Unlikely To Be Forgotten - Book 1

Chapter 2: To be Vulnerable is to be Dead

May 2012

2 hours after the collapse of the New Mexico base, I sat in my bedroom on the helicarrier in a fresh uniform trying to figure out how I could completely avoid Stark once he boarded. I wish I was of more help at the moment, but Coulson was calling Nat who would then recruit Bruce for the Avengers Initiative and Fury was in a meeting with the World Security Council. Which is basically just a bunch of hot-headed idiots that were given too much power. I was snapped out of my thoughts when Uncle Nick walked into my room and said, "Let's go, I need your help."

"Don't you know how to knock?" I swear there is no privacy in this flying fortress.

"Yes. Now let's go," He pointed out the door, "I'll explain everything once we're on the plane." I sighed, loudly, but stood up and walked out to the runway and onto a quinjet. There was complete silence on the jet until Fury decided to brief me on our current mission. "Isa, do you remember Captain Rogers?"

"How could I not? I mean it's not like he dislocated my shoulder or anything."

First gave me a pointed look and all I did was shrug, "Well, you are coming with me to recruit him. Okay?" Not waiting for my answer he continues, "I want you to stay concealed until I give the signal. We need him on this so you are going to walk him back to his apartment. And when you do you have to be extremely persuasive and vulnerable. Honestly, I just need you to do whatever it takes to get him on board."

"Fine, whatever."

"Good, 'cause we're landing now." I took a deep breath and followed behind the Director, trying to let my guard down. Natasha taught me that to be vulnerable is to be dead and that feelings will get you killed, so for the past four years I have built up a wall that never comes down and now in order to save the world it's going to have to.

I only had a hot second to take in our surroundings, we were standing on a street in New York in front of a 1940's themed gym just down the block from the Captain's apartment, before we walked into the building. Upon entering we saw Rogers hit the punching bag off the hook and into a wall. As he hung a new one from the line behind him up and began to hit it, Fury stood in the doorway and I sat at a messy wooden desk. "Trouble sleeping?"

He glanced over at my uncle but did not cease his punching, "I slept for seventy years, sir. I think I've had my fill." Fury began to walk over with his hands behind his back.

"Then you should be out, celebrating, seeing the world." I swear to God, this man can never get to the point. Steve stops his punching and walks over to the bench and begins unraveling the tape from his hands.

"When I went under the world was at war, when I woke up they said we won. They didn't say what we lost." I feel bad for this guy, but right now I have to focus on my mission.

"We've made some mistakes along the way, some very recently." Finally!!

"You here with a mission, sir?"

"I am."

"Trying to get me back into the world?"

"Trying to save it." That was my cue, I stood up and walked over to where they were standing. Once I was standing in front of the blue-eyed man, I opened up the tesseract file that contained other H.Y.D.R.A. projects and handed it to him.

Steven grabbed the file from me and sat down on the bench next to his bag, "Hydra's secret weapon."

I nodded, "Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you. He thought what we think, the Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs."

"Who took it from you?"

I hung my head, "His name is Loki... He's not from around here.There's a lot we'll have to bring you up to speed on if you're in. The world has gotten even stranger than you already know."

"At this point, I doubt anything would surprise me."

I smiled and Fury was the one that spoke next, "Ten bucks says you're wrong. There's a debriefing packet waiting for you at your apartment." Steve then turned around and began to walk out, grabbing a punching bag on the way. "Is there anything you can tell us about the tesseract that we ought to know now?"

"He stopped at the door and without turning around he simply stated, "You should have left it in the ocean." Then he just walked out, Fury motioned for me to follow so I ran to catch up with him.

After we walked out of the building he finally addressed me directly, "Yu know, I never did catch your name."

"That's because I never gave it to you.I'm Isabella Barton, it's nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too, so is there any particular reason why you're following me?"

"Umm, I actually wanted to talk to you about something." I paused and took a deep breath before continuing, "This Loki person... When he took the Tesseract last night he also took somebody really important to me. It was my dad actually, well my adopted one. But he was the one that was there for me for the past four years. My biological one never really was and so it makes Clint all the more important to me. And you know, I've grown up hearing stories about you and everything you've done to help people. And we really need you on this, I need you on this. So please just at least consider it, if you don't who knows what will happen to my dad. To the world." By the time I finished speaking, we had made it to the front of his apartment building so I just turned around and began to walk towards the building we just left.