Into the Fray {Marvel} ||4||

1. Turkey

I never thought I'd say it, but, I missed my apartment in New York. Why?

Tony Stark.

Oh, no, he wasn't a pompous ass of a host when it came to his tower. Oh, no. It was his endless teasing still to this day about my love life. You got to love when one of your Avenger friends constantly acted like the sibling you never had.

"You know, you'd think this would roll off me by now," I told Tony airily as we waited in a room of the tower. "I guess there's not enough desensitization going on."

"Hey, you and the old man have had plenty of chances to run back to wherever you were nesting before," said Tony.

"'Nesting'? Wrong Avenger, wrong joke, Tony. Besides, you know why we moved." I tried to not think about it.

He rolled his eyes. "I never realized being fashionably late was a S.H.I.E.L.D. thing."

I cringed. It still sunk in, that S.H.I.E.L.D. was no longer S.H.I.E.L.D. All thanks to HYDRA, an enemy that had gone underground since the fall of the Red Skull in the 1940s. Oh, you could bet my ass I dug up on all things HYDRA once Steve and I made it to the tower. I wanted every piece of dirt on the organization.

They were the lowest scum I had yet to face so far in my lifetime.

Maybe this is what the meeting is about. We'd been reached out to by Maria Hill, a former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. There were no details given, just a date and location, which was the Avengers Tower. To prove it was no longer Stark Tower, an "A" replaced where "Stark" once was on it.

Bruce Banner was already in the Avenger Tower, having come around more often lately. The first time I'd seen him since our last Avenger assemble (which really hadn't included him, or Thor, but had included a bunch of malfunctioning super-powered people with pirated power via my bloodstream), he'd done the friendly thing of asking the usual questions. It'd been hard, to talk to him.

Truthfully, aside from Natasha, Tony, Steve, Todd, the former Winter Soldier (aka Steve's not-dead-best-friend James Barnes), and Sam Wilson, no one else knew about my brief time in HYDRA's service.

"I don't see any reason why most would be late. Steve's in another room, and didn't Hill tell you she was bringing Tasha and Clint along?" I asked Tony.

As if on cue, the familiar roar of the quinjet's engines could be heard. Exchanging a look, Tony and I set out onto the landing platform, the wind tousling our clothes and hair.

The engines settled down, and the ramp lowered. Maria Hill, with Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton in tow, exited. I was a little crestfallen, because I had been so sure that Todd would have come along. He was practically a part of the inner circle.

The perks of knowing an Avenger.

"Good thing our lives didn't depend on your punctuality," said Tony. "Otherwise, we would've been dead."

I snorted. "Your humor is off point today, way off point." I nodded towards Tasha and Clint. "Nice to see you two again."

"We're still waiting on a few more people," Maria Hill said.

"Who else do we need to wait for?" I did the mental math. I didn't think Thor could make it to Earth anytime soon. He hadn't shown up, nor had he said anything about the Bifrost finally being repaired after all this time.

"Well, me, for one," came a familiar voice. He descended down the ramp, giving me that traditional crooked smile. My mood brightened at seeing Todd Brealey. "You and me, we're a package deal."