Fury could feel an ache beginning somewhere behind where his eye used to be. This wasn’t going to work. After the disaster he’d needed to assemble a new team around the remnants of the old- only Natasha, faithful Orlesian defector that she was, Coulson, his right hand man, and Maria, the scribe- remained, and that wouldn’t be enough to rescue Clint.

(damnfool elf needed rescuing more often than not, but he was worth it).

Still, Fury’s heart sank as he looked across the room. The dwarf, Stark, still firmly believed that just because he had been hot stuff in Orzammar he deserved to be treated like royalty everywhere he went. This sat badly with Ser Rogers, the Templar they’d found frozen in some ruined Circle basement, who in turn sat even worse with that mage guy- Banner something. But then everything sat wrong with someone posessed by a spirit of Wrath.

And then there was Odinson, whose brother had started the whole mess and who had joined up out of some misguided, meatheaded sense of duty. Nobles. Fury made a disgusted face. It was hard to tell, because it was his regular one.

“This is never going to work.” he muttered, but Coulson, hovering at his elbow as always, shook his head.

“They just need something to bring them together.” he looked at Fury, his eyes quick and thoughtful. “And they might get it soon enough.”

There was a city here, once.

Perhaps there will be a city here again. You stand in what was once a bay, now choked with sand. Out in the desert, you can make out an island. Further in, doors and windows stare blindly, walls softened by drifts of sand. 

This is a wrong place. The music of your passage echoes oddly from the  buildings, and you can feel eyes staring at you as you cross the wide spaces that must have once held markets, passing pillars still daubed with the red marks of those that once lived here. 

The creatures that make the desert their home do not like it here. They will not cross into the bay or fly among the corroded bronze statues that frown from every corner. This place is thick with ghosts and stories, more so than any other ruin you have visited.

There was a city here once. But now only the ghosts remain.