Scream ▸ Steve Rogers [1]

VII

07 // BROKEN PIECES

"Get it together, Delilah." The strawberry blonde told herself as she stared in the mirror in her bathroom. "He wouldn't want you to be like this." She told herself with a sigh, looking at her puffy eyes. "Suck it up. You are not a wreck, you are not a monster." She told herself, even though she didn't believe it. "You're human and grieving. Get it together long enough to get off this stupid hellicarrier." She splashed some water in her face before leaving her room, needing to know what was going to happen next.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Fury asked Delilah once she walked into the conference room.

"If that's your way of asking if I'm going to scream again, the answer is no." She said as she took a seat between Tony and Steve.

"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket." Fury said as he looked down at the trading cards. "I guess he never did get you to sign them." He said, tossing the cards on the table in front of Steve, smearing blood on the table.

"Maybe I should have stayed in my room." Delilah said, watching as Steve picked up a trading card. If they weren't covered in blood she would have taken them, knowing how much Phil loved them. Sure, she had plenty of things that reminded her of her godfather but he loved those trading cards more than most things.

"We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, the location of the Cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you. I lost my one good eye." Fury said, putting his hands on the table and leaning on them, shaking his head. "Maybe I had that coming." He slowly began walking around the table. "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." He paused by the first chair before speaking again. "There was an idea, Stark knows this, I'm pretty sure Caldwell does too." Fury told Steve as he began walking again.

"The Avengers Initiative." The strawberry blonde said as she looked at her hands, not looking up at Steve when she felt his eyes on her.

Fury nodded, "the idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people to see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we need them to, to fight the battles we never could." Fury stopped behind Delilah's chair. "Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea. In heroes."

Tony stood up as soon as Fury stopped speaking. Delilah watched as he left the room, debating over whether she should follow him or not. She figured it wouldn't hurt to see what he was doing. She got up from her seat and followed the billionaire out of the room.

"Well, it's an old-fashioned notion." She heard Fury say.

Delilah didn't say anything as she caught up with Tony. "What? You're not going to say anything on Coulson's behalf?" Tony questioned, glancing down at Delilah.

Delilah shook her head. "No, I was just wondering how you are. You knew him fairly well." Delilah said before she could feel her throat closing up, ready for the sobs to come out.

"You were closer to him than anyone on this hellicarrier and you're asking if I'm okay?" Tony scoffed. "Now I'm starting to understand why he loved you so much. How are you?"

Delilah shrugged, "honestly, I just want to cry and sleep for the rest of my life." She sighed before speaking again. "But I can't do that because I know he wouldn't want it."  She said, not being able to say Phil's name without completely breaking out into tears. "Sometimes I just don't want to be alone. I don't necessarily want to talk but I just need someone there with me. Usually it was him." Delilah paused for a few seconds. "You never answered my question."

Tony shook his head. "He was an idiot, you know that right?"

Delilah nodded, "Yeah, I know. But I guess we can't do anything about it now. And now, I'm going to go suffer in silence." She said before walking away from Tony and down the hall towards the detention section.