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Leila took a few moments to catch her breath, then slowly pushed herself off of the cool ground. She stepped through the glass shards of her door to see agents hurrying around. The emergency was over, but the helicarrier was still in a state of disarray.
She shakily and slowly walked to the bridge, where Director Fury was standing by a table, speaking to two men sitting- was that Tony Stark? Leila slowed her pace and gaped in wonder. She had only seen him on tv, and he looked smaller in real life. Defeated. Less proud.
Fury saw her approaching and inclined his head towards her. "Agent Dayne."
"Director Fury... what-" she stopped and coughed into her elbow. "What happened?"
"An attack." He sighed, rubbing his temples. Fury gestured to one of the open seats, and she warily sat down. Agent Hill was standing nearby, and she nodded in greeting. "See you got hit pretty hard," he added and handed her a napkin, which she instantly pressed to her bleeding cheek.
Leila chuckled. "You should see the other guy." She looked around hurriedly "Where's Coulson?" On the helicarrier, it was rare to see the Director without Coulson close behind.
As soon as she asked, the mood in the room dropped even further than it already had. A blonde man seated at the table who looked strangely familiar to Leila tightened his grip on a collectible card.
"He... didn't make it." Said Fury. Her mouth formed an "o" and she looked down. The room was silent for a few long, painstaking minutes.
Fury sighed. "It's true. We were going to build an arsenal with the tesseract." Phase two. Leila had never been directly involved, but had done some work under an oath of secrecy.
"I never put all my chips on that number, though, because I was playing something even riskier." Fury said, pacing around the table.
"There was an idea; Stark and Dayne know this, called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people. See if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could." He paused. "Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea. In heroes."
Tony Stark abruptly stood up and walked out of the room. Everyone watched him go, and Fury sighed. "Well, it's an old-fashioned notion."
The room entered a state of near-solid silence until Hill departed. Fury left soon after, but the blonde man remained sitting. He was still holding the collectible card from earlier, and Leila saw that there were several more scattered across the glass table, smearing the clear surface with red.
"I'm Steve," said the blonde man, addressing the dark-haired woman.
"Leila. Nice to meet you." She sighed and gave a weak smile. "Just wish it was under better circumstances."
Steve nodded and put down the card he had been holding. An illustrated picture of Captain America, an old World War Two hero, was on it. "You knew Coulson?"
"Yeah. He recruited me, actually. Good man." Leila's eyes flicked from the bloodstained trading card to his sullen face with a shock of realization. That's where she had seen him before. Old army recruitment videos in her high school history class.
She hadn't been around for the near-hundred year old being pulled out of the ice, but the man, and what he had done, was legend. Those who had recovered the frozen jet, and were responsible for waking up the American hero, boasted about it almost every day.
"Did you... know him?" Leila asked.
"Only a little. But... yes. He was a good man."
-
A few hours later, the helicarrier was still in a state of shock. Cleanup had begun, but everything was still in disarray. No one was quite sure of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s next move.
Leila was slumped against the wall, holding a piece of gauze to her cheek. Her throat was still sore and a purple bruise had formed. The broken glass in her lab had been swept up and the body of soldier who'd attacked her had been moved out.
Right now, everything felt hopeless. Doctor Banner and Thor had both gone missing during the attack. Loki was still out there, and there was nothing Leila could do about it.
A knock on the wall outside of her lab jolted the woman out of her stupor. She looked up to see Tony Stark poking his head into her lab. Immediately Leila's jaw dropped.
"Listen, I'm not exactly Nick Fury's biggest fan right now, but he knows what he's doing. So, let's go." He said. Fury had told him.
"Uh... where?"
"Not important, we'll fill you in on the way. You got a suit?"
Leila quirked an eyebrow and shrugged. She figured she could throw on her emergency combat gear.
"Sure."
"Then suit up. Hangar bay in fifteen minutes."
Once Tony had left, Leila donned the standard S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform. She put bulletproof armor over it, thin to allow mobility but still protective.
Leila strapped an assault rifle to her back, a pistol on her thigh, and a knife on her boot. Once she had finished dressing, Leila headed down to the hangar bay, where Steve was standing with Romanoff and Barton, two high-level agents.
All three gave her a nod and they headed towards an open quinjet. The pilot stood up from his seat. "Hey, you guys aren't authorized to be in here."
"Son, just don't," said Steve, dressed in his red-white-and blue uniform, shield strapped to his arm.
Leila could see the fear on the pilot's face as he scrambled out of the jet. Barton took a seat behind the controls. Romanoff sat beside him, while Leila and Steve stood in the back.
Within a few moments, the massive hangar door opened and the jet flew out.
