An Unlikely Romance - The Avengers (Part 2)

Hangover the Edge

Panic ran in your veins before you even fully finished waking up. Not because of any conscious thought, but rather an intimate, very much unconscious familiarity with your situation. Your mind was hazy, your instincts uncertain, and your memories failed you as you tried desperately to right yourself. Anxiety, stress, and sheer terror maliciously echoed through your body and soul as you struggled to remember something – anything – about who and where you were.

"No... it's not the same."

That thought was comforting, but only for a moment. It came as you realized that all of your memories were intact, all of your feelings were there, they were only subdued. This was completely unlike the day you'd awoken in that cell, the day that Natasha had subdued you and delievered you to SHIELD. It was far more like the days after waking up from Clint and Natasha's late night outings, complete with the headache and body fatigue. You'd never been so happy to realize how intimately you could recognize the difference between an amnesiac and a sedative...

Nor had you ever been so furious about having one used on you.

You forced yourself up even as you fought to maintain your balance, using the coffee table to struggle upward. You ignored the remnants of quesadillas that showered the carpet as you shook the table with your unsteady weight, and the wine glass that shattered on the floor as you struggled to your feet. You focused your entire mind on righting yourself and standing up... because every part of your brain that wasn't focused on that started replaying your memories from last night over again.

"Of course it wasn't genuine," you told yourself as you found your way up to your knees. "Why would it be? She's better than me, and I've always known that. That's why I stopped her. I knew... I knew she could never..."

That train of thought hurt too much so you forced yourself to focus on the effort required to push yourself up further, until you had one foot underneath of you and managed to raise your head above the coffee table.

"Fury would never have approved of any of this. I was a fool to think otherwise, to even believe they'd defy him for me. Of course they were waiting, of course they were hoping I'd let my guard down, so that she could..."

Tears formed at the corner of your eyes, and you forced yourself to stop that train of thought. You wouldn't cry. Not here, not now. There would be time to mourn your ignorance and innocence... but later, after you had assessed the full extent of the damage done by your trust.

The living room was the first and most obvious casualty. You hadn't had much in your budget for furniture over the last several weeks, but the few pieces you had managed to acquire were thoroughly ransacked. Both of the drawers of your coffee table were fully pulled out and turned over on the carpet, the table itself was upside down, and even your TV stand had been clearly moved from where it was, shelves removed and the television itself unplugged and set aside.

Stumbling through the rest of your "home" showed you similar scenes across the rest of the rooms. Your storage closet was opened and the contents spilled out across the floor, including several of the shelves fully broken and ripped free. The basket of your dirty clothes had been overturned and spread out. Fury's laptop was gone from its spot on your desk, and it seemed to have been one of the only things that was outright taken. The worst, though, was when you stumbled into your bedroom.

Your dresser was overturned, one door completely broken free and laying uselessly on the ground a full foot away from its main body. Your few clothes were strewn about the floor haphazardly where they had landed after being ripped from the drawers. Your pillow had been slashed open and turned nearly inside out, your blankets were strewn around the room, the curtains had been pulled down, and