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The news hit SHIELD like a truck. Agent Coulson was dead. Steve, Tony and Julianne were sitting at the conference table on the bridge, Fury was facing them and Hill was standing on the side. The room was extremely silent. Truthfully, no one wanted to say anything, nor did they know what to say.
Julianne did not know him. She spoke to him once. Or was it twice? He called her Icegirl and she whined about it. The young Stark was always one for snarky little comments, but she did not have the heart to say anything now. A good man died. It felt weird, for someone you’ve spoken to earlier that day to suddenly be dead. It didn’t feel right. He did not deserve that.
She let her eyes wander around the room, her stare stopping on William Russell, standing by a monitor, staring blankly at an empty space. She looked down, her heart burning in sympathy. He probably knew him well.
“These were in Phil Coulson’s jacket. Guess he never did get you to sign them.” Fury finally spoke, scattering some cards on the table. The blonde girl winced at the sight of some of them wet with blood. “We’re dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor, Nolahni. I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye. Think I had that coming.”
That statement had the girl frowning. The Goddess, God and Doctor were missing? Julianne could only hope they were alright. But she wondered if they would be. Those three were probably the strongest ones of the team, they were pretty much screwed without them. She watched Fury make his way around the table, nearing the three heroes.
“Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number, though, because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea, Stark knows this, called the Avengers Initiative.”
Julianne raised her head at that. Avengers Initiative. Her parents and Agent Coulson mentioned that when they were at Stark Tower. Her father was bitter for apparently not making the cut. But she did? Why? It didn't make any sense, she was not the friendliest "enhanced" human if one relied on her past activities.
“The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes.”
Then he was naive. She thought.
As Tony stood and walked out, his daughter was reflecting on the director’s words. Phil Coulson believed they could make a change but died watching them jump at each other’s throats. They were supposed to be a team.
“Well, it’s an old fashioned notion.”
“Nice speech, Nick.” She mumbled, also making her way out of the room. "Heroes? The fuck is this, Disney?"
