Part 7

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After Steve leaves your room, you attempt to go back to sleep but it doesn’t come easy.  You toss and turn, trying to get comfortable.  Finally, you must have drifted off but it was short lived.  As soon as the sun comes up you decide to just give up completely.  You gather your things and head out... you are exhausted but there is no point in laying in bed staring at the ceiling anymore.

On the train ride back to your apartment you start to think about how incredibly embarrassing the last few days have been.  You had planned on coming back and showing everyone you were just as good of an agent as you were before your injury.  So far, however, all you had shown them was you had no control over your emotions when it came to Loki or Sarah.  That was going to change, you were going to get your shit together and prove to everyone and yourself that you could handle this. 

When you reach your apartment, you shower and change quickly.  After eating breakfast, you pack yourself lunch and dinner just in case you work late again.  You also set an alarm on your phone for 7PM so you don’t work late enough to need to stay the night.  Before you reach the tower, you pick up coffee.  Now there is no reason you need to go anywhere near the common floor of the tower or leave your desk.  This should work perfectly...

And it did work, until Friday.  You got to work and checked your email, you noticed there was a meeting invite from Hill for that afternoon.  You suddenly felt a combination of pride and nervousness when you realize the meeting is about the report you put together on the Hydra base in Bulgaria.  You had sent Hill and your supervisor your recommendation and prospective mission notes the night before.  This meeting meant they had decided to move forward on the information you gathered. 

A few hours later you make your way to the large conference room for your first official meeting with the Avengers in your new roll.  You sip your coffee and read over your notes while the Avengers file in.  They each offer you a smile or small wave as they take their seats, all of them except Loki.  He walks in behind Thor but doesn’t acknowledge you as he takes his seat. 

Hill, Tony Stark & Nick Fury lead the majority of the meeting.  They explain how you discovered why the Hydra base had been so hard to locate.  Instead of having a standalone base, which was usually the case, this base was hidden in the lower levels of a legitimate hospital.  You had found a few members of the hospital staff who were Hydra agents, performing experiments on unsuspecting patients. 

In your report, you had suggested a small information gathering mission.  It wasn’t clear exactly how far into the hospital ranks this went but you thought it would be better to find out more instead of launching a full scale attack on a hospital. 

“I think Y/N is right, we can’t just barge into a hospital full of innocent patients and staff to round up a few Hydra agents.  It would be better to send in one person for now, so we can get enough information to make a better plan,” Steve said. 

Tony nodded his head in agreement, “It should be as small of an op as possible.  Get in, get the information and get out.”

The group discusses the details of the op, eventually deciding the Loki and Nat would needed.  The plan would start with Loki and Nat abducting one of the known Hydra agents.  Nat would bring him back to the jet and extract any useful information she could from him.  Loki, meanwhile, would assume his identity and go to the hospital to see and what could be learned that way.  The only thing still left to be decided was which analyst would accompany the two Avengers. 

Steve and Bucky had suggested someone, Clint had a different person in mind.  Nat and Bruce offered a third person. They all went back and forth, discussing the pros and cons of each. 

“Y/N should do it,” Loki said.

Everyone stopped talking and looked at Loki, no one had expected that.  Especially not you.

“Me?” you asked him.

He sighed, almost seeming annoyed he needed to explain this.  “I’m going undercover with an unknown number of Hydra agents.  This won’t be the type of mission where I can just fight my way out of singing goes wrong.  We need to be stealthy and not attract any attention.  I need someone in my ear who knows everything about this mission and can feed me information about the other agents in real time,” he says. 

Crap... you think, that makes sense.  The others agree, the mission needed to happen the next day.  It would take time to bring anyone else up to speed. 

This was it... you were going back into the field, running an op all on your own.  This is exactly what you needed to prove to everyone that you were capable of this job. 

As the meeting ended, everyone gathered their things and headed off in different directions.  You stayed behind to collect all the papers and charts for the mission.  You were going to have a long night ahead of you, re-reading your report and making sure you didn’t miss anything.  You didn’t want to screw up, you had to be successful. 

Files and laptop in hand, you look up from the table and see Loki standing in the doorway.  His arms are crossed and he’s leaning on the frame.  He doesn’t move as you walk towards him, he’s now blocking you from leaving the room.  “We need to talk,” he says with a serious tone.  He pulls the door closed, and takes a step towards you.

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