A Taste of Vengeance

Three Years Previous

“Miss Bane?” Nick Fury calls my name again. I turn my face away from the large glass window. Outside the grass is a bright, healthy green, with signs of spring flowers growing in. Through the glass, I can see the large marble statue of professor Xavier, a memorial to the amazing work and school that he has built for people like us, for people like me. Students walk around on the grass, oblivious to the harsh world outside of the school’s grounds.

“What would you have me say, Nick?” I ask the man in front of me, purposely using his first name to annoy him. Nick Fury has known me since I was a little girl, although he would pretend that I am not one of his favorites. It’s his job to treat his agents fairly, although I could hardly be considered a part of S.H.E.I.L.D. “I don’t feel particularly comfortable agreeing to be a part of a protocol that may not even work. How can you be so sure the others would be willing, especially the likes of Tony Stark?” I laugh ruefully then. “No, I don’t think he’d be willing.”
Fury sighs and runs his hand over his face, clearly losing patience with me, as he so often does. “Ash, you know what I would have you do. I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t have to.”
“Oh on the contrary,” I say, getting up from the window seat. “You would ask me even if you didn’t have to, which, by the way I don’t think you need me. You have super humans, don’t you? I heard Captain America is awake.”

I know that by now, I am pushing his patience and his offer. Just this morning, my uncle’s old friend Nick Fury showed up at Xavier’s school for gifted youngsters, which is just a nice way of labeling a school like me, a school for mutants. Nick Fury is the head operative of S.H.E.I.L.D, an elite vision of spies, soldiers and people of the like that keep our world in tact. They are also one of the few agencies who know contained information, such as the very details I have just let slip on purpose.

“That is classified information,” Fury warns, leveling me with his gaze, which is with one eye, mind you; the other is hidden by an eye patch. “How do you know that?”
I gave him an annoyed look taping my head. “How do I know anything?”

The thing about my mutation is this: not only have I adopted my uncle’s telekinetic abilities and perfected them, but I am unlike any human there is- save for the serum injected Captain America. My mutation not only allows me to read minds, invade minds, control objects with my mind and project visions, but my body has advanced itself, making me stronger, faster, have keener senses, and age much, much slower than other humans.

All my fancy powers are just another example of why I am a total outcast, and why shield wants to use me as a weapon, which I do not appreciate all that much.

After my uncle’s passing, Storm and myself took the job of running the school and teaching mutant children how to use their abilities. It was one of the toughest things I had ever set my self too, but it kept me distracted. Since my parents death at a young age, I had lived with my uncle for as long as I could remember, and was always under the watchful eye of the man standing in my office, a long time family friend.

“Do you honestly believe you will ever have to have a call for what do you call them again?” He glared at me and made the input, “Avengers.” I continued, “Yes that. Avengers- who came up with that name by the way, it sounds like some kind of action movie? Anyways, do you honestly think that world could fall into such ruin that a team of… super heroes, if you will, are going to unite and save the world?”
“Take the offer, Bane,” he growled, ignoring my mockery. “You know he would want you too.”
I didn’t have to ask who he was. “My uncle wanted me to do a lot of things, Agent Fury. But throwing my life away for something that may not even happen does not seem like one of the things he would want me to do.”
“Why do you insist that you would be throwing your life away?” he demanded. “Just because it involves taking orders from S.H.E.I.L.D? This is sad, Ashlynn Bane, very sad. Tell me, when did the little girl who wanted to grow up to be a hero die? Where is the fire that wanted to rid the world of bad guys?”
“She died when Charles did!” I yelled, slamming my hands on my desk, cracking it clear in two.

I lifted my hands from my desk and clenched them, closing my eyes to will the tears away. What seemed like a harmless visit had turned into a battle of the past and who could bring up the most painful memories. I was no longer the little girl who wanted to go out and save the world from all the bad; no, that had died with the responsibility of running an institute and having the last piece of me ripped away like it was nothing.

The day Jean Grey- or Phoenix, I should say- killed Charles Xavier was the day that my heart died. My uncle was the only thing I had ever known, the only inspiration and love I had ever received. As a teenager, helpless and unable to do anything as he was ripped away, piece by piece, floating like dust in the wind, was unbearable. No, I had to live out his legacy here. I had to carry out what was uncompleted.

“Is that what this is about?” Fury asked me, moving around the desk. His face was filled with concern now, the fatherly figure in a matter of moments. “Is this about trying to complete what he couldn’t?” He took my hand, drawing my tear stained face up to meet his. “You are lost, if you think your uncle did not complete what he set out to do, and I don’t mean the school, Ashlynn.” When I gave him a confused look, he smile softly. “Your uncles greatest goal and most successful accomplishment, has always been educating you, and making you the extraordinary woman you are today. That is why I need you to be a part of the Avengers, Ash. Because you are a legacy and a gift that no one else can fathom.”
I laughed through the tears. “No one has ever called me a gift before.”
“Maybe because most people see the pain in the ass before they see the gift,” he quipped, raising a brow. I laughed. “I don’t really know how you’ve managed to do it, but if and only if there is a crisis, and you call upon me as an avenger, I will come, but God help the poor bastards who face me. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”