Chapter Text
“Eleanor! Eleanor, wake up!”
Ellie started from sleep, tired eyes blinking in the dark as her foster mother pulled her up from the mattress. Her voice was low, but frantic, her usual light-hearted and calm demeanor gone out the window as she hustled the brown-eyed girl out of bed to crouch on the floor. Eleanor was immediately frightened because Emily looked shaken and that had never happened before.
The strong woman pressed a piece of paper tight into her palm, her grip crushing on the girl’s fingers.
“You need to find your daddy, alright?” she whispered, “Go straight to your father. Don’t let them take you anywhere else, do you understand?”
“Emily, what’s going on?” Ellie asked, worriedly gnawing on her lower lip as a clatter came from the front of the house. She jumped.
“Do you understand?!” Emily repeated, not even flinching as something heavy crashed against their front door. She gripped Eleanor by the upper arms, looking into her eyes with terror and determination. The girl nodded and her Life-Model Decoy of a foster mother sighed in relief, yanking her into a brief hug. Cold lips pressed to her forehead.
“Good,” she huffed, broad shoulders rising and falling as she pushed her charge away. “Now get under the bed.”
“What?” Eleanor blinked. “But why-”
“Get under the bed this instant, Eleanor Camacho,” Emily ordered, her no-nonsense voice in full swing as she aimed a finger between Ellie’s eyes. “And don’t you dare come out no matter what you hear, you understand?”
Ellie nodded, eyes wide as she laid down and scooted underneath her low bed frame. From her vantage point she could see as Emily stood, feet still secure in her favorite blue slippers, and then exited her room towards the front of the house. She broke her promise to stay put for a moment to scoot back out and grab her stuffed bunny off her pillow. With the well loved toy clutched tight to her chest along with the paper Emily had given her, Eleanor rolled back under the bed and lay still.
She couldn’t see much, but her hearing was stellar for her age and she flinched, shoulder banging the underside of her bedframe, as another loud something smashed into their door and the thing fell to the ground with a loud bang. She imagined she could hear Emily jump. Footfalls followed immediately after, a whole team of people rushing into the house.
Next she heard the familiar sounds of a struggle. A fight. Men grunting and panting as they came at Emily only to realize too late she was no ordinary foster mother. Emily’s brief shouts of rage and exertion seemed louder in the girl’s ears than all other noises and she focused on them desperately. Hanging on Emily’s every whirring movement to make sure she wasn’t slowing down
But then something shifted and she couldn’t hear Emily fighting the good fight anymore. She couldn’t hear Emily at all. With all the pained groans and heavy pants that filled the air, Emily’s usual clicking movements were strangely silent. Eleanor strained to hear but all she caught was the sound of heavy booted feet entering through the busted front door.
“Where is the girl?” The voice was deep and accented, filling the room like hot air and making it feel stuffy.
“Not here.” Eleanor perked up, a rush of relief going through her at Emily’s voice.
“Do not lie to me,” the voice warned, “I can make this night very unpleasant for both of you.”
“She’s not here,” Emily insisted, her cold calm returning when push came to shove. “I sent her to Charles when I heard you were looking for her.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“You don’t have a choice. I guess you shouldn’t have sent your little psychic pet away.”
The deafening sound of crushing metal made Eleanor tremble as it grated against her ears. Her teeth chattered, her nails dug into her bunny, and her knees knocked together beneath her unicorn nightgown. It cut off as quickly as it had began and a large, heavy, gnarled heap of destroyed machinery fell to the ground in front of the girl’s open bedroom door apparently having been flung through the air like a piece of crumbled paper. Eleanor recognized Emily’s favorite blue slippers in the dark.
She swallowed a gasp and squeezed her eyes shut telling herself it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t real.
“We’re finished here,” the unfamiliar voice stated, the sound of several bodies exiting signaling that he had called a retreat. Eleanor stayed put, knowing the house wasn’t truly empty as the heavy boots made their way up the hallway.
Ellie held her breath as they entered her line of sight, a pair of long legs crouching down over them to leer over her foster mother’s deanimated body. She still could not see the man’s face, but a long purple cape dragged the floor behind him and his hand was glove clad as he reached out. He flicked a bit of Emily’s synthetic hair away from what had been her face and stared into her black optic lenses.
“You should have handed her over years ago.”
He stood and turned and was gone within the span of the girl’s next breath.
He never even searched the house.
Eleanor thought about getting out from under the bed, but she was frozen in fear aside for the occasional tremble. Emily had told her not to move no matter what, but she hadn’t said what to do in the event that the danger left leaving nothing but the crumpled, empty shell of her foster mother behind. She stared out from under her bed into the hallway and wondered what time it was.
It was some time in the wee hours of the morning, she knew that much from the way the sky outside wasn’t pitch black like it had been when she went to bed. She knew the intruders had caused a ruckus, but she didn’t know if it had been enough to wake the neighbors. The front door had been blown off it’s hinges and a chilly breeze rolled through the front rooms, leaves occasionally tumbling across where Eleanor could see. Across Emily’s favorite blue slippers.
She hugged her bunny and waited.
She talked to herself quietly like Emily had taught her. She told herself that someone would notice the busted door and call for help. She told herself that even if that didn’t happen Emily would have had another plan in order to keep them safe. She told herself not to sleep.
The hours passed.
8 o'clock rolled around, heralded by Emily’s shrill alarm clock that she could hear through the wall just like she did every morning. It beeped loudly for five minutes before turning off. Ten minutes later it repeated the process before shutting off entirely. Apparently they were sleeping in today. The sun glinted off Emily’s hardwiring and put a glare right over Eleanor’s eyes so that she couldn’t even try to sleep. The bed was too close to the ground for her to roll over and give the hallway her back.
The hours passed.
She was telling herself the rather harrowing story of how her bunny had been present and lent a hand in the battle of New York when the sound of several vehicles pulling up outside grabbed her attention. Tires screeched, engines cut off, and doors were slammed. Quick, rushing steps approached their ajar front door and a voice began barking out orders.
“Let’s start a perimeter and get the neighbors handled. Agent Preston’s transmission said the girl would still be on the property so let’s fan out and find her. And someone clean up Agent Preston’s LMD.”
“Yes, sir!”
The next few minutes was just Eleanor listening as people ran around her home, going into rooms and yelling ‘Clear!’ before returning to the front. One set of feet even came to her room, throwing back her covers and checking in her closet before declaring the room empty and exiting without checking under the bed. As they exited, Ellie saw three figures crouching down and hefting up Emily to be carted away. Tears pricked her eyes for the first time during the whole ordeal and she sniffled loudly against her bunny.
It was a small noise, but it was enough.
The next thing she knew a body had dropped to her floor and there was a gun aimed at her face. She froze like Emily had taught her.
“Sir! I found her!” the young woman who had drawn on her called, immediately reholstering her weapon as she made to reach for Eleanor. The girl flinched back into the darkness of her hiding spot. “Don’t worry, you’re safe now. I’m agent-”
“Agent May, stand down.” The commanding voice from earlier came into the room and the woman disappeared with a wave of brunette hair that swept the floor as she stood. In her place came a smooth faced man in a finely pressed suit who stretched out flat on his stomach, clearly not armed on his front as he brushed his jacket out the way, exposing his sides. Eleanor wondered if he had done that on purpose as he fixed her with an open expression, lips pursed as if in thought.
“Eleanor Camacho?”
She nodded.
“I’m agent Phil Coulson,” he told her and her shoulders, which had been tensed for hours. eased slightly. Emily had always been very adamant about not talking to strangers, but this Phil Coulson was no longer a stranger because she knew his name. “Can you tell me what happened?”
With a quiet voice and surprisingly precocious vocabulary, she recounted how her guardian had woken her in the middle of the night and told her to hide under the bed before confronting a group of unknown intruders that left her a messy pile on the hallway floor. Agent Coulson listened intently the whole time, his foot soldiers gathering in the room around him, none commenting on how their director had his head nearly all the way under a child’s bed. When Eleanor finished speaking the thin haired man nodded.
“Mr. Lehnsherr was always a bit too serious for his own good,” he commented, almost conversationally, “He would never think to look under a bed because he couldn’t imagine himself hiding under one.” He spared the boxspring a glance. “But it’s the perfect spot for a little thing like you isn’t it?”
Eleanor just stared at him.
He stared back.
“Eleanor, is there anything Agent Preston-...Emily gave you? Something important that she may want me to see so I can help you?”
With arms more tired and cramped than had she realized, Ellie held out the folded bit of paper Emily had pressed into her hand all those hours ago. Coulson took it, unfolding the document right there on the floor to read. His eyes swept the info, going back and back multiple times to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. He didn’t look happy. He sighed a tired sigh and looked back at the girl under the bed.
“Someone get me a phone,” he called over his shoulder, “I need to get Wade Wilson on the line.”