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ichorai · 2 years

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GALVANO ; the tesseract.

pairing ; bucky barnes x reader (gender-neutral) chapter synopsis ; waking up after seventy years of being frozen in ice proved to be every bit as awful as it sounded. you lost everything you once knew, thrown headfirst into a storm of villanous gods, aliens, and a shitload of trama. wc ; 16.7k warnings ; violence, death, cursing, lots of painful angst/grief, tony is an asshole but i love him, this is a bucky series but he doesn’t show up in this chappie i am so dearly sorry KWJLKJSLDKF it’s all about slowburn folks <3

this chapter follows the movie the avengers! upcoming chapters will follow the general mcu timeline <3

series masterlist.

Punching had never felt so good before. You jabbed at the sandbag in front of you with quick succession, raw pent-up tension poured into each hit, strike, and kick. All the stress you’ve felt from the past week melted out of you as you pummeled the poor red sack, muted grunts of exertion falling out of your lungs.

Steve had come to join you some minutes ago, doing just the same as you were. A thin grey t-shirt that clung to his chest and dark pants were all that he wore, along with a grim expression melded over his strained features.

You understood, almost completely sure you mirrored that same look. After all, the past seventy years haven’t been kind to either of you.

How did you survive the ice that long without aging? Steve, you understood wholly. He had that super serum swimming around his blood… but what kept you alive?

It took you several sleepless nights, but you came to the conclusion that it was that energy source that had fallen into the ocean just before you and Steve landed in the ice. You weren’t quite solid in the logistics, but somehow, its incomparable energy was enough to keep you frozen in time, alive where life shouldn’t dwell.

A tremble meandered up your spine, and you paused your hits, leaning against the punching bag with labored breath. Steve kept going, bandaged knuckles thudding dully onto the leather bag.

“Stevie,” you whispered.

He kept going.

Chewing on the bottom of your lip, you repeated yourself, louder this time, “Steve.”

He didn’t stop. You watched with a slight frown as your friend punched one last time, sending the bag flying off of its hook, sailing across the room as sand fell from split seams. Only then did he stop, turning to you with freckles of sweat glistening on his forehead.

“What?”

Gone was the sweet Steve you once knew from the forties. This Steve was angry, confused, mourning. You stepped forward hesitantly, unwrapping the gauze around your fingers to hand to him.

“Your bandaging is too thin. Don’t want you hurting yourself,” you said quietly as you took his hand, re-wrapping his knuckles.

There was little Steve had to say to that, so he remained mute while you fussed. It unnerved you; silence with Steve always meant something was wrong.

These past few days, all you’ve known was silence.

Once you were done, Steve gazed into your eyes for a millisecond longer, noting the glassy sheen of anguish behind those irises of yours. Then, he turned to pick up another sandbag as if it were weightless and hooked it back up.

The last person you expected to show up was Nick Fury.

“Trouble sleeping?” he surmised to the both of you, striding into the training room with his hands clasped behind his back. Black was his color, you thought absent-mindedly, observing the monotone attire consisting of an inky jacket, ebony trousers, and, of course, the infamous eye patch.

Steve paused before he could take a jab at the new bag. “I slept for seventy years, sir. I think I’ve had my fill.”

“Then you should be out, celebrating! Seeing the world.”

You snorted at that. “When we went under, the world was at war. We wake up, they tell us we won. But I have yet to know what we lost.”

Fury narrowed his one good eye at you. “We’ve made some mistakes along the way. Some… very recently.”

This seemed to pique Steve’s interest. “You here with a mission, sir? Trying to get me out in the world again?” The last question was said with an undertone of bitterness, subtle, yet you still picked up on it.

“Trying to save it,” admitted Nick. A manila folder was in his grasp, extended towards the two of you. Gingerly, you took the file from him and flicked open to look upon its contents.

On the cover, in bold capital letters, read TESSERACT. You blinked upon seeing the picture attached; the blue cube that Hydra used to build weapons. The energy source that you presumed kept you alive in the ice. You could feel the flowering of a headache blossom at the base of your skull.

“Hydra’s secret weapon,” Steve mumbled, peering over your shoulder.

Fury dipped his head in recognition. “Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you.” At the painfully familiar name, you could feel yourself tensing all over again. “He thought just the same as we did. The Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. And that’s something the world sorely needs.”

A sick feeling twisted at your stomach. The last time a man got his hands on power that strong, a war ensued. History had a tendency to repeat itself. You pieced two and two together and asked in a bleak tone, “Who took it from you?”

“He’s called Loki. He’s… not from around here.”

Both you and Steve glanced at each other in mild concern.

“There’s a lot to bring you guys up to speed on if you’re in. The world has gotten even stranger than you know.”

An almost-laugh fell past Steve. “At this point, I doubt anything would surprise me.”

“Ten bucks says you’re wrong,” said Nick with a snort. “There’s a debriefing packet we left at your apartment. Anything you can tell us about the Tesseract we ought to know now?” The question was directed to you, well aware that you had studied the source with Stark all those years ago.

Nose twitching, you leveled Fury with a dismal gaze.

“Should’ve left it in the ocean.”

You harbored a deep dislike for planes. It was quite a glaringly obvious reason why, but it seemed you really had no other choice. You forced yourself to swallow the bile in your throat and got comfortable (or, as comfortable as you really could) beside Steve.

A SHIELD agent you knew to be Phil Coulson (he was there when you woke up from your coma), hovered over the two of you like a mother bird would her sickly children.

“Anything I can get you? We have drinks somewhere in here… you want a Sprite or something?”

The both of you blinked at him in confusion. What in the world was a Sprite?

He winced at your befuddled expressions, but digressed. “Let me know if you guys need anything else. We’ll be here for another hour or so.”

Tentative, you raised your hand awkwardly, clearing your throat. You vaguely motioned to the briefing file you read over several times before getting on the plane. “So this Dr. Banner was trying to replicate the serum they used on Steve? The amount of Gamma radiation he was exposed to should’ve killed him. But instead, he… turns into a monster when he gets angry?”

Phil seemed to consider your question, lifting his hand to do a wishy-washy motion. “It’s a bit more nuanced than that, but that’s about it, yeah.”

The uncomfortable feeling at the pit of your stomach increased ten-fold.

“Anybody else try to replicate the serum?” questioned Steve.

“A lot of people were,” Coulson admitted. “You were the world’s first superhero. Banner thought Gamma radiation would be the key to unlocking Erskine’s original formula.”

Glimpses of your past flashed behind your eyelids as you slowly slid them shut. You pictured the lab where they turned Steve into a superhuman… where Erskine was shot just moments after.

“When he’s not that thing, though, the guy’s like a Stephen Hawking.”

Great. Another reference you couldn’t understand.

“Er, he’s like a really smart guy.”

Steve bobbed his head in understanding. “I know my fair share of smart people,” he muttered whilst angling his face to look at you. Everything he once knew was gone, all he cared for, all he was familiar with, gone at the snap of a finger. All except you. You were the one constant he needed in life. A scoff rumbled within your chest, and you nudged at him with your elbow.

“I gotta say,” Phil started, suddenly appearing clammy and pale, “it’s an honor to meet you. Both of you. Officially. I watched you while you were sleeping.”

An amused chortle bubbled within your throat. Steve cast his eyes downward to hold in his own laugh.

“Er… I mean I was present while you were unconscious from the ice. You know, really, it’s just a huge honor to have you guys on board for this.”

Steve pushed himself up, feeling antsy. He stared out of one of the plane windows, murmuring, “I hope I’m the right man for the job.”

“You are!” the SHIELD agent blurted out a little too enthusiastically. With slightly flushed skin, he regained his composure and said, “We made some modifications to the uniform. I had some design input.” The last bit was said with an air of pride. Awh, cute. Stevie had a fanboy.

Taking in another moment to fully process Phil’s words, you bit down a guffaw. Oh, no. Not that sorry excuse of a wretched swimming suit!

Steve’s irises flickered back to the seats to meet your mirthful eyes. “Aren’t the stars and stripes a little… old-fashioned?”

“With everything that’s happening, and the things that are about to come to light… people might just need a little old-fashioned.”

The rest of their conversation blurred into background noise as the purring of the jet beneath you lulled you into a hazy sleep, slumped against your seat uncomfortably. At one point, you recalled Steve slipping back to his original spot beside you, maneuvering your drowsy form so your head found purchase on his shoulder.

Things were changing, but at least you had Stevie with you.

The helicarrier was probably the coolest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. If you had the time, you’d willingly explore the gigantic vessel for hours and hours on end. There was a heavy pang to your chest when you thought about just how fun it’d be to look around with Howard Stark. An even heavier feeling sank your stomach when you thought about how Bucky would also love to see the craft. Or, more accurately, he’d love to see you get excited over such advanced technology.

Much to your dismay, you were given little time to get reacquainted with the ground, an unfamiliar woman approaching the two of you as soon as you stepped off the plane. Your eyes widened at the sight of her. She was absolutely gorgeous; curls of dark flames framing her poised face perfectly, donning a leather jacket shrugged over a red tank top tucked into fitted trousers.

“Agent Natasha Romanoff,” Phil Coulson gave her a nod, gesturing to the two of you. “This is Captain Rogers and Y/N L/N.”

All business, the agent barely spared you a glance, addressing Phil first, “They need you on the bridge. They’re starting the face-trace.” Coulson paled and rushed off, muttering something under his breath about how they were always starting things without him.

“It was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice.” Natasha’s voice made your eyes snap to hers, skin flushing with warmth. You opened your mouth to say something, but opted on nodding your head once you realized you hadn’t much to say on the matter. The three of you started walking together. You weren’t quite sure where you were going, but Natasha’s confident strides lessened your worries somewhat. “Thought Coulson was gonna swoon. Did he ask you to sign his trading cards yet?” she asked, aiming a smirk at Steve.

“Trading cards?”

“They’re vintage. He’s very proud.”

You snickered under your breath, laugh dying on your tongue when the trio stumbled upon a confused man, excusing himself around a group of mechanics carrying parts to fix up a jet. A large piece of you yearned to join them; attempt to feel a semblance of what you did back in the forties again.

“Dr. Banner.” Steve’s eyes lit in recognition, and he stepped forward to shake the disorientated man’s hand. The frayed mousy-grey suit he wore perfectly matched his hair, a mess of salt-and-pepper curls. His face bore both a painting of awkward uncomfort and weary exhaustion. You could almost relate to that on a personal level.

A hesitant smile graced his lips. “Ah, they told me the two of you were coming.”

“Word is you can find the cube?” you asked in a gentle tone. “I was hoping I could help with that. I know a thing or two about the energy source.”

Bruce Banner regarded you with a poorly-masked look of awe. “Yes, I’ve read about all your work with Howard Stark. Amazing, the two of you.” Hesitance flooded his body language. “So, uhm, is that the only word on me?”

One of your shoulders lifted in a shrug. “The only word I care about.”

A beam, a genuine one, fiddled with the corners of the scientist’s mouth. Then, he turned to Steve, gesturing around the busy helicarrier. “This must be strange for you, no?”

Your friend heaved a sigh, propping his hands up on his hips. “Well, this is kinda familiar,” he murmured, watching a group of agents jog around the perimeter, curving around another group that was practicing their shooting aim at mannequin targets. You couldn’t help but agree. The bustle of military life was one you weren’t unfamiliar with.

“Hey,” Natasha said out of the blue, making you flinch at her sudden presence beside you. Has she always been this close? “We might wanna step inside in a minute. It’s gonna get a little hard to breathe.”

“Is this a submarine?” The unabashed wonder in Steve’s question almost made you snort.

Banner scowled. “Really? They want me in a pressurized metal container?”

“It’s not a submarine,” you said, almost breathless as you stepped forward, closer to the edge of the helicarrier. A smile traced your lips as you turned back to look at Steve with excitement. This thing was taking you to the skies. “Much the opposite, really!” Water from the ocean sloshed about as the helicarrier groaned to life, revealing wind turbines larger than houses.

Wind billowed almost instantly upon the turning of the metal spokes, tousling your hair and mussing your clothes. Steve pulled you from the edge with knitted brows.

“No, this is much worse!” Banner remarked.

Natasha led all of you into the main compartment of the helicarrier. You couldn’t help but gawk at every little detail, marveling in the advanced technology splayed right before your very eyes. Even Steve was smiling beside you, lips parted in amazement.

Rows upon rows of sleek computers and screens with agents scampering about for work filled the room. They wore wireless headsets and modern suits with the SHIELD insignia etched into the protective fabric. In the center of all the organized chaos, stood Nick Fury.

“Engage retro-reflection panels.”

Your breath caught in your throat. That was…

“I know what you’re thinking,” Fury said as he drew nearer to you, “so let me answer before you ask. Yes, the reflective panels were your original idea. Howard Stark might’ve brought it to fruition, but the idea was yours. He made sure to give you credit wherever it was due. A shame you didn’t get to patent it, though. Would’ve made a fortune.”

Your heart ached at his words. Gentle was your tone as you choked out, “I’m glad my invention can be of service.”

From beside you, Steve fished a crumple ten-dollar note out of his pocket, handing it to Fury with a sheepish smile. The man in infamous black only leered viciously before taking the money and stuffing it into his coat. You tugged at Steve’s arm, beckoning to the large windows. Though you quite disliked planes, the helicarrier was something different entirely. With an arm hooking around his lean waist, you leaned against him while staring out at the rapidly-shifting clouds, watching the ocean toil about hundreds of meters below you.

“That was the only money I had,” Steve whispered into your head.

“I’m not lending you any,” you replied just as quietly, earning a small chuckle from him. Then, you abruptly turned upon hearing Phil Coulson again.

“We’re sweeping all the wirelessly accessible cameras on the planet. Phones, laptops… practically anything with a satellite, we use as our eyes and ears.”

Natasha, who had taken to leaning over a computer monitor and swiping across the screen with narrowed eyes, piped up, “That’s still not going to find them in time.”

Hesitant, you stepped forward, raising a hand. “You need to narrow your field. Our potential region is way too large, and our energy source is big一bigger than anything we’ve ever seen before一so we have to work smarter, not harder. How many spectrometers do you have access to?”

“How many are there?” Nick Fury asked, cocking his head whilst crossing his arms.

Banner picked up on your idea, nodding vehemently as he supplied you with an impressed smile. “Call every lab you know. Tell them to set up their spectrometers on the roof and calibrate for gamma rays.”

“You can rough out a tracking algorithm,” you hummed. “Basic cluster recognition. Won’t be able to exactly triangulate its coordinates, but you’ll be able to eliminate most of the candidates.”

“I can do that,” proposed Bruce, rubbing his palms against his pants nervously. “You have somewhere for me to work?”

Bobbing his head in satisfaction, Fury gestured to Natasha. “Could you show Dr. Banner to the laboratory, please?”

The beautiful (and admittedly very intimidating) agent brushed past you to Banner, beckoning him to follow. “You’re gonna love it, doc. We got all the toys.”

Nick Fury’s piercing stare was one you couldn’t easily ignore. And so, with an expectant expression plastered over your face, you looked at him once more.

“You don’t wanna go in there with him? I’m sure you could help out a lot.”

Nervousness coiled at your gut. As much as you’d like to, you didn’t think you’d be able to handle being in a lab jet yet, and leaving Steve here alone made you uneasy. Baby steps were the way to go, and hopping onto a massive helicarrier in search of a world-altering energy source was probably the exact opposite of baby steps.

“I’m sure Dr. Banner knows what he’s doing,” you replied wispily. Steve nudged your side, as if silently urging you to go. With a little more force, you spoke up once more, “I’ll stay here with Steve for now.”

“Suit yourself,” Fury said before whirling around to bark orders at another agent.

Releasing the sigh you didn’t know you had been holding in, you turned back to look at the clouds with Steve, wondering what lay in store for the two of you in the future.

Baby steps turned out to be an absolute lie.

The first thing that came into your field of view was a sea of cowering people in expensive garb, kneeling before a god. At least, that’s what he called himself. Loki wore gold as if it were only his to wear, a crown of aureate horns resting upon his slickened raven hair. A cape of emeralds billowed behind him as he stepped through the kneeling mass.

Steve intercepted first, blocking off a shot with that vibranium shield you’ve grown so fond of. Back in the helicarrier, SHIELD had given you all your old equipment and gadgets back, along with Steve’s ridiculous suit.

The parry of energy curved straight back to Loki, knocking him off his feet. Furious, the god clambered back to stand, jaw clenched.

“You know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing,” Steve said as you floated down beside him, activating your flame thrusters and pointing at him. You eyed the scepter that Loki held, glowing a strange blue. A part of the tesseract’s power was in there… you could feel it. The beginnings of a migraine danced at the center of your skull.

A cruel grin tainted Loki’s expression as he crooned, “The soldier. A man out of time. Brought your little pet with you?”

A scowl crossed both of your faces. Steve shook his head, pointedly ignoring his last question. “I’m not the one out of time here.”

Behind you, a shooter jet lowered down, Natasha’s voice echoing on a PA system, “Loki, drop the weapon and stand down.”

Moving at the speed of lightning, Loki pointed the scepter at the jet and shot a pulsing wave of energy towards the craft. Thankfully, Natasha managed to evade it just in time. People were screaming, scrambling every which way like frantic ants. Steve arced the shield towards Loki, moving forward to jab him in the face. Loki parried with a malicious chuckle, using the staff to kick out Steve’s legs and push him back. Taking that as your cue, flames billowed out of your weapon and you lunged forward, feinting a punch before ducking his swipe and sliding a knife out of your sleeve to slash against his abdomen.

To no avail, Loki trapped your arm with ease, twisting you sideways and throwing you to the cobblestone ground. Steve threw the shield again, but Loki knocked it to the side as if it were a frisbee. Much to your horror, Loki stalked forward and placed the scepter at the base of his head, sneering out, “Kneel.”

Fury boiled in your blood as you surged forward, yanking at his cape and landing a kick to the back of his head. This managed to distract him just enough to allow Steve back on his feet, grabbing his shield and throwing a punch to the god’s face.

Then you heard… was that rock music? You might’ve been an old soul from the forties, but you tried catching up to the best of your ability while you had the time. The familiar electric riff of a bass echoed through the air. You, Steve and Loki froze, eyes shifting up to the sky.

A person of crimson-and-gold metal streaked past you in a blur, pummeling Loki to the ground with such a force that made the bricks crack beneath the impact. The man stood back, his suit revealing small compartments holding bullets and launchers, all aimed at him.

“Make your move, Reindeer Games,” the metal man said in an ‘I dare you’ tone. Both you and Steve came forward beside him, your knives held ready and Steve’s shield gripped tightly in his hand.

Slowly, Loki’s golden armor faded into thin air, and he held his hands up in tentative surrender.

“Good move,” Iron Man quipped. It took everything you had in you to not slide your eyes to his suit; it was impressive technology that you were very keen on learning more about.

Steve exhaled a deep breath. “Mr. Stark.”

A part of you froze. What?

Your breath caught in your throat as you turned to the man with widened eyes.

“Captain,” he replied, nodding. Then, the suit’s bright slits for eyes fixated on you. “Y/N L/N, right? My dad’s said a lot about you.”

“He’s kinda handsome,” you muttered to Steve, wrinkling your nose while eyeing Loki tied up in the seat opposite you. “In a sleazy, corrupt kind of way.” Your friend turned to you with an appalled look on his features and you nudged his shoulder with a playful laugh.

After a tense silence, you mustered up the courage to ask him, just quiet enough so only he could hear, “Why didn’t you tell me that Tony Stark was going to be a part of this thing?”

Uncomfort splayed across his visage at your query. “I didn’t think he’d come. I just… I don’t know, I wanted to spare you the pain of remembering.” A part of you softened at his words. His intentions were good, but you couldn’t help but be wounded at him holding information like that from you.

“We can’t keep things from each other, Stevie.”

“I know.”

The two of you lapsed into another silence, this time comfortable and less tense.

“I don’t like it,” admitted Steve after a moment. You arched an eyebrow in a silent way of telling him to continue.

Unceremoniously, Tony stalked over to the two of you, interrupting before he could go on, “What, Rock of Ages giving up so easily?”

You could tell just by the look on Steve’s face that he didn’t appreciate Tony’s uncouth behavior. This was a serious mission, after all. “I don’t remember it being that easy. This guy packs a wallop.”

“Still,” Stark hummed with amusement, “you are pretty spry for an older fellow.” A laugh lodged itself in your throat, but you masked it as a cough when Steve leveled you with a glare. “Must be weird, huh? You missed quite a lot of things. You know, while you were doing time as a Capsicle.”

One thing you learned about Tony Stark that day was that he enjoyed provoking people purely for the fun of it. Just like Howard did back then.

Before you could help yourself, you tilted your head and blurted out, “You look just like him.” For a second, Tony froze, an indiscernible expression painting his features blue. You gulped, suddenly realizing how inappropriate the statement was. “I’m so sorry, I一”

Stark raised a hand, and you immediately snapped your mouth shut. Despite your embarrassment, what you said was wholly true. They had the same tousled hair, dark playful eyes, hell, even their beards were duplicates.

“I didn’t talk to my dad a lot.” His words were slightly despondent in tone, hinting at years of emotional distress. “But I do know that he never stopped looking for you.”

Bile rose in your throat, and you nodded once with downcast eyes.

“Really cool gadgets you got there,” Tony said, gesturing to your weapons in an effort to alleviate the rigid atmosphere. The second thing you learned about Tony Stark was that he had trouble remaining serious in serious situations. “Mine are better, though. Not that this is a competition or anything.”

An airy scoff escaped you, and you shook your head with a slight smile fiddling at your lips. “Give me a week. We’ll see who’s got the better gear then.”

He opened his mouth to crack another joke, but was rudely cut off by the loud grumble of thunder, lightning streaking through the navy-grey clouds like a snake of electricity. The jet beneath you rumbled with turbulence. You got flashbacks to when you and Stark and Peggy drove Steve out to the Hydra base to save Bucky.

Your heart clenched painfully and you subconsciously stepped closer to Steve.

Even Loki looked spooked, eyes widened as he stared out the jet.

“What’s the matter?” goaded Tony. “Scared of a little lightning?”

“I’m not overly fond of what follows,” the god responded.

Breath caught in your lungs, you swiveled to look out of the window, spotting a small figure hurtle through the storm. “We’re being tailed!” you yelled, which catapulted Steve and Tony into action.

Ever the reckless one, Tony threw his helmet on and stalked to the rear hatch, slamming it open.

“What are you doing?” Steve yelled over the sudden whooshing of wind.

It happened so quickly that you had trouble processing what was going on. A man with shoulder-length locks of spun sunlight landed on the deck, rattling the plane violently with him. Tony lifted his hand to blast the newcomer, but was promptly flung to the side of the jet with a heavy hammer to the chest. He strode forward and wrapped a burly arm around Loki’s neck, yanking him out of his bonds as if they were brittle thread. The two of them disappeared into the stormy fog with not another word. With a lump in your throat, you dropped to your knees beside Tony.

“Hey! You okay?” you asked, clasping the cold metal hand of his armor and yanking him upwards.

“Peachy keen,” Iron Man grumbled out, followed by a gruff thanks.

From the cockpit, Natasha asked over her shoulder, “Another Asgardian?”

“That guy’s a friendly?” Steve questioned, still in shock.

Tony made his way to the edge of the jet. You stepped forward, reaching out as if to stop him. Then you retracted your hand, a cold slap by reality reminding you that Tony wasn’t his father, no matter how similar they were. “Doesn’t matter,” Stark said. “If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract’s lost.”

“Stark, we need a plan of attack!” Steve stood beside you, brows furrowed, torn in indecision.

“I have a plan. Attack.” With that, he blasted off into the clouds, leaving behind a faint glowing trail of orange.

Frustratedly gnashing his teeth, Steve hurried to grab a parachute taped to the wall, shrugging on the straps and buckling in the safety.

“Stevie, just stay here! Those guys are literal legends一”

“I can’t just sit back and let this happen, Y/N,” Steve mumbled, cupping your face in his hands before gently landing a kiss on your head. Blindly, you grappled behind you for his shield, handing it to him with nimble fingers. “Don’t follow me down there, okay?”

“But Steve一!”

A frown made home on your lips as he shot you a stern look, before whirling on his heels and jumping off the platform.

Now, usually you’d dive headfirst into the fight with Steve, no matter how many times he’d tell you to stay back. But you found yourself grappling against the jet walls, short of breath. The edges of your vision flickered black and blue, and suddenly your face found contact with the floor, and you were out cold as a light.

“Stop fussing,” you hissed with a glower as you batted at Steve’s gloved hands attempting to stick another band-aid onto your cheek, where there was a minuscule gash streaking down your cheekbone. “It was just an accident.”

“Yeah?” your friend queried with an unbelieving arch of his brow. “That’s not what Nat said. She found you passed out. When was the last time you ate? Slept? Maybe we should get you in the infirmary. No point in waiting in a meeting room when the whole gang is missing.”

Huffing, you bit out, “Have some patience, will you? And it wasn’t that. I… I think it was the Tesseract.”

“What? Why?”

A sad smile, a hollow one that held no true happiness touched your lips. “Haven’t you ever wondered why I survived the ice? I shouldn’t have一it’s literally humanly impossible without the serum. The only reason why I’m here must be because of that damned energy source. Getting too close to it must’ve made my body remember what it was like being frozen.”

“Just tell me you’re okay,” Steve mumbled. “If you’re not, I’ll take you back home right now. You don’t have to do this.”

Your nose wrinkled at his words. “And what? Leave you here with Norse gods and Stark Junior? No way.”

He deflated at your words in mild relief. “Thank goodness. Not sure what I would’ve done without you here, honestly.” When the rest of the crew filed into the meeting room, all stone-faced and scowling, you immediately sat up straight, folding your hands over the round table.

Thor, in all of his muscular glory, stared out the window blankly. “He has an army called the Chitauri. They’re not of Asgard or any known world. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth, and in return, I suppose, they’ll get the Tesseract.”

“An army,” Steve deadpanned, “from outer space.”

“That means he’s building a portal,” you jolted upwards at the thought.

Banner crossed his arms over a purple button up. “That must be what he took Dr. Selvig for.”

“Loki has him under some sort of spell,” Natasha stated, leaning forward on the table, looking away as a stormy expression flickered over her usually stoic visage. “Along with another one of ours.”

That made your stomach drop. This situation was far worse than you had initially bargained for when you first flipped through that manila file.

“I wanna know why Loki let us take him. He’s not leading an army from here, is he?” asked Steve.

“I don’t think we should focus on Loki.” Banner grimaced, fidgeting with his glasses anxiously. “That guy’s brain is a bag full of cats. You can smell crazy on him.”

The blank look in Thor’s eyes quickly shifted to one of defense. “Be careful with how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother.”

“He killed eighty people in two days.” Natasha narrowed her eyes, shifting back on the leather chair.

“... He’s adopted.”

“Iridium,” Banner mumbled as he inspected a monitor of brain-washed agents stealing the element. “What do they need iridium for?”

All of a sudden, Tony Stark strode through the doors with a flourish, announcing his presence loud and clear for everybody in the room. You could’ve sworn you saw Steve roll his eyes to the side. The iron suit was nowhere to be seen. In its absence, Tony wore a dark, long-sleeve shirt with an obscure rock band you didn’t know of.

“It’s a stabilizing agent,” the man said with a cocky smirk. “So the portal won’t collapse in on itself like it did at SHIELD.”

Leaving Steve’s side, you pushed yourself from the chair and made your way beside Bruce, pointing at the iridium displayed on the screen. “Tony’s right. A bridge with no support is bound to collapse. Throw in trusses, and you have yourself a sturdy transportation system. One that can stay up and running as long as Loki wants.”

A mock-gasp left Tony, leveling you with an amused look. “Don’t be a show off, that’s my job!” Snickering, he stood up to the main monitors and lifted his hands as if conducting an opera. “Raise the mizzenmast! Jib the topsails!”

Everybody stayed quiet, save for you and your muffled snort.

“The rest of the raw materials, agent Barton can get his hands on easily,” Tony uttered, coming to stand beside you. He practically radiated confidence, uncaring about being wrong because he knew for a fact that he was right. A part of you yearned to feel an ounce of what he exuded. What was it like to be so certain of everything all the time? “The only major component he still needs is a power source of high-energy density. Something to kick-start the Cube.”

“When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?” you asked, turning to look at him curiously. “Last I checked, you specialized in physics and electronic engineering.”

“Oh, so you’re checking up on me now?” Tony simpered with a suggestive lilt, to which you scowled and shifted your irises to the artificial lights of the helicarrier’s meeting room. “I read up last night. I’d expect someone like you to have read through Selvig’s notes. Extraction theory papers. Am I the only one who did my homework here?”

You spent last night curled up in bed, crying yourself raw over thoughts of Bucky, sobbing with his cold dog tags clutched tightly in your fists. But Tony didn’t need to know that.

“Didn’t get the opportunity,” you hummed, shrugging your shoulders.

“It’s alright, you get a pass.” Stark gestured to your bloodied face. “I fought a god, and you fell on the ground.”

On second thought, the resemblance between Howard and Tony was narrowing quickly.

“Hey! Lay off, will you?” barked Steve, muted anger emanating from his terse form. “Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?”

“He would have to heat the Cube to a hundred twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier,” Banner mused, swiping across the monitor to draw out a simple model of the portal.

Tentative, you shook your head. “Unless Dr. Selvig figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect.” Throwing Tony a playful glance, you childishly raised your brows. “I didn’t get to do my homework yesterday, but I read ahead on everything before the mission started. Not that it’s a competition or anything.” The last bit was a snarky reference to what Tony had said about your weapons when he first met you. You were only met with an impressed chortle.

“Well, if he could do that, he’d be able to achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet,” Dr. Banner narrowed his eyes in thought, finally stopping his fingers from fiddling with the hooks of his glasses, perching them on the bridge of his nose.

“Finally!” Tony exclaimed as he threw his hands up into the air dramatically. “Someone who speaks English.”

“Is that what just happened?” Steve looked as befuddled as a child who’s lost their parents at a store. You made your way back to him, gratefully sinking back into the seat and curling into his side.

As Tony spoke to Banner (or, more accurately, poked fun at Bruce’s ability to… morph), you shut your eyes and leaned against Steve, drained from the fight and tired from the constant noise.

Nick Fury came not longer after, swiftly telling Tony, “Dr. Banner is only here to track the Cube. I was hoping you might join him. Y/N too. The three of you are probably the most brilliant available minds we have in America right now.”

Steve patted at your head, voicing what you were already thinking. “What about that staff of his? Y/N said they could feel its powers from the Tesseract.”

Chewing at the inside of your cheek, you righted yourself and nodded along. “The scepter may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a Hydra weapon. “

“I don’t know about that, but it is powered by the Cube. And I’d like to know how Loki used it to turn the two of my sharpest men into his personal flying monkeys.”

“Monkeys?” Thor asked with a concerned tone. “I’m afraid I do not understand.”

“I do.” Steve perked up, clapping his hands once. “I understood that. I… got that reference.”

Grimacing, you draped your elbow onto Steve’s shoulder, hushing him quietly. “Alright, calm down, big guy.”

Stark obnoxiously rolled his eyes while scoffing, before promptly addressing you. “Wanna play with Banner and I in the lab, Y/N?”

You could feel Nick Fury’s one good eye piercing you alive. Hesitantly, you nodded an affirmative, pushing yourself up with an affectionate clap to Steve’s shoulder. You might’ve felt a little off yesterday, but you supposed that it was just first day jitters. Pain still hung over you like a dreary storm cloud, a constant damp shroud of despair hovering over your form.

You think you’re ready to open up an umbrella.

The scepter was an oddly shaped thing, hilt holding intricate designs engraved into the polished metal, the top end consisting of two elegantly-curved blades that held a fractal of the Tesseract’s power between them.

“Gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig’s reports of the Cube,” Banner said as he scanned the scepter. “But it’s going to take weeks to process.”

“Bypass the mainframe,” both you and Tony said at the same time.

“Jinx, you owe me a soda.” He pointed to you without sparing you a glance, though there was a grin playing at his lips.

A frown creased your face. “I don’t get that reference, Stark. You gotta stop with those until I’m all caught up.”

“I’m not waiting around for you. Here, catch.” Tony threw you a USB, which you swiftly grasped and plugged into the computer. “Direct the route to the Homer cluster, we can clock this at around six hundred teraflops.”

You clicked your tongue at the side of your mouth. “I can’t believe I signed up for this mission. I barely packed anything.”

“You think you’ve got it bad?” Bruce chuckled as he carded a hand through his tresses, tapping his pen against the table in thought. “I only packed a toothbrush.”

There was a crash that echoed across the lab as Tony threw another crumpled piece of paper to the overflowing trash can, making the bin fall over and all the scrapped ideas scattered over the floor.

“I’m not picking that up,” you said before returning to your work.

Tony faux-glared at you. “You know, the both of you should come over to Stark Towers sometime. Top ten floors, all R and D. You’d love it, it’s candyland.” Once Bruce timidly declined the invitation in accordance to the green fellow, Stark sidled up next to you. “We’d love to have you. What you’ve got up in that noggin of yours is valuable stuff. Say, you ever thought about getting a suit? A proper one?”

“I’d love to build myself one. Just need the right equipment. Haven’t had the time, really,” you responded around a mouthful of a sandwich you were forcing down for lunch. Tony reached for the other half of your sandwich, but you didn’t have the heart to stop him.

“I’d be more than willing to give you the equipment. Or a suit for that matter.”

All of a sudden, you stopped working, dropping your sandwich and dusted your hands off before propping them onto your hips. “Tony一can I call you that?” At his nod, you carried on, “Tony, we only met a couple hours ago. What’s going on? Why are you… I don’t understand what you’re trying to do. Size me up? Compete with me? Take advantage of me?”

“Uhm,” the billionaire held up a finger, “it’s called making friends, Y/N.”

“But…” you paused, cautiously hesitant with what you were going to say next. “Why would you want to be friends with me and not Steve? Is it because of your dad?”

Tony pinched at the bridge of his nose. “Jesus, you sounded like Pepper for a second there. And, no, I just think you’re cool. Is that so hard to believe?”

“Yes,” you deadpanned.

“Fair enough.” Tony shrugged. “Still making you that suit, though.”

Not bothering to spare him a response, you returned to work with a heavy sigh. It wasn’t long after that you heard a gentle zap of a low-voltage taser spark from the other side of the laboratory. Bruce and Tony were children, you were sure of it.

“Ow!”

Tony leaned forward, observing Bruce’s skin for any… noticeable changes. “Really? Nothing at all?”

The lights came into your field of view as you rolled your irises. “Quit it, Tony.”

As if on cue, Steve stormed in, a frown heavy-set on his features. “Are you nuts?”

Tony barely paid attention to your friend, continuing to pester Banner (who had smiled awkwardly and meandered around him to continue working). “What’s your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?”

“Is everything a joke to you?” Steve spat, frustration getting a little too out of hand. At this point, you hopped off your stool and walked to them, stopping beside Steve with a hand on his forearm. You said his name gently, which made him glance at you with a far softer look than what he supplied Tony.

“Funny things are,” replied Tony.

With pursed lips, you gently shook your head at Tony, telling him to keep his clam shut. Though, with what you knew of him, you surmised that that was highly unlikely.

“Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn’t funny. No offense, Doc.”

“It’s alright,” Banner chuckled airily. “I wouldn’t have come onboard if I couldn’t handle pointy things. Or zappy things.”

Tony plucked the pen from the doctor’s fingers and flicked it at his forehead. Living embodiment of a child. “You’re tip-toeing, big man. You gotta strut that stuff.”

“You need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark,” Steve reprimanded.

Chewing on your lip, you pondered on saying something, telling them to stop bickering, but you kept your mouth snapped shut.

“Do you think I’m not?” Tony shot back just as quickly. “Why did Fury call us in? Why now? Why not before? What isn’t he telling us?”

Blinking in mild surprise, you reared around to look at him clearly. You had never pegged Tony Stark as a conspiracist. “You think Fury’s hiding something?”

“He’s a spy.” Hands splayed over the table as he slanted over the sleek glass to lean close to you. “Dubbed ‘the’ spy. Narcissists, am I right?” You snorted out a laugh, turning back to Steve, who sported an even gloomier frown than what he came in with.

“Come on, Stevie,” you said, tilting your head to him, “Tony has a point. I don’t like to be kept in the dark, either.”

Even Banner nodded along with you. “‘A warm light for all of mankind’ is what Loki said to Fury. I think he was referencing you,” the doctor murmured, plucking a blueberry from a platter of fruits Tony held. Where in the hell did he get that? “Even if Barton didn’t tell Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news.”

“The Stark Tower?” you queried, hopping up on the table to try and pluck a pineapple off the plate. “That big, ugly building in the middle of New York, yeah?” Steve chuckled lowly at your words, but Tony stuck his tongue out at you and yanked the fruits away.

“It’s powered by an arc reactor. A self-sustaining energy source so that the building could run itself for around a year,” Banner explained to Steve, who had trouble keeping up.

“Prototype!” Stark exclaimed, setting the platter to the side so he could fiddle with the monitor. “I’m kind of the only name in clean energy right now.”

“Brag,” you muttered beneath your breath.

“I heard that.”

“Yeah, whatever.” With a gesture of your hands, you mimicked connecting the dots to Steve. “So, if Tony’s a big name in such a scarce industry, why hasn’t Fury called him beforehand? You told me yourself, Stevie, you didn’t know he was coming. Tony didn’t know until just a few days ago, either. They didn’t call him onto the Tesseract project before Loki came, see? What was SHIELD planning to do with the source in the first place?”

Tony pointed at you with a grin. “Ten points to Ravenclaw.”

“I don’t get the reference, Stark.”

Steve seemed to grow more agitated and confused by the second. If he was to be honest, the fact that you were siding with Tony and not him wounded him more than he’d care to admit.

“We can watch the movie together. It’ll be great.” He clapped his hands together. “Anyways, I should probably look into what they’re planning to do once my decryption program finishes breaking into all of SHIELD’s secure files.”

Now, this was a surprise to you as well.

“I’m sorry,” Steve stepped forward and held his hands up with tightly-drawn brows, “did you just say一?”

“Yup!” Tony turned the monitor to briefly flash his handiwork. “Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours, I’ll know every dirty little secret SHIELD’s got to hide. I feel like a parent finding their kid’s porn video folder.”

“That’s… amazing,” you breathed out just as Steve grumbled out ‘awful’. “Not the porn part. Obviously.”

The bridge of his nose wrinkled. “And yet you’re confused about why they didn’t want you around.”

Scoffing, Tony countered swiftly, “An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome.”

“I think Loki’s trying to wind us up.” Steve exhaled a shallow, frustrated breath. “This is a man who means to start a war. If we don’t stay focused, he’ll succeed. We have orders. We should follow them.”

“Hm.” Tony pretended to consider him for a second. “Following isn’t really my style.”

“Yeah, you’re all about style, aren’t you?”

A dark eyebrow arched, Tony’s irises running over Steve’s suit in an exaggerated manner. “Of the people in this room, which one is wearing A, a spangly outfit, and B, not of use?”

Alright, maybe you laughed at his jabs before, but that was uncalled for. “Tony, come on. Steve’s just trying to stop the bad guy.”

“And if we were working for the bad guys all this time?” Tony narrowed his gaze at you. “What then? I put on a party hat and tell you I told you so?”

Having heard enough, Steve firmly gripped your arm and pulled you so you were forced to rotate and look at him. “Y/N, you’re not really with these guys, are you? That information might be classified for a reason.”

A frown crossed your lips, and you carefully extracted your limb from his grasp. “Stevie, I’m just trying to look for the Tesseract. But… if it turns out I can’t trust SHIELD, then I have to know so I can stop it from getting into the wrong hands. You understand that, right?”

A piece of your already shattered heart crumbled apart even further when Steve shuffled backward, shaking his head in palpable disappointment. He left the laboratory after shooting Tony a dirty glare, muttering something about finding the Tesseract.

“That’s who my dad never used to shut up about, huh?” Tony rolled his eyes so hard it was a wonder his pupils weren’t permanently stuck looking into the back of his skull. “I’m wondering if they should’ve kept him on the ice.”

Freezing at the mention of Howard and the particularly harsh jab at Steve, you felt the inevitable rush of tears prick at the corner of your eyes angrily.

“Oh, really?” you asked, crossing your arms with a watery scowl. “Would I have to go back down in the ice with him, then? Everything I lost, it wouldn’t have mattered because I should be dead too, right? Let me tell you something, Stark. You are nothing like your father. Your father was an amazing man who helped millions. And there you stand, making fun of my only friend like he did something wrong. If this is your way of making ‘friends’, I don’t want to be part of it.”

Stunned silence flushed over the lab. You were breathing heavily, casting a deathly glower towards Tony, who had finally learned how to shut up for once in his life.

“I’m going back to work,” you murmured, anger fading away just as quickly as it came. You hadn’t the energy to remain mad.

At one point, Banner started speaking to Tony again, but you drowned out their hushed conversation, too busy trying to stave away the hot wave of choked up emotions, all with one hand clutched at the dog tags looped around your neck.

Natasha was ruthless. She drilled you with questions on your background, your knowledge, what you were good at, what you needed practice with, all while holding the same disinterested expression.

“Ever killed anyone?”

“Nazis,” you whispered after a moment’s hesitance.

She was quick to move on, not even batting an eye at your morbid response. “Family?”

Your eyes found home on the grooves of the room’s flooring. “None.”

The atmosphere lost a little bit of its stiff tension at that.

It seemed all the questions were worth it, because the agent wore a slight smile as she dropped her tablet. “You’re all good,” she said softly. “Come on. Director Fury wants you up there with me.”

“What are we doing, exactly?”

“Loki must have a plan. He wouldn’t have given himself up that easily,” she explained as she led you through the maze of corridors. “Our job is to get a handle of what he tries to tell us.”

“Why… Why does Fury want me in there?”

Natasha sent you an amused side-glance. “Fury said you’re one of America’s brightest minds, no? Not only that, but you’re the only one out of all of us that had some sort of experience with the Tesseract. Could be used to our advantage.”

How? By making me dizzy? You thought almost bitterly, biting at the inside of your cheek.

The glass chamber that Loki was kept in was an impressive one. You raised your eyebrows at the solid infrastructure, the glass surrounding the god glowing a faint tint of cerulean. There was a smile that twisted his handsome features in a way that screamed malice.

“There’s not many people that can sneak up on me.” His words, clearly directed to Natasha, were said in a glib fashion, the green fabric of his outfit seeming to ripple with every step he took closer to the secured barrier. Then, his eyes found yours, piercing blue. Electrifying. “Not you, though. I heard you coming from decades away. An old soul, aren’t you?”

“You knew I’d come,” you whispered, narrowing your own lids in suspicion.

The god spread his arms out as if he were a winning gladiator in an arena. “I presumed after, actually. After whatever tortures Fury would concoct for me, they’d send you. As a friend… a soothing balm. After all, it’s what you did back in the forties, was it not? Licked the wounds of your precious Captain and the blue-eyed soldier of一”

“Enough,” you hissed out, fury staining your intonation like inky blood would a river. There was no way you were letting Loki press into your past like that.

Stock-still, an ever present shadow of cautiously-masked indifference that went by the name Natasha Romanoff spoke out from beside you, words melded from cold steel, “I want to know what you’ve done to agent Barton.”

“I say I’ve expanded his mind,” sneered Loki.

“And then? After you’ve climbed the top of the mountain and sat on a throne of severed heads… what happens to his mind then? A man doesn’t bother apologizing to a flower they’ve trampled on.” It was hard to believe that you were speaking words of philosophy to a murderous god.

“Interesting,” Loki hummed.

There was a minuscule crack to Natasha’s expressionless features. “Will you hurt him?”

A laugh, one that fell like ghostly wind chimes, reverberated throughout his cage of glass. “Is that love I detect, agent Romanoff?”

“Love is for children,” Natasha swiftly replied. That definitely stung a bit. “I owe him a debt.”

This man was a master manipulator, you surmised as he beckoned for Natasha to go on. He planned for her to pour out her soul, only to then plunge his taloned fingers in and rip it apart by the seams. While the assassin beside you prattled on about her past life of blood and death with Barton, you took to observing the god with something akin to curious disgust. He said something that made Natasha visibly freeze up, and you turned to her in concern. Then, Loki was suddenly in front of the glass, only inches away from you, slamming his fist against the barrier with a resounding thud that made both you and Natasha flinch harshly. He spoke more, empty taunts of a painful death. Out of character, the deadly assassin spun on her heel and hunched over slightly, sniffling as she held down wracking sobs. All fake, you deduced once you spotted her tapping her finger three times against her leather-clad thigh, just for you to see. You couldn’t help but marvel at her acting skills.

“And you,” Loki spat out of the blue, which made your gaze snap up to his. “You walk around this craft as if you’re free of sin. Your ledgers are gushing just as red as the murderer beside you. Worse, in fact. James Buchanan Barnes plummeted from a train to his icy death while you sat in a lab and fiddled with your thumbs. If you had gone with them on the mission, he wouldn’t be in brainwashed pain right now. No, instead, you holed up with Howard Stark and convinced yourself that you were making a difference. I’m afraid to be the one to inform you, but you did nothing. Is that what you pathetic mortals call love? Something to toss aside as if it were meaningless?

“This is my bargain, you mewling quim. I’ll make Barton kill the both of you slow and intimate, in every way he knows you fear. Then he’ll wake just long enough to see the mess of blood dripping from between his fingers, and when he screams, I’ll split his skull!”

Rage clouded your vision, roiling through your veins. Tumultuous were your thoughts as you grit your teeth and forced your burning gaze away. None of what he says should be listened to, you told yourself, according to all the legends, he is the god of trickery. So why was it so hard to look past his words? Why did it strike you true and hard? And what did he mean by Bucky being in brainwashed pain? There was no point in dwelling on that; as Banner perfectly mentioned before, Loki’s head was but a bag of cats.

“You’re a monster,” Natasha choked out.

A heinous laugh rang from the crystal prison. “Oh, no. You brought the monster.”

Bingo. A smile suddenly broke through your mourning frontage. “So, Banner, huh? That’s your play?”

For the first time since you stepped foot into the holding quarters, Loki appeared genuinely surprised. “What?”

Natasha placed a warm hand on your shoulder before leading you away hurriedly, pressing the coms in her ear and spoke, “Loki means to unleash the Hulk. Keep Banner in the lab, I’m on my way. Send Thor as well.” She paused in her swift strides abruptly, sending forth a sarcastic slant of her lips to the befuddled god. “Thank you for the cooperation.”

With that, she stalked out of the room.

God, she was so cool. You followed out with your own congratulatory grin splaying over your lips, but that heavy feeling of impending dread still clawed at your chest, begging to be let go. Let go, let go, let go, the faceless voice shrieked.

It seemed your umbrella had holes in it.

You walked straight into a heated argument between Tony, Steve, and Fury.

“Did you know about this?” Banner immediately asked Natasha, who stepped into the lab after you, followed by Thor.

Know what? Your eyes landed on the contraption Steve had clutched in his arms, which he threw onto the table with a look of disgust. Oh. You were hoping not to be right, just this once. Tony caught sight of you, nodding his head once before rotating the monitor to show you the progress on tracking the Cube. You still hadn’t forgiven him for his earlier negligence, but you shot him a grateful look nonetheless.

You meandered around the bristling agents to get to Steve, placing a hand on his arm, a silent question hanging between the two of you. Steve might have also been mad at you before, but there were far more pressing matters to tend to at the moment. Not to mention that you were right to be suspicious, anyways. SHIELD was planning to make weapons out of the source.

“You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor?” Natasha asked, cocking her head to the door.

“Heh, I was pretty well removed back in Calcutta until you came slithering in,” replied Banner as he recoiled away from her.

“Loki’s manipulating you.”

“And you’ve been doing what, exactly?”

Despite his obvious restraint, Natasha persisted. “You didn’t come here because I batted my eyelashes at you.”

“Yeah, and I’m not leaving because you suddenly get a little twitchy. Now, what I’d like to know is why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction.” Banner slid his glasses off the bridge of his nose and hooked them onto his button up shirt.

Exasperated, Fury leveled a glare with everybody in the room. Even with everyone against him, he still managed to appear intimidating. You had to give him props for that.

“Because of him.” He pointed to Thor.

“Me?” echoed Thor, affronted.

Fury took to pacing around the lab as he explained. “Last year. We had another unearthly visitor. Leveled a small town completely from a grudge. SHIELD learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned.”

“My people want nothing but peace with your kind!” Thor bellowed.

“But you’re not the only one out there,” you whispered, finally understanding what Fury was getting at. The rest of the team’s gazes on you made your skin flush with heat. “That inevitably means there are more threats as well.”

Solemn, Nick bowed his head at your words. “The world’s filling up with people who can’t be matched. That can’t be controlled.”

Steve, however, was still stiff with opposition. “Like you controlled the Cube?”

“Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki and his allies here,” Thor growled out. “It is a signal to all the realms that the Earth is ready for a higher form of war.”

Suddenly, everybody started speaking over each other. Your heart thudded within your ribcage; noise… too much noise.

“A higher form of war?” Steve whispered.

“You forced our hand!” barked Fury.

Tony deadpanned, “Nuclear deterrent. Because that always calms things right down.”

“Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?” The eyepatched director shot back.

Steve took a step forward. “I’m sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck-deep in一”

“Hold on, how is this now about me?” “Oh, I’m sorry, isn’t everything?”

“Steve!” you interjected, casting him a warning glare.

Even Thor managed to throw in his two cents. “I thought you humans were more evolved than this!”

“Excuse me, were we the ones to hop onto your planet and start blowing things up?” Fury was starting to sound exasperated.

Too many voices, too much noise. You could feel that familiar pounding of a headache taking root into your skull, tendrils of pain curling around your head.

“Are you guys really that stupid?” Natasha hissed. “SHIELD monitors potential threats.”

“Captain America’s on threat watch?”

The arguing blended into indiscernible voices, replaced by a prominent ringing that sang its warbling song into your ear drums. Right behind all of you stood Loki’s scepter, the Tesseract’s power glowing its distinct electric blue. Was it just you or had it gotten brighter since you stepped into the room?

“What are we, a team? No, we’re a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We’re… we’re a time bomb.” Agitation colored Bruce’s features a strange hue.

“You need to step away,” Fury warned.

Of course, Tony interposed loudly, “Why shouldn’t the guy let off a little steam?” Then he had the audacity to land his palm on Steve’s shoulder, just as you did so many times. But Steve merely scowled at this, quick to shove his arm away.

“You know damn well why! Back off!” Steve commanded in a stern tone.

“Oh, I’m startin’ to want you to make me,” he taunted.

Alright, you supposed that was your cue to step in. “Tony, stop. We don’t have to argue about this, it’s a waste of time一!”

“Big man in a suit of armor.” Steve was so caught up in his own emotions that he accidentally cut you off before you could finish. His nose wrinkled as he stared Tony down, pulling at you so that he stood between you and the offending man. Even subconsciously, Steve was trying to protect you. “Take that off, and what are you?”

“Genius, playboy, billionaire, philanthropist.”

You would have laughed if not for the incredibly terse situation at hand.

“I know guys with none of that are worth ten of you,” Steve snarled. Bucky. You knew he was talking about Bucky. Who else could it be? “I’ve seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself.”

“Hey, come on.” You sidestepped his bristling form, wedging yourself between the two men who had taken to glowering at each other, almost nose-to-nose in their dick slinging contest. It wasn’t like Steve to lose control like this; throwing insults wasn’t exactly regular Stevie behavior. The stress was most definitely getting to him. “Will you guys quit it?

Despite your protest, Steve kept speaking directly over your shoulder. “You’re not the kind to make the sacrifice play. Never laid down on a wire so the other guy could crawl over you.”

“I think I would just cut the wire,” Tony quipped, picking at his nails disinterestedly.

A strained silence flourished over the group for a beat of a second.

“Stevie,” you whispered-yelled, “come on, just stop.” The headache brewing in your temple was growing worse, pulsating and throbbing with a raw urgency.

It stung how he ignored you completely. “You might not be a threat, Stark, but you better stop pretending like you’re a hero.”

Alright, that was it. Glunching, you pushed at Steve’s chest, afraid that he was going to maul Tony right then and there.

“A hero?” Stark mocked. “Like you? You’re a lab experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle.”

You whirled around, crossing your arms with a snarl. “Steve is Captain America with or without the serum, Tony.”

“Untrue,” he countered, “because if your pal there didn’t have the serum, he’d be dead.”

A bitter scoff fell past your lungs. “Oh, dead like I am right now? I’m as serum-less as it gets.”

“Put on the suit. Let’s go a few rounds,” Steve jabbed.

“No!” The pain in your head was starting to grow unbearable. “You guys are being children. We have a job to do.”

Thor started laughing from behind all of you. “You people are so petty,” he crooned, “... and tiny.”

A heavy sigh escaped Fury. “Agent Romanoff, please escort Dr. Banner to his一”

“Where?” the scientist asked with a resentful tone. “You rented my room!”

“The cell was just in case一”

“In case you needed to kill me!” Bruce roared. “But you can’t. I know, I tried.”

The room fell so muted that you could hear the fluttering of your heart warble in your ears.

“I got low. I didn’t see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth. The other guy spit it right back out. So I moved on… focused on helping other people. I was doing good until you dragged me back into this freakshow and put everyone here at risk.”

A gasp lodged itself in your throat, but nothing came out. Instead, you slid out your knives in one hand and slowly lifted a wrist-blaster you had quickly built during your lunch break. In your peripheral vision, you caught sight of Natasha and Fury both placing their hands on the holsters of their guns.

“Dr. Banner,” Steve said, stepping forward. “Put down the scepter.”

Horrified, the scientist loosened his grip on the staff, tossing it onto the table with widened eyes. You let out a loose sigh of relief and lowered your hands. A light ding emitting from the corner of the lab made you swivel around.

“Got it,” Bruce grumbled as he stalked to the computer. “Sorry kids, you don’t get to see my party trick after all.”

“You located the Tesseract?”

“I could get there the fastest!” Tony proclaimed.

“You’re not going alone,” growled Steve, shoving the man back with an arm to the chest.

Tony shot him a dirty glare while shoving the offending arm away from him. “You gonna stop me?”

“Put on the suit, let’s find out!”

“I’m not afraid to hit an old man,” Tony snickered.

Steve gnashed his teeth together. “Put on the suit.”

At this point, you didn’t bother trying to stop their childish gimmicks. You were far more interested in the Tesseract.

“Bruce?” you asked, turning from the arguing duo, noting the scientist’s confused guise. “What is it?”

Life always had a way of flipping itself upside down. Abruptly, the helicarrier jolted violently and an explosion rippled clean through the lab. The glass panes shattered into a million fractals of glittering shards, hailing down onto the floor. Amber, ochre, and ashen smoke filled your vision in the form of flames and sparks. You were blown to the side of the room, thankful for the repulsion technology you had clipped on for the mission, sliding down a wall with minimal impact.

“Steve!” you shrieked just before accidentally inhaling a lungful of smoke. Eyes burning, you shoved your nose into the crook of your elbow and shuffled forward, carefully stepping over the cracks of the floor and leaping to where you saw his familiar blue suit. He was sprawled out on the floor, in the midst of pushing himself up with a groan.

“Are you okay?” he asked upon seeing you. At the grimaced bob of your head, he turned to Tony, who sported a thin rivulet of scarlet blood running down the side of his face. “Put on your suit.”

The three of you sprinted down the halls to the main room of the helicarrier.

“Engine three down! I’ll meet you there!” Tony yelled, relaying the information Maria Hill had told him through the comms. Steve took off in the direction he pointed, and you were about to follow after him before Tony stuck his arm out, leading you to the armory room. “I built you a suit! It’s made out of spare parts, but it’ll do for now! Consider it an apology gift.”

Your jaw unhinged at his words. “What? A suit? Tony, when in the hell did you…? Nevermind, we have to hurry!” The two of you ushered into a separate room. With a click of a button, the walls slid open to reveal Tony’s infamously sleek suit, along with a second, more shoddier version of it.

“Thanks,” you muttered beneath your breath. “Could use some tweaking, though.”

“I had two hours, give me a break,” Tony rolled his eyes, but offered you a weak smile. It wasn’t properly said, but you could tell that he was genuinely sorry for his harsh words earlier today. He might’ve had a riff with Steve, but the man didn’t want to be at a stalemate with you.

The suit he made you consisted of glossy platelets of silver metal, glowing a faint blue once he activated it. “Calibration is automatic,” he said as he stepped into his own iron attire. “Just say the word and it’ll be at your beck and call.”

Grateful, you murmured another word of thanks before shuffling forward and allowing the suit to close in on you. It fit like a glove, adjusting to meld over your body perfectly. Floating blue programs fanned in front of your vision, and you blinked in awe at seeing the suit’s stats in the top right corner.

“Ready?” Tony called.

“As I’ll ever be.”

With that, the two of you took off. You were slightly wobbly with the jets coming out of your hands and feet at first, but quick to adjust. In a way, it wasn’t unsimilar to your anti-gravity models. Tony led the way, flying out of the helicarrier and rounding to where a large chunk of the craft was demolished, just beside one of the main engines. Steve stood in the middle of the wreckage, looking at you with widened eyes.

“You’re flying!” he exclaimed.

“Sorry I can’t take you up here with me,” you replied as you drew nearer. “No offense, but you’re a little heavy.”

A small smile quirked his lips, but it was short-lived, dying away when Stark spoke again. “I gotta get this superconducting coolant system back online. Before I can access the rotors, work on dislodging the debris. I need you to get that engine control panel and tell me which relays are in the overload position!” Steve nodded, springing into action by leaping across the ruins and yanking open the hidden panels.

“Stand back, Stark,” you said, allowing him enough time to jerk back before blowing apart the metal parts covering the engine.

“Could’ve done with more warning!” Tony shrieked, but you only half-shrugged.

“What does it look like in there?” you asked Steve.

“Uh…” the blonde scratched at his head, miffed. “Looks like it runs on electricity.”

A snort escaped you. “Thanks, Stevie! Just what I needed to know.”

As Tony gave Steve orders (and Steve willingly complied, though reluctantly, much to your surprise), you flew around the engine, scanning all damages and calculating the most efficient way to keep the craft going with it momentarily down.

“Relays intact! What’s our next move?”

“Even if I clear the rotors, this thing won’t re-engage without a jump. I’m going to have to get in there and push,” Tony said, his voice echoing through your suit’s comms. His words shot a chill down your spine.

Panicked, you quickly replied, “Tony, if that thing picks up speed, you’ll be shredded!”

“That stator control unit can reverse the polarity long enough to disengage the maglev, and that could一”

“Speak English!” Steve asserted, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration.

The blasters on your feet blew saxe flames as you flew over to where Tony was. “The red lever beside you, Stevie!” Tony pointed to the large slants of metal debris wedged between the engine blades. You nodded in understanding, using the lasers embedded in the bionic arm of your suit to break them apart. “It’ll slow the rotors down long enough for us to get out.”

“Us?” Both Tony and Steve protested.

Your nose twitched. “You’re going to need someone there to catch you should you fall, Tony. We need all the manpower we can get.”

“No! Y/N, you don’t一!”

Before Steve could finish the sentence, Tony interjected. “They’re right! Stand by the lever, wait for my call.”

Worry clouded your consciousness when you heard gunshots ricochet from the area Steve was in, followed by the clanging of that vibranium shield. You relaxed slightly, returning to the task at hand.

“You okay, Stevie?”

“I can handle it!” his voice was strained over the comms.

With all the obstructions cleared, you flew up to Tony, lining beside him, preparing to push at the engine to get it going.

“We’re losing altitude!” Nick Fury bellowed through the crackling transmission.

“Yup, noticed!” quipped Tony just before igniting the blasters. You mimicked his actions, steadily gaining velocity as the both of you shoved with your combined forces.

The surge of resistive wind was trying its hardest to push you back, but you thrusted yourself along, brows knitting in concentration. Every part of your body burned, and you quickly grew dizzy at the constant spinning. Adrenaline coursed through your veins, viscous and golden. You could feel the helicarrier plummeting down, down, down, your gut sinking along with it.

No. No, that can’t happen! People can’t die because you weren’t doing enough. Not again. Not ever again.

A worn yell ripped from your throat as you kept propelling ahead. There was so much blood rushing to your head that you hadn’t even heard Tony’s mirrored scream.

“Cap, hit the lever!” Stark gritted out. From a quick glance to your right, you could see that his grip was faltering. “NOW!”

“I need a minute here!” Steve’s voice echoed back.

Your lungs burned when you cracked your lips apart to wheeze out his name, desperate on your tongue. You weren’t quite sure how much longer you could last.

The engine started moving too quickly for you and Tony to keep up. For a millisecond of an inhale, you looked to Tony, and he looked to you.

“Oh, shit,” both of you whispered in horrified synchronization. Then, the both of you were sucked downwards, flopping beneath the spinning metal like washed-up fish on a beach. Pain blossomed over your muscles, and you were eternally grateful for the strong armor that encompassed your body. Now, you weren’t one to be afraid easily. But stuck here, iron grinding against steel wailing in your ears, sparks of heat dancing in your vision, you don’t recall ever being more panicked in your life.

Except… well, except driving a plane straight into the ice.

Utter relief flushed through your system only seconds later. The barrier you were clanking against slid open promptly, and you flailed in the air for a bit before gaining your footing once more, turning on the blasters to keep you upright. Thank god for Steve and his lever-pulling skills.

You heard more shots, phantom explosions echoing in your ears followed by Steve’s pained grunt. With your breath caught in your throat, you flew around and zeroed in on a man with a gun, pelting Steve with shots, which he narrowly parried away with his shield.

Tunnel vision made you snarl out a filthy obscenity before you jetted forward, punching the man square in the face. The both of you went sprawling to the ground, the impact knocking him clean unconscious.

Panting, you rolled over and wheezed out a broken laugh before slipping into cold darkness, Steve’s panicked yells echoing in the recesses of your mind, and Bucky’s warm smile flickering behind your eyelids.

“Two broken fingers.”

“Steve一”

“Sprained ankle. Pulled thigh muscle. Fractured wrist.”

“Steve一!”

“You’ve got bruises everywhere!” The man in front of you clicked his tongue, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t have put yourself on the line like that.”

A frown tainted your split lip. “You’re not allowed to tell me that. It’s what you do every day, Stevie. I might not have the serum, but I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Stop fussing so much, will you?” your voice was but a hushed whisper, soothing in tone. It made Steve stop bristling, but he wrapped a protective arm around you nonetheless. Steve had changed back into a navy long sleeve, clinging onto the muscles of his biceps. You would’ve laughed at the ridiculously tight fit if your lungs didn’t ache whenever you took a breath.

The meeting room grew eerily quiet. Even Tony was silent, brooding mutedly as he propped his chin on his knuckles. Nick Fury was the only other one in the wrecked room, standing as still as a shadowed statue. The helicarrier was in absolute shambles. Everything was covered in splinters of glass, and the flooring was crumbled. The lights flickered on and off repeatedly, pathetically dousing the four of you in dim amber luminescence for momentary periods of time.

“These were in Phil Coulson’s jacket,” Fury muttered, flicking cards onto the table. Bloodied, they stained the surface a startling shade of cerise, sending a chill thrumming up your spine. “Guess he never did get you to sign them.”

A sinking feeling graced your abdomen, and you sent Steve a worried glance, observing the way his eyebrows creased into a crestfallen expression. He gingerly reached over with his free hand to pick one up, frowning when he turned one over to see himself saluting, marred by the smudges of dried ichor. You could only shuffle closer to him, resting a pounding head against his shoulder.

“Where’s Banner?” you murmured, voice far more frail than you would’ve liked.

Nick grimaced. “Not here. Thor’s nowhere to be found as well.” You waited with bated breath for his next words. “We were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number, though. There was an idea一Stark knows this一one called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people to see if they could be something more. To see if they could work together when the world needed them most. Fight the battles that we couldn’t even begin to hope for. Phil Coulson died still believing that idea. In heroes.”

At that, Tony Stark huffed a resigned sigh, pushing his chair from the table. The screech of metal against glass made your head throb. Before you knew it, he was striding away, shoulders squared.

“Well,” Fury swept his gaze to the two of you, “it’s an old-fashioned notion.”

A gulp lodged in your throat, and you did nothing but clutch onto Steve all the tighter.

You found Tony outside. It’d been hours since Nick talked to you. You spent the free time fixing up the suit Tony had given you, installing new compartments and fixing up all the bugs. When you were finally satisfied with your handicraft, you packed the suit away and took off to find him. He was leaning on the helicarrier’s railway, features drawn into a pensive expression. The breeze blew gentle, tousling his already haphazard strands of hair. He hadn’t looked surprised to see you when you sidled up beside him, adjusting your arm sling so you wouldn’t accidentally elbow him in the abdomen.

“Hi,” you whispered. “Got sick of Stevie. Kept bugging me about the suit, so I wanted to come out and check if you’re okay.”

“‘M fine,” Tony replied. There was a gentle smirk on his lips from your slight jab at Steve. “Not. It’s whatever.”

An off-hand hum rumbled from deep within you. It was obvious that Tony was upset about Coulson. There was a certain fear inside him that you understood all too well; tumultuous and clamoring for attention. Tony Stark was worried.

“As a kid I looked up to you,” he said, which made you look at him with a pleasantly surprised raise of your eyebrows, “because my dad said you were the coolest person he’s ever met. Drove himself insane trying to find you and Capsicle.”

A puff of a sigh left your sore lungs. “I miss him.”

“Yeah.” Stark laughed. “I do, too.”

The both of you lapsed into sweet silence. Silence was rare with Tony Stark, but he figured he owed it to you to keep quiet for once in his life.

“I was in love with another man.”

“Sergeant James Barnes?” Tony’s gaze flickered down to your cast once he fully turned to you, curious. “Famous name. You and Barnes canoodling wasn’t in any history textbook I’ve read, though.”

Snorting, you knocked your uninjured elbow against Tony’s arm. “We were quiet together. It was nice. Bucky was my whole world. He still is.” A reminiscent smile painted your lips at the memory. “Then… your dad surprised the hell out of me by asking me out for fondue in Switzerland. And I told him I was taken.”

“You’re telling me Pops had the hots for you?”

“We all get lonely, Tony.” You cleared your throat, shifting slightly. “Then… then Bucky gave his life during one of their missions. It was hard. Real hard. But Howard was there to help me through it. And Stevie. I wasn’t alone. I never was.”

Tony’s eyes seemed to soften. The weight of whatever he was feeling suddenly felt cleaved in half. “I’m sorry.”

“I want you to know, Tony. You’re not alone, either. Our team might’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make things better.”

There was a strange look on his face when he mused out loud, “You’re something else, aren’t you?”

Tony Stark was a stranger to raw emotions. Maybe you’d share your holey umbrella with him.

“So… what do you think your superhero name is gonna be?”

“What?”

“You know,” Tony gestured to himself, “I’m Iron Man. Capsicle in there is Captain America. Romanoff is Black Widow. You?”

A superhero name. Strange to believe you were a hero now. A part of you always thought that that was Steve’s role; the face of justice and courage. It hadn’t even occurred to you that you were a part of it just as much as he was.

After a moment’s hesitance, you breathed out. ��Galvano. I’ll be Galvano.”

“Sounds like a villain name.”

“Shut up, Tony.”

Eventually, you and Tony retreated back into the helicarrier’s lab, bumping into Steve on the way.

“I’m sorry about Coulson,” Steve offered, obviously trying his best to extend an olive branch. “He seemed like a good man.”

Tony shrugged. “He was an idiot.”

Crossing his arms, Steve asked, “Why? Because he believed in us?”

“For taking Loki on alone.”

“He was doing his job.”

Scoffing, Tony shook his head. “He was way out of his league. Should’ve waited.”

“Sometimes there isn’t a way out, Tony,” you murmured lowly.

Oh, you knew that look. One of grief, loss, pain, only thinly masked by a snarky attitude. Peel off the layers… and you get something ugly, deformed, terrifying. Sweeping it under a rug doesn’t change the fact that it hurts. It was as if every step forward you took with Tony, there was an invisible barrier that shoved you ten paces back.

“Is this the first time you’ve lost a soldier?” Steve queried, narrowing his striking grey eyes.

A ripple of tension rocked the atmosphere on its heels.

“We are not soldiers!” Tony bit out at a volume that made you flinch just slightly. When his eyes flickered to your concerned ones, the tension holding his shoulders captive alleviated minutely. “I’m not marching to Fury’s trumpet of war.”

“Neither are we, Tony,” you countered with a firm tone, shuffling forward. “He’s got the same blood on his hands that Loki does. Right now, we gotta put that behind us and get this done. Loki still needs that power source. If we can put together a list of potential…”

Tony was looking at something. Trailing off, you traced his line of sight and noticed the faded crimson stain on the wall, meandering down the sleek surface and dripping into the shadowed gaps of the vent. You weren’t quite sure whose blood that was, but it spurred Tony on enough to snarl out, “He made this personal.”

“That’s not the point!” Steve asserted.

“Correction,” a pompous finger stuck up in the air, “that is the point. That’s Loki’s point. He hit us all where we’re most vulnerable. Why?”

What was Tony getting at?

“To tear us apart,” replied Steve, looking every bit as befuddled as you were.

“Yeah, yeah, divide and conquer is great but he knows he has to take us out to win, right? That’s what he wants. He wants to beat us and be seen doing it. He wants an audience.”

Oh. Oh.

“Right!” Steve nodded along. “I caught his act in Germany.”

Tony snapped once. “Bingo! Those were just previews, this is opening night. And Loki, he’s a full-tilt diva, right? Flowers, parades, costumes, you name it!”

A celebratory grin graced your lips. “He wants a monument built to the skies with his name plastered over it. Sound familiar?”

It dawned over Steve and Tony at the exact same time.

“Son of a bitch,” uttered Tony. With a cackle of delight coming from you, the three of you sprinted out of the lab, ready to launch into fighting mode once again.

If you had gone back in time and told yourself that you’d be fighting an army of aliens from outer space, past-you would’ve raised a skeptical eyebrow and continued on with whatever you had been doing.

Even now, as you were blasting the grotesque creatures into bloody-green fragments, you still had a hard time processing that this was all real.

You flew around buildings, swerved around cars, and dove beneath the aliens’ hovering crafts, taking down each and every one in your path. You kept a steady watch on Steve and Natasha and Clint fighting below, practically ants at your height. The portal above all of you glowed ribbons of electric blue, just the same as the Tesseract, giving way to the endless nothingness of space.

Soon after, not only were you fighting the Chitauri, but their beasts of sentient metal plates floated their way in as well, bulldozing straight through buildings and monuments. They were larger than life itself, spanning as tall as skyscrapers. Your breath caught in your throat as two barreled in your direction, metal mouths groaning open to reveal rusty slates of sharpened teeth.

“Stark! Are you seeing this?” you yelled into the comms, narrowly dodging the creatures, pulling out an infinitely-expanding blade (an invention that you were practically dying to put into use) and landing onto one of the humongous brutes, driving the sleek steel between the plates of its spine. You then used the force of your thrusters to propel you through the air, dragging your cutlass clean through its tough hide. A shrill roar of fury echoed throughout the city as the beast went down, crashing into the cleared-out streets, a mess of road asphalt, concrete and car parts.

Tony’s voice crackled in the comms as he replied, “Seeing, sure! Still working on believing! You seen Banner yet?”

“Banner?” you echoed, incredulous. “We haven’t seen him since he turned into Green Bean, remember?”

“You were meant to call him Mean Green, Y/N, come on!” Tony chuckled as you lithely ducked one of the Chitauri’s arrows aimed straight at your skull. “Just keep me posted!”

Responding with a gruff affirmative, you jetted back down to ground level, sprinting over debris and dodging up-turned cars to reach Steve. Natasha and Clint were kneeling behind a taxi and you plopped down beside them, catching your breath. With a press of a button on the side of your head, your helmet folded away and you saluted Barton with a meek grin.

“Nice to officially meet you! Really cool bow!” you called out over the explosions.

Before Clint could respond, Natasha sprang up, took two dead-aimed shots that cleaved straight through the skulls of Chitauri, and then dropped back down to her haunches. “Could we save the introductions until after we’re done fighting aliens? We got this down here! Go!”

“Yes ma’am!” You could’ve sworn you saw Natasha’s pretty lips curve into a minuscule grin. With a sheepish smile, you nodded once before jetting back up, helmet folding over your temple once again as you shot down more Chitauri coming their way. Higher up, you scanned the buildings, looking for anybody who hasn’t evacuated yet. Your brows creased upon seeing a whole floor of people cowering on one of the top floors, hiding beneath their desks.

Bracing yourself for impact against the glass, you dove through the windows and rolled back onto your feet, huffing out a relieved exhale.

You ran a quick scan of the stairs, blue wreckage filling your vision. Damn it all, the exits were obstructed by rubble far too heavy to lift. “Everyone, the stairs are blocked! There’s an escape ladder on the left, let’s go! Move it!” you ordered, guiding people from their catatonic states of shock towards the exit.

So this was what it was like being a hero. Throwing yourself over the grenade to keep everybody else safe.

A Chitauri bastard weasled through the window you had broken into, snarling in its filthy alien language. You pulled out your true-aim knives, arcing them towards the creature with a yell. It split him straight into half, dark blood staining the office carpets. Screams erupted pandemonium as people scampered to leave in panic. Good. At least now they’re moving their asses.

Satisfied once the whole building was clear, you flew out of the building, immediately met by Tony whizzing past you.

“Okay, I got its attention! What the hell was step two?” he shrieked. With widened eyes, you looked over your shoulder and flinched at the sight of another large Chitauri beast. Blue flames erupted from your blasters as you threw yourself ahead of Tony, flying around the buildings semi-smoothly.

“You’re an idiot!” you screamed, turning on auto-pilot so you could fly backwards. With a snarl, you shot explosive capsules into its widened mouth, jetting away with Tony hot on your tail just as the whole front of the beast detonated into a million fragments. Still, it wasn’t enough to kill. No, you were pretty sure you’ve only managed to make it mad.

“Wow, you should be a motivational speaker!”

Snorting, you replied, “Nah, that’s Stevie’s thing.”

“I can hear you two, you know!” Steve barked as he swung his shield to take down two aliens at once.

“We can all hear you!” exerted Natasha while swinging up around a Chitauri’s neck and holding it in a chokehold.

Your eyes bugged as you spotted Banner zooming through the cluttered streets on a weathered motorcycle, coming to a gruelling stop by Steve and Natasha and Clint.

“Tony! Bruce is here!”

A smile crossed the billionaire’s face. “Great! Capricorn, tell him to suit up. I’m bringing the party to you.”

The pair of you nodded at one another, flying across the city, steadily leading the goliath metal serpent around skyscrapers.

“I don’t see how that’s a party,” Natasha deadpanned. You laughed hoarsely at that.

Dazed, you watched in muted awe as the awkward doctor you grew quite fond of morphed into the Hulk; beige skin melting into a furious shade of green, muscles expanding ten-fold and ripping clean through the fabric of his button-down. This was a battle of beasts, you mused, repressing the urge to whoop excitedly when Hulk dug his fists into the snake of steel, effectively grinding the behemoth to a halting stop. Tony shot a grenade into its exposed flesh once the metal plates shifted apart, and it came crashing down with another deafening eruption.

You lowered down beside Steve once the smoke subsided, grazing the cold material of your suit’s hands over his own warm, gloved ones. A strange feeling danced at your chest upon seeing the rest of the team forming a defensive circle with you. United, determined, ready to give their everything. Even their lives.

This was the Avengers.

For the first time since all the way back in the forties, you felt whole again.

There were more coming through the portal.

“Until we can close that portal, our priority is containment,” Steve said. “Barton, I want you on that roof. Eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays. Stark, Y/N, you got perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or you turn it to ash.”

“Good luck, Stevie,” you murmured, a stark contrast to all the yelling you’ve done previously. Said man shot you a sweet look that lasted only a millisecond.

“Give me a lift?” Barton asked.

Teasing, Tony quipped, “Better clench up, Legolas.”

“I was asking Galvano, actually一!” Tony gave Hawkeye no time to complain, yanking him up by the pits and soaring through the skies at neck-breaking speed.

“I didn’t get that reference,” you hummed in slight amusement when you matched pace with Tony.

The two of you swerved farther out of the center of the city. “The movies are an absolute snoozefest. You’d love it!”

“Are you calling me boring, Stark?” you gasped in faux-offense as you slashed through three Chitauri soldiers in one go.

Tony was never given the opportunity to slide in another joke because an alien struck him down, sending him flailing towards the streets. Angry, you shot rapid-fire at them, taking down any that were tailing you along the way. Quick to recover, Iron Man bounced back beside you. The two of you bobbed your heads at one another before jetting opposite directions.

A part of you was surprised at how long you’ve endured. The adrenaline fueled you like gasoline would fire; you felt it surging through your veins and invigorating every fiber of your being.

At one point, you bumped back into Natasha again, struggling to hold herself against three aliens at once. You quickly shot them down, sending her a fumbled wave before turning to blast at the creatures closing in. Steve joined you, even letting you use his vibranium shield as a reflector for your lasers. The two of you worked together in perfect harmony. It reminded you of that last battle you fought with him before going into the ice. Back when everything was so much simpler. Well, that was an understatement. At least there weren’t aliens in the forties.

A triumphant smile made its way onto your face when Thor came thundering down and shot rivulets of electricity through any aliens near his vicinity. You took that as your cue to leave; you were needed elsewhere.

Just before you could jet back off, however, Natasha’s voice crackled through your comms.

“I can close it. Can anybody copy? I can close it.”

“Do it!” Steve yelled.

“No!” said Tony. “I got a nuke coming in. And I know just where to put it.”

A gasp lodged itself in your lungs. “Tony! No, you don’t have to do that, we can一!”

“Save all the power for the trip, Jarvis. Don’t wait up on me to watch those movies, Galvano!”

Even on the brink of death, Tony was still cracking jokes.

No. No, you couldn’t lose Tony, too. You’ve lived through one too many losses already. Tears pricked the corners of your eyes as you bit down on your bottom lip, watching the streak of gold-and-crimson sail through the wind, holding a nuke twice his size.

Then… then he was gone.

You waited, praying for whatever God (but not the one of thunder heaving breaths right beside you) was listening. Come back. Come back, Tony.

“Close it,” Steve muttered, despondent.

No, no, no. You couldn’t let it happen. Not again.

Your helmet shrunk away when you pressed the button, gasping for air. “Steve, I have to go get him.”

“Are you insane? Y/N, no一!”

A part of you should’ve felt guilty for flying off so suddenly, leaving Steve coughing amidst your wake of dust. The portal was closing fast, and Tony was nowhere to be seen. Tears trickled down your cheeks, blown clean off your skin and into the whistling wind.

Tony Stark was a man of surprises. Damn him for nearly giving you a heart attack.

Suddenly, his limp body fell through the narrow remaining gap of the portal, swallowing itself closed just as Tony sank back to the Earth. Breath stuttering, you forced yourself forward, swiftly catching him through the air and jetting back down to the ground. The landing was sloppy; mostly due to the unexpected weight, but also the mess of tears obstructing your vision. Both of you were sent tumbling to the ground, rolling painfully over glass, metal, and rock.

You were pretty sure you broke several more bones (which Steve would probably hound you over), but none of that mattered. Because Stark was unconscious, still as stone.

The rest of the team was quick to surround you as you crawled over Tony, prying his mask off and shaking him vigorously.

“Tony? Tony, please.” You slammed your against the concrete beside you, the metal fist leaving dented cracks on the sidewalk. Immediately, you grappled at his suit, uncaring if you had to rip it apart piece by piece to get Tony to start breathing again.

Bruce, no, the Hulk stomped up beside you, thumping at his chest and belting out an enraged roar, so loud that your head spun at the volume.

Lo and behold, Tony jolted awake, dark eyes darting every which way in panic. “Jesus fucking Christ! What the hell? What just happened?”

Tears were still streaming down your face, but you didn’t have the heart to stop yourself. Steve wrapped his arms around you, shushing you gently.

“It’s over,” he murmured into you, pressing a chaste kiss to your forehead. “It’s over, you’re okay. We won.”

“Please tell me nobody kissed me,” Tony wheezed out, still laying star-fished on the road.

Laughing into Steve’s hideous suit, you kicked at Tony’s leg. “Nobody kissed you, Tony.”

“Woohoo,” he weakly cheered. “Hurray. Good job, guys. Let’s just not come in tomorrow. Let’s take a day. You ever tried a shawarma? There’s a shawarma joint just two blocks from here. I don’t know what it is, but I wanna try it. I’m really hungry.”

Rolling your eyes to the clear skies, you shook your head while wrinkling your nose. “Okay, Tony. We can go get shawarmas.”

As you smiled down at him, turning back to Steve with a watery grin, you realized that it was perhaps time to put the umbrella away.

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