Steve was surprised when he pulled into the garage for the Avengers Tower that they weren't intercepted at the gate by a SHIELD strike team. He knew Fury would be incensed that they didn't head straight to HQ, but looking at Delilah, with her full lips pressed into a tight line, strain bracketing her mouth, he made the executive decision that she needed rest before confronting the Director.
Riding up the elevator, they both lapsed into a comfortable silence. She'd pretty much withdrawn into herself as much as she could and he didn't want to stress her out further. Not knowing what else to do, he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and though she didn't say anything, she leaned into him gratefully.
"Captain Rogers?" The building AI spoke up when they were halfway to the common floor of the private residences. Even though he was a computer he sounded almost, reluctant.
"Yes, Jarvis?"
"Sir, I know that Director Fury is very eager to make the acquaintance of Ms. Ford."
It was hard to keep the irritation out of his voice as Steve responded. "And I told him on the phone he would see her first thing in the morning because she needed to rest."
The elevator slowed slightly and a disquieting silence stretched between his response and Jarvis. "I don't believe he was clear on that," the disembodied butler noted lightly. "He is on the communal floor right now and planning to meet you at the elevator."
"Yay." He knew it was asking too much to expect Fury to wait. He looked down at Delilah, in her borrowed clothes and some of her wispy curls escaping her ponytail to frame her face and make her look so much younger. Her lack of reaction was concerning, but regardless of what happened-and he'd been around long enough to have a sixth sense for 'impending fiasco', he'd be there to face it with her. "Two floors to go," he murmured with his lips against the top of her head, and felt her nod slightly.
"Who's Jarvis?" Delilah's voice was soft against his side, the strain of the day making itself known.
Hell, he hadn't even thought about it when he spoke to the computer, it was so normal to him now. "Right. Um, Jarvis is our…" He didn't want to use the word 'butler' because he was so much more than that, but he wasn't quite sure how to explain it. "He's kind of our computerized secretary, I guess? He takes care of the building and us." Her dark eyes blinking up owlishly didn't fill him with confidence that he'd explained well, but he wasn't versed enough in the tech to talk about it like Tony did. "Um, Jarvis? This is Miss Delilah Ford, she'll be staying with us for a while."
"Captain Rogers, Sir already informed me that she and her mother would be our guests for a time. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Ford. I am the building's artificial intelligence, and if you need anything, please don't hesitate to ask."
"Thank you? I think?"
At her look of concern, he explained further, "He's our eye in the sky."
Surprisingly, that settled her right down. "Oh, like Alan Parsons Project. Okay." He had no idea what that was, but if she was good with it, he could be, too. Plus the elevator dinged and he had other things to think about.
The doors opened, and Fury stood there tall and imperious, his full coat unfurled and on full display even though it was a good 60⁰ outside.
"Cap, Miss Ford." He smiled like he was welcoming them home and Steve barely concealed his irritation.
"Director," he acknowledged the man as they stepped off the elevator, his hand protectively on her back. Behind Fury and off to the side stood Phil, looking fresh and pressed in his usual immaculate slate suit and muted tie, if a bit apologetic. He had the kind of face that allowed him to hold entire conversations without ever having to open his mouth.
Phil held out his hand and looked a modicum more cordial. "Miss Ford, my name is Phil Coulson. You put on a fantastic show. Your voice is incredible."
His smile was warm and she seemed to take to him immediately as she shook his hand. "That's so nice to hear! Thank you, Mr.-"
"Agent, actually, ma'am," he corrected gently.
"Oh." Her cheeks darkened. "Agent Coulson. Apologies." She turned to Fury, looking bone tired, but also here to take no prisoners. "And you would be director of…" she trailed off expectantly.
"SHIELD, Miss Ford. And I need to, the agency needs to, have a conversation with you about the events of the last two days."
"I see." She closed her eyes and slowly blew out a deep breath before looking him in the face again. "I don't suppose this could wait until tomorrow morning, yes?"
"It really can't, Ms. Ford." Fury wasn't trying to be a hardass, it was as natural to him as breathing.
Steve could feel that she was leaning on him for support more and more, and she'd gone from simply leaning against him to having an arm around his waist and pressing close to him like she was using him to hold her up. And for whatever reason, her temperature seemed to rise as well. Not badly or dangerously, but certainly enough that he could notice.
"No really, I would really like to put this off, if we possibly could, for just a few hours," she tried again.
Fury's eyes widened at her audacity in speaking to him like a human being of equal standing. "People are dead, Ms. Ford. This is not that type of situation."
Delilah stood up straighter, but Steve could feel the strain vibrating through her body. "I am…" she looked deeper into the room for a second, the murmurs of conversations and laughter coming from somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen, before bringing her very strained attention back to the Director, "reasonably certain I don't give a fuck, sir."
"And if I don't acquiesce?" His smile looked like a viper's and Steve bristled against his immediate reaction to step between him and Delilah. So far she was holding her own, but the moment she couldn't, he was there for her. "You'll… what? Turn this floor into the biggest barbecue joint on the East Coast?"
Her growl was audible only to Steve and he kept a hand on her back, even though he agreed with her anger at the uncalled for remark. "Look," she held up a single finger, "I'm exhausted. I've flared up more in the last two days than I have in the last five years. I've worked very hard to stay out of trouble and under the radar. I am smoked." She didn't even acknowledge her own pun and held up a second finger. "Point two, I'm a vegetarian. I don't even like barbecue." Her lip curled into a vicious sneer as she continued. "For reasons I'm sure you can guess, the smells of cooked and smoked meats and/or burning hair are upsetting to me."
Cap's eyes met Phil's as he passed a hand over his mouth and attempted to hid his grin at Fury's deepening glower. He was backed into a corner and he knew it. He wasn't just not going to win this, he was going to have to concede with grace, because she wasn't fighting him about appearing, but asking for a perfectly reasonable delay and there were witnesses.
"I'd just like to get, like, twelve hours of sleep. Sleep, my meds, and my mother, not even in that order. You don't even have to feed me." Delilah shifted and stretched her arms over her head, her back releasing in a series of unnerving pops and crackles. "And then we can discuss whatever you'd like. The current geopolitical climate of Europe, the rise of fascism, a comparison of the Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau movements. I don't care." Steve blinked in interest at that last one, and Phil pursed his lips to keep from snorting in amusement.
When Fury just stood there mute, she shook her head in disappointment. "Am I under arrest?" she demanded quietly.
That pulled him up short, quickly. "That remains to be seen," Fury growled.
"Am I. Under. Arrest?"
The soft way she spoke, the fatigue pulled at every single word, and Steve could tell she was just… done. He shifted next to her, his arm snugged up around her waist both as moral support and to hold her up in case her legs walked off the job.
Coulson stepped up then. "Not at the moment, no."
"Then may I please, pretty please, with sugar on top, see my mother? Then I would like to find a flat surface on which I may lay and sleep for the next year. Is that okay?" Her arch tone and overly wordy request was delivered with a straight face that almost broke Coulson, whose neutral expression was only maintained through sheer force of will and a bit of lip twitching. It was a thing of beauty.
Looking like he'd swallowed the harshest lemon ever, Fury demurred, cowed in the face of relentless politeness. "I'll see you in my office at 8AM sharp."
Delilah threw up a hand as she passed the two men to proceed into the living space. The common area was the size of her aunt's house and whole yard put together. It was all sleek lines and modern furniture, from the sitting area with the large sectional couch that looked like he could seat most of a third grade class, to the bar with the silver Sputnik lights overhead, a kitchen that could cater a superhero convention, and the exterior wall was floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the most amazing view of the city she could imagine. The whole place was an overwhelming work of art.
In the sitting area across from the well-appointed kitchen, Meredith was engaged in an animated conversation with Natasha, Bruce and Thor, while drinking tea and eating biscotti. It was surprisingly cozy.
Tony was behind the bar watching the whole thing, and the moment she came in the room on Steve's arm, he stalked over to them. "Look, I don't know what Cyclops said, and I don't care. You're safe here, your mother is safe here. Nothing is going to happen to her here, all right? I don't want you to worry about that at all, but please," his dark eyes looked so serious Steve perked up, "don't tear up my building. That's kinda my job and I take it personally when people move in on my destructive territory."
He looked a little manic when he said it, and she amused herself with a little giggle because that was really not where she expected that to go at all. "I'm not here for any of that at all," she assured him, "I'm just here for my mama."
At the sound of her voice, her mother's head snapped up and she ran over to her, wrapping her in a tight hug. "It's gonna be okay. I'm gonna fix this. Everything's gonna be fine." Delilah didn't know if she was reassuring herself or Meredith, she just knew the words needed to be said.
Steve stepped back from the scene and over to Tony. "Do you have anywhere they can be?" he asked meaningfully.
Struck by the deep affection of the embrace in front of him, Tony nodded absently. "Oh. Yeah, of course."
After Steve accompanied them, at Jarvis' direction, to the guest rooms just off the communal living room, he went up to his apartment to change out of his suit and clean up before rejoining Tony at the bar.
"This isn't going to be a problem, is it?" Tony asked as he wiped the gleaming marble surface of the bar before setting down a coaster for his friend.
"It's not," Cap assured him as he pulled up a stool and looked back over the room. The conversation on the couch was still going on, just at a lower volume in deference to their guests down the hall. Clint had wandered into the kitchen and was rummaging through the fridge. This was, for better or for worse, home, and he hoped that this would bring the safety and peace that Delilah and her mom needed. It was the least he could do. "You missed the floor show, by the way."
"Oh?" Tony was reorganizing his bottles and checking his inventory just to have something to do. Not that he couldn't have Jarvis do it, but it was a way to relax and keep an eye on everyone in the face of these new unknown quantities.
"Delilah managed to tell off Fury in quite possibly the most polite, pleasant way possible. It was amazing."
Coulson appeared over his shoulder, reaching over the bar and snagging a can of cold pineapple juice. "He's right. You might want to check the footage on it. It's worth it." He then wandered over to the kitchen to join Clint after tossing his jacket over the back of a dining room chair.
Tony was kind of dumbstruck at the very idea of this newcomer scoring so soon. "Well, damn. I'm sorry I missed that." He held up a bottle for Cap and popped off the lid when he nodded.
"I appreciate this," he said as he accepted the beer his friend offered him from the cooler under the counter. "Taking her in and looking after her. I'm grateful and I know she is as well."
"I should be mad at you, you know," Tony replied as he dropped more ice cubes in his tumbler and poured out another couple fingers of scotch. At Steve's raised eyebrow, he shrugged and sipped his drink. "You did bring a thermonuclear weapon into the house."
Steve killed half his beer in a one long drink, wiping his lips on the back of his hand. "You act like she's the only thing in this building that qualifies."
Tony blinked at Cap, completely unprepared for his dry sarcasm. "Was… was that sass? Is that a thing now?"
"Maybe." He chuckled softly and blinked slowly, feeling the exhaustion of the situation begin to settle in to his bones, too. "I'm tired, she's tired. She poses no threat, and I'm tired of explaining that today."
"I get it." Tony came around to join him on a stool. He leaned forward and spoke quietly. "So what's the plan here?"
Steve sipped for a moment and shrugged. "Keep her here until we have a better idea?"
"A better idea of what?"
Steve drove his fingers through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck in irritation. Not at Tony, but this situation was beyond unfair in his mind. Arrested or not, she was a prisoner there until they found a solution to her problems. "Of what this looks like going forward. We can't let her go home. Her whole life is there, her medication, her clothes, her cane…" He trailed off as he swallowed hard. "She doesn't even have her cane, Tony."
Tony frowned and looked toward the hallway remembering the way she limped down the hallway with her mother. "How bad is it?"
Steve sighed and watched the ring of condensation collect on the coaster for a moment before answering. "You saw her walk, Tony." Feeling her literally fade away on him touched him deeply. He remembered his life before the serum, the feelings of being perpetually tired, feeling useless, 'less than' as she'd called it. Somehow he'd fix this situation, make it right for her beyond this custodial here and now. Delilah and her mother both deserved better, and he would find a way to get it to them.
Tony hummed as he sipped and watched the room. Bruce had wandered in from his lab and joined Clint and Phil in the kitchen, and Thor and Nat were calling in requests from the couch. It was so… normal. Seemingly having made a decision, he threw back the rest of his whiskey and set his glass down on the bar with enough force to jostle the now denuded ice cubes. "Go take care of her, Cap. Don't worry about us, I'll take care of this end." It was moments like this that Tony sounded like he might be flirting with being a responsible adult.
Not wanting to discourage this urge, Steve drained his beer and left the bottle on the counter. "Thank you, Tony." He then grabbed an apple and a bottle of water and headed down to the guest rooms to check on Delilah and Meredith.
Delilah had crashed as soon as Steve showed her the bed. It wasn't flirty or sexy, but so necessary, and he'd held up the blankets as she fell sideways into the sweet embrace of a soft, flat surface. Her whole body was in an uproar, the kind she knew would take days to recover from, if not longer.
The pain won over dinner, and she'd stayed in bed instead of having food because of both effort and nausea. The pain won over even getting out of her clothes, besides the boots. Not that she'd had anything else to wear. The boots, however, were too hot and terrible and she was over them. She was used to that, though. The pain wins. The pain always wins.
But now, with her mother asleep in the room across the hall, and, as she'd discovered accidentally on her way through their sitting room, Steve's big body stretched out across the couch, she was starving. She'd remembered her mother mentioning something about a caprese salad at dinner, but since their rooms didn't have a fridge, she knew that her finite amount of energy and coordination would be best used dragging her carcass out to the shared kitchen.
Thankful for a wall to lean against, and the very minimal ground lighting that seemed to sense her presence, she followed the path of the hallway back out to the very dimly lit kitchen, only to find that she wasn't alone. Sitting at the table was a slightly disheveled guy with messy hair and glasses, wearing a wrinkled bluish t-shirt and some plaid pajama pants, hunched over as he read something intently with a pen in his mouth.
He looked up at her shuffling, doing her best to make it to the breakfast bar before something failed on her. Like a knee.
"Hi," he said softly, in deference to the late hour and the overall encroaching darkness. "You must be Delilah. I'm Bruce."
"Nice to meet you, Bruce." Her eyes cut to him briefly before returning to focus on the breakfast island. At this point, she was going on sheer will alone, and man, was that excruciating.
"Oh, I'm sorry." He stood up and helped her over to the kitchen table and sat her down across from him. It was farther from the fridge than she'd prefer, but she could rest and start again shortly. "May I get you anything?" He gestured to his mug with a chain hanging out of it.
"No. Thank you." He nodded and headed over to the stove to retrieve the kettle and pour himself more hot water for tea. She watched his methodical work and felt herself relax. Something about him just infused her with an odd sense of peace and tranquility. Just a little bit longer, and she could take a run at the fridge and finding dinner.
Finally, she took a deep breath and pushed herself to her feet, taking a moment to stabilize before embarking on her trek for dinner. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bruce almost get up before stopping himself. She appreciated his restraint.
True to her word, her mother had left a caprese salad with balsamic vinaigrette in a box with her name on it on the second shelf. From her favorite Italian place on Mulberry and Broome in Little Italy. It was comforting like a hug, and she tucked a bottle of water under her arm, ready to set out on the hunt for silverware.
"Top drawer to the right of the dishwasher," Bruce muttered without looking up from his work.
"Thanks." She grabbed a fork and hustled back to the table, knowing she was on a clock, movement wise. Every damn movement was a negotiation with a time limit. She gratefully dug into her cold, cold tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella and embraced the silence.
"There's cannoli, if no one told you." She wasn't proud of the sound she made when he informed her of this, but he laughed it off. "Clint called dibs on yours, but Cap hid it from him."
"Bless him," she responded and her dinner companion chuckled as he got up and went to the fridge, only to emerge with a white paper bag with promising looking grease stains on the bottom. He set out one for her and then returned to his side of the table to enjoy his. "Thanks, Dr. Banner."
He gave her a timid smile as he nodded his acknowledgement. "Bruce is fine." She smiled a little and silence fell between them in the early morning hours as she ate and he worked.
"I enjoyed your paper on tumor-associated immunosuppression." Her voice sounded extra loud across the table even though she spoke to her plate. She heard, rather than saw, him set his pen down and look at her.
"You read it, the one on applied antigens and targeted therapy?" The disbelief in his voice was clear but then, the topic wasn't quite the casual smalltalk that most people were accustomed to.
"Yeah. I really liked your forward-thinking approach and it looks like a very promising field." She dug the cannoli out of the bag and wondered if it would still be there in the morning if she put it away to eat later. Probably not. "I… it came out… there was a story about it on NPR Science Edition and it sounded interesting so I looked it up." She ventured a look across the table and he was an amusing combination of 'flattered' and 'flattened'.
"I-I'm…" he trailed off with a slightly confused chuckle as he pulled off his glasses and wiped the lenses down with the bottom of his t-shirt. "I'm glad you could get something from it."
"It came out when I was…" she let the sentence go, because this wasn't a short topic nor something to just drop on someone in the middle of the night over a midnight snack. "It was great and you're going to save a lot of people."
"I hope so." He settled his glasses on his nose and checked the contents of his mug. "Makes up for…"
He didn't finish the thought, but he didn't really have to. "People like us, you and me, sometimes we have a lot to make up for."
"Sometimes." Bruce's shoulder rose and fell in a halfhearted shrug. "And it's not always our fault."
She nodded, conceding the point. "True, but when who you are-what you are-poses a danger to everyone in your immediate vicinity… or the Eastern Seaboard… sometimes we have to work harder to make up for that…" she sighed and drank her water as she worked on coalescing her thoughts. "It's like everything in my life revolves around not letting that part of myself show, by any means necessary. Not slipping up and someone gets hurt, because that's what happens when I'm not vigilant. Vigilance is… depleting. I'm terrified and I'm exhausted. Do you ever get that way?"
He started nodding halfway through her rambling. "All the time. I spend so much time living in fear of the next time the other guy shows up, doing everything I can to hold him off a little longer, it's hard for me to remember to enjoy the rest of it. It's hard to find joy in the rest of it." He got up with his mug and went to the sink to rinse it out, returning with two more bottles of water. "So how do you do it?" He slid one across the table and regarded her closely.
"Thank you." She killed her bottle and dutifully cracked the next. If she couldn't stay medicated, hydrated was the next best thing. "How do I do what?"
"Keep the wolves at bay, so to speak. Five years without a reaction is a helluva track record." His half smile was sleepy, but he sounded impressed with her.
Delilah blew out a breath very slowly and stared at her hands as she thought about it. "Honestly? I work very, very hard at keeping the calculus of immolation balanced. The pain is medicated, I use a cane, I don't normally get angry. Or at least, I don't let myself get the kind of angry that can tempt me into letting go."
He cocked his head, his inherent curiosity clearly roused. "Tempt you?"
"Hell yeah," she scoffed. "Of course. It's easier, it's infinitely easier."
"How so?"
"I don't know if you find this to be the case, but it's easier for me to let the rage drive. It's so much easier to let the destruction happen and let the fuck go. I don't hurt, I don't have to walk, it's blissful release of my everyday travails. It's terrifying how easy it would be for me to just be… When I change… I'm not me anymore. I'm not damaged, crippled, frail, fragile me. 'Now I am become Death…'"
"Destroyer of worlds," Bruce muttered with a rueful grin. "Oppenheimer. Appropriate."
"Blast hot enough to burn the sky." She stretched her arms over her head, and then took the box that had housed her leftovers and her empty water bottle to the recycling bin. "You don't feel that way?" She asked the question, then she blanched, sliding back into her seat. "I'm sorry. That was…" She pressed her lips together and sighed through her nose before trying again. "I'm sorry for being rude. I just… It's not often I have a chance to talk to someone like me." Bruce's only reply was a raised eyebrow. "I mean, someone who changes. And not just changes, but becomes a force of nature. Capable of incredible destruction, when really, we're just regular people trying to get through our lives."
The doctor laughed softly and held up his bottle in tribute before taking a long swig. "It wasn't rude. I get it. And yes, there are definitely some days when it would just be easier, less taxing physically and emotionally, to just let it be and what happens, happens. I also expend a lot a time and energy in maintaining, just maintaining, my presence, my quiet. And yet, at the same time, the other guy does serve a purpose as well. As much as there's destruction, he also is instrumental in a great amount of good in the world, if that makes sense. It's about finding a way to balance the two.
"The biggest difference is that I have the blessing, and curse, of being here." he gestured around the room with a careless hand. "The Avengers, for better or worse, have made it infinitely easier for me to learn to live with the other guy. More or less peacefully. It's a process…" he trailed off and looked out the window as the sun chased a bright line across the horizon, delineating the skyline from the darkness. "The difference between us, and those we fight?" She hummed an interrogatory but other than that, didn't reply. "We put in the effort. We're the ones who think of other people in relation to ourselves. We give a damn about what happens after... because there's always an after. And we have to live with it."
The sound of feet on the tile floor brought both of their attention to the hallway where her room was, and found Cap, in all his sleep pants and unreasonably tight t-shirted glory, wandering out into the common area yawning and sleepily scratching his stomach.
"Mornin', Delilah, Dr. Banner." Steve detoured to the fridge and Bruce rose and stretched his back with his arms over his head.
"Morning, Cap." Bruce gave him a tired smile as he collected his work and stuck his pen behind his ear. "I'm off to bed if anyone needs me. It was lovely to meet you, Delilah."
"Likewise, Bruce." She watched him head off into the receding darkness over by the elevators before turning her attention back to Steve. The tiredness had returned, with reinforcements, but the fingers of sunlight that began to spear across the sky and spread told her sleep was not on the agenda. "Hi," she whispered as he took the chair next to her and pulled it close as he sat down with his coffee. Seeing him up close was still mindblowing to her.
"Hi back," he murmured as he stretched an arm across the back of her chair and leaned in close. "You're up early. You feeling okay?"
She hummed an assent and closed her eyes. He was still sleep-warm, and it was no hardship at all to cuddle up next to him with her head on his shoulder. "I'm alive. Stiff, sore, the usual. Just came out here because I was hungry and talked to Bruce for a while."
Steve rubbed her arm and just enjoyed having her close to him in the relative privacy of the early morning hours. "Dr. Banner is a pretty interesting guy." He didn't want to say it out loud, but he was glad she had found in him a kindred, someone who could truly see things from her perspective. Everyone needs that.
"He is," she agreed, then did her best to fight off a jaw-popping yawn. "We have a fair bit in common."
At her confirmation of his thoughts, he grinned but hid it behind his mug. "I could see that." He sipped his coffee and they watched as the sun began to peek over the tops of the skyline and fill the room with glorious golden light. "You know know whatever happens today, we're going to figure it out, right?"
Delilah took a deep breath and let it out slowly, ending on something not unlike a purr. "I'm not sure your optimism is warranted, but I appreciate it all the same." It was tempting, so tempting to just absorb his calmness and strength and let that lull her back to sleep. But with the light came the need to get ready for her day. While she'd been able to put Dir. Fury off for a little while, her weapons-grade manners wouldn't get her nearly as far today.
As she dozed lightly, she felt herself flying and when she came back to consciousness as such, she found that they'd migrated couch. Steve had sprawled against one corner, and collected her with her head pillowed on his chest. It was the most comfortable she'd been in a long damn time. She hummed a happy little noise and sighed, content to slip off for another few minutes of sleep until her day truly began.
"You know," his voice was a deep rumble in his that she felt as well as heard, "you keep falling asleep on me and I might start taking it personal."
His teasing made her laugh softly. "Stop being so warm and smelling so good and I'll think about it." Delilah patted his chest and he chuckled as he read the news on his phone. Normally he would have prefered the actual, physical newspaper, but he was occasionally willing to make an exception.
The quiet was short-lived as the daybreak brought an alert that a HYDRA base had been spotted outside of Lancaster, PA. It wasn't confirmed, but Cap, Thor, Nat, and Clint had to leave to check it out, leaving Delilah to get ready for her interview alone.
By the time the sound and fury stumbled into the common area from his workshop, Phil was drinking coffee at the dining room table and working the sudoku puzzle in pen. He was there to escort Delilah in, and had brought some clothes and things the SHIELD agents had gotten when they'd located her roommate and searched her apartment.
"Oh good, you're here," he threw out in passing as he made his way to the coffee trough. "I need-" he only paused long enough to top off his cup with some high test before making a beeline back to the table. "How long are you going to be here? I'm waiting on powder coat to cure, and it's almost done, but I wanted to get it to you before you leave."
Phil blinked up at him and didn't answer for a moment as he processed Tony's babble. "Those certainly were words. And it even appears they were in sentences. However, I fail to see-"
"Her cane," Tony replied impatiently as he shifted from foot to foot next to him at the table. In his 'engineering mode' he was allergic to slowing down long enough to use a chair. "Did your people find her cane?" At the agent's blinking response, he threw up a hand and raked it roughly through his hair. "Oh for fuck's- Have you seen her walk? What is wrong with-? You know what? Nevermind." He finished his coffee in one swallow and held up an irritated finger. "Just don't leave until I get back." He stalked out of the room, just missing Delilah's mom.
Meredith emerged from the guest suite then, drawn by the commotion in the common area. "Agent Coulson."
"Ma'am." Phil's manners had him on his feet in a second, getting her chair, smooth as Cary Grant.
A grappling hook, a flamethrower, and an EM gun.
Tony Stark was a lot of things, several of them unpleasant, however, deep down, he really wasn't unkind. He was also the reason she was running late to her meeting with Director Fury. The upshot was she now had a super tricked out, StarkIndustries prototype forearm cane, with glittery flames and 'Hot Pocket' stenciled down the side, that also happened to be armed with a grappling hook, electromagnetic pulse gun, and oddly enough, a flamethrower. She wasn't sure why he felt she needed those things, but she appreciated his thoughtfulness all the same. Its inherent wildness didn't match her very staid navy blue swing dress that made her feel like Audrey Hepburn, but incongruous was an ongoing theme in her life.
She laughed softly as she proceeded down the halls of SHIELD HQ to the interrogation room accompanied by Agent Coulson and a tall woman with deep brown skin and a long straight ponytail who was supposed to be a member of SHIELD medical according to her uniform. Not that she needed medical attention since Phil had located her meds and she'd taken them. It would be a couple days until she was fully balanced back out, but at least she didn't have to worry about that. Not for the first time, she lamented not just going backstage and leaving.
The room they took her to was windowless until she entered, and Fury was already seated at the table with a fairly thick file in front of him. The walls, table, and chairs were all an odd, silvery off-white, and the only window was a two-way mirror. Since the Director was in here with her, she shuddered to think about who might be observing.
Delilah gingerly moved into the awkwardly cold metal chair, immediately knowing that her body would make her pay for the privilege of pretending to be an adult in a piece of uncomfortable furniture. Phil took a seat across from her, his expression resolved, apologetic, and otherwise inscrutable. The medic stood behind her and off to the right.
"So apparently your powers don't extend to being able to tell time," Fury grumbled as he looked at his watch. Regardless of how it looked, she refused to bow to the feeling like she was facing off against her high school principal.
She hooked her purse strap around her knee as she set her bag on the floor, then folded her hands on the table in front of her, the picture of relaxation. "Tony's fault." It wasn't a lie, and she got the feeling that was an excuse he heard a lot, just knowing the engineer in the short time she had. The way he blinked when she said that all but confirmed it.
"So let's get started, shall we?" Phil prompted.
The Director harrumphed and opened up the file which had pictures paperclipped to the inside cover and a paper full of densely packed paragraphs. "You are an unregistered mutant." It wasn't a question.
"I'm a citizen, and that's a civil infraction."
"You killed seven people." He delivered the accusation with a stony expression, but she was unmoved.
"They came to arrest me unlawfully for a civil infraction, abducted me, and then they assaulted me." She tapped the spot on her cheekbone that was still swollen and discolored, even under the makeup. "I have the right to protect myself."
"You don't have the right to scorch a city block," Fury snapped back.
"Oh, I'm sorry, was I the one standing there with automatic weapons? In fact I was not. I was the one standing there in a mermaid dress having just come off a double set on stage. So please, tell me again about how the unarmed, fat, crippled chick posed an imminent threat to federal agents. I'm waiting." Phil didn't smile but she could tell from the way he blinked and the slight twitch of his lips that he was working really hard at it.
He was unmoved. "Be that as it may, the seven bodies to your name were federal agents with the Mutant Registration Agency."
And two could play that game. "Not my problem. Am I under arrest? Am I entitled to counsel?"
"You are in custody while charges are brought under the heading of mass murder as a result of terrorism. Technically, I don't have to provide you with counsel." He seemed proud of that fact.
Delilah snorted, the irony startling a chuckle out of her. "Wow. So snatching people off the street for warrantless detention is cool, but refusing to go is a problem."
Director Fury shrugged, very carefree. "It is when several people die."
She felt the annoyance at the base of her skull and schooled her features to make sure it didn't show in any way. "Not my problem," she repeated with a boredom in her voice she didn't feel. "I gave them numerous opportunities to let me go and they chose the hard way. I can't help they made stupid decisions." A couple minutes passed then with silence falling between them as they stared at each other across the expanse of the table. The solution, at least the one it appeared he was angling for, came to her all at once. "Let's have it, then."
He blinked. "I'm sorry?"
She got the feeling that not many people at all caught Nick Fury flat-footed, but she'd done so twice in as many days. She was kinda proud of herself. On the offensive now, she congenially demanded, "What is it you want? You want me to cop to killing them? Sure, they were standing too close to me when one decided he liked hitting women. I didn't appreciate it, and wasn't wrong for it. Let's get to the real point."
He had caught himself and was back to looking bored and unimpressed. "Which is?"
"Isn't this the part where you offer me a deal?"
"A deal?" Normally he was a man who brokered in artfully applied leverage, favors, and arm-twisting. Being confronted like this hadn't really factored into his plan at all, and that showed all over his face.
Delilah rolled her eyes. "Yeah, a deal. Like whatever it is you want in exchange for the inconvenience of making murder charges go away or whatever? Isn't that how this is supposed to work?" The Director of SHIELD opened his mouth a couple times, then pursed his lips as he stared at her, and poor Phil looked like he was slowly strangling to death. "So let's just jump to the part where you tell me what it is you want and we go from there."
"Okay." He flipped to about halfway through the file and paused again to read and regroup. "You did not kill the HYDRA agents who approached you." His tone indicated he was getting back on track with whatever his original plan was, but was still shaking off her attack.
"If by 'approached' you mean 'also attempted to kidnap me', then yes. That is correct."
"Is there a reason you didn't kill them?" The accusation in his tone was more than clear, and it seemed to make him happy to convey it.
"As cute as you alluding to me colluding with a state enemy is, I was interrupted by Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor while working on doing just that." She paused and thought about it with a finger on her lips. "Oh, and my mama was there."
A razor-sharp smile slid across his lips as he flipped a couple more pages. "Let's talk about your mother."
"I'm just sayin', Cap," Clint mused around a bite of blueberry muffin that left crumbs and chunks of struesel all over his lips, face, and chest, "we could take more runs to Amish country and I would be totally okay with that." He had a hand possessively over a bag of more muffins in the seat next to him, as well as a bag of rolls underneath, both purchased from an Amish market when they found that their callout to the HYDRA base had been unfounded. Never let it be said he didn't make the best of a bad situation. Thor sat next to him on the other side of the bench, jars of jam samples in a bag by his feet as he delicately cracked one open and dipped in a recently purchased shortbread cookie.
Steve normally would have been a least a little amused at the archer's running commentary, a common occurrence when he wasn't piloting the quinjet, but the tension that vibrated through him wouldn't let him settle down enough to appreciate it. There was something fundamentally wrong and he could feel it, but damn if he knew what it could be. "How long 'til we're back at the tower?" he asked Natasha from the copilot's seat.
"Little under two hours," she replied as she checked her instruments and made adjustments.
He didn't like it, but then, wasn't much he could do about it, either.
"I'm amused that you think threatening my mother is the way to go here. Especially when you haven't even told me what it is you want from all this." The man had a lot of damn gall. She didn't add the last person who did that damn near got his car blown to hell, she wanted to leave that as a surprise.
He chuckled at her, clearly reveling in her irritation. "What makes you think I want something?"
"Because this is fairly theatrical if you're just here to arrest me for for capital offenses. You could have handed me off to the FBI by now, but instead, here I sit, in SHIELD-like the CIA but less pleasant or so I'm to understand-being forced to entertain your foolishness. Let's just get to it. What is it you want? Damn." The lack of comfort in the chair was becoming more evident, the longer he hemmed and hawed around the topic and with that pain, her patience began to stretch thin in places.
"The government would like your services."
"Services?" Delilah scoffed, choking on a cough as she openly cackled in his face. "Is that what we're calling this now? There are far simpler ways to ask." They wanted to weaponize her, because of course they did. Exactly 100% what she didn't want to have happen. "And uh, also no."
He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, looking very certain he held all the cards. "Your opinion in this matter is noted and disregarded. You seem to be laboring under the delusion you have a choice."
"Don't I?" she challenged.
As they stared each other down, she could almost see the moment he switched gears. "Do you realize I could have you injected with a sedative?" His eyes flicked to the medic behind her briefly. "One that could induce a coma from which you would never emerge, thus alleviating the public threat you pose?"
Delilah looked back at the medic and slowly gave them her sweetest smile. "You're welcome to try." She kept her voice soft, the tone inviting, but the threat was very, very real. She turned her attention back to Agent Coulson and Director Fury. "That's the interesting thing about these places. Tables, chairs, walls, windows. The choices are actually fairly minimal in terms of construction materials, really. Wood, metal, plastic, or concrete, or some combination thereof. Wood burns, metal conducts, plastic will melt and burn, and concrete will insulate." She, too, could make threats, since it was now that kind of party. "You think you can get to me before I decide to flash broil everyone in this room?" In case anyone was unclear, she was absolutely devoted to being the only motherfucker walking out of the room if it came down to it.
She opened her hands on the table then, running across its smooth and oddly cool, burnished metal surface. Every eye in the room was on her as she stilled her hands, amused to find that the heat in her hands didn't gather in the metal beneath them.
Fury smirked. "That's right, that metal doesn't conduct."
Completely unimpressed, she cocked her head to the side with an innocent expression. "Chitauri or Shi'ar?" This time Phil snorted and Fury was reduced to blinking.
"You gave her a flamethrower? Tony, what the hell, man?" When he was finally able to raise the man on comms, that's what he'd opened with. While Steve was truly touched that he felt so moved as to make her a cane to help her walk, the additions he made were… concerning.
"I did it as a laugh, honestly. She doesn't really need it but I figured she'd get a kick out of it. The grappling hook and EM guns were the more practical additions." He honestly sounded proud of himself. Steve stared at the ceiling of the cockpit and then looked over at Natasha, who was making no secret of her grin at his expense, even if she never looked away from her post. "So when she left with Agent Agent for SHIELD, I figured she might need a little bit of something extra, just in case."
They were going to talk about this when he got home. There were so many things wrong with Tony arming Delilah, just on general principle, but he really didn't want to get into that right now. "Oh, and how'd that go?"
"No idea. They're not back yet. I've been hanging out with her mom and Bruce. She made us chicken pot pie. Like from scratch. I had no idea such things were even possible but it's amaaaaaaaazing."
"No fair!" Clint protested, now with only half a bag of muffins to his name. "You better save me some!"
"You better get home soon then." Tony's voice was light and airy and grinding on Steve's last good nerve.
"That doesn't matter. The fact of the matter remains that the metal doesn't conduct and you won't be able to do that in here."
"Oh sweetheart," she chuckled as he flinched at the endearment, "let me explain this to you using the tiniest words possible. If it doesn't burn, and it doesn't melt, and it doesn't conduct, it will insulate." She pushed to her feet with her new cane and stood even though it hurt. "Now I ask you, is this really how you want this to go or can we have a civilized conversation?"
The medic decided that she did not wish to spend her afternoon as a charcoal briquette and made for the door as Delilah and the Director faced off. The minutes ticked by with neither one of them backing down or blinking as the temperature in the room gradually rose.
Finally, Phil, beads of sweat collecting on his forehead and around his collar, slammed his pen down on the table, bringing both of their eyes to him. "That's enough! Both of you sit down." Shocked by his sharp tone, both of them did just that. He then looked to the medic who had yet to make it past the locked door. "Thank you, Angela, that will be all." The door clicked and she slipped out as fast as her bootied feet would carry her the moment he dismissed her.
Fury opened his mouth and Coulson held up a finger with a positively lethal expression. "Do not." He took one deep breath, then two, then straightened out his tie and took a seat next to the Director, pulling the file folder over and flipping through it towards the back, grumbling, "You're trying to get us killed. I cannot believe you! It's Tuesday!" He looked at him so accusingly, Delilah felt bad. "Taco Tuesday and I haven't had lunch yet. What is wrong with you?"
Delilah opened her mouth to offer suggestions as to the answer when the whole damn building shook. Hard. "The fuck?"