Caffeine Rush (Avengers Fanfic)

Chapter 32: Lines We Cross

Those words . . . I didn't know what to say. Not in response to that. How much had he learned about speedsters in this short time? Had he learned from the Legendary Cisco Ramone and Harrison Wells the perfect method on how to quarterback a speedster? I was having a speed talk! Oh my god, I was having a speed talk! I . . . was having a speed talk? Wait, wait, wait, backup just a second there. I did not need no speed talk, my confidence was through the roof, my speed was completely intact, and all of my support systems were in sync. Why was I getting a speed talk again?

Oh right, disappointing a diseased parent. Superhero 101, right? Orphans make the best heroes, or hero-adjacents. They must have a manual or something. Whoever thought that was a good idea, huh? Entrusting the safety of the entire world to traumatized adults barely old enough to be adulting and sometimes not even old enough to drive. What a wonderful idea.

Where were we again? Right, disappointed father. But hey, I finally got my boots! Silver linings I tell you. They looked like I would run right through the soles, but I knew they were far sturdier. I didn't know if they would be able to withstand the full force of my speed but then again, not many things could, I saw this as a huge win despite the depressing conversation and backstory reveal. I had no doubts that the Avengers, Fury, and all of SHIELD's council and top ranked agents were watching this conversation from the monitor. I didn't know where it was exactly, perks of working with an expert in micro-tech, but Tony would have been a fool to install a Hall of Heroes with their memorabilia and remembrance plaques without some sort of surveillance security and he wasn't a fool when it came to technology—most of the time. I certainly wouldn't blame any of the aforementioned people for sneaking a peek either, I would be curious too if another speedster from a different universe showed up and said "what's up, doc? Didn't see that coming?" Yeah, me neither.

"Jesse! You're late again!" Came Clint's disapproving dad voice from down the hall. I forgot we were supposed to have that meeting today, I told CASS to remind me, but she hadn't, how could a pseudo-intelligence forget something like that? She hadn't been responded quite as fast either, I would have to check it out. "Bring Strange while you're at it, he should be part of this."

That didn't sound good in the slightest. I grabbed Strange by the arm and dragged him down the hall after me. I could ignore the heat of our previous conversation for the sole reason that he had actually delivered on my boots and that bought him some extraordinarily good graces in my book.

I received some oddly assessing looks as I walked into the conference room. Some more guarded than usual, others indifferent, even a few sympathetic, but that told me exactly what I needed to know, they had indeed been monitoring the conversation between me and Strange in the Hall of Heroes. For a brief moment, there was silence as everyone decided how they would act going forward in their interactions with me.

No doubt it was no surprise when Tony broke the silence first, seeming completely unfazed by the new knowledge and electing to ignore it altogether, with a callous remark, "you can literally run faster than the speed of sound, how are you always late?"

I shrugged, deciding that just rolling with it would probably be my best bet until the tension from the full backstory reveal simmered down, again. "It's a multiversal thing, except in the universe where it isn't." It was practically a universal truth, to be honest. There were very few universes I had been to where the speedster, if there was one to begin with, was ever on time.

"And which one are we?" Bucky prompted, one of the sympathetic gazes that was readily willing and able to slide right past it.

"One of the ones that isn't the exception," I teased, "and even if it was, CASS didn't alert me so I'd still be late anyway."