I don't know how long I was under the water, it didn't take long to wash my hair, but despite having no flames, my body was still hot. When I did dry myself, get re-dressed in my sweaty training clothes and step out of the shower cubicle, no one else was there. I didn't really mind, I just quickly dried my hair and tied it up in a ponytail before walking down the pebbled path back to the compound.

When the glass doors slid open, I saw that the whole kitchen and lounge room area was empty, which almost never happened. I blinked in confusion and hesitantly walked in, the absence of any sound instantly putting me on edge. My hands slowly drifted to the bracelets on my wrists and I continued to walk slowly into the kitchen. There was food on the bench half made, but no Pepper anywhere. I looked around for any sign of struggle, maybe if HYDRA had kidnapped them all or something, but nothing looked out of place. As I walked behind the kitchen, I heard voices murmuring from behind a glass wall, which had a door half ajar. I blinked before slowly creeping forward, the voices slowly becoming clearer.

"She's not the danger!" Tony's voice sounded like he was saying it through gritted teeth. "HYDRA is!" I immediately froze, my heart beginning to pound hard against my chest.

"HYDRA will not stop hunting us for her, its unsafe for all of us, including her. "I know you like to think of us as the world's mightiest heroes, but we can't do everything."

"So what do you suggest we do?" Demanded a different voice, Nat. "We can't just turn her in. You know what will happen when we do that."

"And we don't know what they will do with her if they get her back." Bruce pointed out. "Her genetics are... very complicated. It seems as though they were making her for a purpose."

"Like a Red Room assassin?" Asked Nat.

"More than that." Tony replied, his voice dark.

"So they want her back... to be worse than an assassin?" Steve said slowly. Silence filled the room and I felt my throat tighten as I tried to process everything they were saying.

"Do we actually know that though?" Clint's voice cut through the silence. "I mean, we could just be jumping ahead and assuming things."

"So what do you think she is?" Asked Thor.

"She could be a spy." Clint suggested. "She was clearly locked up for a reason. She's a danger, her fire is deadly."

"They locked her up because they are sick and twisted." Loki hissed, the sound of a chair scraping on the floor as if he was standing up.

"Or maybe it was just an elaborate lie that she has spun." Argued Clint, his chair also scraping along the floor. "Maybe she wanted to get captured, maybe this is HYDRA's way of getting into us from the inside, by having an assassin spy join us, only to turn on us."

There was a flash of green from beyond the frosted glass wall and several chairs scraped along the floor.

"Loki." Thor growled.

"She's not a spy." Loki's voice growled back, most likely to Clint. "I've seen her mind."

My throat closed up even more and my heart pounded hard. Loki had seen inside my head, even though he knew I didn't want him to.

"Well then what is she?" Clint demanded. "Cause I highly doubt anyone coming out of HYDRA is good."

"We're willing to give her a chance." Tony interrupted before Loki could say anything else. "We are willing to take that risk." There was silence throughout the room and I held my breath, not wanting them to hear me.

"I should probably go finish making lunch." Pepper said, breaking the silence and I immediately darted away from the room as I heard footsteps move towards the door. I looked around quickly and my eye fell on the staircase. I immediately ran up them just as the door to the frosted glass room opened. I quickly spun back around and pretended to be walking back down the stairs, my heart still pounding hard against my chest as I struggled to control my heavy breathing from the small sprint.

"Did you have a nice shower Emily?" Tony called out as I walked down the stairs and I looked at them all as they filed out of the frosted glass room, all of their eyes darting up to me. I plastered a small smile on my face and nodded, my eyes flicking across all of them.

"I'm preparing lunch." Pepper spoke up and I looked at her. "Do you mind helping?" I nodded and walked the rest of the way down the stairs, feeling all of their gazes on me, but I just ignored them. And just to make sure I wasn't projecting any of my thoughts, I thought especially about the wall in my head that Loki had talked about.

"I'm thinking of making sandwiches." Pepper said as I walked around to the kitchen bench. "I need to get some good food into you all after training, instead of the pizzas that Tony normally requests." She gave him a soft glare, but he wasn't even looking, he was deep in conversation with Steve, and I instinctively wondered if they were talking about me again.

Pepper immediately set me to work making all different kinds of salad sandwiches, but I wasn't really concentrating too much on them, I just went with whatever Pepper told me to put on them. I must have had a vacant look on my face because when we were all sitting down eating the sandwiches, Loki nudged me gently, causing me to look up at him sharply.

"You okay?" He whispered, and I swallowed my mouthful of food, nodding as I gave him a small smile. He paused before nodding back and looking back over at everyone else. I only ate two sandwiches, my stomach roiling with different emotions I couldn't even place. I was still trying to process everything that I had heard, mainly stuck on the fact that HYDRA had been creating me for a bigger purpose. I mean, I had thought about it before, but I honestly just thought HYDRA wanted to experiment, not actually create a weapon. I didn't want to be a weapon. I just wanted to be normal, like everyone else. I didn't want to be an assassin or spy or whatever HYDRA had created me for.

And then there was the fact that Loki had looked into my mind, it may not have been the biggest worry I had right now, but... there were lots of things in my head I didn't want anyone to see. A lot of weaknesses. If anyone knew them, I could easily be taken down. And I didn't know any of them well enough yet to trust them, they had been nice to me so far, but that didn't mean they had other intentions. And while I was slightly closer with Loki than any of the others, he had still said he was the God of Mischief, I wasn't going to trust that anytime soon.