One Body, Two Personalities

Down But Not Out

Fury, Steve, Stark, and Zack were sitting the meeting table. Zack had taken off his armor with a big patch over his right shoulder where he had taken the bullet. 

Fury had something in his hands, fumbling with them. "These were in Phil Coulson's jacket. Guess he never did get you to sign them." He tosses Steve a number of Captain America trading cards. They were all stained with blood. 

Fury sighs. "We're dead in the air. No communications, the location of the Cube, Banner, Thor, Striker, I got nothing for ya. Lost my one good eye, maybe I had that coming." 

"Fury, stop." Zack snaps, getting his, Stark's, and Steve's attention. "Loki got all of us. None of us are mind readers. We couldn't have predicted this. No one can predict anything. Coulson did his job, fighting for what he knew was to be expected of it. Even death." 

Fury sighs and looks at Steve. "Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number though because I had something even riskier. 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 be become something when we needed them to. To fight the battles, we never could." 

Fury looks at Stark, who just turns away. "Phil Coulson died, still believing that idea...in heroes." 

Stark just stands and walks away. 

Zack looks down and sighs. 

"It's an old fashioned notion." Fury finishes. 

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Outside the edge of the forest, Marcus groans while blinking his eyes, adjusting to the brightness of the sun. 

He faintly hears his name being called and sees Thor and Venom looking down at him. 

"You okay, Marcus?" Venom says relieved. 

Marcus sits up and rubs his head. "I've been stabbed through the chest before V, I think I can take a hundred-thousand foot drop to the ground." 

Thor extends his hand and helps Marcus up as Venom disappears into his clothes. Thor then walks through the foot tall grass, where he sees his hammer in a pile of dirt. Marcus watches as Thor stretches out his hand, trying to summon the hammer into his palm. 

Thor curls his fingers into a fist as his arm shakes. 

Marcus sits down on a rock and looks at the sky. "Now what do we do?" 

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Steve and Zack walk into the prison bay where they see Stark just staring down at where the cell that held Loki used to be. 

Steve crosses his arms and leans against the railing. "Was he married?" 

"No." Stark replies, not turning his gaze. "There was a cellist, I think." 

Zack walks up to him and puts his good arm on Stark's shoulder. "Tony, I'm really sorry." 

"He seemed like a good man." Steve adds. 

Stark gives a small laugh. "He was an idiot." 

Zack removes his hand and gives a shocked face. "Why? For believing?" 

Stark looks at him. "For taking on Loki alone." 

"He was doing his job." Steve states. 

"He was out of his league. He should've waited. He should've..."