INFERNO │ Marvel

5 - The End of Our People

"Thor didn't say where he was going for answers?" Tony asked his sister. Both of them were outside of Clint's farmhouse chopping wood with Steve. She shook her head.

"Well, sometimes our teammates don't tell us things," Steve said and looked to Clint on his doorstep. "I was kind of hoping Thor would be the exception."

"Give him time," Amelia sighed. She struck the axe down into the wood. "You don't know what the Maximoff kid showed him."

"And you do?" Steve questioned. Amelia threw her log into Tony's small pile.

"Vaguely," she answered. "I think he saw the same as me, just different circumstances. So I can't blame him for needing to get away from all of us."

The two men stopped their chopping to look at her. She threw another log down into the pile.

"I didn't mean it like that," she explained with a grimace. "The end of our people. That's all I know. That's all I saw."

"Ames-"

"I don't want to talk about it anymore," she interrupted. Steve scoffed.

"Earth's mightiest heroes," he mocked. "Pulled us apart like cotton candy."

"Seems like you walked away all right," Tony observed.

"Is that a problem?"

"I don't trust a guy without a dark side," he commented and brought his axe down on a log harshly. "Call me old-fashioned."

"Well, let's just say you haven't seen it yet."

"You know Ultron is trying to tear us apart, right?" Tony pointed out.

"Well, I guess you'd know. Whether you'd tell us is a bit of a question."

"Banner and I were doing research!"

Amelia felt like she wasn't there anymore, so silently she slipped off. She wandered around the farm for a while until finally sneaking into the barn, hoping to have some privacy. What she didn't expect was Nick Fury to be watching her from the shadows.

"Miss Stark," he called out. She whirled around, spotting the man sitting on a hay bale in the corner. He stood from his spot. "It's good to see you again."

Amelia ignited her whole body and materialised behind the man.

"You should know by now that I don't like people sneaking up on me, Nick," she said. It was his turn to whirl around and face her.

"Neither do I," he retorted. "And I see you've learned some new tricks."

"Yeah, no doubt I'm even more destructive now," she sighed. "You tried to warn me about that once."

"And then you proved me wrong."

"Did I?" she questioned. "Why are you here, Nick?"

"I was actually here to see your brother," he explained. Perfectly on cue, Tony entered the barn.

"Hello, Deere," he greeted the tractor, not noticing the two other people in the room. "Tell me everything. What ails you?"

"Do me a favour," Nick called out. Tony stopped what he was doing and turned to the man with a sarcastic smile. "Try not to bring it to life."

"For the record, I didn't know he was here," Amelia said.

"Why, Ms Barton, you little minx," Tony whispered. "I get it. Maria Hill called you, right? Was she ever not working for you?"

"Artificial intelligence. You never even hesitated."

"Look, it's been a really long day, like Eugene O'Neill long," Tony groaned. "So how's about we skip to the part where you're useful."