∆ {1⁷} {FOREIGN CONCEPTS} ∆

AT ONE POINT in her long history of S.H.I.E.L.D missions, Roxi had gone on one that took her to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Unusually, she'd gone with a small team, in case she needed backup; to take down a person on the Index. She'd ended up falling a ten-foot drop onto the top of a metal shipping container, and when she woke up, all she could feel was an aching pain that gnawed at her muscles and nestled itself deep into her bones.

When Roxi woke up after her encounter with Loki, she felt the same way, but with more of a pain in her ribs and head than anywhere else. She realised that she had failed at keeping Loki at bay and tightened her hands into fists, grabbing the material beneath her tightly. It was then that she noticed that she was lying on a bed. She peeled her eyes open slowly, squinting at first to adjust to a harsh white light above her. When it eventually stopped blinding her, she opened her eyes fully and glanced around the room she was in. The medical ward. Again. She sat up, her hand instantly going to the pocket of the leather jacket she still hadn't taken off, letting out a light breath of relief once her fingers grazed the key-ring she'd left there.  She took it out and admired it for a moment. She admired the way that even though it was worn, it was still special to her, and that some things never lose their meaning, no matter what they've been through. She supposed that could apply to a person as well. It just had to be the right kind of person, and that wasn't her. She tucked it back into her pocket quickly when she heard the door to her small room open, seeing Fury walk in.

"You do seem to have a remarkable talent for getting injured, Agent Ryder," he announced. She smiled slightly and then remembered why she was in the medical ward and it turned into a frown.

"I didn't stop Loki. I'm sor-" She began, before he cut her off.

"Okay, let me stop you there. First of all, you delayed Loki long enough for us to deal with the Hulk, and second of all, nobody was expecting you to hold off a god, so give yourself some credit." A sudden thought struck Roxi, causing her frown to deepen, not lift. When she woke up on the helicarrier on the way back from Rio, Phil had been right at her side, checking to see if she felt okay, and he had told her that he hadn't left her side except when he had to. So where was he?

"Where's Phil?" Fury  sighed slightly and gave her an almost pitying look - he knew better to outright show that he pitied her- and Roxi immediately knew something was wrong, and she had a pretty strong guess what.

"He didn't make it," she said quietly to herself, and though she tried to keep emotion from her voice, she found it quivering ever so slightly as she uttered the four words. She have tried to look like it hadn't hit her hard, but in reality, it had. It had hit her like a sledgehammer, and it was sending waves of emotion through her body, making her hands shake, which were hidden by the thin covers of the hospital bed, and sending her thoughts into a jumbled mess, but she managed to think straight enough to remind herself to be professional. Fury gave her a few moments to get over the overwhelming tide of emotion that coursed through her, and watched as she slowly adjusted to it. He knew she hadn't dealt with it, but simply pushed it aside for her to work out later, and he knew it wasn't good for her, but he didn't try and stop her. 

When Roxi had successfully stored her emotion for the moment, she noticed that something felt foreign in her body. At first she thought it was grief - she hadn't got attached to many people over the years, and none of them had died - until now. She always felt a pang whenever she pulled the trigger, but the grief she felt was a hundred times worse. Except she ahd pushed that away - for the moment - so it couldn't be that. She focused on the feeling. It was strange. It was warm and cold at the same time, and felt solid but also as though if she tried to move through it, it would swirl out of the way like mist. She couldn't describe the feeling as anything other than alien. She looked up at Fury, again pushing all thoughts of the strange new feeling aside as she got back on topic.

"And Agent Barton?" She inquired as she remembered the cause of the attack. She then reprimanded herself. No, this wasn't Clint's fault, it was Loki's. It's Loki's fault Phil's dead. It's Loki's fault I feel like this. It's Loki's fault that this was happening at all. Loki's fault. 

"He's recovering next door. Agent Romanoff's with him at the moment, but I'm sure you can go in a little bit." She nodded, and he left the room, and she sat there for a few seconds, before swinging her legs out from under the covers, causing goosebumps to rise over her skin as her arms were exposed to the cool blast of the air conditioning. She was still in mostly the same clothes, which surprised her, but she reminded herself that she'd been given new ones the day before when she'd been in the medical ward. Her hand slipped again to the small key-ring in the pocket of the leather jacket, before she let go of it and stood up, deciding that she would drop in on Clint to see how he was doing. She walked out of the room, which, now that she looked in from outside, was a lot smaller than she'd thought. She didn't particularly have a problem without small spaces, but it meant she hadn't been paying full attention, which she needed to do if she was going to stay safe. She turned briskly and made her way past a few rooms, all of which she peered into on the way past, until she found the one that had Clint and Natasha in it. 

She knocked just as she saw Natasha stand up, causing the redhead to turn to her and walk over. Roxi subtly noticed that in the strange lighting of the room, the ex-assassin looked quite pretty. She scowled at herself with that thought, which was the second foreign concept of the day. Natasha opened the door and Roxi stepped in, just as Clint got hold of a cup of water, saying

"He's gonna make his play soon though, today," obviously carrying on from a conversation she'd interrupted. He looked up as soon as he noticed another person in the room.

"Agent Ryder," he acknowledged in slight surprise.

"Agent Barton, it's been a while," she returned, holding out her hand and smirking slightly as her mind drifted back to London. It hadn't been their last mission, but it had been the most memorable by far. He seemed to be thinking along the same lines as she was, because when he took her hand in a firm shake, there was a knowing gleam in his tired eyes. Natasha interrupted their little reunion when she spun around from where she had been gazing through the glass window in the door, insisting urgently

"We've gotta stop him," her eyes falling on Roxi and Clint's hands, which had only just released from the handshake. He picked up his cup of water again and had another sip, hoping to replenish the water in his body after sweating most of it out fighting Loki's mind control.

"Yeah? Who's we?" He asked, making a very good point. The supposed 'Avengers' were hardly a team, and Roxi thought back to just before the explosion when she'd heard raised voices from the lab. 

"I don't know. Whoever's left." Natasha responded swiftly, prompting Roxi to think through the events. Phil was gone, obviously Clint, Natasha and herself were still there to think, but who else? How had they stopped the Hulk's rampage? And what had happened to Stark and Rogers? 

"Well, if I put an arrow through Loki's eye socket, I'd feel better, I suppose," he reasoned, causing Roxi to cut in with her own comment.

"As long as i get to shoot that smug grin off his face, I'm with you," she agreed, drawing their eyes back to her. Natasha gave her no indication of surprise, but a small amount of shock swirled in her forest green eyes. Clint scoffed slightly, though whether it was at his own comment or her's, Roxi wasn't sure. Natasha sat down on the bed beside him.

"Now you sound like you," she told him, probably bouncing up and down with happiness on the inside, but outside, she was once again her perfect mask of professional coolness.

"But you don't," Clint shot back, and Roxi suddenly felt very awkward, "and neither do you," he continued, looking at her.

"You're a spy, not a soldier," he said to Natasha, before turning his gaze back to Roxi, "and you work in pairs or alone, not in a team."

"Now you want to wade into a war, and you want to fight on a big team mission with people you don't know. Why? What did Loki do to you." The last sentence made Roxi suddenly remember about that strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. She'd attributed it to the pain to ease her consciousness enough for her to push it to the side, but now that the pain was fading, and it was still there, it seemed more and more likely that it had something to do with fighting Loki. Natasha was the first to answer.

"He didn't, I just.." she turned her gaze to the floor, as if she didn't want to finish her sentence, which Roxi respected, but Clint pressed on. She guessed that was what best friends did.

"Natasha," he said so quietly that she barely caught it. It took her a moment longer to answer.

"I've been compromised," she paused.

"I've got red in my ledger; I'd like to wipe it out." She explained a sentiment that Roxi could fully empathise with. The realisation that she had killed just as many people, if not more, as a former Red-Room, HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D trained assassin made another unfamiliar emotion creep into Roxi's body. But this time, ti wasn't grief, or that strange, cloud-like feeling. It was shame. After a few moments of silence, Clint turned to Roxi, who forced herself to relax as soon as his eyes fell on her. She was sure Natasha had seen, but for the moment, that didn't matter. 

"And you?" He asked. She'd been hoping to escape a response, but it seemed as though Clint would be insisting.

"Working in a team could save my life one day. Thought I'd try it out, get to know a few people, have a bit of a different mission," she half-lied, looking for an easy way out. He seemed to know she was lying, which she had been expecting, but he nodded anyway, deciding not to press this time. As they stayed there in silence for a few moments, Roxi wondered what she was actually doing here. She hadn't known that it would be a team mission, but now that she thought about, she probably would've come anyway. She needed to be around people every now and then, because she was scared. She was scared that if she was left alone for too long, she would lose her way, and that something else would take over. She'd always felt not entirely connected from the world, as if she was hiding from it because it didn't want to see who she was. She felt like the world shun her as if she was the scum of the earth. That was because she thought she was. She killed people for a living simply because she was told to. On the other hand, she reasoned, she had these skills, wasn't it better to use them for a good cause. And there was the project she'd been working on a while. The door opened a moment later, distracting Roxi from her swirling void of thoughts. It was Cap.

"Time to go," he ordered, looking completely ready for a fight, and she faintly wondered what he had been doing after the attack to help fight it off.

"Go where?" Natasha asked, ever the practical thinker.

"I'll tell you on the way. Can you fly one of those jets?" He asked. Roxi guessed that they were going to stop Loki, although she had no idea where it was, she hoped it was a less civilised area. The less fatalities and injuries, the better. Clint emerged from where he'd gone into the small to get a towel and put his glass down. 

"I can," he told Steve, drying his sweating hands on the towel. Steve looked towards Natasha to check whether he was okay to go on the mission and fully recovered from the mind-control. She nodded in affirmation, and the ex-soldier looked to Roxi.

"Good to see you've recovered, Agent Ryder," he greeted her briefly, before posing a question to the room at large.

"You got a suit?" He asked.

"Yeah," Clint responded quietly, just as Roxi said

"Kinda," wondering where he was going with this.

"Then suit up," He ordered, walking out of the room. She wondered faintly whether it was his catchphrase or something. Roxi made her way out, heading back to her room, hoping to find her tactical suit, which she eventually did, though it was sprawled at the bottom of the wardrobe. She hadn't really had time to settle in properly since she arrived. She slipped it on, glad that it wasn't quite as tight-fitting as Natasha's, before slipping her pair of (now reloaded) Glock 26s into their thigh holsters. Now, she decided, would be a good time to go and get her project from where she'd hidden it. 

She made her way back down to the training room in a light jog, aware that they were short on time. She went straight past the array of guns and even the silver quarterstaff she'd used to fight Loki's men, which she guessed had been replaced when she had been taken to the medical ward. She had found a secret compartment a few years back when she had been exploring and had used it to store her prototype project in. She was fully aware that Fury knew about it; there was nothing that went on in the helicarrier that he didn't know about. Well, almost nothing. She was sure there were some things that he definitely didn't want to know about. She found the tiny switch embedded in the wall, which was the same shade as the metal to make it harder to see, and flicked it. There was a slight click as a small black crack became visible in the metal wall a few centimetres away, which she walked over to. She pushed her fingers into the small gap and pulled that part of the wall sideways, like a sliding door. She pulled out what was inside and admired it for a moment before dragging the 'door' shut again and flicking the small switch to close it fully.

In her hand lay a black metal cylinder, a few inches thick and about double length as long. It had a strange, curving shape to it, like a handle. There was a small button in the middle of it, which Roxi pressed after ensuring that it was far enough away from her body that she wouldn't get hurt. Two thinner, longer pieces of metal shot out from the handle, becoming thinner in levels  until it reached the last one, which was about an inch thick. She smiled at her self-designed quarterstaff, twirling it around a few times to get used to its balanced weight. It was slightly heavier than the training one, to allow a little more power on the swing. There was another button on the other side, which before she pressed, Roxi made herself calm the wave of slight excitement and expectation soaring through her. After a few moments, she pressed it. Two small, sharp, pointed blades sprung out from either end, allowing a more lethal version of the quarterstaff should she be in a situation that required it. She pressed both buttons again, reverting the weapon back to its small, smooth cylinder, which she attached to her belt. 

Once she was completely satisfied, she then made her way to the corridor that lead to flight bay 6. She caught up with Natasha, Steve and Clint relatively quickly and joined them in the formation as they marched forward, her brown her tied back, and her icy blue eyes steeled for battle. They finally made their way into the room and onto one of the open quinjets that seemed to be just waiting there for them to snatch it up and make their way to the fight. A mechanic stood in front of them, trying to stop them from taking the jet.

"Hey, you guys aren't authorised to be in here," he protested. Steve gave him a look, saying

"Son, just don't." The mechanic didn't seem to have a response and simply allowed them to push past, into the cockpit of the quinjet. Clint took off and they began flying. To where? Roxi didn't know, and she once again hoped that it wouldn't be anywhere with too many civilians. But her prayers wouldn't be answered, because they were going to New York. 

{A/N:} So hi again. I'm sorry about this chapter, I don't think it's as good, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway. What did Loki do to her? What do you think? Comment and let me know. So next chapter, the Battle of NY starts :). Please forgive me if it's terrible, I'm really bad at fight scenes, so I hope you enjoy that too. I know I'm looking forward too it. I may be putting a little plot twist in there ;). See you next time,

JabberJay11

3095 Words

Written: 16 / 07 / 2020

Published: 18 / 07 / 2020