｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆
𝐃𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆
CHAPTER FIVE— OWN OUR OWN

          Hope had only met Alexander Pierce two different times before and, despite how brief it was, the man gave off some creepy vibes. He stared at her with an expression she couldn't quite pick out and it made her want to snap his neck, though she refrained from giving in to her temptation.

As she and Steve stand in Pierce's office, the creepy vibes got even more intense. Hope forced herself not to tense up every single time she made eye contact with the man.

Steve noticed an old picture of Fury and Pierce, catching Pierce's attention from across the room.

"That photo was taken five years after Nick and I met. When I was at the State Department in Bogota. ELN rebels took the embassy, and security got me out, but the rebels took hostages. Nick was deputy chief for the SHIELD station there. And he comes to me with a plan. He wants to storm the building through the sewers. I said, 'No, we'll negotiate'. Turned out the ELN didn't negotiate, so they put out a kill order" Pierce made his way over to the two agents.

"They stormed the basement, and what did they find? They find it empty. Nick had ignored my direct order and carried out an unauthorized military operation on foreign soil. He saved the lives of a dozen political officers, including my daughter" They were sitting down now on the two black sofas he had in the office. Steve and Hope sat on one while Pierce sat on the other across from them.

"So you gave him a promotion" Steve finished for the man, not even bothering to add any sort of emotion to his voice. "I've never had any cause to regret it" Pierce studied the two's facial expressions, trying to get a read on them.

"Captain, why was Nick in your apartment last night? I'm assuming Agent Kenner was there because you were suspicious" Pierce looked at Hope for confirmation so she nodded. "I don't know" She was pretty impressed with Steve's partial lie. He had gotten better at lying since he joined SHIELD.

"You know it was bugged?" She took the liberty to answer it for Steve. "We did, sir. Director Fury told us this" Hope replied smoothly.

"Did he tell you he was the one who bugged it? Or that he tried to bug your apartment but the bug failed?" The two gave him a blank look, not wanting to buy into the bullshit he was about to start spewing. Steve didn't trust Fury completely but he trusted this guy even less.

"I want you two to see something" He hit a hidden button which brought up a screen with footage of some man named Batroc being interrogated.

"Who hired you, Batroc?" The SHIELD agent on-screen asked.

"Is that live?" Steve inquired. "Yeah, they picked him up last night in a not-so-safe house in Algiers" Hope wasn't buying it. She knew he wasn't the shooter, so what was Pierce showing them this for?

"It wasn't him. Assassination isn't Batroc's thing" Hope drawled, a hint of a southern/New Orleans accent peaking through her words.

"No, it's more complicated than that. Batroc was hired anonymously to attack the Lemurian Star and he was contacted by e-mail and paid by wire transfer. And then the money was run through seventeen fictitious accounts, the last one going to a holding company that was registered to a Jacob Veech" Alexander Pierce pulled out two of the same files and handed them to Hope and Steve.

"The name doesn't sound familiar. Is he a target of SHIELD's?" Pierce shook his head. "No, he isn't. Veech died six years ago. His last address was 14-35 Elmhurst Drive. When I first met Nick his mother lived at 14-37" Hope tensed at his accusation.

"Are you saying Fury hired the pirates? Why?" Steve had to be the one to speak, he knew that Hope could and would snap at the man despite his position in the agency.

"The prevailing theory was that the hijacking was a cover for the acquisition and sale of classified intelligence. The sale went sour and that led to Nick's death" She was obviously upset and couldn't believe that Pierce was accusing Fury of being a traitor, that he was the one who infiltrated SHIELD.

"No disrespect sir but if you knew Director Fury as well as you claim, you'd know that there's no way that he had done that" Hope's eyes narrowed at the man who was supposed to be a friend of Nick Fury's, daring him to say anything else.

"Why do you think we're talking, Agent Kenner?" Pierce looked at her with a hint of admiration before standing up and walking over to the giant window as he spoke. Hope and Steve got up from their seated position on the couch, both not knowing what the man was about to sit.

"See, I took a seat on the Council not because I wanted to but because Nick asked me to because we were both realists. We knew that despite all the diplomacy and the handshaking and the rhetoric, that to build a really better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down. And that makes enemies" He stopped looking out the window and turned to face the two agents who had approached his desk by then.

"Those people that call you dirty because you got the guts to stick your hands in the mud and try to build something better. And the idea that those people could be happy today, makes me really, really angry" Pierce hesitated before he continued to talk.

"Captain, Agent, you two were the last ones to see Nick alive. I don't think that's an accident that he got both of you there, and I don't think you two do either. So I'm gonna ask again, why was he there?" Steve and Hope both faced each other for a moment, different shades of blue eyes meeting as they decided non-verbally what to tell Pierce. They then faced him, deciding to tell part of the truth.

"He told us not to trust anyone, sir" Hope bit back the urge to snarl at her superior. "I wonder if that included him" Both Hope and Steve were hit full-force with the feeling that Alexander Pierce was certainly apart of whatever Nick Fury was trying to tell them in the apartment. The compromising of SHIELD went a lot further, a lot deeper than they realized.

There was a pause before Hope's Stark Phone started to ring even though she had put it in silent mode. The only person who would be able to change that was Tony Stark himself with his hacking skills.

"I'm sorry, I have to take this" Steve looked at her with a worried expression but didn't stop her from leaving the office.

Hope made her way to an empty office room, mumbling a quick privacy spell that would temporarily stop any of the bugs and recording systems in the room beside her phone until she left before she answered. It was a spell she had created but never used until now.

"Tony, hey" She greeted, keeping her voice low despite not necessarily needing to.

"What the fuck, kid! Sabrina the Teenage Witch called and said that Fury's dead!" Although Tony tried to hide his emotions quite often, Hope could tell that he was concerned. She also knew that he was referring to Lizzie with the nickname.

"Fury was killed by some assassin guy with a metal arm and was protected from my magic somehow" Hope sighed, running her fingers through her naturally curled hair that she hadn't attempted to tame.

"You should come back to New York, Bruce misses you. So does Jarvis, Dume-E, and U" The 'and me' part was left unsaid although they both knew what he meant.

"I will, soon. Fury told us that SHIELD was compromised before he died. I'm not sure by who but I think it goes a lot deeper than we thought. As in Alexander Pierce is too" Hope couldn't help but chew on her lip nervously. She knew that Tony was one of the few she could trust right now, he was suspicious of SHIELD from the start. But she didn't want to get him mixed up in this, not after what happened with the Mandarin.

"Tony, stay safe, okay? I don't know how far the supernatural goes into this issue. I'm gonna call my aunt Freya and come back to New York, probably with Lizzie and Steve too. We need to figure out who has infiltrated SHIELD, what organization would even be capable of doing....that?" She rambled on, pausing when she saw a bunch of SHIELD agents with guns from a window running towards an area.

"Kid?" Tony's voice shook her out of the shock.

"Uh...I'm gonna have to call you back" She ignored his protests on the other end of the phone, hanging up and looking out the window from the office to see the swarm of the agents in tactical gear.

"Captain America is a fugitive from SHIELD and is attempting to escape. All agents report to the main conference room".

Hope's blue eyes widened at the realization that Steve somehow figured out who was apart of the infiltration. If they were after Steve...they were gonna be after her soon enough.

She frantically looked around the office that she had shut herself in. She dug around until she found a piece of paper and a pen. She quickly started to scrawl the intended words on the paper, looking around to see an agent on the other side of the door see her.

"Iam ostium celes" The spell when had muttered was another one she created where it would temporarily keep the door locked until enough pressure was put on it that it would break. She had created the spell as a moody teenager whenever she wanted privacy.

She heard people trying to knock down the door, making her scribble down the words as quickly as she could. "Incendia" The note started to burn so she could continue with the spell that would send it to her intended target.

"Touve mon se kavo. Touve mon se kavo" She repeated Freya's spell that she taught her not too long after coming back from her five years rest.

The letter that had just been burning was now gone, disappeared. She sighed in relief before muttering a teleportation spell when she saw that the people on the other side of the door were applying enough pressure that the door would break.

Once they broke down that door, Hope was gone.