(Chapter 1) The Right Moment

Author's Note:: Hey! Welcome, welcome. This is both a standalone story AND it functions partially as a follow up to my previous Avengers' story, Parting Shot. Not that you had to have read Parting Shot because there's a different cast of characters here except for the Avengers of course. I like to think of this story kind of like Lion King 1.5—but better. Anyway, if you like it, please let me know with a review. I have a really cool idea I want to play out in my Avengers stories, but first I wanna make sure people are onboard with this character and where the plot seems to be headed.

I'm waking up to ash and dust
I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust
I'm breathing in the chemicals

Novi Grad, Sokovia

She had always known her fieldwork would be hard—emotionally, academically, hell, she even suspected physically. After all, the fieldwork was the crux of her research for her doctoral dissertation—if the work wasn't going to push her to the brink of mental breakdown, she wouldn't be doing it. That's not the way Columbia's Dissertation Committees rolled.

So, she knew before she started—before she had even picked a concentration or a country to work in—that a solid year or two of her life would be blood, sweat, and tears all for 300 pages of writing and the name Dr. Iris Tate.

But it wasn't until after she submitted the paperwork declaring her intent to study transnationalism in gateway countries that she realized she'd signed her soul away to hell. She couldn't even call it a deal with the devil because there was no true benefit to her decision except for a moderately relevant dissertation. No, she had voluntarily agreed to take up residence in a country ravaged by riots, rebellion and petty wars all for the sake of education.

That was how she found herself in Sokovia, a country possessing nothing the rest of the world valued except loosely guarded borders to more significant countries. And while the living conditions fluctuated between dismal and downright dangerous, and the people were inherently (and understandably) distrustful of outsiders, she couldn't have picked a better place for her fieldwork. Over the passing months, she became captivated by the stories of people whose lives had been decimated by outsiders' greed and war mongering and inspired by their belief in the power of civil disobedience. She reveled in the exhilaration of surging with a crowd, shouting chants and brandishing signs in angry Sokovian. She enjoyed exploring the geography of the country, occasionally popping in and out of the neighboring countries. She never laughed harder than when she was making fun of the people from those countries with her newfound Sokovian friends. She savored her meals of paprikash and Tokaji Aszú. Sure, the field work was grueling but all things considered, it was only minorly neuroticism-inducing. As such, Iris decided that maybe, just maybe, she actually kind of loved Sokovia.

Of course, that was before the city started to fly.

Once Novi Grad was airborne, she decided she was firmly rooted back in the camp that Sokovia was a huge mistake. Sure, the robots had been a bit of a hint, but it wasn't until she looked out and saw the building behind to hers tumbling off the side of the earth that she was entirely certain that, contrary to popular belief, hell was a few miles above the earth's surface.

Iris stood at her window for a moment, watching clouds and sky pass down and away from her sight. And then a robot cut across the view and Iris took it as her signal to take off, leaving behind her wallet, keys, and the computer where she had finished the final draft of her dissertation last week. She thundered down the stairs, running away from the small apartment where she had spent the last two years of her life and out towards the street. She only made it to the doorway before she stopped dead in her tracks.

She had heard the crashes and the screams and the sounds of sirens and gunfire. She had seen the smoke and robots flying through the sky, darting through the buildings surrounding hers and swooping down to the ground. What she hadn't seen were the actual streets of the city laden with rubble and trash, fires springing up and various electrical works sparking. It looked like the end of the world. It might be the end of the world, she thought.

Movement caught Iris' eye as she saw Baba Branka, the elderly landlady and proprietor of the downstairs shop being ushered away by…Wanda? She hadn't seen Wanda in about a year—not that she had really looked for her. Wanda wasn't a friend as much as a figurehead—someone who had led a good number of the protests and riots when Iris had arrived. But, when the doctor came with an offer too good to refuse, Wanda and a good number of other Sokovians had disappeared along with him. And now—Wanda looked…different. She seemed darker in some way. Maybe it was her hair or maybe her skin was paler or maybe it was a bit of both—but she had a haunted look about her that Iris vaguely recognized. Her wonder was cut short as a blast blew past her before exploding into a car, drawing Iris' attention to the robots who were currently being picked off by Hawkeye, the Avenger. He stood further down the street, calmly firing arrows into the heads of the metallic creatures, still amongst the chaos surrounding him. He ducked, and even that motion was oddly static, especially in contrast to the blast that flew over him and hit the bookstore, parts of the stone crumbling down and nearly hitting Baba Branka who skirted across the street, ushered away by the police—people she had previously referred to as pigs and dogs.

Another robot swooped down, aiming for Wanda. With a circular movement of her arms and a weird reddish stream of energy, she threw the robot back—straight to the door where Iris currently stood. Iris ducked to the side, flicking her hands up, palms out, as if attempting to shield herself. The robot veered to the left where it crashed into the ground, exploding into flames. Iris' hands shook as she looked up from the door, making brief eye contact with Wanda. The fear was evident in every part of the other girl's body—she seemed to be frozen with her arms still outstretched, face openly filled with terror. Her wild eyes seemed to flick about, from Iris' face to the robots that were converging around her and Clint. Another shot was fired at Wanda from above, and it came spiraling down to the earth.

"Go! Go! Move!" Hawkeye barked out, running to Wanda and putting an arm around her before forcing her to jump with him through a window, narrowly dodging the explosion. Iris pulled herself back inside the door, leaning her back against the wall and breathing heavily.

Iris didn't crack under pressure. It was a point of pride. She didn't crack when she wrote her dissertation or when she fit four years of undergrad into three. She didn't crack when she had to move back to America and jump right into her first and last year public high school. She didn't even crack when she had to say her "big goodbye" to her boyfriend back home. She would be damned if she started cracking now. It was one thing to be frightened—it was another to let fear control you.

Iris peered around the door frame, looking down the street. Most of the robots were preoccupied with firing into the building that Hawkeye and Wand had disappeared into. A few detached themselves from the group and started to wander down the street towards her. One ran into a building on the right side of the street, and another took off into the sky to fly further down. The last headed her way.

Why aren't they focused on those two? What are they looking for? Iris wondered as she withdrew back into the building, holding herself completely still. Do they know I'm here? A heavy clunking and scraping sound of metal brushing against the pavement could be heard now, even over all the other noises. She stopped breathing. This thing coming to kill her.

She had often pictured her death—call it a fascination with the morbid or a terrible childhood, either way she had never—in any of her imaginations—pictured robots. Aliens? Sure. There was plenty of stuff out there to justify aliens' existence and it was only natural that as sentient beings some, like humans, would be homicidal. And there was little humans could do but speculate how that homicidal tendency would manifest. But killer robots?The idea just seemed too cliché to ever come into fruition. Besides, humans had control over whether or not killer robots became a thing. Never had Iris believed that someone would be so stupidly arrogant as to create a robot without putting in any backdoor protocols. Not after 2001: A Space Odyssey, Terminator, and I, Robot. But here she was, living in hell and about to be killed by a metal demon. No, she told herself as the clinking of metal grew even nearer. I've got shit to do.

The scraping sounds stopped, and rather than letting the eerie calm pervade, Iris spun out from behind the wall and with a great push of her hands and flexing of her fingers, she sent the robot hurdling backwards into the building across from hers where it crashed into the wall before falling down into a heap of metal. As she watched the robot spinning away, an arrow cut across her line of vision, piercing the empty air where the robot's head had once been. Iris snapped her head to the right and made eye contact with Hawkeye. His face was one of open surprise—both eyebrows lifted, lips slightly parted, eyes wide. He shook his head slightly before rolling towards her and away from a blast, stopping momentarily to stand up and kill a few more robots. Iris began to make her way towards him, flinging an arm to the side and causing one of the robots to collide with his compatriot before both sparked out and dropped to the ground.

"Do you speak English?" She was close enough to him that she could hear his quick, rough voice broken up with pants for air.

She nodded, throwing up her arms over her head as another blast fired down at them. Hawkeye merely aimed upwards, loosing an arrow into the robot.

"Are you an Enhanced?" Hawkeye shouted.

"A what?" Iris dropped her arms from over her head and stared at him.

"How are you doing that? With your hands?" He aimed a few arrows over her shoulder letting off one after another, each resulting in a telling metallic thud.

"I don't know how it works," Iris shook her head. "I've been able to do it since I was little."

"Do what?"

"I can control the wind—the air. Kind of," she added, and his attention snapped onto her. His gaze was intense and hard—almost physical.

"Can you get this place back on the ground?" he asked, his voice as urgent as his gaze.

She did her best to give him her own hard look, "Do you really think we'd still be up here if I could?"

He weighed this, tilting his head from one side to the other. "Can you fly?" he asked.

"Do you really think I'd still be up here if I could?" she modified her question. For all of the times she had tried to fly—and there were plenty of those—she had never succeeded at lifting herself more than half an inch off the ground. If she was falling she had somewhat better success, but usually it ended with her coming crashing down—she had broken her arm more than a few times as a kid. "I'm not an Avenger."

Hawkeye searched her eyes as if trying to read all of who she was, her abilities, history, personality, secrets all at once. From behind Hawkeye, a robot raised its hand. Iris didn't say anything, instead she threw her arms out, the wind hitting the blast like a wall and causing it to blow back into the robot. Hawkeye looked over his shoulder at the damage.

"You're close enough."

Iris looked at the robots trooping down the street behind them, and with a great sweep of her arms, as if she were being jerked by a roller coaster, she caused the three in the front line to crash into one another before smashing into the side of a building. Hawkeye looked as if he was about to say something else and then he suddenly grabbed her, pulling her down to crouch behind a car. The two of them breathed heavily, gathering air into their lungs. "What—?" Iris started before she was cut off by the sound of a robot clambered on top of the car and shot down at them. Her reaction was more instinct than defense—she flew up her hands, fingers spread wide and the shot seemed to rebound off a wall of air, in the next second she pushed forward, and the robot fell away.

"Good break," Hawkeye nodded before standing up. He fired an arrow and in the next second the doors to the building nearby were flung open and Wanda stepped out.

Something had happened to her inside of the building. Iris wasn't sure what exactly that something was, but the Wanda who went in was an entirely different person from the one who came out. The fear had been wiped away from her features, instead replaced with a burning fury that far surpassed any similar feeling Iris had ever seen on the girl's face. Wanda flung a ball of red energy at a hovering robot without even looking at it. The robot seemed to be encased in the red glow and in the next moment, with a pulling motion, she took half of the robot and sent it flying into another one, causing them to fall into pieces. Wanda reached down, seeming to pull up more of the red energy from the earth, forming a large ball which she sent out, decimating the remaining robots while leaving Hawkeye and Iris completely unharmed.

Hawkeye and Wanda shared a look before nodding together. "Alright, we're all clear here," Hawkeye announced. Wanda walked over to Iris, offering a hand to help her up.

"You look familiar," she spoke in Sokovian, looking intently at Iris.

"I've fought for a free Sokovia along with you," Iris responded. "No justice, no peace."

"No justice, no peace." Wanda repeated with an oddly sentimental smile.

Hawkeye spoke again, "We're coming to you, and I've got a present I think you'll really like." He glanced at Iris as he said the last part, and she frowned.

Present, she grumbled in her head. Before she could get out he rest of her complaint, she caught sight of a blue blur hurdling towards them. "Look out!" she cried throwing up an arm. The blur faltered to the side and then slowly, it slowed enough for Iris to recognize that it wasn't a robot or missile or any of the things Iris thought it could be—it was Pietro, Wanda's twin brother. Only, in the same way that the Wanda stepping out of the building had been "Wanda, but not," this Pietro was "Pietro, but not." Iris remembered him as a tall, thin and angry man with brown hair. This Pietro was still tall, but he was broader—clearly more muscular, and he had the beginnings of a beard—not the rugged hipster type found in Brooklyn, but the carelessly handsome type. He wore a tight grey and blue Underarmor-type shirt with black running pants. Gone was the somewhat ragged protest leader. In was the silver-haired and inhumanly fast Adonis. He looked at Iris with wide

"Who is this?" he asked in thickly accented English. "Who are you?" he added in Sokovian, Iris opened her mouth to respond, but she was beaten to it.

"She's here to help," Hawkeye answered. "Which is more than I can say for you."

"What you think I'm not helping? I show you," Pietro said, sweeping up Wanda into his arms. In the next second he took off, throwing over his shoulder, "Keep up old man!"

Hawkeye let out a heavy sigh before lifting his bow, aiming an arrow at Pietro's back. Iris looked at him with mild alarm and took a step forward, lifting a hand so that she was ready to swipe the arrow out of the air. Hearing the step, Hawkeye turned to look at her. "It's…it's a joke," he mumbled before lowering his bow. She didn't say anything, letting silence drape itself around them. "This way," Hawkeye gestured with his head, and Iris trotted after him through the streets of her fallen city.

I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones

Enough to make my system blow

Welcome to the new age, to the new age

It had taken her a long time to understand the winding streets of Novi Grad and the way that it was a city of interlocking circles instead of a grid like Manhattan. Now, as she jogged through the rubble and climbed over the police car barricades, it felt like an entirely different maze. Next to her, Hawkeye moved with a determined swiftness that spoke of years of training. He darted over the rubble like it was nothing. He hadn't wandered these streets and stopped in every shop to take three minutes to converse with the owner, slowly working his way in and learning the way a Sokovian accent felt on his lips and tongue. He didn't know how many years it took Magda to work up the money to buy her store that was now in ruins. He didn't know that Lazar had been passed down his house after six generations of Lazar's before him. He just saw it as debris to be avoided.

"You know, Sokovia's actually a beautiful place in the spring," Iris remarked. "The sky is usually blue and the weather's not too bad. Not as much rain as you'd expect." A lone robot flew above them and Hawkeye picked it off easily, watching as it fell to the ground a few yards ahead of them. "It's a great city to just wander around too—except for the occasional riots…and the constant military presence. But you usually kind of forget about that in the spring," she mentioned as she started to push aside pieces of buildings and trash with a flick of her hand.

"A real vacation spot, huh?" he grumbled, crunching a broken piece of glass.

"She is not wrong," a Sokovian accent spoke causing Hawkeye to spin around, bow at the ready and Iris to start. "The flowers are particularly nice in May." Iris turned to face Pietro. "You live in Sokovia?"

She nodded "For two years."

"But you are not Sokovian." It was a challenge more than a statement—his voice was too lighthearted for it to be anything other than a trap.

"I'm not American."

Hawkeye looked at her sideways. Her accent was dead on, sure, and maybe she was technically American, but it was only through a technicality.

"Where are you from?" Hawkeye asked.

"Does it matter?" Iris asked the question to Pietro, waiting for his response. He was the one with the problems with outsiders claiming his city.

"Not so much anymore," Pietro noted, looking around. He kicked the head of the robot so that it skittered off down the street. "As long as you are not metal." Iris let out an amused snort. Hawkeye didn't say anything—he was still looking at her as if waiting for an answer to his question. Iris let out a small yelp as she was scooped up into Pietro's arms. "And you're not," he remarked before he took off—Hawkeye shouting at their backs.

The wind was brutal. It stung her face and caused her dark hair to plaster itself to her face, blinding her and making it impossible to speak. The edge of her sweater, that wasn't held in place by his arms, fluttered rapidly in the high speeds. Her head was still spinning when he deposited at the entryway of a building. Staggering slightly, she put her hand against the door frame.

"No, I'm not," she panted out. The words had been trapped in her during the 30 second sprint and now came tumbling out on one breath. She turned to him, "I thought I—"

"We must get people to the Market," he interrupted. "You know the city. I go back for old man." Iris nodded, understanding. In this section of the city smoke had begun to flood the streets making it difficult to see—difficult to breathe. Anyone left in the area would feel trapped in their buildings. There was a crash from somewhere further down the street and Iris and Pietro looked at each other. He darted over to a windowsill where he plucked a flower from a pot before appearing by her side, holding it out to her. "Enjoy the flowers," he quipped before taking off and leaving her behind, tucking the flower into her ponytail.

I raise my flags, don my clothes

It's a revolution, I suppose

We're painted red to fit right in

Whoa

"This way! Požuri! Hurry! Follow me!" Iris shouted, herding people out of the buildings and down the smoke flooded streets. There had been more trapped inside—whether by fear or something else she wasn't sure—than Iris had expected. Now grandmothers hobbled quickly down the street, their sons and daughters gripping their elbow in support. Children clung onto their fathers or clutched their mothers' hands. It was oddly idyllic watching the families and friends support each other in the crisis.

"Move along!" a police officer ordered, roughly pushing Iris further down the street. Iris flinched away from his touch, cursing under her breath. She allowed herself to be herded down the street along with the crowd.

The destruction on the streets was easier to deal with than the pain and confusion in the questions swirling around her.

"What are these things? What's happening?"

"Are we going to die?"

"Where is the Air Force?"

"Where is my wife? Where is Maria?"

It was slightly ironic—two years of trying to fit in and assimilate, and now that she had finally been accepted and treated as an equal, she was about to die. At least she would die with two people knowing her secret and a dissertation that's claims were proven to be well founded by the unfolding events of history. If she survived this, her dissertation would propel her into becoming a leading scholar in transnationalism in gateway countries. Unfortunately, she had a sinking feeling that she would die and the only record of her genius would remain forgotten on a shared Google Doc.

The robots seemed to have disappeared from the streets, leaving an unnerving stillness settled over the streets. Iris kept the people from entering the square. All of them stood in the side street, waiting in a precarious silence—the only sounds the shuffling of children and hushing of parents. A minute passed like this. And then two more. More people joined the crowd.

"Are they gone?" a man asked, finally asking the question that was all on their minds..

"Is it over?" a woman added on.

There was no answer. In a way that was the answer.

And then she heard it: a growing rumble coming from ahead of them. She saw heat waves rippling across the sky, and then, out of the clouds, a large, rectangular spaceship emerged. She was flooded with hope and fear. The spaceship looked startlingly similar to the three that had been launched over Washington D.C. last year. They could only be from one entity…SHIELD, the terrorist organization and the last thing they needed. She watched as smaller spaceships made their way to the city, and before she could tell anyone to wait, the people around her began pushing, surging towards the airborne life rafts. She stood back, watching for a second more before she watched Captain America standing there and directing people, civilians into the boats and agents into the buildings to help the people. There was no real choice. She had to trust them.

"Here, allow me," Iris' said in Sokovian as she watched an elderly man struggle through the rubble. She took his hand, walking him towards the boat as she subtly used the hand supporting his back to move the rocks and rubble from their path. She helped him step up into the waiting hands of an agent who moved him further into the ship. Another agent appeared offering a hand to Iris, and she shook her head moving back towards the building. An explosion went off somewhere in the city and she instinctively ducked, the people around her scattering in their search for cover. She felt a hand on her soldier, and Iris flinched away, stepping to the side to face whoever it was who had touched her. Pietro had returned.

"You are wanted elsewhere," Pietro stated before picking her up for the second time, spinning around, and taking off. This time she was prepared for the feeling of the wind, and instead of letting it have its way with her, she waved her hand, parting the wind around them so that they ran in a bubble. Still, he was moving so fast that she couldn't track their progress through the city. All of the buildings seemed to blur together so that when he finally stopped, it took her a minute to determine her surroundings—they were in an old church, and they weren't alone. Most of the Avengers gathered there as well, all circled around a large metal cylinder in the center of the room.

"Is this the present?" Captain America asked Hawkeye, looking Iris over as Pietro set her down gently. Pietro kept his hands on her waist, his fingers lightly brushing the bare skin between her low riding red shorts and slightly scrunched up white sweater. Once he was certain that Iris could stand on her own, he released her, sprinting to his sister's side.

"Something like that," Iris answered, pulling the edge of her sweater down to cover the skin.

"You're American," Captain America stated, surprise evident.

Iris wobbled her head from side to side. "Something like that," she repeated.

Before he had time to question further, a woman walked into the room. Her very presence seemed to demand the group's attention. Iris ran through the list of names in her head trying to place her. Black Widow. She was Black Widow. "What's the drill?"

"This is the drill," Iron Man gestured to a large metal cylinder in the middle of the room. "If Ultron gets a hand on the core we lose."

Iris had no time to ask any of the obvious questions. Instead, as the Hulk appeared, bashing a robot to the side, another, larger robot, twice the size of the other ones and made out of a sleek dark grey metal, hovered down a few yards away from the building and stood staring at them. This had to be Ultron, the one who had been in the news and whose voice had announced to the entire city that eventually they would fall to their deaths due to the folly of the Avengers.

"Is that the best you can do?" Thor baited. The Robot lifted his hand and out from all of the far corners of the city, robots came running and flying towards them. There was at least a hundred—probably more—all of them in varying states of repair and disrepair, but no less menacing.

"You had to ask," Captain America said flatly, shooting a dirty look at Thor. The god's response was lost as Ultron spoke.

"This is the best I can do," it—he?—stated in his deep partially robotic, partially human voice. "This is exactly what I wanted. All of you against all of me." The robots converged around Ultron, waiting for his signal. "How can you possibly hope to stop me?" Ultron asked. The only answer to his question was chaos.

Robot minions scrambled up the sides of the church, coming through the walls and attacking the Avengers from all sides. The superheroes instantly fell into an odd sort of dance that's steps Iris did not know. Thor and Iron Man took to the skies in an air ballet as Pietro began to dance along the ground, occasionally using his speed to catapult him into the air, striking down the robots in his path before he landed back on earth. Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow had their own sort of minuet going on with the robots they engaged, switching from partner to partner as their targets fell. Meanwhile, Wanda waved her arms and swirled her hands in a kind of interpretive dance, alternating between firing off balls of energy and crashing robots into each other.

Iris stood still.

Despite what Hawkeye had said, she was no superhero. She couldn't dance. It wasn't her thing. "Present!" a voice shouted out and she swiveled around, coming face to face with a robot minion who fired a shot at her. Instinctively, she swiped her hand to the side, sending the blast spiraling into the back of the robot Black Widow was dancing with. Bringing her hands back around with a swoop, she tossed the robot up into the air where Thor swung his hammer, smashing it into pieces.

And then, she was in it. If the Avengers were the dancers, she was the conductor, working her way through her greatest symphony yet. She sent a robot into one of Wanda's, crashing them together like cymbals in midair. She sent another that had been advancing on Iron Man—Iron Man—into the wall, letting it fall scraping down like a distorted slide whistle. Her hands moved in sharp staccato gestures sending robots shooting into the ground or colliding into their compatriots. When she brought a new section in to join the orchestra, she moved her arms in a sweeping gesture, causing robots to pile into one another, almost taking out Hawkeye who ducked at the last minute, allowing the Hulk to smash them to the ground. She shielded Captain America—who had tossed his shield to Black Widow to dance with—with a wall of wind until Hawkeye picked off the robots attacking him and Black Widow tossed the shield back. She was excellent. She was a maestro. She was shot in the arm.

Iris swore loudly, and then looking at the wound of charred skin, swore again. In a breath, Pietro was by her side, smashing through the robot. "You ok?" he hesitated, looking at her.

"Fine," she ground out before taking the pieces of the robot and sending them flying out to the room. Some of them hit their former compatriots—others knocked into the church's wall before falling down to the ground again. One hit the back of the Hulk's head, causing him to roar. Pietro nodded once before zooming away again to resume the fight. Iris gathered herself together and then returned herself, fighting until she had a hard time breathing and she had to focus more energy on drawing air into her longs rather than blasting robots apart. As she panted, she heard an odd noise overhead and looked up to notice the red, alien-looking Avenger for the first time. She had never seen him before—not during the Chitauri Invasion or any coverage of subsequent attacks—yet he functioned so well within the unit, she doubted he was another hidden gem of Sokovia like herself. The Red Avenger shot a beam of yellow light out of his forehead, and it knocked Ultron back through the wall, the Red Avenger following it along with Iron Man and Thor, the Hulk charging after them. To her left, a robot caught her attention, and she blasted it back, allowing Captain America to spin and decapitate it with his SHIELD. Then, the robots began to run away.

"They're trying to leave the city!" Thor boomed.

"We can't let them, not even one." The slight panic in Iron Man's voice was unsettling. Iris had only ever heard the grandiose, showmanship of Tony Stark and the bravado of Iron Man. This was the man who gave his home address to The Mandarin. His quick, clipped words cut through her, making her heart pound.

"We gotta move out, even I can tell the air is getting thin. You guys get to the boats, I'll sweep for stragglers. Be right behind you," Captain America ordered, his military coming out.

"What about the core?" Hawkeye asked, glancing at the cylindrical metal center that they'd been dancing around.

"I'll protect it," Wanda nodded.

Hawkeye looked up at her, and she looked back, her face full of resolve. "It's my job." There was a silent agreement.

"This way," Hawkeye gestured with his head to Iris and Black Widow.

I'm breaking in, shaping up, then checking out on the prison bus

This is it, the apocalypse

"So, you're a woman without a country," Black Widow commented, off-hand, almost too casually. "What brings you to Sokovia?"

"It's the flowers," Hawkeye threw out, and Black Widow let out a laugh. Iris let a smile cross her lips.

"I'm a doctoral candidate in sociocultural anthropology—I completed my fieldwork here and due to the rapidly changing nature of the country's political situation, I wrote my dissertation here too." It was the answer that she had been handing out to prospective employers for the past four months.

"But why Sokovia?" Hawkeye asked, taking a turn sharply, causing Iris' to fly into the side of the car.

"I'm interested in studying the effects of transnationalism as a byproduct of a country's geography, particularly in gateway countries. Sokovia was the natural choice," she answered, gripping the doorway. It was great interview practice. Waiting room nerves would be nothing compared to the knot forming in her stomach caused by fact that at any minute she could plummet from the sky or be shot to death by a killer robot.

"What's your dissertation on?" Black Widow looked at Iris through the rearview window.

"The fact that Sokovia's circumstances have basically made it a time bomb," Iris answered. "All it needed was one spark at just the right moment, and then this." Hawkeye and Black Widow shared a look as he pulled to a stop near one of the life spaceboats.

"Speaking of moments, we don't have a lot of time," Hawkeye remarked.

"So get your asses on a boat," Black Widow shrugged, running in the opposite direction.

"Is she...?" Iris stopped, cut off by a shake of Clint's head.

"Come on," he said, jogging with her to a boat. He helped her up onto it before stepping on himself.

Iris felt her body relax as she stood on the spaceboat—despite the fact that it belonged to SHIELD. She was too tired to care. And even if she did have the energy, she wasn't so sure she would care then either. The Avengers had proven themselves, and they obviously trusted SHIELD. Besides, even Wanda and Pietro were fighting alongside of the apparently corrupt agency. Iris dropped to the floor, leaning her head against the wall and taking in a breath. She was ready for today to be over. She was ready to fly out of here like a bat out of hell.

"Costel!" The frantic voice pierced through Iris' exhaustion. It was Zrinka. "We were in the market. Costel!" The young woman called again for her little brother. Zrinka had been caring for him since their parents died in a bombing a few years back. He was all she had left. Iris had had many conversations about it with Zrinka.

Iris sighed and pushed herself up from the ground, but before she could convince her muscles to move her out of the safety of the boat, Hawkeye was already gone, heading towards the market. He reached it, and she watched as he stretched his arms down, lifting up the little boy. Costel clung tightly to the hero, and Iris was about to let the feeling relief sink her back down to the ground when she heard it.

A rumbling, smaller than the ones the spaceship had caused but of the same variety, had started somewhere to the left. Iris turned to face the sound, brow furrowing as she looked off into space. Her expression slowly slipped into one of horror as the jet came into view, a robot sitting in the cockpit gunning down everything in its path. A police officer crumpled to the ground, and as Thor was thrown back, Captain America ducked underneath his shield. She watched as it continued on its path, drawing closer and closer to Hawkeye and Costel.

"No!" Zrinka shouted. Or maybe it was Iris. She couldn't tell because in the next moment she tore from the ship, her body screaming at her to give it a break as she pushed it to go faster, faster to reach the pair. Her mind raced along with her—did she attempt to shield them or did she try to deflect the bullets? The bullets were going so fast, but she wasn't sure she could generate enough power with her shield to cause them to completely reverse direction and be blocked out; if even one go through that could be enough. The plane was almost upon them, and Iris, in a moment of absolute desperation, gave a great push of her arms, a scream wrenching itself from her body as she watched a blur shoot past the pair.

The plane continued on its journey.

The market's windows shattered from the hail of bullets pushed into it, glass showering down onto the backs of Hawkeye and a panting Pietro who had just pushed a car in front of the Avenger and boy. Pietro looked over his shoulder at Iris who stood in the middle of the square, faltering slightly. His stare was intense as he gazed into her eyes-whether he was trying to thank her or if he was just disbelieving that he was bullet free, Iris wasn't sure. She nodded at him, and he nodded back before zooming away and further into the city. Hawkeye ran towards her with Costel in his arms. He paused, reaching her. His gaze was less intense than Pietro's but it conveyed the same mixture of emotions—residual fear, gratitude, disbelief, relief.

"Thanks," he said simply before continuing on, and Iris turned slowly before following him back on.

Hawkeye deposited Costel into Zrinka's arms before laying down across three seats, Iris taking the wall to his left. A bluish blur materialized in front of them, Pietro putting Wanda back onto her feet.

"We're good to go!" an agent barked, and as the boat began to rise, the city began to fall—exploded into small meteors.

Ending Thoughts: Well, there you have it. An introduction to my new character and my slight diversion away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Considering how closely the rest of my story follows canon, I hope you'll stay with me—I'm not one to reverse major deaths, but honestly, no one in the Marvel Universe ever stays dead (I'm looking at you Captain America, Bucky, Coulson, Fury, and Loki), so is it so hard to believe that Pietro may have lived? Anyway, please, please, please review. What are your initial thoughts of Iris? What do you think of the changes in Clint (if you read Parting Shot)? Hopes and dreams for the story?