Umbra

Chapter Twelve

The three heroes around the conference tables were silent. Each had the same look of numb shock on their devastated faces. Steve was staring at the same spot on the table, his expression unreadable. During the fight, he had only taken a few punches to the body, but a short stab to the side had caused blood to cover most of his suit. His face was dirty, and the light which twinkled within his eyes was dull.

Next to him, Tony was the same. He was out of his suit, back in his regular shirt and jeans. Cuts and bruises littered his arms from the blades of the engine, and a large black eye graced his face. His eyes, like Steve's, were sad; but they were instead trained on the small girl next to him. Tony remembered the moment he had pulled her away from Coulson's dead body, covered in blood and screaming. He remembered the way she had tried to claw away from him, before collapsing, exhausted, in his arms.

Now, Tony's hand was in Grey's as she sat as close to him as possible. She felt broken. Even though she didn't know Coulson, she felt responsible for his death. She could've moved from her spot, stopped Loki from his mission, but she didn't. For some reason, she didn't. She had stayed, because she was scared.

"Grey?" Tony muttered, rubbing his thumb against her hand. She looked up at him and he faltered, shaking his head at her bloody, tear tracked face.

Grey felt fresh tears start rolling down her cheeks, and she looked back down at the table. "I wasn't strong enough, Tony. I didn't stop him."

He shook his head and moved his hands to her cheeks to rub the tears away. "That's not true," he whispered, making sure he was listening to him, "he would've killed you if you went in there. And I wouldn't have forgiven myself if you got hurt and I wasn't there to protect you." Tony pulled his hands away and intertwined their fingers again.

Opening her mouth to reply, Grey was interrupted by the entrance of Fury. A solemn air surrounded him as he walked, and Grey could tell he was mourning the loss of his best agent.

"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket," he threw a pack of Captain America trading cards on the table in front of them. "Guess he never did get you to sign them.

Grey let out a choked noise as Steve held them up; they were stained with blood. Tony moved his hand from hers and wrapped his arm around her. Grey pushed her face into his chest, before vanishing. Tony could feel her shaking, and hear the tiny sobs which escaped her mouth.

"We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye." Fury paused, looking at them gravely. "Maybe I had that coming."

He paused for a second and surveyed Tony and Grey before continuing. "Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea, Stark knows this, called 'The Avengers Initiative."

Grey looked up at the mention of Tony's name, revealing herself to look up at Tony. Tony looked back down, his expression unreadable.

"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." Fury stood tall, staring at each hero in front of him in turn. "Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes."

Tony gently pushed Grey off him, before scraping his chair back from the conference table and walking out of the room, unable to listen to Fury anymore. Grey watched him leave, already craving his touch again.

"I'm sorry, Grey." Steve said quietly, and she turned her head to look at him, wiping her tears away.

"For what?"