Superheroes | The Avengers [1]

THIRTEEN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"It wasn't your fault"

      MELISSA, STEVE AND TONY SAT AROUND the round table, each of them still processing Agent Coulson's death. Melissa's fingers twitched slightly under the table, resting on her legs that were crossed over eachother. The anger she felt towards Loki or even at the mention if his name was unbelievable, she had the urge to kill him on sight, but she couldn't. She didn't kill, no matter how bad of a criminal she fought.

She had changed into a loose black top along with leggings, having her black rimmed glasses sit in front of her crystal blue eyes, needing to escape her suit at least for a few minutes, possibly an hour. She mourned for Phil but, her mind didn't leave Reyna.

Melissa wondered what her friend was going to awake as, whether it be the version of her that was being controlled by Loki or the loving and kind version of her that Melissa grew to adore.

The blonde exhaled slowly, gliding one of her hands down her hair before resting it in front of her mouth. Her lips were parted slightly and her crystal eyes stared off in the distance, not focusing on anything in particular.

"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket," Fury started, his hands shuffling through a small pile of Captain America trading cards. Maria, who was standing slightly behind the director, looked up slightly at his words. "I guess he never did get you to sign them."

Melissa watched as the cards spread out across the glass table as Nick threw them towards Steve. She hesitantly looked over to see the Captain reaching out and taking one gently into his grasps. The corner was covered in scarlet blood making Melissa's frown deepen.

"We're dead in the air up here... Our communications, the location of the Cube... Banner, Thor... " Nick trailed off, thinking of the two recruits who suddenly disappeared from the carrier. "I got nothing for you... I lost my one good eye... Maybe I had that coming."

Melissa shifted her gaze to the floor under her crossed legs, moving her hand to rest on her left knee. Scratches were spread out across it but it was the least of her worries.

"Yes... We were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract," Nick went on to explain, slowly making his way around the table, passing Melissa who, refused to look up. "I never put all my chips on that number, though, because I was playing something even riskier," he paused at the head of the table, resting his hands on one of the black chairs. Melissa finally looked up to see her old friend's eye staring to the side as he tried to form a sentence very wisely to explain why they were there.

"There was an idea, Stark knows this," Fury began, beginning to move around the table again. "Called the Avengers Initiative... The idea, was to bring together a group of remarkable people, to see if they could become something more... To see if they could work together, when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could."