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 Studios and The Walt Disney Company, among many others. I'm only a fan, writing this for my love of this film/television franchise.
A.N.: A heads up that the science used here is not my forte and it's just a muddled up explanation for how it's supposed to work. Sorry that I'm a little late with my own pace of a new chapter every other day, but yesterday was a rather busier day at work/home and I could only just finish writing this up. I'll try to get the next one out sooner to make it up!
Avengers Initiative: Reset
10. Reactions
After having worked together for a few days and by now used to each other's thought processes and working styles, it didn't take Fitz-Simmons and Tony too long to agree on the modifications needed to the particle accelerator to synthesize the new element ─ Tony insisted it should be called badassium while Jemma flat-out refused to call it that and Fitz argued that there was no way in hell it would be approved by IUPAC with that name. But naming disputes aside, the two young SHIELD scientists now had the specs necessary for a working model of a prism accelerator and Coulson had managed to secure a lab relatively close by that they could use.
"Captain, I'd like you to head out with the team for backup, if that's alright," Coulson said then, turning to Steve. "I don't expect any problems with a trip to a research facility, but I can't go out right now and I'd rather have someone else with May, just in case."
"Yes, of course." Steve nodded at once, feeling rather eager to get out and do something, not to mention take a look at this 21st century world that he'd only seen through pictures, footage and the window in Coulson's office. "Do you want me to suit up or…?" He trailed off, gesturing at his slacks and shirt he was wearing at the moment.
"Yeah, I hope it's alright that it's not your old uniform," Coulson said with a smile. "At least for now, we don't want to draw any attention to you so I got a STRIKE team uniform for you to blend more in."
Tony let out a soft huff at that. "Black ops isn't exactly what I think of when it comes to blending in, but I guess it is more subdued than the star and the stripes," the hologram commented with a smirk. "I always wondered, did everyone get to wear them? Did the whole Howling Commandos go around dressed like the American flag while fighting HYDRA?"
"No," Steve said with something of a dry smile, somehow aware that Tony would know the answer to that and was obviously teasing him but deciding to indulge him anyway. "That was just me, all courtesy of the USO and I kind of got used to it."
"I bet you loved it, didn't you," Tony poked fun at him, seeming more lighthearted for the first time since his untimely death. "Going around carrying that big star in your chest, bursting through doors and kicking HYDRA's ass like some beacon of hope and liberty for all across Europe."
Before Steve or anyone else could respond to that, Natasha huffed out a soft laugh and all eyes turned to her. "Seriously?" She said, looking up at Tony through her lashes. "You're going on about that when you literally had to clear with the Air Force your drop-down amid fireworks for the kickoff of Stark Expo?"
"Yeah, I'll have to side with Natasha on that one," Coulson said, crossing his arms and one of his patented quiet smiles on his face. "Especially after we went to the trouble to provide you with an alibi and all the cover-up after the blow-up at Stark Industries just for you to go up to a podium in front of reporters and say, 'I am Iron Man'."
"Well, your alibi sucked," Tony replied, although he still seemed to be having fun, judging by the smirk stretched across his lips. "No one was believing a word of all that crap, saying I built myself a robot bodyguard."
"Not my fault you couldn't deliver the speech," Coulson countered, also in good humor. "After all, it wouldn't be the craziest thing you've done before."
"Not by a long shot," Tony agreed readily with a laugh.
"Well, as fun as this all is, we really need to get moving, don't we, sir?" Fitz said then, turning with a rather impatient expression to Coulson.
"We're just very anxious to get back to work on building the cradle as soon as possible," Jemma added apologetically next to him.
"I can't believe you're working on that thing with your hands," Tony said with an exasperated roll of the eyes.
"Excuse me, I like building things with my own hands," Fitz protested right away with a huff.
"Yeah, I get it, so did I and I'm looking forward to having actual hands again," Tony countered. "And I know you don't want me accessing the internet and all, but can't you at least let me have control of some things here at the base on a local server? I could put together an assembly line and get that thing done so much faster."
"Who knows how long we'll be at the research lab with all the modifications we'll need to do and then running the actual experiment," Jemma added her own argument, as she turned to her lab partner, biting a little on her lower lip.
"It would be optimum to get someone working on the cradle while we are gone," Fitz nodded back at her after her words then turned to the others. "Alright, I'll set it up before we head out."
"I can help, too," Skye offered with enthusiasm, eager to be working on something again and not about to pass on the opportunity to work with Tony Stark.
"Good idea," Coulson nodded in approval. "Fitz-Simmons, why don't you get it started while Captain Rogers suits up? Natasha, show him to the changing rooms and the armory. Skye, I'd like a word with you, first."
Giving out his orders and receiving nods back all around, Coulson led the way out of the lab and up to his office through the lounge. Skye followed him with barely contained nervousness, surprising herself that she was able to keep quiet until they were alone in the room with the door closed.
"Coulson, what's wrong? Did I do something─?" She asked at once, frowning up at him and nearly bouncing on the balls of her feet just for the want to do something other than just stand there.
"I wanted to thank you for all the work you've done," Coulson said, interrupting what was about to be the start of her nervous rambling. "We're making progress as a team thanks to your efforts. And I also wanted you to know I didn't forget what you'd asked us."
She took a sharp breath in as she thought, this is it. She was finally going to learn the truth about why she'd been left at the orphanage. "Okay. Did you find out anything?" She asked tentatively when he didn't offer anything else for a moment.
"I did," he said, looking firmly back at her and seemingly searching for something. "I'll tell you everything I found out and keep working on anything else I can find about it. But I wanted to ask you again if you're really thinking of joining SHIELD."
She blinked her eyes in surprise. "Yes, I still want to join. If you're worried about my motivations─" She continued frowning a little and all geared up to defend herself and her reasons.
"That's not what I'm concerned about," he assured her right away with a wave of his hand. "I understand that you learned how to hack into systems in your search for the truth about your past. That's one thing. Joining SHIELD and doing this work, it's something else. There's real danger here. You may not see it, because we're locked into this secret base and no one knows we're here. Right now we have you working as a consultant, but if we start the process and get you training to be a real agent, that's a completely different ballgame."
"I know that," she said, the frown in her brow clearing a little, but she still felt like protesting. "Look, I know what I did was underhanded and it wasn't the most direct approach, I get that. But I don't want to do this just to find out about my past. I get that what you do is dangerous, but guess what? The world is a dangerous place right now, no matter where you go. There are armies of aliens with flying ships stationed all over the place and people are getting restless, so no doubt that out there is gonna boil over at some point." She argued, pointing out the window at the view of Washington DC they could see through the glass. "I figured I'd rather be next to the guys leading the fight and doing something to protect people than out there on my own with no clue how to properly fight back and possibly causing more harm on the way."
Coulson nodded slightly back at her, a new gleam visible in his blue eyes as he took in the words of her impassioned speech. "Alright then," he said, turning around and getting hold of a file that had been sitting on his desk. "I found the un-redacted file you were looking for. It's not exactly about you, but more about the woman who left you at the orphanage. She was an agent of SHIELD."
"A woman," Skye said, breathing in another sharp breath as he handed her the file, her eyes quickly scanning through the information, but he was right; there wasn't much about her per se. "She was an agent? What happened to her?"
"She's dead," he told her softly and she looked back at him with shocked eyes. "I'm sorry if this looks like we've hit a wall, but I promise I'll keep looking into it."
"What happened to her?" She asked, gulping down a lump in her throat.
"Shortly after you were left at St. Agnes, she was found dead at her home," Coulson explained, relaying the information that wasn't in the file in her hand. "It looked like she was tortured before she was executed."
"Oh my god," she whispered, blanching a little at his words, suddenly understanding Natasha's words that things could've been worse than what she'd imagined before. "What about her family? Do you think she was─I mean, do you think it's possible─?"
"I don't think she was your mother," he told her still in that same soft tone, his eyes becoming a little apologetic. "Her autopsy files indicate she'd never been pregnant or given birth before her death. It's possible she just found you somewhere and took you to the orphanage."
Skye looked sharply back at him at his words. "But you don't think that's what happened, do you? It's not just one big coincidence that this woman happened to leave me at St. Agnes and a few days later someone found her, tortured her then killed her just like that."
"She was a field agent," Coulson argued back a little, not ready to confirm her suspicions right away. "We all lead dangerous lives and she might've stumbled into something in one of her missions."
"But she wasn't killed on a mission," Skye argued back as well. "You said she was found at her home. This wasn't an op, this was someone tracking her down."
"Yes," he finally admitted after a moment of heavy silence. "Which is why I was hesitant to share this information with you. Technically I shouldn't even be telling you this as you're not an agent yet, but Natasha had threatened to do it herself if I didn't give you the info."
"Oh. Okay," she said, nodding back in appreciation at him. "Thank you for telling me this."
"Sure," he said with a nod of his own. "And I'll keep digging on it."
"You figured you'd better do it or Natasha will go behind your back and do it anyway, huh." Skye answered with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.
"It's not just that," he said with a soft smile as he shook his head a little. "You're coming into SHIELD, so you'll learn we keep secrets for a reason, whether you like it or not. But if this is about your past, then it's about your safety as well." He didn't tell her the next words, but he thought that even if what he found out was something he couldn't share with her for some reason like clearance levels or something else, he'd rather have all the information he could so that he could work to keep her safe, at least.
Skye found herself nodding back at him, her eyes shining with too many emotions and as she couldn't find the words she wanted to tell him, she swooped in and wrapped her arms around him for a tight hug, hoping to infuse in her actions everything she wanted to let him know. Coulson hesitated for a moment then he wrapped his arms around her back and smiled a little to himself as she held him for a few seconds too long.
"Really, thank you for all you're doing," she said as she let him go and stepped back. "I can't tell you how much it means to me."
He smiled tightly back at her, as he also didn't quite know what to say. Sensing his slight discomfort, she put on a bright smile and said she would head back down to the lab to help Fitz-Simmons and Tony with the assembly line for the cradle, once more eager to get back to work and he watched her go, shaking his head a little before sitting down on his desk and getting back to other business.
It was a relatively short Quinjet flight later that took May, Steve and Fitz-Simmons to a facility in Tennessee that had a particle accelerator they were able to commandeer through SHIELD for their use. By the time they got there, the lab's personnel had been sent home for the day with some ready excuse about an unspecified safety issue and a SHIELD security detail was taking care of the place when they arrived.
Leading the way and clearing their entrance with her credentials for the group, May strode in purposefully into the building then set up a surveillance detail on the perimeter while Fitz-Simmons went right down to the particle accelerator to do their necessary modifications before they could run it and hopefully obtain the proposed new element. Steve stood by with May, taking her lead as he still wasn't sure on the proper protocols and figured he should shadow her to get himself better situated.
"I noticed you don't carry a sidearm," he said conversationally, his hand trailing to the Smith & Wesson pistol Natasha had taken out of the armory for him and that was currently upholstered by his thigh. He was a little surprised by how vulnerable he felt without his shield by his side, so he kept twitching back to the firearm as a reassurance that he had a ready weapon at hand if necessary.
"If I need a gun, I'll take one." May said easily back as she turned to him with an almost-there smile. "But mostly I'm better at fighting with my hands."
Steve raised his eyebrows before this. "Coulson has been telling me I should try sparring with you." He commented, still feeling a little doubtful about that notion. Of course, he knew that since she was a SHIELD agent ─ and a specialist at that ─ she was probably a very good fighter and it wasn't the fact that she was a woman, after all he remembered just how capable Peggy had been back in the day. But he'd been very hard pressed to find someone who could keep up to his enhanced strength, metabolism and skills after the serum.
"Hmm," she murmured back, eyes scanning the outside perimeter in the pad in her hands. "I bet he's just getting tired of you tossing him around, huh?"
"Well, I don't know much about tossing him around," Steve said with a somewhat embarrassed smile. It was true that Coulson had held up against him a lot better than he'd expected and had even taught him some new moves. But it was also true that the super soldier was holding himself back and not even close to using his full strength so far.
"I do," May said with that particular smile he'd grown to associate with both her and Natasha in the past few days, making him wonder if it somehow was something they taught all specialists to use or if it was just something inherent to both women. "Who do you think patches him up after your training sessions?"
Steve furrowed his brow a little even as a confused smile also came to his lips, as he wasn't sure if she was serious or not. He didn't think Agent May was one for joking around, but he also didn't think he'd been that rough on Coulson that he'd caused any injuries that needed medical attention, or at least he hadn't seen anything right after their training sessions so far.
Everything seemed to be going alright, but May wasn't one to relax while out in the field so she went out to check on the agents outside of the building and Steve went further in and downstairs towards the particle accelerator. He found the scientists making the final modifications needed to the structure.
"You guys work fast," Steve commented as he joined them back in the antechamber outside the accelerator where they would be able to control the parameters of the experiment and be protected from any resulting radiation.
"The lab already had a primary structure in place, we only needed to make a few modifications," Fitz said as he sealed the door closed and got back to the controllers with his partner.
"You think this will work?" Steve asked as he stood by and watched them pressing all sorts of levers and buttons in the panel.
"It should," Jemma said succinctly and then slipped into explanation mode, something that was almost second nature to her from the little Steve had known of her so far. "This works by producing negatively charged hydrogen ions and converting each one into a proton, which is then accelerated through that ring-like structure at very high speeds."
"Once enough of the accelerated protons are gathered in 'bunches', so to speak, they are released as pulses through there," Fitz continued with the explanation, pointing at a part of the structure inside the chamber. "Now we've made some changes and added the prism, which will direct the pulse as a beam towards that piece there in the middle."
"The colliding protons should be able to merge together and form the nucleus for the new element, provided it's heavy and stable enough to affix in the resulting structure," Jemma continued. "Otherwise it would simply disintegrate in a millionth of a second."
"But Mr. Stark's calculations are solid and the modifications we did here should get us the wanted results," Fitz said with a confirming nod, turning towards his partner. "Ready?" She gave him a nod and he pulled a lever, starting the process.
They needed to redirect the beam and it took them a few more pushes of some levers to get it where they wanted it, but it looked like it was working when Steve heard May come in through comms in his ear. "Rogers," she said. "We got company."
He felt his blood running cold at that. "What's happening, May?" He asked, pressing a finger to his comm.
"A small Asgardian vessel is approaching. I'll buy you guys time with the same excuse we shut down the lab, but you'd better hurry up if you can."
"We're going as fast as we can," Fitz said with a huff. "We can't exactly accelerate a particle accelerator anymore than this."
"But it looks like it's working," Jemma added. "We should be able to get out of here soon."
May left the communication line open and they could hear her greeting the approaching Asgardian, saying something about a dangerous leak in the system that SHIELD was looking at and correcting. There was some back and forth about no authorization granted for this expedition and how the mission wasn't in SHIELD's official logs. Before anyone could understand what was happening, the sounds of a fight could be heard in their comms.
"Get out of there," they heard May grunt through the line. "Now!"
Just then, the beam in the accelerator seemed to reach maximum brightness and they shut down the machine, barely waiting the necessary time before they could barge into the chamber and collect their results in a case.
"We'll have to check the results back at the base," Fitz said with a concerned frown.
"Right. Then let's go," Steve said with a serious expression as he led them out of the particle accelerator chamber and back upstairs.
As they reached the main lobby of the building that they needed to cross to exit through the back to where they'd parked the Quinjet the team could see May engaged in hand to hand combat with a tall woman wearing armor, her long dark hair pulled into a ponytail. May seemed to be holding her own, throwing out punches, kicks and fairly dancing around the other warrior as they traded blows, neither one maintaining the upper hand for long.
But just then the warrior pulled a sword from behind the shield in her left arm and May needed to jump back to avoid getting hit. Steve got hold of his pistol and took aim, trying to give her cover as they ran across the lobby so they could get away.
He fired a warning shot at the wall near the woman's head and she turned sharply to him. Seeing this, he exchanged a quick nod with May, who ran out towards the back to get the Quinjet, Fitz-Simmons hot on her heels but a bit slower as they carried the cases with their equipment.
"You're defying the ruling of Asgard over Midgard, human?" The woman warrior turned to Steve with an arched eyebrow.
"I'm just following my own orders, ma'am," he replied with something of a smirk.
He'd planned on engaging her in combat long enough that the team could get to their transport and then join them out, but just as she moved to advance towards him one of the agents of the security detail burst through the front door and fired a shot, aiming at her chest. Unfortunately, the warrior's quick reflexes had her raising her shield in defense, causing the bullet to ricochet out in a wide trajectory.
Steve saw it all happening as if in slow motion, only able to watch as he was too far away to avoid anything. The bullet bounced off the warrior's shield and zinged through the air towards the back exit. He saw how the two scientists were running for the Quinjet and just then Jemma turned to look back and reacted on instinct, throwing out one arm and sending Fitz careening to the ground before she crumpled down herself.
"No, no," Steve said almost unconsciously as he broke into a run towards the fallen scientists, not caring to see if the warrior was following them, his mind focused on getting to them so that he could carry them back to the Quinjet if that's what he had to do to get them out of there.
"Simmons?" Fitz looked up as he kneeled then got back to his feet, looking around in alarm, his eyes growing wide as he saw her a few feet away on the ground. "JEMMA!"
Steve reached her and saw the bullet wound in her gut, blooming red against the white of her shirt even as she pressed her fingers down and blood seeped out.
"Ugh, you need to put pressure," she groaned in pain as she squeezed her eyes shut, her face already paling and her breath coming in raggedly. In another moment, Fitz was beside them, hands shaking as he looked down at her and putting them over her own as he struggled to remember the basics of emergency field care in the heat of the moment.
"Agent Fitz, get your equipment cases. I'll carry her back," Steve urged him as he tried to push him away, putting his own hand over the wound and another arm already arching under Jemma's back. "Fitz! We need to get to the Quinjet!"
Fitz's tear-filled eyes snapped back up at him and after another moment he nodded back, moving to grab both the cases and dragging them back to the Quinjet, Steve easily picking up the woman in his arms as he followed him. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the Asgardian warrior had knocked out the agents from the security detail and had stopped by the back door into the building and was watching them go with a frown in her face.
"What happened?" May cried from the pilot seat as she readied for take-off.
"The bullet ricocheted and she got hit," Steve said quickly as he put Jemma down on the ground and hit the button for the ramp. "Get us out of here, May!"
She didn't need to be told twice, swiftly putting the Quinjet in the air and activating on the cloaking, even if it didn't look like the Asgardian planned on pursuing them. May set her lips in a thin line as she flew them back to the base as fast as possible and opened a secure line to let Coulson know what had happened.
A.N. Sorry (not sorry) for the cliffhanger! Also I know Coulson may be coming off a little colder here, but I'm just basing this off the first few episodes of AOS, where everyone mentioned how different he was compared to before his dying-and-coming-back experience. He's obviously headed to caring a lot for Skye as originally, but I figured he wouldn't be so protective of her right off the bat.