Out of Time ★ [1] ✔

A Heart To Heart

Phil Coulson did not deserve to die. He was not just a casualty of war. He was much more than that. And I seethed at the thought of the way he lost his life.

We sat on the bridge at the table, the command center in ruins around us, smoking and sparking. Agent Romanoff was with Agent Barton in the infirmary. Apparently the mind control was knocked out of him when Romanoff slammed his head into the railing during their skirmish. Thor and the Hulk weren't on the Helicarrier. Thor was dropped from the sky and the Hulk crashed with the jet he attacked.

I swallowed. Andi was in the infirmary as well. She...wasn't doing too great. The glass in her side did more damage than she thought. And I felt guilty for not being there. If I were there, none of this would've happened to her. Loki would not have hurt her. I would've made sure of that. I would make him pay.

Only Tony and I were left unharmed with Fury and Hill. None of us spoke a word. We just sat there in mourning.

Fury held a deck of collectors cards. "These were in Phil Coulson's jacket." He inspected them with a pained eye. "Guess he never did get you to sign them."

He tossed them across the table. They scattered. Some had blood on them, smudging on the glass. I picked one up. It was me. Me in the 1940s. And my guilt was amplified by one hundred.

"We're dead in the air up here," Fury explained. "Our communications, location of the cube. Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you." He ran a finger over his eye-patch. "Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming."

I placed the card down. There was a bigger picture that we were all missing. There was a reason for everything. There was always a reason. And it was time we found out.

"Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract," Fury informed. "I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea. Stark knows this. It was called the Avengers Initiative. 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.

"After Thor and the Destroyer levelled that town, I decided to put forward the project to protect the earth. In 2008, Andi came. She suggested that the Avengers Initiative was put forth earlier than planned in order to defeat an enemy of her own."