point in spurring people on. It will only lead to unnecessary bloodshed."

"Skye, I understand your motivations and your reasoning," Coulson said, walking up to her. "But we know what we're doing and we need your help before we can actually go out and fight."

"Right," she said, shaking her head a little to focus instead of getting swept away in her passionate speeches. "Of course. You needed my help with something?"

Fitz-Simmons and Natasha then quickly summarized their situation with the search for materials to build the LMD and the attempts to hack into the U-GIN Genetic Research Facility to get the data they needed. Billy Koenig then handed a new laptop with a SHIELD ID and a lanyard to Skye to set her up to start working right away.

"Okay, that sounds doable," Skye said as she sat down on a workbench they cleared for her, Fitz-Simmons sitting on either side of her in case she needed any assistance with SHIELD operational systems, but she seemed to be doing okay by herself, already typing away at the keyboard. "One question though: couldn't Stark do this for you? I mean, I heard he was this master decrypter and hacker himself. I'd imagine an AI created by him would retain the same capabilities."

"True," Tony said as he walked by. "But they won't give me any access to the internet. I'm completely cut off. You can't imagine how frustrating it is not being able to check on anything online."

"We don't want to risk anyone finding out about you until we can build you a body," Fitz explained in a tone of voice that somehow threaded thinly between patient and exasperated at same time. "If you're linked to the internet, you can get exposed and someone could find out you're sort-of-still alive."

"And in order to build him a body we need the data from U-GIN Genetic Research Facility," Jemma said, finishing their thought process.

"Gotcha," Skye murmured and focused on the screen and the hack she needed to do. "Once I get in, any idea where I should be looking for the data you need?"

"I think I can guide you if I see a directory," Natasha said as she walked over, sitting down beside her on the seat Fitz vacated for her as he moved to stand behind Jemma instead.

As most of the team concentrated on the efforts made in the hack for the data, Coulson motioned with his head and walked outside with May, the two of them heading out towards his office through the lounge. "While they're taking care of that, I'm gonna need your help with something," he said. "Natasha showed me what was in Skye's microchip, so I've put a request in for the original of the redacted file and anything else related to it that we may have. I want you to take a look at it and see what we're able to find."

"Phil, are you sure about this?" She frowned with concern. "We both know these protocols exist for a reason. If SHIELD was involved, it was probably put in place for her own protection."

"That's why I'm asking you to look at it before we give her anything," Coulson told her as they mounted up the steps in the staircase, catching the look she gave him. "Don't look at me like that. I am going to tell her anything we can, but I want to make sure first that we should tell her."

"And if it turns out it's actually something she shouldn't know?" May asked with a raised eyebrow as they walked into his office.

Coulson walked to stand behind his desk, unbuttoning his suit. "Then I'll make that call when I have to." He said and sat down, grabbing his pad and taking care of other business.

"Yes, sir." May said with a slight sigh and took a seat at the conference table, also grabbing a pad and getting to work.