The Thunder

10 years ago

Security House of Special FBI Agent Emily Prentiss of the F.B.I.

Somewhere in New York

If Agent Prentiss thought she had seen it all, her friend Riley (L/n) had just prove her how wrong she was.

Had she worked in terrorism? Of course. With serial killers, rapists, psychopaths, sociopaths and genocides? It was part of her daily life. With child soldiers? Unfortunately, the answer to this was also yes. Had she managed to hide Declan from his father, Ian Doyle, a globally wanted terrorist and criminal? Yes. But this…

To begin with, Doyle had not wanted to involve his son in his activities when he was so young. The girl in front of her was the perfect example of someone who had been practically religiously trained to follow orders and get rid of targets. Deprogramming someone wasn’t as easy as it seemed in the movies, and even if it was, was it really deprogramming if you had never had your own personality, a life of your own, that had been canceled? You, your mind, had been shaped from the start for that, and after three weeks of failed attempts, Prentiss couldn't help but wonder if someone could actually save you by now.

"When was the first time you fired a gun?"

You looked at the woman in front of you without blinking an eye and she shifted nervously. It was clear that she didn’t trust you completely, and you liked that. It made her an intelligent woman in your eyes. She would live longer than the average. Emily sighed.

"You need to tell us something if we want to move forward, (y/n)," said the dark-haired agent. In vain, judging by your blank expression.

Emily knew you were smart, she could see it in your eyes. But she also knew that you were trained not to say a word under any circumstances, even though the youngest child didn't have that problem. Despite herself, Emily smiled briefly. Aiden was a curious and bubbly boy with big eyes. Anyway, he also knew more than he would let on, and that made her angry. Angry at the world, at society, and especially at herself. She had worked for and with SHIELD, with the Interpol and the FBI. She should have known. She should have noticed. HYDRA had been hiding in plain sight and no one had suspected a bit.

"It will kill you," was the reply, leaving a very surprised Prentiss on the way. She blinked a few times, processing what the girl had just said to her.

"I have my ways, trust me," she replied jokingly. "Your brother will be safe," Emily added in a lower, sweeter tone.

Your head turned to her in an instant, your surprised gaze fixed on her face.

"How ...?" You closed your mouth almost instantly, but not before the word escaped from your mouth on its own. Emily's face was now filled with compassion, and you hated it. With all your soul. When her hand, much larger but also more delicate, rested on yours, you withdrew out of reflex and grasped the edge of the bed with both hands. With her hand still awkwardly outstretched, Prentiss bit her lower lip for a second before speaking again.

"I know how much you care about him," Emily smiled softly. "It's all in your eyes. If I had to guess, I'd say he's the reason you took this risk."

You closed, then opened your fists repeatedly. Over and over.

"He is the reason for everything I do," you finally murmured. "Including breathing."

Emily whistled at your words, perhaps too harsh, but at least you had spoken. Breaking the self-imposed wall around you was necessary.

"I was five years old," you said suddenly. It took your interlocutor a thousandth of a second to understand that you were answering her first question. "I used a Glock. It seems heavy, until you pick it up a few times. I had to put the pieces together and kill my partner before he killed me,” Emily watched as, despite the apparent lack of feeling on your face, your chin quivered for a millisecond. “It was his eighth time in that... test. He didn't have a ninth."

Emily bit her lower lip and set the sheet of paper aside, leaning forward in the chair. She rested her elbows on her knees and looked at you thoughtfully.

"Do you regret it?"

There was a prolonged silence in which your eyes connected with hers before you answered. You didn't want to, but you should. For Aiden.

"I had to do it".

That doesn't answer the question… Emily thought, not letting any detail pass. It was important to know how far you were or weren’t a monster. Maybe not a lost cause after all. 

"Why?" the agent inquired and for the first time something close to fear crossed your face.

"..."

"(Y/n)?"

“Garrett.”

"Your father."

It wasn't a question, but you weren't going to contradict iher either. Garrett was the one in charge of your life since you had memories, and he always had been.

"(Y/n)? Did you ever…?"

"I know what you're going to tell me," you cut her off in the middle of the sentence, speaking with relentless resolve. "I don’t want to talk about that".

"You must".

You clenched your teeth, looking at her almost hatefully.

"No," you growled through your teeth. The lights flickered and Emily raised a delicate black eyebrow. It wouldn’t be the first time she encountered an Enhanced, but you were too young to have control over your powers.

Or not , she mentally added as she watched you close your eyes tight and take a deep breath through your nose as the lights stopped their strobe show.

"Interesting, right?" Agent Prentiss commented, trying to redirect the conversation. "Many phenomena have their orig-".

“When I was eight years old, I started to resist. They tortured me. They injected me with things. I killed more than one of my guards,” you confessed, interrupting what she was going to say. "I know what you think. That I am a monster. That I am only 12 years old and that I’m as wild as I can be and I have never seen anything outside those walls. That I am old enough to understand what I have done. And that I never did anything to avoid that. But believe it or not, I did it. I tried. Until..."

"Until what, (y/n)?" Emily asked softly. When you looked at her again, you seemed so helpless that the air violently came out of her lungs, as if she had been hit in the stomach.

"Until Aiden. He- he was going to be 5 years old. Back then I was almost 10 ”.

Emily let out a shaky breath, feeling her heart break as she understood what you wanted to say. The thing you hadn't told her in the weeks you had been talking to her and that seemed to be the only thing that let her see you as what you were: a scared little girl.

"You traded your rebellion, your... freedom... for him," Emily ran a hand over her face, unsure of what to say. It was one thing to think that you had a certain affection for the little boy, and another to hear you admit it in such a crude way. "You really love him."

You blinked slowly, then started to talk. 

"The day Garrett and my mother brought him in, he was just this little thing in a pile of blankets," you were staring at nothing, and for a moment Emily forgot that even though you looked much older, even if you knew how to speak like an adult, you were only 12 years old. Your gaze reflected the weariness of many accumulated lives. Hearing you, it was hard to believe you were a child, but Emily would bet anything you also had been trained in this kind of thing. “When I got close, he touched me with his little hand. And I… I didn't know that something could be so small. And I realized that there would be nothing, no one, I could love more. That I would do, would be anything for him. And I have kept that promise.”

Middle of July, 2015

New S.H.I.E.L.D. base

Location unknown

If there's one thing Bruce Banner was sure of, it was that definitely putting so many people in the same room with "the other guy" wasn’t a good idea. However, when Coulson had personally invited him to visit the headquarters of "the new S.H.I.E.L.D." and, in particular, their great scientific division, his curious side had won overall and he had said yes almost without thinking.

The first person to meet him was a tall young woman with wavy blonde hair. She reminded him Sharon Carter a little, to be honest. The light skin contrasted with the darker blond of the roots of her hair and her eyebrows, with cheekbones decorated with some freckles and two small moles that might have made the face of any other person ugly but that in her case gave her an adorable childish touch, one standing on the bridge between the arches of the eyes and a small and upturned nose, and the other on the left of the jaw, near the corner of her thin pink lips. She was dressed in a black cotton turtleneck, dark jeans, tall black boots, and a white lab coat.

"Uhm… Excuse me, miss? I was told that the laboratory was here, I suppose so because you are wearing gloves and a lad coat but I could also be wrong...".

The woman chuckled, extending her right hand, which Bruce took without hesitation to introduce himself, but not before he dropped a couple of books that he had propped against his chest.

"It's a pleasure, Doctor Banner," the agent said, her blue-gray eyes smiling. “Agent Bobbi Morse, currently working as a scientist. Your work about the possible activation of the mutant gene when subjected to high levels of stress, such as gamma radiation or torture, was fascinating to me.”

Bruce blinked a few times, finally releasing Bobbi's hand and picking up his books.

"Oh thanks. I, mhm- are you a chemist? ”

"Biologist," Bobbi corrected with a proud smile. "Specialized in Molecular Biology".

"Interesting," a smile spread across Bruce's face at the possibilities of having contact with someone with those abilities in such a laboratory, or even in one of the Avengers Complex. “And, oh, you can call me Bruce. I prefer it to- you know. The other guy."

"Hulk?" Bobbi asked and Bruce made a resignation gesture. Bobbi shook her head. "Don't be ashamed, we are S.H.I.E.L.D. Code names are our daily bread over here. You know, Barton as Hawkeye, Carter as Agent 13. Mine is Mockingbird. Nice to meet you, Hulk”.

A smile appeared on Bruce's lips, who raised both eyebrows. Bobbi laughed.

"Let it be."

Leaving the books on the nearest table, Bobbi took him through the laboratory, showing him the different works that were being carried out, including...

"What is this?" Bruce asked looking at the photos that swarmed on the panels in front of him.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. has been chasing all possible HYDRA connections for a few months, including possible disappearances and killings for which they could be responsible,” Agent Morse seemed to hesitate a moment before continuing. "We are also looking for potential sleeper agents like the Winter Soldier."

"We don't believe it," Morse replied, approaching one of the panels and typing a couple of things on the computer before touching the screen to increase the size of one of the photographs. A man with dark skin, eyes and hair combed back was watching him impassively from the screen. "We know it. This is Sunil Bakshi. He was responsible of the department in charge of brainwashing those who didn’t want to work for HYDRA or who resisted, under the command of Daniel Whitehall”.

Bruce, who had stood to the side with his arms crossed, raised one, moving his forefinger eloquently and glancing at Bobbi.

“That name sounds familiar to me. He worked with Red Skull back in World War II. Steve knew him. But he should be...".

"Dead?" the blonde asked. "Well, now he is, just like Bakshi."

Bruce sighed.

"I shouldn't be surprised at this point."

"While still in custody, Bakshi slipped. He mentioned a few cases,” Bobbi ran her fingers across the screen and a few headlines were arranged. "They go from 2004 to 2007, and from 2010 to 2013. And following the MO, we have related these cases to... all… of these", with one last click, the screen filled with overlapping headlines, all at the same time, varying so just the day and the location. There must have been a couple of hundred.

"And do you think those other sleeping agents were responsible?"

Mockingbird shook her head.

“We believe that only one was responsible. The MO it's way too similar. "

"What else do you have?" Bruce inquired, his mind running through all the possible scenarios. Could it be that Bucky was responsible for some of the atrocities exposed there? The MO had escalated in time, become far more violent in such a way that in the second wave no bodies were even found or the remains found were impossible to recognize.

"No biological tests, fingerprints, nothing..." Bobbi bit her lip. "We only have two partial descriptions, one from 2006 and the other from 2013." With a wave of hand, both testimonies appeared on the screen. They were only general data, but one thing could be extrapolated from them.

"It was a girl," Bruce whispered with a choked voice. Complexion, hair color, height and the few features that the two witnesses had discerned had allowed to mount a sketch of a robot portrait that made possible to guess that it was most likely the same person. Both portraits had been drawn by the same S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and the comparison using software designed by Fitz showed a pattern that it was almost impossible to attribute to different individuals.

"An extremely dangerous and lethal girl who will now be an adult," Bobbi confirmed. "And we don't know where she may be."

"I don't know if you've realized," you commented between gasping breaths, "but you could go faster." Steve chuckled seeing how you dropped onto the grass, sweating.

"I'm not here to train," he reminded you, ruffling your hair (which earned him a couple of slaps) and sitting next to you. "I came to accompany you".

You snorted, looking at him incredulously. "So, we talk a few times and you already have the right to appear where I told you that I was going to run? Sounds a little obsessive. "

Steve grimaced, trying to slap you back with no luck.

"It hasn't been a couple of times, it's been six-"

"And counting the times makes you seem less harassing, of course," you said with a nod. This time you couldn't escape the slap on the leg or the shoulder push he gave you, making you laugh even more.

After your first two cordial encounters, the bar and the walk to the police station, you had called him a week after the latter to talk to him for a while. You imagined that talking to someone outside of your normal environment could be good, and the last time you had spoken to the Captain - no, Steve - it had been surprisingly enjoyable, so why not? That had been followed by another call from him, another walk from the Music Academy - this time to the street where Gwen's house was, who thank God wasn’t home yet, because you would have never heard the end of it- and again him calling, a call in which you mentioned you were going to run later. You had mentioned Astoria Park briefly and what you least expected was that he would appear there with a shirt at least two sizes less than what he needed -not that you were interested, but it was impossible not to look- and sports pants, a cap and a dazzling smile.

You had been especially surprised about the fact of him knowing the area you could be in, because Astoria Park wasn’t exactly a small park, but there he admitted he had asked one of Tony's AIs to triangulate the position of your mobile in order to surprise you - something that, according to him, for unknown reasons, they had only been able to do in an approximate way. At that you had to bite your lip to prevent a smile from escaping you: it was one of the benefits of having contacts in the FBI. Knowing Steve's intentions weren't bad, you couldn't get mad at him (although a part of you wanted, and partly you were frustrated, not being able to do it; it was something very similar to what happened to you with Gwen and that made you annoyed as hell), but that didn't mean you couldn't use it as an excuse to mess with him, right?

Although you were both laughing, he seemed to hesitate for a moment.

"Steve?" You called him, tilting your head to see his face, and he returned your gaze after moistening his lips. His celurean eyes gleamed with their own light, covered by the shadow of his long lashes. Ugh.That eyes should be illegal.

"Did- did it bother you? Because if it did, I’m sorry and I will not do it again, but- ”

Your laughter interrupted his talking and he looked at you puzzled for a moment before a shaky smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he saw you let out that laugh, so… free.

"Steve, please," you rolled your eyes, still in the grass, propping yourself up on your elbows and glaring at him. "No offense, but as much as you are a superhero I would have kicked your ass without hesitation if I had felt offended or threatened." Steve snorted, but you continued your spiel. “And then I would have called Olivia to pick up your beaten ass from some nearby alley. So no, you haven't bothered me”, you finished smiling radiantly. The young soldier shook his head, amused, when he felt something warm brush his hand. Seeing your hand so close to his, almost caressing it, his heart skipped a beat. You smiled more sweetly, tenderly, as if you had heard the treacherous reaction of his own body, and spoke in a lower voice. "Also, I enjoy talking to you."

You are much more than I thought , you added in your mind, without having much idea of how to say that out loud without causing a misunderstanding. If certain people could see you now, they would turn in their own graves.

Those thoughts disappeared from your head when Steve briefly put his much larger, calloused hand on top of yours, squeezing it.

"Me too," he replied. And you both stared at each other for a couple of minutes in silence, enjoying the company of a friend.

But like everything good, it didn't last forever. The spell was broken when Steve's cell phone started ringing and as he took it out you saw the Avengers logo on the screen, which reminded you of who you were with, what he was for the world and who you worked with, even if they were now on their account and risk -S.H.I.E.L.D.

"Excuse me," Steve said, getting up from his spot next to you phone in hand.

"No problem," you replied, moving your hand as if to play the matter down. He took a couple more steps away before answering.

"Rogers".

Not wanting to spy on him, especially knowing that if it was something related to HYDRA you would soon receive the news from one of your teammates, JJ or Olivia, your mind traveled to the new team of Avengers that had been formed. To the original, composed by Tony Stark, aka Iron Man; Steve Rogers, Captain America; Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow; Clint Barton, Hawkeye; Thor Odinson; and Doctor Bruce Banner and his alter ego, Hulk, had grown due to another set of recruits, christened by the press as “New Avengers”: Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, and her twin brother Pietro Maximoff, Quicksilver; the android Vision, more human than many people you knew; and Sam Wilson, Falcon. This was how they had introduced themselves to the world and how the world would know them. You were unable to understand the Avengers' need for everyone to know their faces and names, even though you assumed that when you had nothing to lose that kind of things didn't matter.

"Hey," you looked at your interlocutor, who had a hand at his nape, rubbing it nervously, as if he was going to say something uncomfortable.

"Spit it out, it can't be that bad," you commented and he chuckled, dropping his arm.

"It was Natasha. I have to go". Ignoring the puncture in the stomach, which you didn't know what to attribute it anyway, you nodded.

"Has anyone entered the new Avengers complex?" Steve raised his eyebrows, giving you a strange look. It was your turn to lift eyebrows. "Wait, seriously?"

Steve snorted.

“Some guy that looked like an… ant, for what  it seems,, apparently. And he has beaten Sam... who, by the way, had asked not to tell anyone," he added the last part in a low voice.

"My lips are sealed," you replied, gesturing to close a zipper over your mouth, close a padlock, and throw away the key. At least until I find an excuse to tell the rest. A few laughs wouldn’t hurt anyone, right?

"Good to know," the blond conceded. “I also… would like you to know that I will be… away. On a mission. "

"Oh." You stirred uncomfortably. It wasn't that it particularly affected you, in fact not having the Avengers in the city and its surroundings would be a nice break for you and your guys, but that meant not talking to Steve for who knows how much. And that... you were going to miss it.

"Yeah, I know," Steve said as if he could read your mind. "You are my only friend outside the team or S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Friend is a bit of a strong term," you commented, and Steve gave you a half-amused, half-indignant look.

"I'll be gone for two weeks. Maybe three. I'd like to tell you more, but it's… ”

"Confidential?" Steve nodded, You smiled in response. "I get it".

Shaking off your pants, you stood up and walked up to him.

"I only ask you one thing. Be careful ”, you stood on your tiptoes and gave him a little kiss on the cheek, something you only used to do with Peter, Quentin, and maybe Rossi, Barba or Carissi from time to time. Not wanting to think about why you had done it, you started jogging towards the park stairs that gave onto the street, waving the soldier goodbye and not being able to avoid smiling when you saw how Steve kept a hand on his cheek, as if he wanted to retain the ghost of the kiss.