The Seventh Avenger

Chapter 56: Called In

Eight Months Later

Despite the fact that there were many people roaming the halls around me, the building was almost peacefully quiet. While most of the people around me were silent, those who did choose to speak to one another only did so in hushed whispers, not wanting to disturb the comfortable silence that had descended over the room. Instead, most of them stared at the many paintings that adorned the walls, each unique in vibrant colours, shapes and images, placed in golden frames that looked as if they were polished every day so that they gleamed underneath the sunlight streaming through the skylight above. Others also stared at the statues, each of them shaped to perfection and were so detailed in their curves and edges, they had most people gazing at them in awe.

I myself had never truly been into art, though that didn't mean that I didn't admire the elegant work that surrounded me. I found myself standing in front of a certain painting of three girls dancing, their gowns swirling out in front of them. Appearing transfixed by the artwork in front of me, I fit in quite well with everyone else in the room, what with my quiet attitude and silent staring. It would be almost impossible for anyone around me to realise that I wasn't focusing on the paintings at all. That I was merely acting in disguise, to hide what it was that I was really looking for.

"C'est beau, oui?" (It's beautiful, yes?) Comes an elderly voice from somewhere beside me. When I turn towards it, I am greeted with the sight of an old man with a walking stick standing beside me, though he was looking at the painting in front of us.

Ignoring the hushed whispers in my ear demanding to know what it was that the man had said, I shoot the man a smile and turn my attention to the painting in front of us. "Oui, c'est certainment. Ils sont tous magnifiques," (Yes, that's for sure. They are all beautiful), I reply warmly, my accent almost perfect as I spoke.

"Oui," he replies kindly, before he turns to me, his greying eyes locking with my blue ones. "Mais les histoires qui façconnet les peintures ne sont pas toujours aussi belle," (Yes, but the stories that shape the paintings are not always so beautiful)he adds, his tone having an underlying grave tone to it as he speaks. "Mais même si elles sont sombres, les histoires façonnent les peintures. Ce sont les histoires qui nous façonnent,"(But even if they are dark, the stories still shape the paintings. It's the stories that shape us) he finishes. Before I can say anything in response, he abruptly turns around and hurries off, his exit almost quicker than his unexpected and curious arrival.

"For those of us who don't speak French, I ask, what the hell did he say?" Ava Quill exclaims in the earpiece placed in my ear, which was hidden by my blonde, loose curls. It had been her voice that I had heard demanding me to translate what the man had said when he had first started talking. Knowing perfectly well that doing so would only blow my cover, I had ignored her, much to the Techie's annoyance.

Ava and I had been friends almost since the moment that we met one another at the SHIELD academy. And while the strawberry blonde haired woman with the startling green eyes had such a bubbly, extroverted and confident attitude and was a few years older than me, we had hit it off right away.

"Something about how the paintings are beautiful, the stories behind them not so, but in the end they shape us," I reply in a murmur, lowering my head slightly so that my blonde strands tickled and scratched lightly at my face, but effectively hid my mouth. I knew that I couldn't move my hair otherwise. Not only would the people that were passing by think that I was apparently talking to myself, but there was a chance that our target could notice and figure out that I was actually talking to five of my fellow S.H.I.E.L.D agents over a communication device, about finding them and taking them down.