Red Room

26: Honesty

It took about 15 minutes to get through security, they were treating you like a criminal who would crack at any minute. To be fair, you technically were wanted. 

A guard escorted you to the lobby and stood beside two chairs for you and Nick. You took your seats, releasing a deep breath. "That was exhausting." You whispered, leaning over to to your kinda-uncle. 

"That was only the beginning." he relied, simply. 

As you waited for the unknown to begin, you watched as certain people who you vaguely remember passed, making eye contact with you just long enough to release who you are. 

They would stare, you would look to them, and they would immediately look away, thinking you didn't notice...but you did. 

A woman in glasses and a beanie approached you and stuck her hand out confidently, "Darcy Lewis, how's it going?"

You met her hand and shook it, smiling at her genuineness, "Y/n y/l/n, been better." 

She turned to Fury and smiled, he nodded towards the elevator and she snapped around, you assumed you were supposed to follow her. 

You were brought to a simple hospital room, you felt like a child awaiting their checkup. Nick sat in a chair opposite of the examining table and looked at the posters behind you. 

After a few minutes of semi-awkward silence, a doctor came in.

"Doctor Kinney, you must be Mercy." the man said, taking his seat and reading over the charts in front of him. 

Nick cleared his voice to express annoyance and you just nodded with a tight smile. 

"Right, uh, y/n. So y/n, could you tell me the last time you remember being Mercy?"

Damn, right to the point, okay. You looked to Fury to see how honestly you should answer, and he decided to take that as "please answer for me". 

"She had an incident about 4 days ago. It was here, controlled and intentional, just Banner and Stark being idiots."

Dr. Kinney coughed in attempts to not laugh, but failed, "Well, that's uh, yeah. We have that documented, but do you remember any of it?" SHIELD knew about that...mental note taken. 

Fiddling with your fingers, you responded in a quiet tone, "I remember being on autopilot, like watching a TV screen kind of, I had no control- but I can only recall like a few seconds at a time."

The doctor nodded and scribbled something onto his board, he followed with a few more questions, asking more about your mental state rather than physical state, because "Bruce probably handled that". 

-----

About 4 hours of the same thing, doctor comes in, asks a few questions, you respond calmly, they leave. A viciously boring cycle. 

"Are we almost done?" you whined. 

Fury looked up from his phone, "I think that was the last one, not sure though, they haven't told me anything.". 

You huffed and awaited hopefully the ending to this miserable day. 

Sure enough, your ending came, dressed as Darcy Lewis from earlier. 

"Bad news: you have to stay overnight, I can bring you to a room right now if you want." she said, showing some sympathy. 

Nick stood up and shook her hand "Thank you Dr. Lewis. Y/n, I'll see you tomorrow, try not to cause any trouble."

You smiled at Fury, then Darcy, "No promises."

----------

Darcy led you up a few floors into a hospital room, "Sorry, this is all they have for sleeping...it's kind of embarrassing."

You laughed at her honesty, "Thank you, but um, Darcy, could I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"Why did everyone ask the exact same questions....and why do people recognize me...and how did SHIELD know about my incident?"

Darcy's eyes widened and she drew in a deep breath, "Well that was a lot." she laughed, "Honestly, they put me on this job because they don't believe you're hydra, or they're just in denial... why would they put an astrophysicist on a job like this? There's no way that believe you're extraterrestrial.  That part is beyond me. People recognize you because we have cameras in every lab, SHIELD saw the whole thing, we opened a file and made it on more than a need-to-know basis, you're public knowledge in here as of right now."

You cocked your head to the side, perplexed by the information you had just gained. 

"They don't think I'm hydra? I literally came straight out of a red room." you laughed. 

She nodded in agreeance, "Yeah, Hydra is kind of a mystery right now, because technically, if we received that signal that Mercy was active, the initial source received it, too."

"Huh...strange. Well, thank you for being up front." you concluded, deciding that this wasn't productive. 

She shrugged, "Don't mention it, I'll be back in the morning to bring you to the next ear-raping conference.". 

A/N: I'm literally going to take a shower and then come right back to write the next chapter, someone comment under this to hold me accountable lol... ALSO THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR 26K READS WOAH