(A/N: Sooooo, I had planned on this little meeting being wrapped up in this chapter and that would have caught me up with what I had written previously so we could get on with the show, but it didn't quite happen that way. It ended up being WAY too long for all one chapter so all I can say is be patient…there's just a little bit more of this little initiating incident and we'll be on our way. Also, I'm clearly crossing over Marvel universes and characters for my girl's little subplot that's going to carry through. For that I am taking liberties all round with timeline and other things, just fair warning, I know it goes without saying because we all muck around to suit our needs. For the main plot that follows the Avengers movies, though … we're sticking pretty close to the OG timeline, maybe a few tweaks here and there right off the bat but I'll be going pretty close. Not sure what else there is to say other than, I hope the lengths haven't been too painful to read…in future I will try as best I can to hack the length down to a more reasonable level … it's a constant struggle. Thank you for your collective show of support. Updates after this will probably be once a week or so … busy season busy week so, keep your eyeballs peeled )

Chapter Two: First Impressions – Part Two

"Go on and take a peek if you want. I won't bite ya … I don't think anyway. But I guess maybe you do."

Lexie huffed and shot daggers at Fury and his petty taunting … his petty dare.

He couldn't have given two shits less if she actually looked at the file or not, she knew that for certain. He probably knew every last line on every last page that was housed in the folder and he knew all too well she did too. She didn't need reminding of her past and all the misdeeds she thought she had put in her rear-view for good. There was nothing spilled in ink in twelve-point font on a stack of crisp snow white 20-pound bond that she didn't already know about herself and that she didn't revisit in her very worst nightmares every now and then … at least, she hoped there wasn't.

Fury didn't care if Lexie looked through the stack of well collated intelligence or not and she knew that … any idiot would have been able to figure it out. What he did care about, however, was the fact that she wouldn't look; the fact that she didn't want to look and the fact that she would outright refuse if pressed on the matter. What he did care about was the fact that the last thing she wanted to do was to confront even a scrap, the tiniest little bit, of any of the information he had laid out in front of her in a neat and tidy package; a neat and tidy package probably color coded, perfectly paperclipped and squared away like he assumed he had her squared away.

Fury didn't care if she looked through the file, not at all, not one bit, not in the slightest.

What he cared about was the fact that she would much rather avoid it. That she would much rather run from it or pretend it didn't exist … like it was some bad fever dream, or something concocted in the grip of some chemically induced haze.

That was his power move.

Clearly.

That was what gave him the upper hand. As long as he knew everything there was to know about her and as long as he had it so readily at his disposal to do with whatever he saw fit, he had the high ground. He had Lexie bound and had her held in check … and she hated every second of it.

"See, you tell me that you have a good relationship with your mother and that's fine … but you and I both know that's a bald-faced lie. You and I know precisely what's in that file and you and I both know that it's some nasty shit all round." He continued, lowering his voice a little; trying to strike a note of sympathy, trying to get on her level so as to get something, anything, out of her. "I don't think you'd piss on her if she were on fire and I can't say I blame you one little bit."

Lexie didn't respond.

Straight backed and tight lipped in her chair in her silence, Lexie didn't have the first clue of what to say or what to do in order to even begin to address the situation.

"Why don't you refresh my memory, how long ago? How many years ago was it that she sent you away? Sold you off to the Weapon Plus Program … I should say."

"You wanna know so bad, I'm sure you know how to use a calculator." She muttered flatly under her breath; doing her best to restrain the irritation, among other things, growing in her gut.

"I know it's a touchy subject … I hope I'm not hitting any nerves."

Lies.

"You're not."

Lies returned.

"I'm just … doing my job."

"Okay."

They shared a tense and disingenuous smile, each knowing exactly how the game they were entrenched in was played and each trying to formulate two or three moves in advance like some impromptu, unconventional, high stakes game of chess; the spoils of which were yet to be determined … some enigmatic grand prize, Lexie wasn't even sure was worth it.

That strange sort of silence she had so previously enjoyed had crept back into the room, only to bring no comfort with it this time. It hung like a wet blanket, thick and heavy in the air; imposing, oppressive and depriving the room of even the most muted sound and of any sign of life outside of the office … save for the obnoxious ticking of some unseen desk clock ticking incessantly; echoing loud as thunder off of the four cold, hard, empty office walls around her that may as well have been a prison cell.

… fucking S.H.I.E.L.D. All the technology in the world at their fingertips and they couldn't make a fucking desk clock that didn't serve as an irritating countdown to impending demise.

"1983," Fury continued, pointedly digging at the edges of a wound that, after all this time, had yet to fully heal. "You were what? Fourteen? Fifteen?"

"Six-" Lexie's voice faltered slightly, and she caught herself quickly, before she gave herself away. "Sixteen."

She bit back the lump in her throat and shifted her eyes towards the floor as she blinked away the sharp prick of heat that surged at the corners. She hated that there was a shred of something left in her that could not help but flinch at the mention of it; the greatest betrayal of her life … the greatest trauma and the horrendous events that were to follow. She hated all of it, every aspect … almost as much as she hated being forced to relive it, forced to dredge it up from the depths bit by excruciating bit.

She would have called it torture … if she didn't already know better.

"Sixteen …" He shook his head and whistled long and low to himself. "Sixteen years old and she sold you off to Weapon Plus … Weapon X, more specifically … right?"

"Weapon.fucking.X … " Lexie tried to force some sort of detached smile to feign indifference, but it didn't read anything of the sort. "Yeah."

"They tell her they could cure you? They tell you they could take your gift away and make you a normal kid again?"

"Don't know. Don't care … neither did she.' She pulled at her sleeves and picked at any and every stray thread she could find as though it would help her pull out and cast away every shred of anxiety and the resentment rooted deep in her heart … or what was left of it. "She wanted me gone and she made a little money at it … good enough for her."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I know how awful that must have been."

"Doubt it." She really had no mind for trite platitudes or false sympathies at this point. She had heard it all before. "Awful wouldn't be your first choice of words if you did."

"I won't disagree … You have a point."

"Do you?"

"Wouldn't have brought you here if I didn't." Fury assured her, raising a hand a little defensively; full well knowing she was probably close to her limit and probably close to the edge. He'd need to find a way to talk her back down somehow if he was going to succeed. Just how he would manage to do so, given the subject, was yet to be determined. "I do have a point. It's a bit involved though … a little complicated … and I guess, to be honest, whatever comes next depends entirely on you, Ms. Lockhart."

"I don't understand."

"You're here because, I have to tell you I've been over everything in this file at least ten times and I find it all very interesting. I find you very interesting." He leaned in a little closer, halving the distance to drive home his words even more solidly. "You weren't wrong earlier when I asked you what you knew about S.H.I.E.L.D … hit the nail on the head even. We do do cool shit and we do get the bad guys most of the time. You would know … you've worked with some of them and worked for some of them … isn't that right?"

"Once upon a time … in a very different life."

"In a very different life. So, you don't consider yourself a bad guy then?"

"No." Lexie tensed a little and shifted in her seat uncomfortably. "Not anymore."

"Good. Neither do I, so you can relax … that's not why you're here."

"Sure."

It wasn't that she remained unconvinced that Fury had something up his sleeve; that there was some plot twist to be had that was going to swing around and bite her in the ass, but Lexie had learned long ago that skepticism was something she didn't have the luxury of abandoning just on a whim and someone else's say so. She had learned long ago that most people would tell her exactly what she wanted to hear only to stab her right through the back as soon as it was turned.

"Observation is what we do here. Constant vigilance. It helps us get to know people before we get to know them. It helps me get to know people like yourself, who we've been getting to know for a very long time." He continued, his tone shifting just a little more serious and holding her solid in a scrutinizing stare; analyzing every subtle reaction he could gleam. "S.H.I.E.L.D has done a lot of good, protected people and saved a lot of lives over the years … but we can't save everyone, no matter how much we may want to. A lot have slipped through the cracks, I'll be the first to admit that … sometimes it can't be helped, sometimes even we mishandle things. Point is we've come to hold a whole lotta information about a whole lotta people and in that pile of information about that pile of people, sometimes someone stands out … gets our attention … seems like the type we should probably keep our eye on."

"Guess that means me." Lexie smirked to herself, unable to deny the strangest faintest streak of pride course through her.

Fury flashed her an affirmative smile and gave her a nod and pushed the folder towards her again, taking note at the way she still refused to so much as let her eyes flip towards it … even for a second.

"Weapon X made you a lab rat and trained you to be lap dog for almost two years. Like you said, I can only try and imagine what that was like and I'd still wouldn't have any idea … but you got out … somehow. Dropped straight off the face of the earth for three damn years. An 18-year-old girl who never lived on her own, getting her first steps of freedom after …" He paused a moment and cocked his head to the side, appreciating just what sort of extremes and what kind of situation she had endured. " … all of that. No one to lean on and no resources of your own. That's not easy. I'm impressed."

"It's a little more involved than that, actually." She clenched a fist under the desk, away from his prying eyes, pressing bright red crescent moons into her palms to keep herself in check.

"I don't doubt it … don't blame you for losing your way not long after that."

Her face fell a little. They had made it thus far without the less than honorable things she had done and the less than desirable choices she had made just in order to keep alive. It was foolish to think she'd make her way out of the meeting having not had Fury lay it out in the open, drag it back from the dead and bring it to light … but she had hoped. She wasn't proud of it, of course, she'd done do much, seen so much and in general been a part of so many things she was ashamed of … so many things she knew were morally wrong at the very least and even worse than that when it came down to it. But it was as he said … she was alone, she had no one and nothing to have her back, nothing to keep her safe and nothing to keep her afloat except for a very unique and special set of abilities and the training to use them in a way that made her very marketable to the exact wrong kind of people.

She did what she had to to be able to get by … to be able to keep safe, to be sure she'd be able to keep safe. She did what she had to get by, and she did what she had to to make damn sure she could never be used and abused … to make damn sure she would never be anyone else's pawn ever again.

It wasn't honorable, it wasn't right and most of what she had done would have had her locked away in some super max cell somewhere never to breathe free air again. They would straight up lock her up and throw away, there was no mistake of that. But the past was the past, and there was nothing she could do about it now. Too many nights she had already wasted sleepless and guilt riddled, haunted by the memories of everyone and everything she had laid to ruin and while it was impossible to ever really make peace with what she had done and what she had seen and what she had been involved with, Lexie had done what she could to move on; to let the past die and put it six feet under … that didn't mean a casual reminder didn't sting … it didn't mean that it didn't bring it all back as fresh and as raw as when it happened .

"20 years is a long time to be in the life. 20 years is a long time to be in any life … I'd be the first to tell."

"I'm sure you would."

"But you got out again, simple as that … as far as I can tell."

Fury narrowed his one unshielded eye and the wheels in his head began turning as he tried to fit the puzzle pieces together right there in front of her; seemingly without needing any help from Lexie herself at all. Another round about sort of game that she was at the mercy of, this time to what end she had no idea.

"20 years in the life, a hired gun … an assassin … doing what else it is that you do . … that strikes me a bit odd to tell you the truth. Once they get in, ain't many people I know that ever really wanna get out … easy money, so to speak. The living's too good … way more perks than I'll ever get."

"Guess I never really cared about all that. It was just—"

"A means to an end." He finished her thought for her. "I get it … as much as I can, believe me … I do. You went deep too, once you tapped out … deeper than you had to seems to me."

"Obviously not deep enough."

"S.H.I.E.L.D has unlimited resources, Ms. Lockhart. I told you, we've been invested for a very long time. We were always gonna find you … it was really just a matter of when." He reached across the desk and pulled free a small stack of the file towards himself. "I can't help but ask myself why, though. Why, after all that time, would you go off the grid and why would you stay so deep, only pop back up and take some crummy ass job slinging cheap beer for biker gangs and over the hill wanna be bigshots who think some pretty little thing is gonna show them a good time just for giving her a mediocre tip. I'm sure you've made plenty of contacts along the way … I'm sure we've got files on a lot of them too … but maybe, just maybe, you went deep, and you stayed deep for a reason."

Lexie's heart raced as he thumbed through the pages, digging deeper into something he had tipped towards himself on purpose so that she couldn't see.

"Maybe I was just tired."

"Maybe … but maybe not. I like to think you had a call of conscience … woke up and realized just what exactly you were doing … realized that it was only gonna end in bad news for you … maybe for everyone. But that's not exactly it either … is it, Lexie?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't you? I can play this game all day. I can't help you if you won't help yourself."

"I don't know what you're talking about." She repeated herself a little more firmly, a little more abruptly as she pressed her nails into her hand again, this time unwittingly with enough force to break the skin.

"Oh, it's not that I don't want to believe you. Might even be easier that way, maybe for both of us … but honey, I think you know exactly what I'm talking about."

She didn't budge an inch and tried to call Fury's bluff as he wrapped his fingertips around a smaller stack, three or four eight by ten glossies pages; surveillance photos courtesy of those oh so gracious well-dressed lackies that had been playing tail for the past two weeks, or maybe even longer. With an all-knowing self-satisfied look, he plopped them on the desktop in front of her and waited for the penny to drop.

"Do me a favor and take a look at those, tell me what you see."

Begrudgingly, Lexie obliged him; full well expecting his request to be a fruitless pursuit and some random pointless thread he planned to tug on to talk her in circles yet again with no real culmination and no real conclusion to the conversation that didn't make much sense at all. She let her eyes rove over each black and white, scanning the somewhat grainy photos for anything of import other than herself; the target of some weird ass investigation with no merit and with no purpose other than to annoy her the death for the purpose of tying up loose ends and closing a file.

She let her eyes roam over a handful of photos of herself out in the city during the most mundane parts of her day and she was about to fall back and rest easy in her seat; she was about to tell him again she didn't know what he was getting at and that he was out of his tree … and then it clicked … then she saw it … then she saw him and the smug smirk that toyed at the corners of her lips fell so something entirely different.

Her heart slipped to her toes when she did. Barely able to get a handle on panicked thoughts as she tried to fight through and run a million different ways it could have been a trick, some half assed Photoshop effort by which to coerce her into something she might not otherwise be willing to do something she knew she shouldn't; some old photos freshened up and reprinted to trick her into giving something up, saying something that would blow what was left of her world to pieces.

… but she couldn't.

Nothing fit together and there wasn't any way that it could have been a scare tactic or a hoax. It was real. He was real. Alive in screaming color, so to speak, in every photo Fury presented her with. The same smarmy face she could have picked out of a line up at the drop of a hat, same cold eyes with the same goddamn piercing stare that was seared straight into her brain. He was there, brazen and bold, in broad daylight following her … stalking her from only really a few feet behind, not even making an attempt to disguise himself, because why would he need to?

He was right there, clear as day … her absolute worst nightmare, taunting her even in those harmless black and white photos and even that very sight of him was enough for her to have him right back in her head again. His smug, sardonic voice whispering every toxic pet name he had ever called her and that venomous smile sending a chill up her spine and making her blood run cold.

He had found her.

He had found her and in one solid blow, her entire world was crashing down around her.

"Recognize anyone?"

"Where did you get these? When …" Her head swam and the room began to spin around her; if she hadn't already been sitting, Lexie was quite confident she would have flat fainted dead away. "When were they taken?"

"Francis Freeman … Ajax … that's what he calls himself, right?" He skirted around her questions, bringing everything home in that tidy little package he had promised her; ready now to lay it at her feet. "That's what you remember him as anyway … you do remember him … don't you?"