Bounded

Chapter 3

Fury, Hawkeye and Black Widow were walking fast in front of me, passing through various corridors and rooms, not saying a word. Finally, they stopped in front of a big glass door and I could see that the room behind it was pretty big, with a vast table in the middle of it. I could hear several voices coming from inside, but I couldn't see who it was. From what I was hearing, I deducted that there were at least two men inside, talking vividly. Even though I couldn't hear what they were saying, their voices, somewhat, felt familiar. Fury reached out for the door handle, but before he pulled it down, he looked up at me and said: "Prepare to meet the Avengers team."
He smiled, and before I had time to realize what he had just said, he opened the door and Clint and Nat pushed me forward in the room.
When I walked in, I noticed right away the two men on the right side of the room who were in the middle of a conversion that looked more like a quarrel to me. Both of them had short hair, but one looked younger and had corn colored hair while the other had brown hair and facial hair. I turned to look on the left side of the room and I spotted another man, alone, sitting on one of the chairs. He was trying not to look at the pair on the other side and was breathing heavily, as if to try to calm down. He looked angry and annoyed none the less, and with his messy hair, he gave a wild impression. Fury coughed, alerting the three men of his presence. The man on the left side was the first one to react, quickly standing up and coming towards us.
"Mr Fury!" He seemed relived to see him.
"Dr Banner! Here's my agent I've been talking about."
I took a step forward as the man shook my hand carefully.
Fury continued doing the presentations: "Bruce Banner / Lythia Niflei. Agent 096/The Hulk."
"Nice to meet you" He said hurriedly.
"Same goes for me." I assured, though I did feel a little uneasy at the idea of shaking hands with the terrifying but cool green monster that stopped the god Loki from escaping.
He must have seen how I was looking at him, with shiny eyes, but he got the wrong idea since he quickly took his hand away and told me: "Don't worry, I've got the Big Guy under control."
"Oh! I know, that's not it! It's just that I've always dreamt of meeting the Avengers, and, I mean, shaking hands with the amazing Hulk is just...wow!" I laughed awkwardly and didn't know what more to say.
He look at me, surprised, and smiled at me warmly. "Well thank you. You have no idea of how much that makes me happy."
The two other men were still talking, but as soon as Fury turned towards them, the tall blond one stopped the conversation and went towards him.
"Good morning Mr Fury. Is this the agent that you've been talking about?" He asked as he was looking at me, smiling with all his perfect white teeth.
"Yes, as I was telling Dr Banner, this is Lythia. She'll be taking care of the Loki case."
"Nice to meet you." He assured, still nicely smiling. "I'm Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America. But please call me Steve, not Captain."
"Erm, sure..." I said, still shaken by the fact that I was standing in front of the legendary Captain America. I couldn't believe that he wasn't from our time.
"So, this is the girl." I looked to my right and saw that the brown haired man had come to Fury's level. He looked at me with scrutinizing eyes, from head to foot. I spotted that he had something shining on his chest. A circle of bright blue light was coming from under his tee shirt. "Iron Man." I thought to myself, recognizing the world known billionaire Tony Stark.
The man turned to Nick Fury and started talking to him about me as if I wasn't even there: "You really intend to give her the mission to capture Loki? Seriously Nick. Look at her! How can a kid take care of a god when a whole team of super powered heroes couldn't?!"
"Hey! I'm no kid! And I -"
"Lythia. Stop. I'm taking care of this," Fury said "And Mr Stark over there knows very well why I chose you."
Tony Stark sighed and asked to the one-eyed man insolently: "Really? Remind me."
"She has aptitudes that some of you don't, she has a survival's and killer's instinct, she's the first woman to have started to work for S.H.I.E.L.D at such a young age, and, more importantly, she'll be more discreet and quieter than if she were in a big team like yours."
All of them turned to look at me and I looked back at them with daring eyes, full of pride.
"Okay...maybe but why couldn't Barton or Natasha take care of him?" Iron Man continued asking, turning towards my two friends and colleagues that were still standing behind me.
Clint was the first one to react, which was evident:
"I'm already in the middle of something. I need to stay with Freya as much as possible; it seems I'm the only one she trusts, and I'm concerned about her. I promised I would help her."
I looked at him approvingly, as well as everybody else.
Natasha continued: "I'm sorry, but I can't take care of it. That guy is too dangerous and the last time I encountered him one on one, even though he was behind a glass window...I wouldn't want to retry it. All I could think about would be to bring my fist to his dumb grin, and I'm afraid I couldn't , since that'll probably just make me want to kill him, which wouldn't be good since you want him alive. I guess we'll just have to say I have no time for someone like that on my schedule."
The four other members of Avengers and Fury stared at her. I felt a pinch in my chest, feeling a little abandoned. The truth is I had been counting on her to watch my back while I would be taking care of Loki.
After several seconds of silence, Fury said: "Anyways, I was counting on Black Widow for another mission, a hero has responsibilities, right?"
Natasha smiled and acknowledged what he had just said.
"Alright then! Everybody thinks Lythia is the one for the job?"
Everyone nodded, and even Stark said I might be fit for it.
"Very well. Now we can finally start the serious stuff." Nick Fury went up to the big table  and showed us to the chairs: "Please all take a seat."
We all sat down; Hawkeye and Captain America on one side, Black Widow, Iron Man and the Hulk on the other. Fury and me sat on the opposite ends.
"You all know why I called you here." Fury said, without really asking.
"Loki." Steve answered.
I noticed that all of a sudden the atmosphere in the conference room was heavy and dark. The Avengers all had stern faces and looked dead serious. 
"Exactly. Lythia, I asked them to come here to meet you so they could share their experience of Loki with you. They're the only ones, me included, to have come so close to him. You don't know the entire story because I had sent you away on a mission at the time when we had captured him, but it all turned bad, and I'm thankful you weren't there when it happened."
I looked at him inquisitively. I knew things got pretty ugly, but I never got much detail about it since S.H.I.E.L.D put the whole failure under silence.
Nick asked me about what I knew already, so I could be put up to date and get clear on certain rumors.
"Well I know the helicarrier got mostly destroyed...apparently Loki got away and got to get the Avengers, you guys, to destroy your own base ship by chasing after him."
They all stared at me and Iron Man raised an eyebrow.
"Erm, that's not really what happened."
Fury cleared his throat. "That's why we're here, to tell you what really happened, so you understand the maliciousness of Loki."
I sighed: "Okay..."
Fury responded: "I know it's a lot of talking for today, but it's important. Please be patient for one more story."
"Alright. Get on to it then."
"Very well."
The whole team took a deep breath and looked at each other, wondering where to start. I stood in the shadows, feeling for the first time that I wasn't part of them, that I was missing something. I understood there was something between them, and that they shared many secrets, many dark stories, and that they were on the verge of sharing one with someone else, an outsider; me.

Author's note:
Normally this story was, like "imagination_is_gold", something for fun and for friends, on a common idea. I decided to put the whole thing on private, so it would be only reserved for my friends, but after "imagination_is_gold" notes, I just couldn't ignore on how much she was into this and she was trying to make my book known, which was very generous and nice of her. So here I am, I decided to put everything on public, and made notes for almost every chapter so that people that I don't know have all the information they need to understand what's going on!
Hoping on seeing you soon,
Elianki.