Eden Turner did not struggle as she was taken roughly outside into the harsh autumn sunlight, nor as she was shoved with equal force into the back seat of a dark car with dark windows, or as she was marched down cold and colorless halls into a windowless interrogation room and her handcuffs removed. She said nothing since her arrest at the Museum, and seemed very calm about the entire affair. All except for her hands, which fluttered and wrung themselves as if they contained every nerve in her small body. Clint found her overall behavior suspicious, considering what happened the last time SHIELD took a complacent criminal in their midst.
“I don’t like it,” he shook his head. “She’s too quiet.”
“She’s awfully antsy though.” Natasha looked at him. “Like she’s nervous. And she isn’t making an effort to hide it either.”
She was right. It could mean that this girl was nervous about being found out, but it that were the case, why did she allow herself to be caught? What does she know? What is her role in the recent chain of events? It seemed like ever turn she lead them down created more questions than answers.
The agents in charge of her interrogation, a stocky thirty-something year old with cheap black glasses and an agent with a military crew cut, brushed past the assassins without a word and followed each other into the windowless room. Clint and Natasha kept focused on the video feed. They saw Eden look up too see who came in but then dropped her head and began picking at the ratted skin around painfully short nails. The conversation was one-sided for twenty, twenty-three minutes when Natasha sighed.
“So, rather than risk slipping up she’s just not going to talk.”
Another twenty minutes passed. The bespectacled agent was becoming progressively agitated and looked like he might reach across the table and knock her upside the head at any moment. He couldn’t have been suitably trained; it just went to show how thin the ranks were at present. Fortunately Crew Cut was calmer, and when his partner would ask another heated question, demanding answers, he would gently encourage Denny to answer as best as she could, or in any way she knew how. And she ignored them both.
Finally Clint took a deep breath and looked at Nat. “I’m going to get Coulson. Maybe he can make her talk.”
“‘Talk’ as in answering SHIELD’s questions or ‘talk’ as in answering his?” Natasha returned.
“Either would be just fine if we can get her to open her mouth,” Clint stated. “If Coulson can loosen her up hopefully everyone will get their answers.”

---

Coulson entered the interrogation room with three things— the file containing Ronne’s post-mortem photos, Denny’s bracelet, and the note she left earlier that day. The first two agents looked relieved to have him take over. When he stepped in front of the table Denny looked up at him slowly, quietly, a soft smile tugging at her lips but it did not show in her eyes. Coulson saw how tired and empty Denny looked up close. She really did look like a ghost of the laughing girl in the picture. But it was Denny, he was sure of it. He just needed to prove it to the others. And maybe he needed to reiterate it for himself. He held the baggie with the bracelet across the table until she took it, timidly, like he might hit her if she made a wrong move.
“I believe this is yours,” he said as he passed it over, and took a seat. Denny quietly pulled the piece of jewelry from its plastic confines and fastened it to her wrist. She turned it over a couple of times before placing both hands on the table and returning her attention to Phil.
“You’ve made quite a lot of people worry, Denny,” he said quietly, soothingly. Like a parent trying to discipline a young child. “You’ve been missing for a long time. I can’t say this is how anyone would have predicted you would come back.”
“After fifteen years I’m not sure there is a good way to tell people you aren’t dead,” she said with a crooked grin.
“I’m sure there are better ways than murder,” Phil stated with a slight grimace.
“He needed to go,” Denny shrugged, as if it were obvious. Phil moved the post-mortem photographs around so she could see them.
“There’s been a lot of speculation as to how this happened. I assume you already know who this is. What we need to know is what went down between you two.”
Denny looked at Coulson long and hard before picking up the pictures one by one, observing each carefully.
The silence grew heavy, and when Coulson was about to prompt her with another question, she spoke, very quietly— “There are a lot of kids who grow up wanting to be like their parents. And a lot of them do become their parents, whether they’re aware of it or not. I guess some habits can’t be broken in one generation.”
She organized the pictures so that the corners were perfectly in line. Then she pulled her hands back and admired her work, but reached back out to adjust one picture on the right a smidge.
“Mr. Gorman always seemed like a very nice man. Even when he took me away that night, he didn’t seem like a bad person. He just made a really stupid mistake. And because of his mistake his son was left to fill the debt.”
“What mistake was that?” Coulson asked.
Denny looked up at him. “If someone you loved more than life itself died, what would you do to get them back?”
Coulson narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know. Generally there aren’t many options when someone is dead and gone. You can’t bring them back.”
Denny spread her hands and leaned forward persistently. “But if someone came to you and said, ‘Phil, I have an offer for you. I can bring back so-and-so if you do such-and-such for me’, would you do it?”
“I’ll be honest that sounds kind of shady,” he admitted.
“It does! And it is! But human emotions are like drugs. They really mess up people who on a good day have a lot of common sense about them. And when a deal like that came to a grief-stricken man over his wife’s grave, it was an offer he couldn’t refuse. And now here we are.”
“Where is that?”
“Here,” she gestured, “with me looking at a man I used to call my Uncle, who has himself been dead and not dead.”
Coulson frowned. She shouldn’t have known that, but at the same time he was not shocked at the reference. Instead he focused on her. “So are you telling me you actually died?”
Denny laughed, a hollow, nervous laugh, and looked back down at her hands. She shook her head.
“I really don’t have a good answer for that. I don’t think there is a right answer.”
“Try explaining it as best you can. I’ll try to keep up,” he encouraged.
But she refused with another shake of her bowed head. Coulson patiently attempted another approach.
“Does it have anything to do with the supernatural occurrences that we’ve been fighting against?”
Denny’s brow furrowed and she nodded without looking up.
“Was Ronne working in conjunction with these events?”
Another short, rigid nod yes. There was the notion that it was a sensitive and or unpleasant topic to her.
“And was Ronne just a way to tell us you’re back or was there something bigger you intended in his death?”
She seemed hesitant to give her answer. A wordless yes or no would not supply a reason to this question.
“He,” she started slowly, “had given up his humanity voluntarily, and insisted on forcibly destroying other lives in his wake.”
She looked up at Coulson and continued more fervently, “Organizations like SHIELD have protocols they adhere to in order to avoid breaches in security or to avoid lawsuits, and that means— more often than not— that you people arrest and lock up those who need to just go. Think of how many problems would be solved if career criminals were just killed on sight rather than tossed in another cell to break out or serve his time and go about his dastardly deeds?”
“That isn’t how things work unfortunately.”
“In this world, no.” Denny sat back in her chair, resuming the calm and indifferent character. “And look at the state your society is in.”
“‘This world’?” Coulson repeated. “Have you been to a world other than this one, Denny?”
She looked frightened for a moment, then cold, hateful, and angry all at once. Her entire face changed with this new darker demeanor.
But she didn’t answer.

Notes