Chapter Text
“No way,” Natasha laughed, leaning back into the couch, loose-limbed with alcohol and joy. “He just kissed you and passed out?”
“Yes!” Tony insisted, and Steve groaned next to him. “He was like ‘take off your helmet’ and I swear to God, I thought he was going to punch me!”
“Why would I punch you?” Steve demanded.
“Because I faked my death and you didn’t get my voicemail so it seemed like I swooped in from beyond the grave to save you!”
“Cliché,” Clint commented from the other side of the table. Thor smacked him on the back of the head.
“It’s cute,” he said, and everyone stared at him for a beat. “What?”
“Do you even know what that means, man?” Sam asked.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve had to learn how to speak a language properly,” Thor said, sounding mildly affronted. “The Allspeak isn’t universal, I can still adapt.”
Sam put his hands up in surrender, looking a little flustered at his apparent gaffe to an alien prince.
Tony burst out laughing. “Thor, you scared the new guy.”
“Don’t let them get off-track,” Natasha warned, smirking. The alcohol had definitely gotten to her: she was loose-limbed and casual, draped across the furniture in a way that was unlike her. It made Tony happy, that she could be so free here with them.
Sam pointed at her like thank you. “So, are you guys an item now?”
Tony’s cheeks flamed, and Steve’s ears went fire-engine red.
“Hey, they warned us,” Clint commented, spinning two chopsticks in between his fingers in varying patterns, for whatever reason. “How many times did Rogers tell you to not keep secrets?”
Frankly, Tony had forgotten about the future Captain America’s insistence on honesty. He wondered where that had come from.
“Like, seven,” Steve said, and Sam frowned.
“What now?"
“Oh, right, a new guy,” Tony remembered, even though he hadn’t really forgotten. “We had a little drop-in from mine and Capsicle’s future selves. They were together, too.”
Sam looked mildly disturbed by this revelation, and he bowed his head for a moment. “This is my life now,” he lamented, and they all laughed.
“Welcome to the life, wingman,” Natasha said, raising her glass in the air.
Tony followed her example, and they all clinked their glasses together, chiming, “Wingman!”
“What is a wingman?” Thor asked blankly.
“Oh, buddy,” Tony said, patting him on the back. “You’ve still got a ways to go."
It was a few more minutes of comfortable small talk, asking Thor about what the hell he’d done in Greenwich that had destroyed half of the plaza, poking fun at Steve, teasing Sam. Tony leaned into Steve, letting his warmth seep into his core. Steve had draped an arm around him, and the laughter in the air (and in the wine) made Tony feel hopeful for the first time, really, since New York.
“So, we’re getting back together again?” Natasha asked in a lull of the conversation. “The Avengers, it’s happening?”
“I thought that was always the plan,” Steve admitted, shifting his broad shoulders so they brushed against Tony’s. He felt heat rise back into his cheeks and firmly pictured Senator Stern in his birthday suit to make the blush fade.
“Me too,” he said, leaning into Steve. “I was just getting the Tower all fixed up. I mean, we were all in Malibu for a while before the HYDRA thing, and now, it’s obviously, well…” he spread his hands to showcase the obviously-repaired Tower.
“I’m down,” Clint said. “I mean, I’m out of a job now, so…” There was a general murmur of assent all around the table.
“Bruce is flying in tonight,” Tony announced. “I assumed you all would say yes. He was hanging out in Sri Lanka waiting to see what was gonna happen.”
“I won’t be able to stay,” Thor said mournfully. “Asgard was sacked in the war against Svartalfheim. I’ve really been gone too long, but…” he shrugged and said nothing more. There was obviously something else, something he wanted to say but couldn’t, but Tony wouldn’t push too soon.
“I’m going to hit the sack,” Clint said suddenly, slapping his drumsticks together. “Been a long day.”
“What have you done today?” Tony asked incredulously, but then Steve began to shift next to him as though to get up with him. “Not you too!”
Steve aimed puppy-dog eyes at him, and Tony rued the fact that he caved almost immediately. “Fine,” he groaned. “I’m getting old anyway. Old people go to bed early, right?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Sam said, but he got up as well. “Steve?”
“Neither would I,” Steve said wryly, wrapping an arm around Tony’s shoulders. “But don’t be mean to my boyfriend.”
“Aww,” Tony cooed, leaning exaggeratedly into Steve. “I know there was a reason I liked you besides your d—”
“Nope!” Sam interrupted, shutting his eyes despite the lack of anything inappropriate happening in front of him. “I don’t want to hear it!”
“I was going to say dignity,” Tony said sagely.
“I’m sure you were,” Natasha told him, rising smoothly. “Night, boys.”
Tony walked Steve all the way to the room that they shared. They didn’t really speak, but then again, they rarely had to: instead, they strolled in companionable silence, waiting for the sounds of Clint’s complaining to fade from earshot. They reached their apartment, but Tony stopped in the doorway.
“I’ve got to wrap a few things up in my lab,” he said as Steve gave him a plaintive look. “I swear I won’t take more than a half hour. JARVIS can even make sure of it—JARVIS?”
“I am proven to be quite effective when it comes to forcing Mr. Stark to leave the lab,” JARVIS answered affably. “This includes occasionally activating sprinklers at the slightest sign of smoke, just to ensure his safety.”
Tony pointed at the ceiling. “See?”
Steve sighed, leaning against the doorframe. “All right. Have fun not blowing yourself up.”
“One time,” he said, planting a hand on Steve’s shoulder and nudging him into the room. If Steve truly didn’t want to go, he wouldn’t have budged, but he allowed himself to be pushed inside. “That was one time. I’ll see you soon.”
“Counting on it,” Steve said.
Tony managed to restrain himself from addressing JARVIS again until he was in the safety of his lab. Then, of course, as excited as a little kid on Christmas morning, he burst out, “Well?”
“Well what, sir?”
“Don’t be obtuse on purpose, it’s… annoying,” Tony told the ceiling, spinning himself in an idle circle in his chair. “The simulations. Any luck? It’s been weeks now, aren’t they finishing up soon?”
“They were delayed after the… electrical incident with the generators and Mr. Odinson,” JARVIS reported, an ounce of hesitation in his voice to presumably emphasize the absurdity of that fiasco. “They will be finishing tomorrow.”
“And?”
“So far, none have been successful.” Tony cursed viciously, letting the foul language spill out his throat and curdle as they left his lips. The time was running out, he knew it. “However, I am operating on limited scans of the Mind Stone, as we only had it on premises for roughly a week and our attentions were focused elsewhere at the time."
Tony stopped spinning. “So you’re saying having it here would help?”
“It certainly would not hinder.”
“Huh.” Tony scooched himself over to the nearest monitor and tapped it awake. “Where’d Fury stick that thing, anyway? He put that tracker on it because of the whole HYDRA thing, can you access that?”
“Certainly,” JARVIS said, and free of prompting, the computer Tony was using pulled up a satellite map. “Scanning.”
Tony sighed to himself as he waited, and looked to the far wall.
Stardust and cold metal, ancient moons and bright gold and an old, purple-gray face grinning with mossy teeth, I know you, Stark, and Death smothering the universe in her embrace.
Where had Tony seen that? It was a dream—a nightmare—but there was something to it, a tinge of red and green and gold—
“Sir, I’m afraid that I cannot locate Loki’s Scepter.”
Tony shot up in his seat, feeling the familiar symptoms of an attack bubble up in his chest. Drat. He hadn’t had one for months, but now—
“ What?” he demanded. “The entire point of giving that thing to SHIELD was that Fury was going to keep an eye on it. What’s the last ping you’ve got on it?”
“The Triskelion, sir,” JARVIS said, unusually contrite for an AI that Tony had created. “It’s unclear how long it has been offline.”
Tony upset his chair so badly that it tipped onto the floor with a bang that startled him further. “You—what? Unclear?”
“My processing power has been occupied as of recently,” JARVIS said, a bit peevish, “with your project, and with keeping Stark Industries running."
Tony ran shaking fingers through his hair. “You’re right, J, I’m sorry, I—fuck.”
“I will call Captain Rogers—” JARVIS began, but Tony waved him off.
“Don’t,” he ordered, clenching his fingers together to quell their trembling. “I’m going up there anyway. I’m gonna sleep on this. Just—keep looking.”
“Of course, sir.”
Tony took another look at the bright lights, DUM-E and U spinning idly at the far side of the room, the rapid-fire computer screens, and thought I made this, but he runs it. “Thanks, buddy.”
“So, we’ve got a problem,” Tony said the next morning, plopping down on the couch. “Anyone wanna guess?”
“Illegitimate child,” said Clint.
“More aliens,” said Sam.
“You bought more of Disney,” said Bruce, who had arrived sometime during the night and was already bullying Tony.
“I agree with Bruce,” said Steve, who was apparently joining in.
“Hey—!” Tony began, then turned to blink at Steve. “I told you already!”
“Before we devolve into more arguments,” Thor interrupted, “maybe tell us what the problem is?"
“Uh,” Tony said. “Sure. Um. The Sceper’s missing.”
The hustle and bustle of the kitchen went still. Bruce turned off the stove and turned fully around, and Thor leaned forward on his stool. “How is that possible?"
“The tracker that Fury put on it got deactivated, probably somewhere between my death and Fury’s. I think a rogue HYDRA cell stole it during the fall.” Tony sighed. “It’s not ideal.”
“Great,” Natasha said dryly. The rest of them shifted uncomfortably, and Tony was reminded of whispers of everything special about you came out of a bottle, always a way out, isn’t there? “Well, we have access to a list of all the hidden bases as long as they weren’t locked out of SHIELD databases.”
“We’re the only one who have them, right?” Sam checked, reaching for some type of quiche that JARVIS had ordered for them. “The files. HYDRA doesn’t have them?”
“Nah,” Natasha said easily, leaning back further into her seat. “I wiped them from all of SHIELD’s computers and stole the hard drive.”
“And got electrocuted,” Clint put in helpfully.
“And got electrocuted,” Natasha allowed.
“JARVIS can search them,” Tony said, snapping his fingers at the ceiling. “Right, bud? A lot faster than Clint’s cute little eyes.”
Clint pouted, and Steve poked Tony in the side. “Don’t be mean,” he chided.
“His codename is literally Hawkeye!” Tony defended indignantly. “He brought it upon himself!”
“I can certainly convince my father that I have a reason to stay here if Loki’s scepter is in the wind,” Thor reasoned with a mischievous spark in his eye.
“Yeah, can’t have that on the loose,” Natasha said, sipping daintily at her orange juice.
“Sir,” JARVIS said suddenly. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’ve compiled a list of likely locations for the Scepter have been moved to. I’ve also discovered evidence of tampering with the tracker as long ago as three weeks after the invasion.”
The atmosphere sobered even further. “What?” Tony asked, swiping a hologram over to himself. “How did we not notice?”
“Already?” Tony heard Steve mutter, but Tony ignored him.
“They were very subtle, sir,” JARVIS said. “And I’ve recently been preoccupied with other matters.”
Sam stared at the ceiling, alarmed. “The hell is that?"
“AI,” Natasha said, then pointedly looked at Tony. “Although I didn’t realize that he did… all that.”
Tony shrugged at her, not apologetic in the least. “Sorry if I downplayed the importance of my AI that could end the world if someone got a hold of it.”
Sam shook his head incredulously. Thor only laughed.
“There are twelve HYDRA cells stationed all across South America, Eastern Europe, and northern Russia that have the potential to host the Scepter,” JARVIS recounted. “I would recommend that you move immediately to prevent HYDRA from moving the weapon to another location.”
Tony groaned, but Steve sat forwards. Tony quietly mourned the removal of the warmth against his side, but Steve didn’t seem to notice. “What could HYDRA do with the Scepter?” Steve asked worriedly. “It already has mind controlling powers, could it… do something else?”
“It already had a hand in bringing Stark and Rogers to our timeline,” Thor said gravely. “It’s an Infinity Stone: both it and the Tesseract are capable of destroying this half of the galaxy with no trouble.”
“Great,” Clint said dryly. “When do we leave?”
In a rarely intimate moment, Tony curled up on the couch with his head in Steve’s lap. Everyone else had left to pack and rest before their mission, but Tony couldn’t bring himself to move. He ran his fingers lightly along Steve’s thigh where the bullet wound had been. “How’s your leg?” he asked.
“It’s fine,” Steve told him exasperatedly. “It healed two weeks ago. How’s your back? Still bruised?”
Low blow. It wasn’t Tony’s fault that he didn’t have an enhanced body that healed shit in like three hours. He told Steve as much, and he huffed with laughter. “Sorry.”
“What do you think about all this?” Tony said into Steve’s stomach. “The Scepter, and HYDRA, and, you know, Bucky.”
Tony’s head moved a little when Steve exhaled. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “We do have to get the Scepter back, because they were so specific about it. And the thing with Barnes, my parents…”
Tony had been angry at first. He had stormed out of the room when Steve told him, gone down to the lab, and blown up half of the prototypes that he had on his workbench. He still wasn’t sure exactly how he felt about it: it was less of a conscious feeling than a mixture of resentment, grief, anger, but also pity and empathy.
But one thing that Tony had always been good at was analyzing facts, often at the expense of his emotional state. It was one of the reasons he was so good at building things and so bad at dealing with them.
Fact one: the Winter Soldier had murdered his parents in cold blood. Strangled his mother, bashed Howard’s head against the steering wheel.
Fact two: the Winter Soldier was Bucky Barnes, Steve’s best friend from World War II.
These two facts together should have immediately led to Tony irrevocably blaming Barnes for his parents’ death. But then there was fact three: Bucky Barnes had been tortured for over seventy years and brainwashed into becoming a living weapon.
Fact four: HYDRA had done this to him.
Conclusion: HYDRA had killed his parents, not Bucky Barnes.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Tony told Steve, realizing that he’d zoned out. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. And a lot of therapeutic destruction. It was HYDRA.”
“Tony…”
Tony sat up, looking Steve square in the eyes. “Steve,” he said firmly, taking both of his hands. “Believe me when I say this: I understand how important he is to you. And I understand that HYDRA tortured him until he forgot himself. So I want to help. Both for his sake, and mine, and to tell HYDRA to go fuck itself.”
Steve laughed, but there were tears in his eyes.
“I care about you,” Tony continued. “I really, really do. And you care about him, so I do, too.”
“Thank you,” Steve managed, and ducked in to hug him so hard his ribs creaked.
They left early in the morning, despite Tony’s protesting back. South America was their starting point: first in Bolivia, then northern Venezuela. Zip. Nada. The only thing that Tony found was a slight malfunction in his wrist repulsors when he tried to fry mosquitos out of the air.
“There’s gotta be a way to track it,” Bruce was spewing, twisting the sleeves of his sweater between his fingers, an anxious tick. It was late and Tony was bone-tired, but they were still awake because today had been an abysmal failure. “I mean, the Infinity Stones emit massive amounts of energy, and we have the readings from the Mind Stone from when the Couple came. Why can’t we find it?”
The Avengers had taken to calling Stark and Rogers “the Couple.” Everyone thought it was funny but Tony and Steve.
Thor, who for some reason had decided to hang out in the lab with them, set a steady hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “They’re immensely powerful,” he rumbled in that impossibly deep voice of his. “But you humans, I’ve found, are quite clever when it comes to disguising these things. We’ll find it.”
Bruce didn’t look convinced, but he had released the cuffs of his sweater from their stranglehold. Most of his nervous energy seemed to have drained right out of him through Thor’s contact.
“Thor’s right,” Tony said when he realized he hadn’t actually said anything in a few minutes. “We ticked off two bases already. By the time HYDRA realizes what’s going on, it’ll be too late.”
“I hope so,” Bruce muttered, mostly to himself. “I’m gonna get some rest. Thor, Tony?”
The god dipped his head in acquiescence, but Tony waved the offer away. “I’ll clean up and head up in a few minutes. Night.”
Their strongest Avengers both mumbled goodnights and shuffled out. Tony smiled fondly to himself.
“Sir,” JARVIS said quietly, startling Tony despite the AI’s best efforts. “I finished the simulations you requested.”
Tony set down the tool he’d been fiddling with. “And?”
“Every scenario was catastrophic,” JARVIS said regrettably. “I’m sorry, sir. Ultron is a failure.”
Tony breathed deep and looked to the drawing hung on the far wall. “Okay,” he said after a moment. “We’ll just have to try something else then, won’t we?”
“Yes, sir. We will.”
The next morning, they left equally as early. There were half a dozen HYDRA bases in Eastern Europe to hit, plus two in Western, so they packed their belongings for the week and went to stay in Tony’s off-book home in rural France.
“The vineyards?” Natasha asked dryly. “Please tell me—”
“I bought this in my I’m-dying crisis, leave me alone!”
Italy: bust. Switzerland: bust, but they did buy some nice chocolate. Croatia: bust. Turkey: bust. Bust, bust—
“Sokovia?” Clint said dubiously, studying the map. “I dunno, Cap, seems like a long shot. Why would they drag the Scepter all the way out there? It’s out of range of basically every industrialized country, why—”
Natasha spat out a curse. “That’s the point,” she said, like the words cut her throat as they came out. “Let’s go.”
Tony primed the jet with a push of a button on his phone, and called the suit with another. It took the team ten minutes to change into their combat outfits, so he and Bruce sat by the plane playing twenty questions.
By the time Steve distracted him,Tony had determined that Bruce was thinking of a diatomic element with an atomic number higher than eight, which left fluorine, iodine—
Steve kissed him on the top of the head and Tony lost all his trains of thoughts. And those were a lot of trains.
“Steve,” Tony whined. “I was gonna win!”
Bruce laughed, patted him on the shoulder, and blushed when Thor boomed, “another victory, Bruce!”
Oh, boy.
“Ride’ll be a half hour, folks,” Clint announced from the cockpit. “Hop to it!”
“He sounds like a Disney mascot,” Tony complained. “One of those stupid rides at Disney World.”
“You own an entire Kingdom in Disney World,” Natasha informed him. “Shut up.”
Since he was a responsible adult who owned a significant portion of Disney World, Tony stuck out his tongue and blew her a raspberry.
“All right, settle down,” Steve called in his Captain voice. “We’re gonna go over an entry plan. We’ve got the element of surprise. Let’s use it.
“Tony and I will enter from the north,” Steve continued, manipulating the map to demonstrate where. Tony felt a pang of pride at his lover, freshly thrown into a new century and adapting easily: a fish to water. He smiled to himself, but Thor caught it and winked. “Thor, you’ll take Nat down to the south and wait for my signal. Clint, stay in the jet with Bruce until we can determine whether or not we have a code green. If we do, hop out and cover him. If not, aerial support. Any questions?”
No one spoke up. Bruce’s hands were tangled in the hem of his shirt again.
“And keep an eye out for Barnes info, people!” Tony called, rubbing his hands together. “Sam can’t do it all.”
Sam, much to his chagrin, had been left behind in New York for this mission. The Falcon wings had been damaged in their last fight, and Tony hadn’t had a chance to repair them to the point where he was sure they wouldn’t explode upon use. Instead, he was working with JARVIS to scour paper and digital documents for signs of Bucky.
Natasha slung a two-finger salute his way and ducked into the cockpit. Steve took Tony’s hand and squeezed it. “Are you okay with that?”
“What?” Tony asked, and briefly wondered if he’d accidentally tuned out half of the conversation again.
“Bucky,” Steve clarified. “I know… I know your mom’s death was hard on you— is hard on you. If you don’t want to get involved…”
“Steve,” Tony said gently. “I will give you the same answer as all the other times you’ve said this. It wasn’t his fault. Heat of the moment, yeah, I’ll give it to you, I probably wouldn’t have had the best reaction. But being tortured for decades… I want to kill the HYDRA bastards who ordered it. But not him.”
“Okay,” Steve breathed, and he rested his forehead on Tony’s. “Okay.”
And this—Tony loved this. They had their awkward, bumbling moments, or their arguments, but it was all worth it. Steve was just…
“Landing in two minutes!” Clint called over the intercom. “You assholes ready to avenge?”
“Avenge what, dickhead?” Tony yelled back, and Bruce burst out laughing. If it was slightly hysterical, no one called him out on it. They were all a little insane, anyway.
Steve mounted his motorbike, and Tony stepped into the armor. “Catch you on the other side,” Steve told him, and Tony gasped.
“Pop culture!” he yelled. “It’s been butchered!”
The bay doors opened and dropped him right into the fray before Tony could catch Steve’s reaction, and soon, he was much more preoccupied with the agents pointing guns at his face.
There was a code green, because of course there was. Tony’s heart ached for Bruce, the man who had only wanted to do good and thought that this was his version of good, but nonetheless, the Hulk was a huge help. He ripped antiaircraft missiles from the sky before they hit Thor and Tony, destroyed entire phalanxes before they reached Clint and Natasha, and picked up tanks and threw them at Steve’s pursuers like toys.
Tony fired a missile at the looming building, and it rebounded off the force field like a rubber ball. “Shit!” he spat.
“Language,” Steve chided absently, and Tony laughed at the absurdity of it all.
Tony managed to break through the force field a few minutes later: it was powerful, but inefficient, so it was child’s play to send a missile through the weak point into the power source.
The guards inside tried to shoot him, which—seriously, did they have no other ideas? He took them out with strategically-placed drones, moved into the next room, blasted some guy typing frantically at one of the monitors, and stepped out of the suit.
“I’m in,” he said to the empty air. “No sign of Strucker.”
“Be careful, Tony,” Steve said, grunting as he presumably hurled his shield at something. “Who knows what they’ve been doing with the Mind Stone.”
“Roger that,” Tony said just before Natasha cried out, “Clint!”
Tony’s heart clenched, but he had to focus on the mission at hand. He thought of the drawing, torn paper and blacked-out faces, and took a deep breath.
“We have an enhanced in the field,” Steve said faintly over the comm line that Tony had turned down. Tony ignored this—he had to, before he lost it entirely.
“JARVIS, recover the files Mr. Crazy was trying to delete,” Tony said, gesturing at the computers. “And gimme a scan of the room.”
“The wall to your left,” JARVIS said after a moment, the suit bent over the flashing monitors. “I’m reading steel reinforcement, and an air current.”
“Please be a secret door, please be a secret door,” Tony pleaded to himself, approaching the wall with both hands outstretched. When he pushed it, it gave way with a grinding complaint. “Yay!”
“Guys, I got Strucker,” Steve called. “No sign of the speedster. Tony, be careful down there.”
“Yeah,” Tony said absently, because he was already absorbed in the scene in front of him. “Yeah, I got… something bigger.”
The Chitauri leviathan leered down at him, all wicked teeth and gleaming metal, and Tony thought of distant burned-out stars, gleaming fortresses and the face of death looming, smiling, over New York. Tony took a stuttering breath, half-expecting it to lurch toward him and swallow him whole.
There was a shuffle of steps behind him just as Tony caught sight of the Scepter. He went to turn, stretched out a hand for the suit, but too late.
Blinding pain in his head erupted, turned his vision white, and Tony crumpled around the sound of Steve’s shout of “Tony!”
When Tony screamed, Steve nearly dropped his shield and tripped over a dead body in the main chamber. “Tony!” he called frantically, hoping (praying) for a response. He didn’t get one.
“Shit,” he hissed again. “Anyone else unoccupied? Natasha?”
“I’m on lullaby,” she said, worry leaking into her tone. “I can make it there in five.”
“Barton is stable on the jet,” Thor reported. “I can make my way back over.”
“Okay,” Steve breathed, “Okay. Natasha, stay on lullaby. Thor, you do that, meet me…” Steve trailed off, realizing that he had no idea where Tony was. “JARVIS?”
“Mr. Stark discovered a secret door leading down to a lower level of this fortress,” JARVIS reported immediately. “He made his way down, but the Iron Man suit is still on the upper level, except for the left arm. I cannot pinpoint what hostiles may be down there—”
The blue blur of the speedster rushed by Steve, knocking him into the far wall. Steve watched where his trail disappeared, picked up his shield, and followed resolutely after.
He found the Iron Man suit in pieces, sparks flying everywhere from its torn joints, and an obvious gap in the wall. “Thor,” he said softly, pressing his body to the wall and peeking around the corner. “What’s your status?”
“I’m here,” Thor said from behind Steve, startling him enough that he jerked away from the entrance. “What’s…” he caught sight of the mangled Iron Man suit, and his gaze hardened. “Who needs to meet Mjolnir?”
“Two minutes,” Natasha reported. “I’ll meet you there.”
Thor’s steps down the stone staircase were surprisingly soft for a man of his bulk, let alone of his station. There was electricity licking the hammer and crawling up to his wrist, but it also collected along his shoulders and neck. Steve wondered absently how much of the conducting Mjolnir actually did.
There were voices coming from the antechamber below, one male and one female, with Slavic lilts to both their voices. Steve assumed that the male was the speedster from earlier, but he hadn’t encountered any other female fighters.
Steve made out the word Stark and his vision went red.
“Go for the speedster first,” Steve hissed to Thor. “If you can catch him off-guard and fry him, we can deal with the woman.”
Thor nodded his acknowledgement, and static began condensing the air.
They reached the entryway, pressing themselves to either side. “Coming in hot,” Natasha hissed over the line. “Thirty seconds.”
Steve held up three fingers, then two, then one. Thor whipped around the corner first, thrusting his white-hot hammer in front of him. The speedster was not quick enough to dodge.
The Scepter was resting on a lab table behind them. Steve felt a pang of satisfaction— finally.
The woman, with brown stringy hair hanging in front of her eyes and filthy bandages wrapped around her wrists, cried out, “Pietro!” She made an abortive movement to kneel beside him, but whipped around to face him and Thor, her eyes wide with horror and feral anger.
“You can come peacefully,” Steve began, but those furious eyes began to glow red.
“You’ll pay,” she spat, and shot a hand toward Thor. A stream of red, glowing energy collided with Thor’s head in the same moment that Natasha came from the shadows and jammed the girl in the neck with her Widow’s Bites.
Thor collapsed to his knees in tandem with the witch, and his eyes glowed red too.
“Thor,” Natasha called, but Steve caught sight of the legs of Tony’s flightsuit behind a table.
“I have two hostiles contained, Thor is down, Stark unclear,” Natasha was saying rapid-fire into her comm. Bruce sounded an acknowledgement on the other line.
Steve practically flung his shield aside when he found Tony, crumpled on his side with an Iron Man gauntlet around his left hand. His nose was bleeding, and he had a cut along his cheekbone, but that was the only sign of injury.
But Natasha was still shaking a half-catatonic Thor, who was muttering to himself and clutching his hands to his chest. If the witch had done that to an alien god, then…
“Tony,” Steve said, reaching out to jostle him. “Tony, wake up.”
For one horrifying moment, nothing happened. Then, Steve’s boyfriend began to rouse, groaning and raising a hand to his head. “Ow,” he muttered, his voice slightly slurred. “Did Thor hit me with his hammer?”
“No,” Steve said softly, feeling a tinge of amusement as he glimpsed Thor begin to rouse as well. “You both got whammied.”
Tony suddenly went bolt upright. “The Scepter, it’s—”
“It’s there,” Steve reassured him. “It’s okay.”
Tony looked up, and for the first time Steve really took in the Chitauri leviathan hanging above their heads. Its beady eyes had apparently remained intact despite the Hulk’s best efforts, and it lorded over them like it knew something they didn’t.
Behind them, Thor shoved Natasha off him and cried out, “No!” His eyes were glowing blue, plasma wrapping up his arms like demented chains, and for a terrifying moment Steve thought he would explode.
Mjolnir was resting on the ground beside him, forgotten.
“Thor, calm down,” Natasha was saying, showing her empty hands. “Whatever you saw, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t.”
“The Stones,” Thor gasped out, and Tony went absolutely still under Steve’s hands. “He’s—they’re—collecting them.”
“The end of half the universe,” Tony said eerily. “Like they warned us about.”
Thor gazed at both of them miserably, and the lightning went out. “Yes,” he said solemnly. “I’m sorry.”
Natasha frowned down at her hands, then looked over at the girl, crumpled next to the boy—Pietro. “How do you know it was real?”
“It was real,” Thor said, totally certain. “I’m not certain that it would have been real for you, but the fragment of the Stone inside her reacted… poorly with my energy.”
Steve looked over at the girl, studied her delicate features. And at the same time, he and Tony said, “I recognize her.”
They looked at each other, and Natasha and Thor looked at them.
“The drawing,” Tony said. “She’s in it.”
“Oh, boy,” said Natasha, flatly, and she offered Thor a hand to his feet. “Let’s deal with this on the jet, shall we?”
They stumbled out of the fortress looking like a half-crazed, extremely suspicious entourage. Steve walked with the girl slung limp over his shoulder and Tony’s hand clasped in his free one. Thor, despite not looking at all up for carrying anything lighter than a feather, picked up the boy like it was nothing. Although, come to think of it, he probably weighed less than a feather to Thor. The demigod, too, had his free hand wrapped in Natasha’s free one, but Steve was sure that in this case, it was platonic. Natasha was probably trying to steady Thor in the only way she knew how; Thor seeking comfort in a friend after… whatever he had seen.
“I see you guys,” Bruce said unsteadily on the jet. “Clint’s fine, are you guys okay?”
“Getting there,” Steve said, because Tony’s face was still pale and waxy, his hand trembling in Steve’s, and Thor’s shoulders had curved in in an effort to make himself smaller.
“We’ve got two prisoners here,” Natasha said breezily. “Enhanced. Prep the cuffs, please? I’m pretty sure they’ll stay out the whole trip, but just in case.”
Steve was pretty sure at least of half of Natasha’s decisions were based on just in case. In this line of work, it wasn’t exactly a bad thing.
“Sure,” Bruce said. “One minute.”
They boarded the jet, and Thor again proved how thrown off he was when he nearly bashed the boy’s head into the frame of the Quinjet. He would have, actually, if it weren’t for Tony’s quick reflexes.
“Easy, Thor,” he said quietly. “I know.”
Natasha ducked into the cockpit after muttering a few words into Clint’s ear. Steve startled, setting the girl down next to the other enhanced. “Did you see something too?”
Tony shook his head no. “It was just… pain. But I know what it’s like to worry about Thanos.”
“We don’t know it’s him,” Steve said, admittedly pathetic.
“We do,” Thor said, speaking for the first time in a long while. “I saw it. I have to…”
“Nobody is doing anything yet,” Bruce interrupted, ducking out from a storage container to give them a stern glance. He also looked terrible: pale and sweaty, practically buried in that sweater of his. But he was putting on a strong face for the rest of them, which Steve could firmly appreciate. “Right now, we’re gonna get Clint back to base, and then we’ll deal with these two.” He waved the cuffs in the air.
Tony snorted out a laugh. “Yes, sir,” he said, and saluted, turned to Steve. “Steve, I think he’s trying to replace you.”
“He’s welcome to,” Steve said, and he too laughed at Bruce’s horrified expression.
True to Natasha’s word, the two young adults stayed passed out until well after they arrived to base. Sam gave Steve a dubious look after Helen Cho’s crew wheeled Clint off the jet, speaking in rapid-fire Korean and accompanied by Natasha. He and Thor dragged them off again, put them in the holding cells that had been previously used for Loki.
“I knew these would come in handy,” Tony said wryly, rapping his knuckles against the glass. “I turned the heat up, though.”
“Small mercies,” said Steve dryly, and turned away. “What happened back there?”
Tony’s happy expression dropped suddenly, like Steve had told him his new puppy died. He sighed, leaning against the cell wall. “She was trying to show me something,” he said, rare uncertainty leaking into his tone. “I think. There were—flashes. Space. The Chitauri. But it was mostly just pain. I think… I think they’re new to this whole thing. I mean, did you see the way the speedster was running?”
“Yes,” Steve said, “but you didn’t.”
Tony waved that away, confidence already restored. “Educated guess. I mean, Thor said he saw something, which means that she was probably trying to do that to me. They look half-starved, too—this can't have been going on long.”
“Why?”
“They’d be dead!” Tony exclaimed, jabbing a thumb behind him at the glass. “Do you know how many calories they must burn, especially the boy?”
“More than me?” Steve guessed, secretly reveling in Tony’s genius.
“More than you!” Tony agreed. “So why did this even happen to them? How did they use the Scepter to do—”
Steve glimpsed movement, and then there was a huge BANG on the glass behind Tony. The inventor startled so badly he stumbled into Steve’s chest.
The girl was awake, her eyes positively glowing with fury. Her eyes were fixed on Tony. She curled her hands together and flung another magical blast at the glass. Nothing happened.
“She can’t get through that,” Tony said shakily, not untangling himself from Steve. “Even Loki couldn’t. Still, though… JARVIS?”
“I will keep you updated, sir,” the AI agreed smoothly. “I am glad you are safe, sir.”
“Me too, buddy,” Tony said, looking back at the half-feral girl hurling energy at the cell wall as Steve led him from the room. “Me, too.”
Thor was certain something was coming.
They had already had this confirmed by their future selves: Stark and Rogers, quietly describing the destruction of half the known universe. And Thor himself, brutally injured, almost unrecognizable, telling him Loki was dead and to ask his father about a woman named Hela. Thor had not had a chance to get an answer from Odin: when he asked before the siege by Svartalfheim, the king had gone deathly pale and promptly fallen into the Odinsleep.
Days later, after his mother’s and Loki’s deaths, Thor asked again. Odin looked at him blankly, like he had no idea what Thor was talking about, and suggested he take some time off.
Thor knew something was wrong. Something was coming. He just had to figure out what.
“Wake up!” Heimdall shouted, his fingers digging deep into Thor’s shoulders. “You killed us—he’s coming!”
The six Stones flew by Thor’s eyes: Space, enclosed in the Tesseract; Mind, trapped in the Scepter; Power, in a silvery orb, grabbed up by an orange bird—no, a ship; Reality, trapped in the In Between for so long and now enclosed in glass, a new prison; Time, a blinking eye, gold and ancient, clutched in trembling hands, human hands; Soul, two arching pillars and a cliff, a cliff that sparked such dread that Thor backed away from it, stumbling over his own feet—
Thor’s hands sparked, and his lightning stretched out to reach a man on the far side of the room. He screamed as he disintegrated.
So imagine Thor’s horror when his hands sparked again and Natasha was right there, right there—
“Thor!”
Thor looked up abruptly from where he was sat in a chair near Clint’s bed. It was Steve who had spoken, but the entire team was staring at him, even Clint, who had a gash torn into his side and who should definitely be the center of attention right then, not Thor.
“Sorry,” Thor muttered. His hands began to light up again, and he clenched his fists to force the charge to dissipate.
“Are you okay?” Tony asked, and Thor was glad it was him and no one else, because he was the only other one who had felt her claws tear into his skull. “I know she’s kind of brutal, and—”
“It’s starting,” Thor interrupted. “The Stones. It’s starting.”
Natasha bowed her head. Her hair was the longest Thor had ever seen it: it reached past her shoulders and brushed her rib cage, but he got the feeling that she’d soon be changing it. She never seemed to stay the same, and it reminded him of Loki.
I’m sorry—
“How can you know?” Bruce asked, wringing his hands together. “I mean, the Couple said that this didn’t start happening until 2015, and Thanos arrived in 2018, how—”
“We’ve been discovering the Stones faster than they ever did,” Tony interrupted. “Reality, Space, and Mind… it’s 2013, but Stark told me they didn’t find the Scepter until 2015. That’s probably why our Wonder Twins are so inexperienced, they didn’t have time to train.”
“That’s a problem,” Clint dragged out.
“Power,” Thor muttered. “Soul, Time.”
They all turned to stare at him once more. “Come again?” said Tony.
“The rest of the Stones,” Thor said, feeling like something was sitting on his tongue, twisting it, coating his throat in broken glass and ice. “The Orb. The Eye. The cliffs…”
Now they were looking at him like the Allspeak wasn’t functioning.
“Man, you’re such an alien,” Tony said finally.
“Tony,” Steve chided.
“What?”
“I have to go,” Thor found himself saying, standing on unsteady legs. He was still wearing his combat armor, but that was fine for Asgard. It wasn’t like anyone there would care: his mother might have, once upon a time, but those times were long gone, she was long gone. “The Stones aren’t safe here, Time is already here, we can’t risk him noticing—”
“Time is here?” Natasha snapped, standing abruptly from her chair. Thor stopped. Blinked.
“What?”
“What do you mean, what?” Natasha said. “You said Time was here.”
Thor stared at her, then looked around at the rest of them. “What did I say?” he said weakly, and then the ground beneath them began to tremble.
“There are no earthquakes in New York,” Tony said, like this was a normal occurrence.
“No,” Steve agreed placidly.
The ground shook even more, and Thor faintly heard a scream of rage echo from the basement.
“We’re talking about this later,” Natasha said to Thor, perfectly calm.
The lights went out.