Chapter Text
Charli’s knuckles ached. She’d been training with the Winter Soldier all morning and she needed a break. He was beginning to notice the lack of energy in the small girl. She wasn’t working as hard as he had been when the morning began and he decided that he didn’t need to continue beating the shit out of her. She’d gotten much better in the few weeks that they’d been training together and they’d even reached a point where the higher-ups trusted them both enough to train without supervision. He knocked her to the ground one more time before helping her up off the ground and leading her to the cafeteria for a midday meal.
The both of them had become somewhat attached to each other. The Winter Soldier was the only one Charli could really recognize other than some of the staff members that made her nervous and the Winter Soldier had a soft spot for the girl. He always made sure that she was okay and they weren’t harming her.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
After four long, excruciating months of training, Charli was ready for mission. In fact, they’d already assigned her a trial run. It was going to be easy, all she had to do was wait until the Winter Soldier had collected the data from a building and then she was to set it on fire.
Everything went perfectly. The Winter Soldier completed his mission, and she did too. The administration decided that she was ready for her to begin her main mission: taking out the Avengers.
They gave her a cover, a girl named Cameron who was the long lost daughter of Loki. She’d gone missing months more and it was the perfect opportunity for her to infiltrate the Avengers Tower with its members none the wiser. They set up her escape perfectly. A lower level agent “accidentally” dropped a hint as to where she was located, and when they got word that the Avengers were close, they had the Winter Soldier take a few swings at her before tying her to a chair and leaving her alone.
Charli licked the blood from her upper lip as she heard alarms going off in the building. Everything of importance had been removed before the whole thing was set up, all that remained were a few low level agents and Charli, herself.
She wasn’t supposed to spend much time at the Avengers Tower, just enough to figure out the best way to take them out. When a man with long black hair opened the door, she perked up a little. This man was Loki (she’d studied his and others’ profiles) and he was her “father”
“Cameron?”
“Loki?”
“Oh my God, what did they do to you?”
“Just a little light torture. It’s good for the soul.” She quipped. He quickly went to untie her hands.
“Are you good to walk?” He asked.
“I think so.” She said, faking a small limp as she took a few steps.
“You sure?”
“We’ll see.”
They reached a plane and Loki led her to the front of it, speaking into some sort of earpiece that he had her and it was time to get the hell out of there. In time, Charli, no Cameron, watched the return of the others, silently naming them her head as they climbed into the plane.
Before long, they reached the tower, a woman that Charli recognized as Maryanne, her apparent mother greeted them with worry on her face. She was led to a hospital wing and treated for her injuries.
Charli spent the next week collecting data on the way each Avenger interacted with her. From what she could tell, whoever this Cameron that she was playing the part of hadn’t always been the best person to be around. When she was finally released, she decided that spending some time with her “mother” and “father” was probably the right thing to do in order to keep her cover.
And boy, was she wrong.
To be fair, Loki had known something was off about Cameron since they’d rescued her from the Hydra base. Something was just a little different, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. When she asked to hang out with her parents, he become one hundred percent sure that something was right. Before she could even get a word out, he marched her straight to an interrogation room and went to get the others.
She could hear them arguing through the wall. Most of the Avengers didn’t think anything was wrong. Being tortured by a terrorist organization can change someone. But Loki was sure. He wanted Bruce to run tests and for Natasha to question her. Natasha agreed to question her, just to be safe and to prove that nothing was actually wrong. And she knew exactly how she was going to do it.
“So, Cameron E. Granger.” She started. “I’ve got some questions for you.”
“Okay.” Charli braced herself. She’d had a few lessons on how to act under pressure. “I don’t see what the problem is, I-”
“What does the ‘E’ stand for?”
“What?”
“What does the ‘E’ stand for?” She asked again.
“Uhh, Emerald. I don’t see why you need to know that.”
“That’s an odd middle name.”
“Really? I kind of like it. Emeralds are a nice gem.”
And that was when Natasha knew.
(MEMORY)
“What does the ‘E’ stand for?” Natasha asked, it wasn’t often that someone introduced themselves with their middle initial. “Emerald.”
“That’s an odd middle name.”
“It is indeed. But that’s what you’d expect from the great Mary Granger.” Cameron stated.
“I assume that’s your mother.”
“You assume correctly.”
……….
“...and named her Cameron Emerald Granger. Cameron, because she had liked the name, and Emerald because she’d always thought emeralds to be disappointing, and from the moment I was born, I was a disappointment.”
(END MEMORY)
She left the room quickly. “Loki’s correct.” She said to the group. “Something’s not right. It must have happened when Hydra had her. They did something to her.” She said, her words slightly frantic.
“She’s not our Cameron?”
“No. She’s something else.”
The chip in Charli’s arm was buzzing and that signaled that now was the time. She was going to take out the Avengers, and she was going to do it right now. She got up from the chair and made her way to the door, opening it without making a sound. She could see the others in a huddle on the other side of the room. This was perfect, she could take them all out at once.
She felt the fire build behind her eyes as she stepped towards the group. Her fingertips ignited and a smirk of some sort grew on her face. She was going to complete her mission. Hydra would be so happy. Her hand caught the flames and soon her lower arms joined the red-orange bursts of heat. When she was close enough, she knelt down on the ground, letting a flame engulfed finger ignite the floor. She watched as the flames snaked out of her hands and onto the ground, towards each Avenger. And she was so caught up in her fiery delight that she didn’t notice Steve behind her. He hit her over the head with a fire extinguisher just hard enough to knock her out.