Avenge | Book 2

The Trading Cards

Timeskip

"Agent Coulson is down." Fury's sad voice comes over the coms.

"Paramedics are on their way." An agent warns back.

"They're here." He informs. "They called it."

*•*•*•

"I need Stark, Rogers, and Barnes on the Bridge." Fury demands. "Quill, I need you to make sure Madi is fine. Natasha, make sure Clint is stable too."

"What about Thor and Banner?" I question, sliding out of the vent into the hallway.

"We're tracking them right now." He responds. "They both got separated from the helicarrier during the attack." He explains. "Meet at the briefing table, by the way."

"Yes, sir."

Bridge

I'm the first one in the bridge out of the people who need to report to it.

I look around as I take off the top part of my suit leaving me in a dark blue long sleeve athletic shirt that was under it and the bottom part of my suit. I sit down and throw it in the seat next to me, a little bit too forcefully since it makes a few agents' head turn.

I ignore them and just sulk.

As I zone out I feel someone pat my back but I ignore it like I did the agents.

"Was he one of the people here you were close with?" Steve asks as he takes a seat next to me.

"He was one of the people who I could talk about the war with that was actually interested." I nod. "Where's Stark?"

"Here." Speak of the devil.

"Good job with the rotor." I turn my attention to him as he sits down.

"Thanks." He mumbles, taking a seat across the table from me.

The room goes silent.

"Uh..." I break the silence, not being able to take it. "Did you check on Madi before you came here?"

"Yeah." Tony nods again.

"How she doin'?"

"She left the medical ward when I did." He stares ahead at the table while talking in a monotone voice. "When the Hulk smacked her out of the way, it bruised her a lot. But, instead of flying into a stack of crates, Thor broke her fall."

"Thor?"

"Yeah." He answers. "They sent him down to take care of the Hulk and he was just following the roar."

I nod in understanding, turning my gaze back to my boots. The room goes silent again.

The quiet breaks when the familiar sound of Fury's boots come to a stop at the head of the conference table.

"We've gathered the three of you so we can clear up a few things for you guys..." Fury starts, none of us looking up at him. "Along with discussing the events that just took on the helicarrier." I can hear his hand rub against the material as he pulls something out of his inside jacket pocket.

"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket." He throws something onto the table in front of me and Steve. "Guess he never did get you to sign them."

Steve picks up a card with a picture of him posing in his show uniform, a giant blood stain on the corner of the card.

"Guess they are far from mint condition now." I mumble, picking up the card for war bonds.

"We're dead in the air up here." He informs. "Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming." He lets out a deep breath.

"Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract." He admits. "I never put all chips on that number though..." He adds noticing my clenched jaw."...because I was playing something even riskier." He looks around at all of us.

"There was an idea, Stark knows this, 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 battle that we never could.

"Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes." That line causes Tony to get up and walk out, not wanting to hear it anymore. "Well," Fury sighs. "it's an old-fashioned notion." And with that, Fury walks back to his desk in the middle of the bridge with Hill following close behind.

After basking in the sad tension that Fury left the 'debriefing' with for a few more seconds, I stand up and walk away.

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Shorter chapter because I was going to add something but I decided not to (it would be too long and I want to update this). So next chapter might be a little short tool

~Meowlnir