Lost in the Mirror (Avengers Fan Fiction)

[ 9 ]

Steve was making his way through the Avengers Compound. He was searching for the two Avengers who hadn't showed at this morning's conference. He had a pretty good idea of where to find the two scientist.

"You both missed this morning's conference." He spoke, walking in to one of the labs that Tony and Bruce had claimed.

"Yeah, sorry. We're kind of in the middle of something." Tony muttered as he shuffled through a few papers and then looked over to Bruce. "Do you have anything from 2003 to 2005?"

"I have 2004 mission reports right here." Bruce handed the stack of files to Tony.

"What are you doing?" Steve asked, stepping closer to Bruce.

"Nothing."

"It doesn't look like nothing." The Captain peered over Bruce's shoulder.

"Hill gave us a job to do, Cap. We're doing it." Tony told him.

"You both have been in here for the past three days. The first day she put you in here, you were complaining about being put on paper duty."

"People change, Capsicle." The Iron Man chuckled. "Don't worry. You'll know what all of this is about soon enough."

Steve crinkled his brows together, crossing his arms over his chest.

"That doesn't sound suspicious at all, Stark."

"Hey, Rogers? Have you ever seen Barton's handwriting?" Tony changed the subject, holding up a piece of paper to Steve.

"Only from the notes he leaves in the fridge to claim food."

"That's his awful, sloppy handwriting, right?"

Steve hesitated to move towards Tony, his blue eyes on the piece of paper. But he eventually did take the paper from the Iron Man.

"Yeah. That looks like his." Steve read through the writing on the paper for a few moments. His brows crinkled together as he read the mission report.

"There's no agent names on any of the field reports, just identification numbers." Bruce explained. "S.H.I.E.L.D. lost most of its information on agents' ID numbers."

"The Dragon of Queensland?" Steve spoke out loud. "What the hell is that?"

"That would be this woman." Tony shuffled through a few papers before finding a small stack of pictures. Steve took the pictures and studied each one individually. The top picture was from a security camera. The figure in it was blurry but it was easy to tell that the blurry figure was a woman. She had dark hair and she was fairly small in size.

"Who is she?" Steve moved on to the next picture, which was a close up of the woman. He inhaled sharply at the sight of who was in the picture. The woman had dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her eyes were bruised and her nose looked busted. There was a breathing tube coming out of her mouth. Cuts covered her face and neck, which were the only parts of her that the picture revealed. However, it was the deep gash across her left eyebrow that made Steve's stomach turn. Delaney had a scar in the exact same place.

"Well she was a popular assassin in the early 2000's." Tony sighed gently. "Operated in Australia. Not much is known about her. She was a ghost, just like your pal Sergeant Barnes."

"That's Delaney Valente, Steve." Bruce told him. The Captain remained silent, shuffling through the pictures in his hands. Most of them were of the dark haired woman in a hospital.

"She can breathe freaking fire, Rogers." Tony shook his head disapprovingly. "I mean, we know some pretty weird people, no offense to Romanoff, but breathing fire? I mean, S.H.I.E.L.D. put that in their system—,"