a/n: Alexa, play the Avengers Main Theme.
shoutout to Agents of SHIELD for the inspo behind this chapter. i'd never watched anything past season 1 before, which i realize now was a mistake because it is pretty alright. i love FitzSimmons with all my heart. they must be protected at all costs... also Agent Ward and Agent May are HOT.
this chapter is brought to you in part by spiderman: across the spider-verse, kale smoothies, "the Man" by taylor swift, aaron taylor johnson's shoulder-to-waist ratio, Melinda May, and ibuprofen.
"There's a humming in the restless summer air.
And we're slipping off the course that we prepared.
But in all chaos, there is calculation.
Dropping glasses just to hear them break."
- Glory and Gore by Lorde
Breaking News: Lake Havasu City Struck by 6.3 Magnitude Earthquake; Tremors Felt as Far as Las Vegas
Jamie was correct in her prediction that she was going to have one of the worst hangovers of her life in the morning. It was one of the few times she wished she hadn't been right because fuck if this didn't feel like shit. What made her feel even more like shit was the added bonus of hearing Margot, Parker, and Logan's collective fear and worry when she finally showed back up at the Loft at the crack of dawn. Apparently, they'd nearly filed a Missing Person's case.
Jamie had to apologize profusely while Margot held her hair back as another round of vomit passed through her system. She'd been wrong about having run out the night before.
"At least the braids stayed in," Margot mused as she ran her fingers over the tied back threads of hair she'd fixed the day before. Although, she couldn't be as appreciative of the other side of her head she'd curled instead of braided. The curls hadn't remained untouched in Jamie's night of escapades and Margot hoped that whatever Prince Charming character had saved her best friend from getting mugged hadn't been permanently scared off by the current bird nest on Jamie's head. "Maybe next time you'll let me braid all of it..." she side-eyed the redhead with her cheek pressed against the toilet seat, her eyes bloodshot and her eyebrows furrowed in disbelief.
Ticked, Jamie smacked her friend's hand away as she lifted herself from the toilet bowl. "I got jumped on the Metro and your biggest concern is my hair."
"Of course my biggest concern isn't your hair." Jamie gave Margot a skeptical look as she dug through the bottom of the bathroom sink for her make-up box. "My biggest concern is making sure no one can tell you got jumped. Step one is shading and precisely placed tape, but the neck... Mm, how do you feel about chokers?"
Not really seeing herself going out in public with two very visible bandages on her face and neck, Jamie remained quiet and complacent while Margot did what she did best. Work and gossip.
There was no way Jamie was making it to the Bugle on time this morning, so she allowed Margot to go all out. From forcing her to shower, blow-drying, curling and styling her enormous head of hair, all the way up to choosing which outfit best worked with the sleeveless black turtleneck tank top that covered Jamie's neck wound, Margot micro-managed her best friend the same way she did every other high profile hipster that sat in her vanity chair. All the while, Margot got to listen to what little Jamie could recall from her wild night, and vice versa.
Apparently, the events that led up to Jamie getting separated from her friends on their bar crawl were all various phases of everyone having one too many drinks. Between Bar 2 and Bar 3, Parker and Chess had picked up a bachelorette party somehow. The bride had convinced everyone to do at least one body shot off of her each, but Jamie had zero recollection of this. Margot had won several games of darts against a series of Wall Street guys- a memory Jamie had thought was fabricated since she'd once watched her best friend lose $450 in a game of beer pong. Logan was the last one to see Jamie at Bar 5, but Bar 5 was also where Parker had "accidentally" taken ecstasy, or so he claimed.
Then when Jamie got around to telling the rest of her part of the story (what she could remember of it), Margot, of course, refused to let her friend forget about "Prince Charming" and the fact that she didn't give the savior her real name. "I mean, technically, it is my name."
"A-plus argument, Jay Bird," Margot giggled, the brush in her hand sweeping across her friend's cheeks as she applied a fresh coat of light pink blush. "You really think some random guy is going to put together that you're the Jamie E. Archer on the front page paper?" the sarcasm was dripping from her tone.
Jamie pinched the bridge of her nose. "I don't know what I was thinking, okay?"
"Frown lines," Margot chided, gently pushing her hand away from her face and getting Jamie to go back to not frowning. Which meant not looking stressed. Which meant not being stressed. Which meant Jamie was having a bit of a difficult time not frowning or pinching her eyebrows together in concentration. "Maybe you were thinking about personal safety? Y'know, women don't really have a good track record with random men, especially not while drunk. Stranger Danger could've also been a factor."
The redhead coughed on her attempt to cover her surprised laugh. "Definitely," she huffed. "He seemed genuine, though. He felt, I don't know, safe to be around? If it makes any difference, I remember he promised he wouldn't murder me in my sleep."
Margot's movements faltered momentarily. "Oh. What an odd thing to just... say to someone."
"Might've made him promise. That parts a little blurry."
"You made a guy that took you home promise not to murder you in your sleep? You're so charming when you're drunk." Margot giggled as she drew away from her friend's face to turn her attention to her lips now. "You may not be able to remember last night, but I doubt this James guy is ever going to forget about you. Pucker."
Jamie did as she was told. Poor guy, the redhead thought to herself as her friend slathered her lips with matte gloss, knowing damn well that with this lingering hangover, it'd be wiped clean off by noon. Oh, she was not looking forward to her day whatsoever.
Nick Fury stood beneath an array of dark screens wishing he was anywhere else.
His body was still sore from crashing a chopper the night before, and that came after having been shot by Barton. And Barton... Fury pinched the bridge of his nose. He never thought he'd see the day Clint Barton was labeled 'Compromised.' Desperate times, desperate measures.
"Director, you're dealing with forces you can't control." One of the many World Security Council members stated.
Fury glanced up at the faceless figure on one of the broadcasts, frowning. "You ever been in a war, Councilman? In a firefight? Did you feel an overabundance of control?"
"You're saying that this... Asgard is declaring war on our planet?"
"Not Asgard. Loki." The Director's skin crawled at the sinister grin on the Norse God's face as he came bursting through the portal opened up by the Tesseract, something no one had even thought to be possible until it collapsed and had caused the entirety of the Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility to implode. The casualties were many, fatalities even more so. SHIELD had lost the first battle in this new World War. Fury was going to ensure the planet wouldn't lose.
A new Council Member piped up, "He can't be working alone. What about the other one? His brother?"
Thor. Hell, if there was a way to call the blonde God back down to deal with his little brother, as Erik Selvig had so conveniently identified Loki, Fury would've done so already. "Our intelligence says Thor's not a hostile. But he's worlds away and we can't depend on him either. It's up to us."
"Which is why you should be focusing on Phase 2," the first Councilman contributed the exact thing Fury had come to try and talk the Council out of activating. "It was designed for exactly these-"
"Phase 2 isn't ready. Our enemy is," the Director cut in. "We need a response team."
He didn't have to specify which protocol he was referring to.
"The Avengers Initiative was shut down."
"This isn't about the Avengers."
A new member joined the argument, "We've seen the list." The roster sheet wasn't exactly organized, but he had who he had. And what he had was a group with the potential to make something great... Whether they had what it took to set aside their differences and actually work together united, Fury was willing to wait and find out. "You're running the world's greatest covert security network, and you're going to leave the fate of the human race to a handful of freaks."
That was the word that really irked him when it came to these individuals. Dangerous, yes. Otherworldly, sometimes. But freaks? Only on occasion did SHIELD happen on some assets with freakish abilities, but he had yet to meet a super powered person who was fully a freak of nature. Well, that was until Loki, at least, but nothing about him screamed 'normal'.
"I'm not leaving anything to anyone. We need a response team," the Director reiterated. "These people may be isolated, unbalanced even-" that was putting it nicely. "-but I believe with the right push they can be exactly what we need." Defense. Protection. Solitude.
"You believe?" the Councilwoman remarked.
There was a soft scoff from someone else on the screens. "War isn't won by sentiment, Director."
"No," he admitted with a sigh. "It's won by soldiers." And he knew exactly where to look on his roster list of recruits to find the perfect one.
The office was a mess. The conference room was probably ten times worse than that. For the majority of the day, Daily Bugle's finest- Jamie Archer and Logan Zimmerman- had barricaded themselves inside trying to find any shred of evidence they could use to submit a FOIA against SHIELD. It wasn't an easy task trying to dig up fossils buried deep within a covert military installation, and all the pair really had to go on were old SSR files that were probably outdated by decades.
But every string had to start somewhere. Theirs happened to start just a few hours south in New Jersey on an abandoned military base.
"Camp Lehigh." Logan plucked a red pin to stick the first piece of the puzzle onto the corkboard map. "First known SSR base. Headquarters were apparently just a few offices in some building originally."
Jamie, sitting cross-legged on the nearby table top trying not to pay attention to the sun seeping through every floor-to-ceiling window around her, nodded in agreement. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's an entry in Sergeant Thorpe's personal logs about how the SSR folks got a big pay raise after they started making headway overseas. Er, I think he mentioned something about the second known HQ being somewhere in Europe. A Bunker of sorts, I think..." Eyes still pinched tightly, the reporter began to sift through a series of boxes and discarded files all around the table until she plucked up a leather-bound book. She stopped flipping through the pages rapidly when her fingers finally found the section she was looking for. "Aha! Here it is."
Logan held is hand out as his reporter passed him the pages, pointing him to the direct entry dated 12/12/43. "'SSR assets on the ground in Italy must have made some headway. They're telling us to pack our belongings, that we'll be sent to stay in the new SSR facility on the Front. No one is looking forward to the trip across the pond.' Huh." The photographer nodded in satisfaction at the new found evidence. "Says here it's some stuffy Bunker in London."
"Got an address?"
"Not a chance."
Jamie deflated as Logan tacked up a new pin.
Running her palms down her face, the journalist sighed, "Okay, well, that journal is dated from '41 to '46. Most of Thorpe's war experience with the SSR is detailed in there. But what we need to find are more modern leads. Or..." Logan peered across the room towards her as she dramatically spun around to point at him. "-maybe that's exactly what they want us to think."
The young man shifted. "I think you're tip-toeing the line between reporter and conspiracy theorist right now, James. You lost me."
"I mean, maybe SHIELD wants us to think that this information is outdated, but who's to say they're not still semi-active? It may not be likely, but there is a small chance that if we checked out any of these presumed-to-be SHIELD bases of operations and outposts-" the redhead gestured wildly to the display of sticky notes and printed pictures on the corkboard. "At least one of them would have to have some clues left behind about where SHIELD's latest HQ might be. Because there's no way a covert security organization worth billions is holding everything and everyone at a single giant building that looks as hideous as the one in DC does."
Logan frowned, "You're talking about the Triskelion? They covered it in last month's issue of Architect's Digest. Did you see?"
Jamie crossed her arms as she studied her board. "Yeah, I saw. It placed fourth on the Ugliest Architecture List. Right after that even more heinous building on 8 Spruce. Why they let Gehry touch a project in architecture after the Disney Concert Hall disaster, I don't know."
"Ooh, HGTV burn!"
The pair giggled beneath their breath as they continued to work separately across from each other; Logan flipping through Thorpe's entries and Jamie focusing on any minor detail she could recover from news segments over the years. Even if SHIELD didn't keep records of their own mess or tried to cover them, witnesses were hard to completely erase.
Thankfully, Thorpe wasn't the only source they had.
Halfway across the city in a nursing home, Logan and Jamie stood in the lobby waiting for the receptionist to return with whether or not their subject was up for visitors, especially visitors of the press-related kind. After previously having lied to Logan about this being a dead end lead, Jamie had to explain what made it so difficult.
Margaret "Peggy" Carter wasn't in the best shape, so to speak. The dementia had progressed quickly, according to one of the nursing home supervisors that had been overseeing the former SHIELD Director for several years now. She'd have good days and bad days. Jamie understood what that meant after having lost her great grandmother to Parkinson's just before she left for New York. She understood the toll it took, on both the person and their loved ones. It's why Jamie didn't particularly like coming to Carter has a source, but... she was desperately in need of new evidence to keep this case alive against SHIELD. It would only be a matter of time before something else came up that JJ would assign her to, forcing her to abandon this story.
Unknown to the stressing reporter down the hall, the nurse going to check on Peggy Carter had made a pit stop at a nearby empty room where Sharon Carter waited vigilantly.
"There's two; a man and a woman. The woman has been here before asking questions, but this is the first time she's asked if it was a good day to visit. She says they're reporters," the nurse informed the blonde agent in a hushed whisper. "Should I call security?"
Taking a deep breath, Sharon paused to think long and hard. "No," she finally murmured. "Let them know it's just a bad day. I'll investigate further. But Letty," the nurse paused at the door. "Please keep log of any other attempts they make at contacting her." The young nurse nodded firmly before heading out of the room and down the hall to do as she was told and dismiss the two Daily Bugle reporters waiting in the lobby.
Meanwhile, Agent Carter hung back to make a phone call.
After the sixth ring it went to voicemail.
"This is Agent 13 reporting out of Brooklyn. It's the Archer reporter again. The live one. I know you said to keep our distance, but..." Sharon spared a peek around the doorway corner towards the lobby. She could barely make out the sounds of the journalist and her reporter saying their thanks and goodbyes as they left without a fuss. "... she sure isn't trying to keep hers. Look, I don't know what happened with Project PEGASUS, but could you call me back? This radio silence is kind of driving everyone down here in the lower levels stir crazy. Carter out."
"... this radio silence is kind of driving everyone down here in the lower levels stir crazy. Carter out."
On the other side of the world, Phil Coulson frowned as he pulled his phone away from his ear. Not the kind of news her needed after the past couple months he'd had. What his life had turned into, he wasn't quite sure, but it was looking up to be pretty damn incredible. Whatever Fury had planned for his Avengers Initiative was coming together slowly, but surely.
This, however, was one problem he hadn't predicted on coming up. Jamie Archer was one persistent girl. Too much like her Dad for her own good. Coulson had made it a personal priority to keep an eye on her after Michael Archer's untimely death. So hearing she was poking her nose around old SHIELD and SSR ties was a conversation topic he knew he wasn't going to enjoy in his next meeting with Fury at the end of this fiasco with the God of Mischief.
"Something the matter?"
Coulson turned to peer over his shoulder towards where Agent Maria Hill was. Fury's second in command darted her eyes between Coulson and his phone he quickly pocketed into his suit jacket. "No. Everything's perfectly fine." He smiled. She didn't return the gesture.
Both agents turned their attention back towards the series of teams and screens in front of them. The Boss had left them to man the Helicarrier while he'd gone to start briefing on Captain Rogers, which left them to their own devices on how to get the rest of the members of the Avengers Initiative on board. They'd already called in Romanoff who'd successfully recruited Dr. Bruce Banner, to many SHIELD members' shock and awe.
Hill crossed her arms as she dismissed a few alerts on the screen closest to her on the bridge. "When are you going to ask?"
"Ask what?" Coulson prompted innocently.
"Ask about how the Director's meeting with the Captain went. I know you're dying to know since he'd decided to go alone."
Coulson eyed Hill from the corner of his eye. It was no secret to anyone who'd worked closely with him at SHIELD that he was a lover of everything Captain America. After all, he was a fan before Fury had ever approached him and before he ever found out his personal hero had turned out to be an actual living legend. And now that they'd found and unEarthed him? Since seeing him for the first time in the defrosting room, Coulson had been dying to meet him officially after his abrupt awakening.
"How did it go?" he prompted off-handedly, trying not to seem as though he were desperately waiting for details. Admittedly, he was anticipating seeing his hero taking up his old mantel again.
Hill hummed noncommittally. "Fury said Rogers was up for anything, obviously. He's been debriefed and the Director asked me to talk to you."
"Oh?" Coulson couldn't help the way his stomach flipped excitedly as Hill turned back to him, a stern look on her face. This meant business.
"On your way back from stopping at Stark Tower, Fury's asking if you could bring a special delivery from HQ in Manhattan with you."
Code words? Coulson perked up at that. "A special delivery, huh? He mention what it was?" Or perhaps, who it was?
Hill's lips perked up in the smallest of smirks. "All he said was that this delivery required discretion and the utmost of professionalism. His words, not mine."
Agent Coulson had to smother a smile. He knew if he was seen beaming as brightly as he wanted to right now, everyone on the Hellicarrier would worry that maybe he was almost too happy to be at War with a Demi God. Besides, he still had work to do before tomorrow morning when he'd have to transport this special delivery. A lot of work.
"You headed out soon? Knowing Stark, he'll blast off before you even get a word out," the Associate Director joked. She'd seen first hand how bad Tony Stark's antics could be, but she'd never actually had the displeasure of having to deal with him hands-on, unlike Coulson who'd been doing it for a couple of years now. "It'd be a miracle if you'd actually get him to say 'yes.'"
He shrugged. "Yeah," Coulson agreed because truthfully, he knew it was a longshot that the Iron Playboy would take time out of his fun schedule to 'work,' especially not on a team of any sorts. "But I figure, if the Black Widow could lure in the Hulk... There'd be a chance for me to talk the Tin Man into having a heart."
Hill gave him an unimpressed look.
"... you run that line by Fury?"
Coulson winced. "Nope."
"You shouldn't."
Jamie wasn't sure how much puke she had left in her. For the third time that day, Jamie had spent an hour and a half with her head over a toilet seat, quietly begging for the sweet release of death as she vomited up the contents of her stomach until there was nothing left. After finally returning to the office space her and Logan had rented out in the Daily Bugle building, the photographer had immediately insisted she go home. Of course, she couldn't be persuaded. Not with this much at stake.
So while Logan headed out to go grab them some hot caffeinated (as Jamie had stressed) tea, she stayed behind to sort out any other potential leads. She'd taken to going back through Thorpe's journal entries again. She'd rehashed the different dates, names, and locations dozens of times it felt like. Most, if not all, of the people Thorpe referenced in his entries were all either dead, impossible to track down, or simply didn't exist. It felt like an uphill battle and all Jamie had to latch on with were her easily disprovable personal experiences and semi-concrete evidence.
Oh, I'm totally gonna get sued for libel. She let her lips trill as her nails dragged through her unruly hair. Slowly, Jamie lowered her face until her forehead hit the table top with a soft thud. Her eyes were burning, she'd been at this all day. The words were beginning to blur together and she'd had to reread the last page four times after not computing any of the last three. "Mmm." she hummed. She was about to moan in frustration again when her phone went off, the vibrating noise against the table almost sounding as though it were mocking her.
Exasperated, the reporter plucked it up to swipe 'answer.' "Hello?"
"James, you gotta turn on the news. I'm so serious!" Logan. She pinpointed the voice immediately. "Are you seeing who's on TV right now? What the Hell is going on?"
Jamie, now ramrod straight in her chair and more wide awake than ever, spun in her rolling chair and flicked on the flat screen at the end of the conference room. After having a bit of difficulty flicking through the channels like a mad woman, finally she ended up on any of the number of breaking news channels.
"Unknown armed assailants in military garb stormed the Schäfer Sicherheitsdienst Science Institute Building in Stuttgart, Germany. They were headed by an armed man holding what appears to be a glowing golden scepter or sword of some sort. Witnesses on the scene claim to have seen this man in the helmet we see on the screen here multiply himself. Some say they looked holographic, others claim that they seemed real." The reporters on the news sounded panicked, like they weren't sure what to make of any of this. Jamie understood why they would feel that way seeing as this was a once in a lifetime event happening in the streets of Germany, apparently.
On screen, grainy video footage inside what looked like a gala showed a seemingly normal suited man with sleeked back black hair, a golden staff, striking bloodshot, blue eyes, and pale, sticky white skinny descended down a stairwell behind the man of the hour, identified as nuclear scientist Dr. Heinrich Schäfer. Schäfer turned towards this stranger before he abruptly grabbed him by his throat and tossed him with inhuman strength onto the marble counter top at the center of the dance floor. In front of hundreds of guests, this Monster in dark green regalia used some kind of mechanism to... suck out his eye? Jamie couldn't quite tell from the shaky video playing on the news.
She felt her stomach drop at the sight of the next video of this man on the street outside the Institute building. The regalia morphed into weird medieval armor with large golden horns atop his head, the golden staff turning into a sharp, glowing scepter. The scepter lit up a bright, flashing light that shot out towards an emergency vehicle, blowing it out until it slid against the street and crashed nearby. This was fucking nuts.
"James, seriously- are you seeing this?" Logan persisted on the other line.
"Yeah, yeah. I-I'm seeing it." Jamie bit inside her cheek until it bled. "Still not sure if I'm believing it."
"It appears that the, uh, Horned Individual has been apprehended by... Captain America and Tony Stark's Iron Man. Cheryl, are you getting this?" the reporters continued to gape as new footage appeared on screen. This footage actually did cause Jamie to nearly buckle over in shock as images of two figures, blue and red, standing beside one another projected on the TV.
She could recognize the metal red and gold armor to the left as Stark's work. A new Mark because he just couldn't help but keep himself busy. But what made Jamie pause the TV and zoom in on was the figure to the right, the toned and fit individual wearing red, white, and blue attire fitted with a helmet complete with the 'A' she'd seen on older posters from World War II war bond advertisements. He's even holding the fucking shield.
"Logan... do you see-"
"Ho-ly shit!"
The redhead suddenly couldn't articulate words or comprehend what was happening now. "I have to- I have to call someone," she stammered, her hand shaking as her thumb came up to brush the 'end' call button. Was this an alien attack? They were calling in the big guns- and that included a man they'd just defrosted and scooped off the street a couple weeks ago. And by 'they' Jamie knew this all came back to SHIELD somehow. It had to.
Her fingers felt numb as she typed at her cell, not stopping until finally she hit the dial button on the contact she was frantically searching for. She didn't particularly enjoy using this number. It felt wrong having it in the first place, but- hey, he was the one who gave it to her and told her last time she saw him to call whenever.
Whenever just so happened to be after a very public appearance with a man who wasn't supposed to be alive.
In Jamie's defense, she didn't actually expect him to pick up. After all, he'd just got done fighting off the Horned Guy with the Scepter, why would he take take the time out of his day to pick up a call from her?
"Hello, Lois," Tony Stark answered on the fourth ring. "How's my favorite reporter doing? I've been meaning to call you about that Hammer spread. A-plus work, by the way. Couldn't have written it better myself. Even though it was about myself."
Jamie rolled her eyes. "You know, you're absolutely right. You couldn't have written it better. I'm actually surprised you read the article at all. I thought the lasting damage from having your head repeatedly crushed inside that soda can you call a helmet inhibited you from actually retaining written words and phrases anymore." She heard the billionaire suck his teeth on the other end of the line, irritated. But he was quiet which meant she'd accomplished what she'd set out to do in the first place: render him speechless to give her some time to actually talk. "Now cut the shit. What are you doing in Germany next to Captain America and a man who looks like he hasn't washed his hair in a decade?"
There was a beat of silence.
"Uh, classified." Stark finally answered.
"Oh, c'mon. What are you, SHIELD's bitch now?" Jamie couldn't believe what she was hearing. Her least withholding source who actively enjoyed giving her juicy tidbits on the shady organization he barely trusted himself, finally growing a spine and keeping their secrets for them like... holy shit, like a soldier.
"I don't know. Can I fill you in about it at another time? How about I fill you in at another time? Now is not a great-" Repetition. A tell Stark had in his speech when he was being pressured, or at least that was Jamie had come to recognize.
"I want the scoop. Exclusive."
"I can- I can give you the scoop."
"Stark, no!" A new voice shouted in the distance of wherever Stark was.
"Agent Romanoff is telling me 'no.'"
Jamie stopped her pacing abruptly. "'Agent Romanoff'?" Where the fuck was he? At SHIELD HQ?
"Yeah, you two have met. Oh wait, you knew her as Natalie. Natalie... what was your cover name at SI again?" she heard Tony call out to this Agent Romanoff. Only when he mentioned Natalie did it dawn on Jamie who he was talking about. Suddenly, Agent Rushman had a new name, an actual name- thanks to Stark's slip.
She could hear a frustrated woman's voice growl, "Stark, hang up the phone- now." Agent Romanoff.
"Maybe you ought'ta hang up." A male voice said, but not Stark's. A third voice.
The redhead opened her mouth only to clamp it shut. Did he... No. There was no way. Tony Stark couldn't possibly have her on speaker phone in the middle of whatever was going on. He would've at least taken a call in a secluded hallway or office space somewhere. He wouldn't put her on speaker phone around SHIELD agents and... and Captain America. No... No. "Tony, do you have me on speaker right now?"
"... maybe."
Oh my God. Jamie ran a hand down her face. She couldn't fucking believe him.
"Hey! You wrote that article on Capsicle. You want an exclusive? Say 'hi.'" The billionaire genius continued joking. She couldn't see him, but she could tell he was probably smiling gleefully as he held the phone up. "You put in all that research. You need any extra quotes? Ask away, kiddo."
There was a long pregnant pause before Jamie finally found her words.
"Tony Stark, you son of a bitch."
"Talk to you later?"
"I'm working on your smear piece as we speak."
"Can't wait!"
And with that, the line went dead.
Unknown to Jamie, just a few miles North above a dense and deserted Canadian forest, Tony Stark had hung up the cell he looked almost comical holding up with his large, metal fingers in his bulky metal suit. After tossing away the device, the billionaire glanced across the cockpit where Romanoff and another SHIELD lackey were bust piloting the Quinjet. The redhead had her shoulders set in a way that told him she wasn't particularly happy about him taking that phone call.
A pattern he'd picked up on Romanoff way back when she was pretending to be his Executive Assistant as replacement to Pepper, whenever the other redhead, Jamie, was involved, she'd get twitchy. Why, Stark wasn't sure, but it was a thread he'd remind himself to pull on at another time. Meanwhile, he was still presently stuck in a cabin with his dad's long lost war hero and a thousand year old Demi God from outer space. What a trip.
"Reporter?" the blonde Captain beside him prompted curiously.
"Friend of mine."
The Captain raised an eyebrow as if to silently ask 'really?'
Just as abruptly as the phone call had come, a new sound busted the silence in the quiet calm inside the Quinjet. Lightning followed by shuddering thunder that caused the plane to rock slightly. The sky outside the glass windows of the aircraft lit up bolts traveling around them in the electrified airs.
"What's the matter?" Tony perked up at the Captain's question, turning towards whom it was directed to at the back of the plane. Chained up like a dog, Loki peered up uneasily at the roof of the jet, as if apprehensive of it's chances to withstand the coming storm. "Scared of a little lightning?"
"I'm not overly fond of what follows..." came the sultry response in the posh English accent the Demi God had.
Before either men had time to ask what he meant, there was another series of rumbles followed by a resounding thud against the outside roof of the Quinjet, shaking the jet violently. And the problems just keep stacking, Stark inwardly cursed as he quickly reached for his already glowing helmet.
As he placed the metal soda can- as Jamie Archer had so rudely referred to it- atop his head and watched the data and analytics pop up on his screen in a series of holographic numbers, graphs, lines, shapes and images, he couldn't help but wish he'd just stayed back at the Tower. The Stark Tower where Pepper would be back home at in a couple days when she got back from DC. The Stark Tower which finally had power, heat, lighting, AC, and incredible water pressure.
Damn Agent Phil Coulson, Tony fought the urge to mutter beneath his breath the moment he saw the blonde caped crusader with the giant metal hammer, long golden locks, a gruff beard and bulging biceps trampled onto the lowered ramp of the jet from out of open air. Somehow whenever he shows up, things always go to shit shortly after.
"Jarvis, remind me to add more cushioning on the back of the helmet on Mark 9," he groaned. After getting knocked back like a toy soldier by this latest character, Iron Man pulled himself up with a newfound spite and anger welling in his chest. Now not only was he irritated, he was rightfully pissed. "Now there's that guy..."
"Another Asgardian?!" Romanoff called from the cockpit over the rushing air billowing in from the open ramp where the pretty boy in the red cape had dragged Loki off into the darkness. He didn't look particularly happy with the shackled Demi God after he'd roughly yanked him from the chair, so Stark wasn't too worried about a team up. Nonetheless, he still wasn't thrilled about having his prisoner stolen from him only to get knocked on his ass immediately after the fact.
"That guy's a friendly?" the Captain asked exasperatedly, having thrown on his mask over his face again. God, I can't even take him seriously in that get up. Stark nearly blanched under his own mask.
"Doesn't matter," Iron Man stated firmly. "If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract's lost."
As he turned on his heel towards the ramp, he heard the walking fossil call after him. "Stark, we need a plan of attack!"
"I have a plan," he paused momentarily to glance over his shoulder. "Attack." And with that, he blasted off into the open air, guided by his navigation systems to direct him through the thick clouds, unforgiving jet stream, and surprise lightning storm.
The conference room back at the Daily Bugle looked like a war room.
Littered with paper stacks, sticky notes, and cardboard boxes, the room was filled with any potential information or leads they could muster up to find in a limited amount of time. Desperate to get something to JJ soon now that the sun was coming up on the next day, Jamie and Logan were now digging up anything that could've told them why a crazy guy with a glowing staff would attack a Science Institute in Germany.
While Logan sifted through a series of photos he'd managed to print for analysis from last night's scene, Jamie had taken to deep diving down a rabbit hole about Dr. Heinrich Schäfer and why anyone would target him. Or, more specifically, his eye. "He's not involved in anything shady. No arms dealing. No drug or human trafficking. No record of any prior criminal activity," she listed off dejectedly from her place at the table. "Either this guy is really good at covering his tracks or he really is as squeaky clean as he seems."
Logan shrugged. "Maybe we're thinking of the wrong stuff. I mean, typically rich people like this German guy get taken out and targeted for those types of reasons. But we're talking about a crazy killer who clearly is not from here-"
"So there's gotta be a different reason he targeted him. Something he wanted from him." A lightbulb went off in Jamie's head. "Logan, you're a genius." Discarding the manila folder in her hands, the redhead clawed at her laptop, yanking it across the table until it was in her lap. Her fingers typed away furiously for a few minutes. "Aha!" she shouted triumphantly after finding what she'd been looking for.
"On the nose?" the photographer prompted.
"Just about," she answered. "Turns out that Dr. Schäfer isn't just involved in nuclear science. He's also a fan of the stars. According to this BBC article from 2006, Dr. Schäfer and his Institute have one of the few known fragments of a precious metal that can only be found in meteorites. He kept his shard in a bio-metric vault at the Science Institute that got raided during the Gala."
"What's the metal?"
Jamie frowned, "Classified."
"Naturally."
"But if it's rare on Earth, I doubt there's any way to track it now that the crazy Scepter guy has it." Jamie bit her bottom lip.
Then again, Scepter Guy was with Stark at SHIELD now. They'd probably bury him beneath everything they had to try and cover this big of a public spectacle up. It was all over the news, internationally. Conspiracy theorists on online chat boards were already theorizing that the Captain America seen in Stuttgart had to be either the son, grandson, or lab-made duplicate of the last. Many classics professors and professionals came forward to news broadcasts, claiming that the Scepter Guy was some kind of God or Deity, but it sounded too far fetched for anyone to actually buy what they were saying.
It was difficult to sift through the real and fake news coming at them from all sides. It wasn't a welcome distraction. Especially not when they were pressed for time to get more concrete evidence against the covert military organization for JJ.
Feeling overwhelmed, the redhead idly let her hand come up to her neck to twist the ring around her necklace. Only when her hand came up against her collarbone and found the area empty, she jolted ramrod straight in her office chair. Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no.
"No... Fuck!" Pushing herself from her seat and rushing over to her bag, Jamie began digging, hoping and praying that maybe she'd somehow taken it off and dropped it in there somewhere.
"What? What is it? Is this an episode of some kind?" Logan immediately began wondering aloud as he watched the reporter frantically search for something.
"No, it's- I-" Groaning, she discarded her bag that held no answers and threw herself back into her seat. "My Dad's necklace, the one that had his ring on it. I have it on me at all times and now I... Ah, fuck. Oh, no..."
Still lost, the photographer watched Jamie as she dragged her palms down her face exasperatedly. "You lost your necklace?"
"I think I know where it might be," her muffled answer came from underneath her hands.
"Where?"
Her hands fell into her lap and her eyes locked with his. "Remember that guy I told you about? The one I... lied to about my name and ditched out on at the ass crack of dawn yesterday?"
Logan's face fell. "James... oh, no."
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Jamie tried not to let the tears brim too quickly. She couldn't cry about the loss now. There was far too much to do for her to drop everything to attempt to track down a man in a city of millions. She had better chances of finding evidence against SHIELD than of ever finding 'James' and her necklace again.
As if things couldn't get worse, her laptop chimed with a new email alert.
From: JJ Jameson
To: Jamie Archer
My office. Now.
Deflating, the reporter slouched in her seat. "Aw, shit."
No one ever enjoyed getting lectured. She doubted many people actually enjoyed ranting and complaining as much as J. Jonah Jameson. Everyone in the Daily Bugle office was shocked that his vocal chords hadn't died out after days of screaming at his employees endlessly. Jamie silently prayed that this meeting would finally be the one that did him and his vocal chords for good, she wasn't sure how much more she could endure.
The thing about meetings with JJ was that he tended to follow a structure, of sorts, whenever he'd rant. The first ten minutes typically consisted of him going on an unrelated rant about something he saw in the news either earlier in the day, week, month, or year. That was then followed by a five minute interlude that consisted of him berating the person he was talking to, then immediately after that was when he'd go into why he was actually upset and demand you come up with a solution on the spot. He'd give someone about three minutes to get their point out, but he didn't actually listen because he already knew what he wanted and what was going to happen.
Once again, he really just enjoyed yelling at people.
By the end of the meeting, Jamie had remained silent and allowed her editor to lash out at her repeatedly for the better part of twenty minutes. She kind of deserved it. She hadn't come up with shit in her weeks, months of searching. She was exactly where she was when she'd first got her start at the Daily Bugle and had first began her investigation on SHIELD: with crumbs and grasping at straws for leads.
Even with this big break, she knew she had nothing to publish at this point.
There was finally a break in the rant. A point where JJ had finally run out of things to say or air to speak. He glared down his nose at her, seated on the other side of his wide desk in a lounging chair that made her look entirely too small to be sitting in it.
Jamie twiddled her thumbs in her lap. "So... I guess now would be a pretty good time for that FOIA, huh?"
Slamming his fist against the desk top, JJ shook the table. "Don't give me that shit!" The redhead immediately flinched. Despite her best efforts to brush it off, her editor took note of the reaction and softened slightly. "Look, I don't know why you're dragging your feet on this. Because I know this isn't the same work ethic and input I've seen from Jamie Archer before. You've gotten leisurely."
"Yes, sir."
"You've gotten lazy."
"Yes, sir."
"Fix it!"
"Yes, sir."
"Now go get me what you can on the developing situation. I'll have Huron send out a brief Developing Breaking News bit to buy you some time, but I better have a full fledged story by the end of the day, dammit! That understood, Archer?"
"Yes, sir," Jamie nodded.
"Good. Now get the Hell out of my office!"
Without another word, the redhead rushed out of the office doors. The second the door click shut and she'd made it only a few yards down the aisle of office space and semi-empty cubicles, she was joined by her photographer. Logan, who'd apparently been listening in from right outside the door, had waited vigilantly for next steps on what to do. He knew after the meeting, the reporter would be shifting into a new gear, which typically meant a new direction or new destination they'd be going next.
Tightening the fastens on his satchel, the photojournalist prompted, "Where are we headed?"
Without breaking her stride, Jamie answered, "First stop- bathroom. I need to puke."
The next couple minutes were spent rather humorously; Jamie trying to plan and execute with her head in a toilet and Logan seated directly outside the stall, a man out of place in the women's restroom. Thankfully, it was a Saturday and no one was really at the office except for them, which gave them the privacy to be as weird as they needed to to get them through the day.
Another series of gags sounded out from inside the stall. On cue, Logan reached an arm out beneath the door to hand the woman inside her water bottle. She took it after she flushed and wiped away an excess spit from her mouth. The redhead couldn't help but reflect on how shitty the past few days had wound up. She was hungover as shit still. Her headache had upgraded to a migraine. She was running on six hours of sleep over the past 48 hours. She was on the brink of being fired. And now she'd lost her most prized possession to a stranger she was probably never going to see again. This fucking sucks.
Ever the optimist, Logan continued to bounce ideas off of her in an attempt to brainstorm through the bile. "We could try to sneak into the SHIELD Headquarters they took you to near Times Square," he suggested.
Using her long French tips, she parted her bangs out of her face and ran her fingers down her neck, trying to use her cold skin to cool off her hot neck. "We could, but... from all the suits and how open everything was there, I doubt that's actually where their base of operations is for all this black-ops cra- mm." Her mouth clamped shut as she felt her stomach twist and clench. Here we go... "Hm... Hm..." she tried to fight back the dry gags. "There's gotta be... more bases than we know about."
"Area 51?" Logan added cheekily.
"You're not funn- blegh!"
Logan barely reacted. "How many bases of operation could these people possibly have? They're an underground organization, maybe they took it literally-"
"Do not say 'underground,'" Jamie interjected. Her interruption followed by another round of vomit.
The photographer crossed his arms and huffed. "Fine. I won't. But we need to think a little outside the box when it comes to people who hang around with Captain America, and Iron Man, and X-Files, and all this other bullshit. W-W-T-S-H-I-E-L-D-D."
Inside the stall, he heard Jamie's confused mutter, "What?"
"What Would The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division Do?"
There was a brief silence.
Jamie ran a hand down her face after flushing. "I'm too hungover for this."
Logan chuckled as he heard her begin to crawl out from the stall. "Tell me about it." He glanced up at the standing reporter in the doorway of the stall, glancing down at him from his place still seated on the tile floor. "Barfing help you brainstorm yet?"
Whimpering pathetically a little, the young woman threw her head back overdramatically. God, why didn't she stop herself from drinking past 8pm? The LED lights in the women's bathroom were a little too bright for Jamie to see straight while walking to the sink. She probably still looked drunk with her eyes screwed shut, swaying side to side trying to blindly navigate for the handles, soap, and paper towels. After Jamie had finally washed away any evidence of sickness and Logan had pulled himself from off the ground, the pair leaned against the sink counter staring aimlessly at the bathroom back wall.
Neither said a word while Jamie dried her hands.
"Be honest with me," she said, finally breaking the silence. She heard him hum in acknowledgement, an unspoken promise to do so. "Do you think this fight against SHIELD is hopeless?"
The weight of her question left a dead silence in the bathroom, one that was somehow even louder than before.
Nearly two years of work and investigation had gone into this story. It was a larger part of a puzzle that tied back into Obadiah Stane, the Ten Rings, and Michael Archer's death, and Logan knew how desperate Jamie was for answers. He'd seen her at her lowest. He'd seen her at her most vulnerable, most desperate. But most of all, he understood how much this story meant to her. Logan recognized the difficulty of posing this question, having come so far and worked so hard. It must've taken a lot of gall to second guess herself this way.
The photojournalist had thought they'd seen rock bottom before, but the fact of the matter was that this life never came with a second shoe or an absolute rock bottom. It was like a line graph that consistently hit highs and lows, so infrequently it became hard to keep track of just how long that line had been stuck at the bottom. But when Jamie's determination faltered and her stubbornness morphed into self destructive tendencies, he found that the only buffer between this dynamic duo and completely crumbling always came down to how quickly he'd be able to get her to bounce back.
"Honest, right?" he prompted softly.
She nodded, her palm resting against her collarbone where her rings typically sat.
"Remember the first story we covered together? How we'd both been assigned by Bushkin on the City Budget deficient that caused the J.D Weiler Hospital to shut down one of their "lesser" wards, according to the report released by the hospital president. I lied to you, you know? About being assigned." When he saw the way Jamie's face lit up in perplexion, he continued. "I volunteered. Asked, actually. It wasn't anything against you, I guess I just didn't feel like disclosing it to a random reporter at the time. But the reason I'd asked was because my Dad had been in that ward they closed. The Otolaryngology Ward was deemed unnecessary and was shut down due to the budget cuts, so my family and I had to have Pa transferred out to a different facility in New Jersey that specialized in treatments for his, uh, thyroid disease."
"I'm so sorry," Jamie couldn't help but add softly at the disclosure.
Shaking his head, Logan tried to backtrack to his point. "He's gotten better. Still needs to stay in hospice out there, but he's still here. But before he left, he'd spent months in and out of that ward. It was close to home. It practically was home for a time. He was friends with a lot of those patients in there with him and not all of them had as much money to move after it closed. A lot of them passed in the following months, even after that story broke."
Jamie remembered. She remembered how seamlessly she'd gotten those statements from the families of those patients from Logan, never questioning how and only ever assuming it was just how efficient her new photographer was. It was all starting to make sense, like pieces falling into place.
Nodding in acknowledgement, the redhead leaned back with her arms crossed around her middle. "How come you never told me about any of that? After I wasn't a random reporter anymore, I mean."
He shrugged. "I don't know. Guess I just don't really like talking about my personal life. Which... saying it aloud while you've always been really open about yours makes me kind of sound like an actual droid."
Chuckling good-heartedly at the cheap jokes Parker would always make about Logan being a robot, Jamie had to shake her head at the jab. "You are far from droid-like, Zimmerman. Trust me. Highly efficient? Yes. Emotionless, cold, and heartless like the Tin Man? Far from reality. And it's understandable for you to keep things close to the chest sometimes. I don't want you to think just because I'm so open about my personal problems that you have to be."
"That's the thing... You deserve to know the effect you had on the families who suffered from those budget cuts. Even though some of them lost members of their families, the ones still alive used the evidence you dug up in your investigation to use in a civil suit against the hospital. Won millions in damages that actually allowed them to either put their family in hospice or give them beautiful funerals. Because of you, Jamie."
When he leveled his eyes with hers, he noticed the way she shifted. Her eyebrows furrowed deeply as if she weren't sure how to feel about these conflicting feelings.
Logan caught onto her sour look pretty quickly. "What?"
Shaking her head, the redhead pushed herself from off the sink counter to turn to face the mirror, her hands pressed against the marble surface as she hung her head. "It wasn't because of me. It was because of what I found. I'm not some vigilante, Logan. I just... I just dig up old graves and make a mess along the way."
The photographer watched as the young reporter dragged her nail along the marble lines beneath her palm.
"I found out why the hospital had to shut down the ward. It wasn't just city budget cuts," she began slowly. "It was a private investor that had been donating chunks of money to fund it. When I followed the receipts I wound up on the front door step of an older man who'd explained that he'd just lost his mother to her long-fought battle against thyroid cancer. She'd been married to some investment banker who'd died before she remarried and started a family. When she got diagnosed in the late '80s, she started funding the ward anonymously because she knew when she would eventually lose that battle against cancer that her late husband's estate would no longer make payments to the hospital would be going to whoever was listed next in his will."
Frowning, Jamie could barely look at herself in the mirror.
"I went to that woman's son after the piece had already gone public, not knowing the full story. When I first got there, I'd fully planned on going to give whoever ripped that financial rug beneath the families' feet a piece of my mind, but when I found him... and his story..." she let out a heavy sigh. "I felt like shit for months. I never told anyone. I never made an amendment on the story. I couldn't even bring myself to tell that guy why I was actually there after the story had already gone up... They sued him, you know. The families."
"Wait, what?" Logan faltered.
"Someone's attorney found that funder's name and tracked down the son, same as I did. But instead of asking for his story, they just assumed the money had gone to him. He was served for the first time a few months after the story hit the stands," Jamie explained gravely. "That was the first time I realized the power I had in my writing, the magnitude and effect. How one small, missing detail could lead to something even worse..."
Her hand came up to clutch at her necklace, but when her fingers brushed against her bare chest, she was reminded what she was missing. Slowly, she placed her palm in the empty space her necklace would've been and silently wished her Dad were with her now.
"It just feels like I don't know what I'm doing anymore," she whispered hoarsely.
She was content with sitting in silence, facing away from Logan to ensure he couldn't tell how hard she was trying to keep herself from crying, knowing it'd only make her barf again. She'd just started to close her eyes when she felt a firm hand against her back. When she glanced to her left, she found her photographer standing beside her, facing the mirror now with a comforting arm on her shoulder. "You're saving lives, Jamie."
All she could do was sniffle. "Then why does it feel like all I do is ruin them?" Brushing him off, the young woman quickly sauntered out of the bathroom, looking for reprieve in literally anything else because right now... all she wanted to do was run and hide in a corner.
Why did this all have to be so surreal? Why did it have to be so complicated? She thought journalism would be a cut and dry job when it came to morality. Seek the truth and report it, it was in every lesson she'd ever been taught in school and in the work force. Her job was to write and inform the public, so why did it feel like she was fighting against a current and somehow making things worse along the way?
How could she have known what the affect her Captain America story might've had on the freshly resurfaced superhuman from the past (or so SHIELD claimed)? And since her piece on Iron Man had rocked the world in it's breaking coverage, how many times had her life, Logan's life, and Tony's life been put into excessive danger since?
The amount of unknown variables that came with going against an organization as large, scary, and covert as SHIELD were nearly suffocating. It felt as though at every turn, she had to question what steps she should make to ensure not only her own safety, but her closest companions' safety. Suddenly, Jamie Archer was starting to understand why her Dad had little friends in his old age and experience in reporting.
You need a break, a voice in the back of her mind hinted. You're throwing yourself into a spiral. It sounded too much like Margot to be a coincidence, so Jamie knew better than to argue with her conscious. After all, she deserved a break.
So, snatching up her tote and keys from the conference room, the redhead made an escape through the elevators and out of the Daily Bugle lobby. She knew she couldn't go home. Being within the confined spaces of the Loft would drive her crazy right now and she needed fresh air. But thankfully, she was in Manhattan and she knew exactly where to go to help spin her head back on to her shoulders - the Smoothie King on Broadway.
So... this is what dying feels like.
Agent Phil Coulson couldn't help but smile fervently as the delirium of his circumstances set in. The finality of it all only made it feel that much more surreal. He was dying. He knew it'd happen someday, somehow, especially in his line of work. SHIELD had been a good home to him for some time now and he felt satisfaction in having gone out doing what he'd been working towards his whole life: protecting the World.
Yes, Loki had stabbed him in the chest and caught him off guard by duplicating himself. But lucky for him, he hadn't died immediately upon hitting the floor. He was a fighter. He hung on just long enough to say his piece and take a good shot at the Norse Demi God bastard.
You lack conviction.
Oh, the disturbed look on the grimy asshole's face just before he pulled the trigger on the Destroyer Gun Mark I, blasting him like a rag doll through several walls into a brown, steaming pile of rubble and fire. He'd hoped it had killed him, too. If not killed him, then at least give the Team enough time to Assemble.
Just hold on, a voice in the back of his head urged him further. It sounded too angry to be his own conscious, but just pissed enough to sound like Fury. Stay alive. Hold on.
As if on cue, the heavy vibrations of the Director's thick boots carried approached quickly. His figure cast a shadow over his body as he knelt before him.
"Sorry, Boss." Coulson uttered, he could faintly taste the blood trickling down the side of his mouth. "The god rabbited."
The relief Coulson felt as the large, alien weapon lifted off his body was unmeasurable. He sighed out, expecting to feel pain, but all he felt was coolness passing through his body. He knew that feeling all too well... The emptiness. That couldn't have been a good sign.
"Just stay awake," the Director demanded. He brought a gloved hand up to firmly grasp Coulson's face in his hands, keeping him still. "Eyes. On. Me."
"No, I'm clocking out here," the agent muttered through the curdling blood he could feel clogging his lungs, blocking what little air he had left. It was starting to become debilitating.
"Not an option," Fury retorted firmly.
Sometimes Coulson had to admire how much Fury liked to look Death in the face and consider Him and option. He was going to miss that about his Director. "It's okay, Boss," he began softly as the hand fell from his face. "This was never gonna work... if they didn't have something... to..." Phil paused between breaths. He could feel each inhale growing weaker as his body felt less and less corporeal.
Eventually, as he lost his train of thought, he nearly wondered aloud, wow... it really was like stepping off into the deep side of the pool. And with one last push... he drifted away.
Wandering aimlessly along the crowded Broadway stretch with her smoothie in hand, Jamie couldn't help but contemplate whether or not self-destructive tendencies were a self-isolated incident or if they were a familial trait.
She wondered if her Dad ever second guessed himself as much as she did. She knew he had his set backs, but somehow he always had the answer. She wished that particular trait had been inherited, but alas...
Jamie probably looked like a pouty kid stomping on the sidewalk sipping out of a pink straw. She didn't care. She had a rough past few days. She had a rough past few years, if she was being honest. So maybe she was entitled to be a pouty kid once and a while, she figured as she continued her trek through the crowds bustling to get to lit up ticket booths beneath the enormous, vibrant signs of the theatre scene. God, she never got tired of living here.
Bzzzzzz!
Plucking her phone from her pocket, Jamie shouldn't have been as surprised as she was to find Margot had messaged not long after she left Logan dumbstruck in the woman's bathroom.
M: meet 4 for lunch?
Jamie let out a heavy exhale from her nose. Margot was halfway across the city right now in another borough. She'd have to take the ferry and a one-way trip alone would take up her lunch break.
J: dw about it.
It took a couple minutes before her best friend responded again. She imagined Margot ripping out a couple hairs from frustration after sending it.
M: i am worrying about it.
M: and i'll meet you at Vill's in an hour ;)
Floundering for a moment, Jamie attempted to brainstorm different excuses to try and get out of this sprung-up lunch date. But it ended fruitlessly. She knew once Margot said she was doing something, her only choice was to trust in Margot and go along with it. Sighing, the redhead went along with it.
It was a bit of a walk from Broadway up town towards the Rockefeller Center, just a block away from her and Margot's favorite upscale brunch spot was. They only ever went on special occasions or on the rare occasion either of them really needed to day drink without being judged. Today was the latter situation.
But the trek across town did give Jamie time to reflect a bit as she passed through the crowds on the New York sidewalks.
One thing she enjoyed about this city was the sense of community. There was something about the way the people's spirits of these communities filled in every gap of this concrete jungle with aspirations, dreams, and determination. It didn't feel like home to her per se, it felt like a warm hug in the form of a city. It felt like at any corner of this enormous maze of skyscrapers, brownstones, and bodegas Jamie was within reach of a new type of story.
When she sought out writing as a career, she hadn't originally planned on becoming a reporter like her Dad. In fact, growing up, she thought what he did sounded kind of boring. Then again, what ten year old girl was interested in Boston politics and domestic/foreign international law? Originally, she'd wanted to write fictional stories about princesses who slayed dragons to reclaim kingdoms and secret agents who conquered corrupt governments from within. But once reality set in the older she got, the more intrigued she became with real stories. Stories non-fiction people told her that she thought deserved to be heard by the World. That was why she became a reporter.
Sometimes Jamie felt like she lost sight of that.
Like she knew her Dad did, especially after his return to reporting prior to her graduation. He'd also been a little avoidant during transitional periods like these. Plucking out her phone, she began to scroll through her Dad's saved messages.
J: i saw your story broke today
J: coffee at the usual?
J: dad?
D: held up at the office.
D: sorry hon
As Jamie's feet kicked on, she stumbled past a handful of basketball courts. Kids played from the nearby neighborhood. It looked like there were two different games being played on either side of the court, both often cheering the other teams on in between boughts of playing. Jamie sat to watch for a moment, enjoying the cheering and comradery. Taking in the sounds of the birds chirping that paired oddly well with the sounds of little kids screaming of glee at the playground swings while cars honked and swerved past each other on the street.
Eventually she paused at the swings to take a seat. Her fingers dragged down to Margot's messages.
J: i'll get us a table in twenty.
J: thank you, Go
Sighing, the redhead dug the heel of her boot into the asphalt, pushing herself back and forth slowly on the swing. She'd looked childish sipping on her consolation smoothie earlier. She imagined she looked even more so swinging on a child's playground in the middle of the day.
It would be deserved due to her recent stint of childish behavior. The drinking, the clubbing, the crying in bathrooms, and essentially ghosting her boyfriend- if she could even really call Nick that anymore.
It'd been months since she'd seen him last in person. He was still being kept busy in Calabasas, or the Hamptons, or wherever rich people kicked off to right before election season to blow off steam. For all she knew, Nick could've been drowning in beer, boobs, and blow. But she also knew she probably assumed the worst because she felt the worst out of guilt. Jamie acknowledged that the crumble of this relationship was never Nick's fault. It was hers. And it was time to finally set the record straight.
With her phone still in her hand, the young woman dialed up the contact she'd dreaded staring at the past few weeks anytime they'd texted or called on the rare occasion they finally made the time to. It rang six times and went to voicemail. Jamie could've cried from relief.
"... please leave a message after the tone."
Beep!
"Um, hi." Bad start, bad start, bad start. Jamie internally kicked herself, externally cringed. "Sorry. I'm- Nick, I'm so sorry. I know that this is the last thing you need to hear right now. But I am sorry." This was already going horribly. Give her a pen and paper and she'd probably write a twelve page apology break up letter, but put her on the phone with an automated voicemail box? Forget about it.
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Jamie took a deep breath in through her nostrils. C'mon... speak from the heart. She sighed.
"Look, I- I didn't call to only apologize or to take all the blame... I actually wanted to thank you for being incredible these past few years. I went to LA chasing another story and I was lucky enough to find you along the way. You were kind, compassionate, charming. The truth is, I didn't deserve any of it. Because whether I recognized it at the time or not, I was using our relationship as a distraction for all the things wrong in my life. Mostly my inability to ever actually leave work at work. If you'd believe that," she laughed nervously, coughing to quickly cover it. Bad joke, Jamie chastised herself.
"You didn't deserve that from me. And I can't keep selfishly yanking you down like an anchor to me because I'm too much of a coward to actually confront that." The young woman was now fully crying now, still idly swinging on the swing set as more kids screamed and shouted in joyous excitement nearby, a taxi honked, a gate rattled shut. Jamie sniffled, wiping away excess tears beneath her eye bags. "I'm so sorry, Nick. I... I..." Love you? Could she even claim to love Nick?
Realizing she'd probably hung onto the pause too long, clearly caught on the confession, Jamie panicked. After choking, she quickly hung up the call and shoved her cell back into her pocket. "Fuck," she practically sobbed out as she let her head fall into her hands. And on top of all of this I am still fucking hungover.
Through all the noise, something sharp caught Jamie's attention. It didn't sound like the typical noises of New York City most people had come accustomed to. It wasn't a scream. It wasn't a bang. It wasn't a crash. It wasn't a honk. It didn't even sound like an explosion. It sounded like the sky had ripped open, a loud crack that whipped across the clear atmosphere above the bustling city.
It was as if time stopped.
Everyone in the park all turned at the odd, eerie noise that came from somewhere above the tree line that shaded them from whatever was happening. Unsure of what was happening, but having an idle sense that something was actually happening, Jamie pulled herself from the swing set and started towards the edge of the street. She wasn't the only one either. Several of the surrounding people who'd been previously occupied with playing basketball, carrying groceries from their cars, jogging on the sidewalk, watching their kids on the playground, began to make their way out into the open to get a better look.
What they saw was... indescribable. If it weren't for the dozens of other witnesses around her, Jamie wasn't sure if she'd be able to believe it herself as she watched a tear in the clear, blue sky above rip a hole out of thin air. For a second, Jamie thought it might've been some kind of crazy new bomb of some kind until it didn't explode... it stayed open.
That was when the things began to descend from the other side. And everything erupted into chaos.
a/n: Part II coming soon! little Tony cameo! semi-Steve cameo (more to come)!
Did Barbie make anyone else cry? It made me sob. Here's a chapter to comfort you at night.