Stowaway
Relief, Fear, anger for some reason? These were the feelings I felt as I sat crouched in that plane, listening to the voices outside.
"The sun's getting real low big guy" a voice called, a woman's. I heard a growl and the sound of something, maybe a tree or a boulder, being smashed. The growl turned into a roar that slowly diminished into the whimpering of a grown man. "Alright guys, Banner's secure, you got the scepter?"
The staff! That's what they were there for? Maybe... maybe I would be able to help them work it out and they wouldn't toss me out. Not immediately anyways. I worked to control my breathing and found a metal cabinet filled with cardboard boxes and crawled behind one of them.
That mysterious staff had come to them a while back, 3 years ago at least, and the institute had never been more guarded for the first few months. Eventually they assumed the Avengers either didn't care about it or couldn't find it. They must've just found it. After 10 long minutes, I heard more voices.
"Here banner, just wear these." A few seconds later, Tony Stark himself stepped into the plane, the armor he was wearing folding in on itself and leaving a small box. He walked over to the cabinet I was hiding in and I held my breath and hunched into a tighter position, the way I did when I wanted to hide away until a "training session" was over. In reality it was just me showing them my powers while they wrote notes on a clipboard and prodded me with a stick.
He opened the cabinet and put the box containing the suit on the top shelf. I exhaled a very small breath of relief as he closed it again.
I heard a few voices panic as someone, a few someone's actually, came into the plane, one coming in backwards while the other faced forwards, in between them was the man that confronted me in the forest, he was unconscious and part of his vest had been singed away where a faint blue mark burned against a patch of skin.
I knew what that mark was, it was from some kind of laser the guards had developed recently, I knew from watching them carry in the guards who'd accidentally been blasted by the lasers while testing, that the only way to fix the injury was to basically replicate DNA and 3D print it into his skin.
The other man who'd been backing into the plane was, it seemed obvious now, Steve Rogers. The only other guy there was Bruce banner, who'm I was more excited about than seeing him as the hulk, his research on Gamma radiation and everything else he did was incredible. Bruce sat down and put on a pair of headphones. Tony Stark walked into the plane with Thor, the staff clenched tightly in his hand, and closed the plane door.
Careful not to fall over, I got out of my position and crouched over nearer to the door to hear what they were saying better. I'd forgotten all about Thor temporarily and he was now pacing angrily around the plane with the staff. "Hey how about we take this before you stab someone with it." Tony looked up into Thor's eyes, he was short like I was, and took the staff out of the god of thunder's hand.
"Jarvis take auto pilot." Tony called over to the controls. "Of course" a robotic voice replied. "I'll take it back to the lab and look it over." Tony spun over in his chair to face Thor. "I don't believe you should." Thor replied in his deep voice. "You see that staff belongs in the treasure room of Asgard."
"I know, just let me look it over before you leave, Loki wasn't able to touch me with it so I want to know what I was doing right with this thing." He rapped his knuckles on his chest, where the sound of knocking on glass responded. "Oh alright." Thor muttered.
I took this as my chance. Slowly, I crawled out of the cabinet, I had finally found my voice again and I tried to keep my voice calm. "I... uh, I could help you with that..." everyone whirled around to face me. "Who are you?" Tony asked quickly. "Uh... Peyton." I replied. "Where the hell did you come from?"
"The institute" I replied quietly, almost whispered.
"What institute" The woman asked, who I know realized as Natasha Romanoff, also known as Black widow.
"The building you just left was an institute for people with special abilities like me."
"That's why there were other kids there with weird powers?" Steve asked. I nodded. "It's just me, my sister Wanda, and my brother Pietro. Ok well technically we are more adopted siblings, not actually blood related."
"How did you get here?" Bruce asked, he had taken off his headphones.
"I snuck on, you left the door open."
"What did you mean that you could help with the staff?" Tony asked, glancing over at it.
"I watched the Guards test on it. They only really figured out how to separate the stone from the rest of it."
The others looked at each other. Something told me that they wanted to send me back, so I spoke again. "Please don't send me back." I whimpered. "It's horrible there. I don't want to be tested on anymore."
This seemed to earn some sympathy from Bruce, and Natasha had a sudden look of... what was it? Fear? Recollection? A sad nostalgia? I couldn't quite place it.
"Did you have parents?" Steve asked.
Did I? I was always told my father had donated me for science, but nothing about my parents besides that.
"I don't know, I've been there since I was, at most, a month old."
"How old are you?" Thor asked incredulously.
"11" I replied, I was glad to have something that I knew for sure, other than the fact that I don't like my birth name; Nevaeh. It was too feminine, it was given to me by a man who abandoned me a few days after I was born, it's literally just "heaven" spelled backwards, and it definitely didn't align with my gender identity.
"Fine kid you can come back with us, we'll help you find your parents." Tony sighed.
"I don't want to meet them." I said flatly. "They gave me away for science. Why would I want to meet them, and they clearly don't want to meet me either."
"She's got a point." Bruce said, giving me a shy smile. I sat down on a wooden crate and looked at Hawkeye. "I know how to fix that." Natasha looked up at me, "really? How?"
"That's new technology, I watched them figure out a way to heal the wounds. I can help when we get back."
I just wanted to do anything that would stop them from wanting to return me back to that damn building. Selfish, I know, but these guys were pretty much doing my dream job, helping people. Maybe I could be apart of their team when I was older.