A/N: Here it is, guys. Part Three of my Avengers AU and the final installment of the Masters of Evil Saga. Enjoy!

Ghosts

Silent Impressions

Pirate guy said an hour, right? Peter thought back. Yep, an hour before they were supposed to leave for their first mission. First mission as Avengers. He could still hardly believe it. He had been dreaming of being an Avenger ever since they saved New York from that Loki guy. Now, he had his chance.

Maybe.

It seemed like it had been days since they first arrived. Weeks even. A month and some days tops. If this was this guy's idea of a resistance, sitting around all day, slowing going insane from boredom, then maybe he should have given Hill's offer more thought. Because, if this was all they were going to be doing, then it wasn't worth lying to his Aunt May.

He sighed and, for the twentieth time since arriving, checked his stock of web cartridges. All full, just like last time. He even had enough time to make more. As mind-numbingly boring as sitting around waiting was, Peter was happy to admit that the chemistry labs SHIELD and Dr. Richards had set up were pretty sweet. There was more than enough chemicals for him to make his standard webbing, and even enough for him to make some of his more specialized webbing.

It was the only thing keeping him from tearing his hair out. That, and messing with Hill. But, she was nowhere to be found, forcing him to find someone else to keep him entertained. He crawled along the metal walls of the facility that was in the middle of the another dimension. He made a concerted effort not to look out the window, lest his brain melt from the insane images the abyss that was the Negative Zone had to offer. That may or may not have been true, but he wasn't about to be the guy to take one for the team in the name of Science.

Speaking of science, "Hank! Did you see the way that super cute agent was looking at me?"

If Peter recalled correctly, the one who was reminiscent of a lot of girls he knew in school was Janet Van Dyne. Cute, smarter than she looked and not afraid to take what she wanted to have a good time. The guy she was talking to was Dr. Hank Pym, only of his idols. His work with shrinking and growing ants was groundbreaking in the opinion of him and his fellow arachnids. A tad eccentric and always overshadowed by big brains like Reed Richards and Tony Stark; kind of like him. Well, not quite even kind of.

"No, Janet, I was too busy paying attention," Hank replied dryly.

"To who? That boring guy with the eyepatch." She scoffed and waved him off dismissively. "Please, I'd rather watch paint dry… or listen to you drone on and on and bugs."

"Insects," he corrected. "Bug can describe either them or viruses, which I would not drone on and on about. I don't anyway, and I –"

"Blah, blah, blah. Oh my God, he was sooooo cute! His eyes, his cheekbones, I'm sure he has a killer bod. How long do you think it'll take before he's falling all over me?"

Peter stifled a snicker. She was exactly how the people on TV said she was. Not that he watched those shows, mind, his aunt did and insisted on telling him all about the dreadful women in Hollywood. Ms. Van Dyne was always at the fore of her complaints.

"Don't you have anything better to spend your time on than wondering about some person you don't even know?" The way he chastised her was not unlike a father scolding his daughter. Peter tilted his head slightly and watched her huff and put her hands on her hips.

"Is that a note of jealousy I hear, Hank Pym? Not my fault men fall over me and not you." She smirked.

Hank let out an exasperated sigh and bent down to check his microscope. "It wasn't jealousy and trust me, I'm not nearly as bent out of shape as you think."

Peter smiled. They bickered like an old married couple, yet the age difference between the two made them seem more like father and daughter. This required further seeing into. But later, as he wanted to very around to spying on the rest of his actual teammates. Fury the Pirate claimed that they weren't on the team; but he had to question just how long that was going to be the case. He knew Janet had powers, but wasn't sure about Pym.

Huh? Can this guy get any more uptight? He stopped in the middle of a hallway to watch that colonel, Rhodes, he believed, sitting on a bench reading a thick spiral bound book. It had to be the SHIELD handbook he overheard one of the agents talking about, which officially made him the lamest person here for reading it willingly.

Peter sighed.

"Hm. I wonder if any of this applies to us," Rhodes muttered.

Peter sighed again.

"It doesn't." Both he and Rhodes looked up over and saw another Avenger, Agent Morse, walking over to the latter. "SHIELD protocol only applies to agents. And since the Avengers aren't technically agents…"

"And you? You are an agent," he countered.

"Not while I'm in costume." She smirked when Rhodes groaned. "Something wrong, Colonel?"

"Yeah; calling our uniforms 'costumes'. Makes it seem like what we're doing is just for fun. It kinda isn't."

She shrugged and leaned against the wall next to him. "Fair enough. Just a way for me to differentiate my SHIELD work and what little hero work I do."

"You're a superhero?"

She nodded. "Mockingbird. When I'm off duty or on leave, I do a little crime fighting while resting. Keeps me sharp. Hawkeye and I work… did work together whenever we had time off together." She sighed. "Yep."

"You two were close?"

She shrugged listlessly. "Kind of. No closer than friends. Widow made sure of that. Can't blame her; guy was a regular Lothario."

"That sounds very familiar," he replied with a grin.

She matched it and swept a blonde lock behind her ear. "Yeah, you were Stark's best friend. How was that like?"

"I own stock in Aleve."

Peter repressed a giggle and moved on. So, the uptight Colonel had a sense of humor after all, underneath all of the rigid professionalism. Go figure. He made a mental note to make sure he got him to tell at least one joke every day born the duration of this… thing they had going.

He halted after a few minutes and peered ahead. Statuesque stoicism was the first thing that came to mind when he saw Agent James Barnes, another of his teammates. The guy was scary; he just had to come right out and say it. Well, think it. He was just standing there, staring out one of the windows that Peter resolved to never look out of, and yet, he found himself becoming very unnerved. Was it the almost angry glare that his reflection in the glass carried? Was it the metal arm? It had to be the metal arm. As cool as it was, he could only imagine how annoying it must have been to have to pull refrigerator magnets off it every time he walked through the kitchen.

He watched Barnes stand rigid for what seemed like hours. Someone else was watching him, too. "You could give a statue a run for its money." Monica Rambeau stepped forward and didn't stop until she was right next to him. Barnes didn't respond. "So, anything happening out there?"

Barnes breathed in deeply. "A space worm just ate a pterodactyl," he said almost casually, as if talking about the weather.

She looked as offput by it as he was. "Oh. That interest you? Watching those freaky things out there?"

"No."

"Oh. Why are you watching then?"

He shrugged.

Peter could only marvel as the master conversationalist weaved a syllabic masterpiece in just a few short words. If only he could master the art of the English language like he had; then he would really be something.

Ms. Rambeau didn't so much as marvel at his oratory skills, as huff in annoyance. He couldn't imagine why; who could be upset at such marvelous spoken word art? Okay, it was clear that the guy wasn't much of a conversationalist, but then he couldn't blame him. He seemed so dark and brooding and quite scary to be in a room alone with for any extended period of time. He was actually pretty uncomfortable being on the same team with him. He seemed, at a glance, to be that guy who was secretly voted 'Most Likely to Shoot the Entire Office Up' behind his back.

Peter really, really hoped he wasn't that guy. Don't be that guy, metal arm dude.

He moved on, leaving Barnes and Rambeau to awkwardly stand next to each other in awkwardness. He had enough awkwardness within him to power a skyscraper, if such a thing could power a building. Any more absorbed from those two and he would explode.

It seemed that the team was grouping off into pairs. He might have been the only one not paired off with someone. God, it as like high school all of over again. Wait, could he say that even though he was still in high school? Oh well; it was like high school all over again.

"I cannot believe you, Danny! Pro bono?! Really?!"

Peter halted and turned his head in the direction of the yelling. The guy in the crisp yellow button down shirt, Luke Cage, if he recalled right, was gesturing demonstratively at the smaller, but definitely calmer guy in the green pajamas with the giant yellow collar. Man, that was a giant collar.

"What's not to believe, Luke? We're heroes," Danny replied calmly.

"Well, yeah, for hire," Luke retorted.

"Emphasis has always belonged on heroes. It didn't seem right to save the world at a price."

Heroics for a price? While Peter could admit that the notion crossed his mind when money was tight, he never considered it for more than a second. It seemed so… wrong, even though in every other sense, it made perfect sense. Singers sung for prices, dancers danced for money, athletes played whatever sport they excelled in for exorbitant amounts of money; why not heroes. Even cops and fire fighters got paid something.

Still, doing it purely for the money was what turned him off. Not that he was in any position to judge anyone on their ethical choices.

"Y'know Danny, it's people like you that are the reason the economy is so shitty," he said after a moment's silence, albeit without anger.

Danny grinned. "Actually, it wouldn't be in the shape it's in without people like me. I buy American."

Peter smiled at that and left them alone. There had to be someone in need of his company. He didn't want to intrude on any conversations, but it was looking more and more likely that that was going to have to happen.

He reached a quiet area in the facility, with only a few people walking through. He peered and saw only one, a bespectacled woman, sitting by herself. Hm, wonder who that is.

To inquire of this, he dropped down softly behind her and walked around. "Um, hi there."

Her eyes widened and she moved away. He quirked an eyebrow, then remembered that he was wearing his costume. So familiar with the blue and red threads had he become that he had forgotten he was wearing it. It didn't help that it was so tight that it might as well have been a second skin. "Sorry. I won't hurt you."

"I-I'm sorry. You just startled me. You're Spider-Man, aren't you?"

He bowed ostentatiously. "Indeed, milady. Thine friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is at your service."

Thankfully, a small giggle escaped her. He straightened up and backflipped up atop an arm of the sofa she was sitting on. "Nice to finally meet the Menace of Manhattan." He cringed at the nickname Flattop, aka J, Jonah Jameson bestowed on him. "I'm Jennifer Walters, attorney at law." She extended her hand and he took it.

"Ah, you're a lawyer. I'm pretty sure the team will need one after we're sued for all the damage we'll inevitably cause."

A small smile quirked on her lips. "I guess so. Heroes tend to be… messy." Peter couldn't help but notice that she was wringing her fingers out without mercy. Nervous, maybe? He didn't think he could make people nervous. At least, not the ones that didn't read Jameson's drivel.

"So," he said after a moment, "how did Fury recruit you to the team?"

"I'm not on the team," she answered, almost before he could get the words out of his mouth. "Sorry. I'm not on the team. I'm just here for one thing."

"Oh?" Well, that was surprising. Not really, once he thought about it; she seemed too… mousy to be a bombastic, egotistical hero. "What are you here for?"

She sighed and looked down to the floor. "To save my cousin."

It took him a second to realize who she was talking about. "Wait, Dr. Banner is your cousin?" Suddenly, the reserved personality made sense. Familial trait, obviously.

She bobbed her head. "He's in Egypt. They need me to bring him back. Once that's done and I know he's safe, I'm out of here."

"Aw. I was hoping you'd stay and keep us out of civil court."

She shrugged. "Even… even if I had powers, I'm not cut out for this type of work. Hell, most people look at me and think I'm not cut out to be a lawyer. They think I'm too soft. But they change their tunes pretty quickly when they see me in action." Despite the cheerfulness of her words, she didn't smile. If anything, she grew even more glum.

He frowned under his mask. "Well, you don't have to be like the ones that kick people's doors down waving a sketchily earned warrant, get into the witnesses' faces and have generally devil-may-care attitudes about the rules."

She snorted. "Law & Order isn't real. Lawyers, for the most part, don't act that way."

"I know. I was just – Wait, Law & Order isn't real?!"

She looked at him strangely. "No. It's a TV show," she drawled.

"WHAT?! NO!" Peter hurled himself to the floor, pretending to cry hysterically. "My entire life is a lie!"

She smiled wryly, and even giggled a little at his antics. "It'll be okay. There are sleazeball lawyers in real life, too," she consoled while rubbing his shoulder.

"But… but…"

=Team, assemble in Conference Room 12B for your first briefing,= Fury's voice chimed through the intercom. Peter immediately hopped up to his feet. Finally! He thought Fury had forgotten that they were even there.

"That's our cue. And it's about time, too. Sooner we finish here, sooner we can save your cousin, right?"

She smiled softly. "Right."

Not as big as he intended, but it was a start.