Author's Notes: An early Christmas present for my sister, this is the first story in a trilogy. AU in that Iron Man 3 never happened. All French dialogue in this chapter was taken from a translator site, so PLEASE tell me if I made any mistakes so I can fix them.
All is silent, all has been silent for a year and a day. The room knows no visitor: It has been void of life since it's creation at the beginning of the silence, and the only form of energy it knows comes from the swirl of the blue light emitting from the barrier in the center of the room. The barrier surrounds an object of much power, situated atop a black pedestal.
Suddenly, there is another form of energy, and there is a new light. An opening has appeared in the black wall that was not there before, and a figure steps through, pausing in the newly formed doorway. The swirls of light drift lazily towards him, but he is unimpressed. He carries a vessel; one which has not been seen since the beginning of the silence, and which causes the blue light to react slightly, withdrawing to the source. The light flickers and dulls, and in that moment, the figure in the doorway makes up his mind and steps forward.
Raising an object that the room recognizes as another item of great energy, the figure touches the tip of the object to the barrier, causing it to collapse before stepping up to the pedestal. Carefully, without touching the source of the light, he removes the object from the pedestal and places it in the vessel.
Securing the vessel, the figure places the other object onto the pedestal and withdraws, concentrating his efforts until, with the power of the object in his hands, he reinitializes the barrier. He steps from the room, the black wall is replaced, and the silence reigns once more.
"Mr. Stark, you've got 60 seconds."
The speaker, a young man in a dark grey suit jacket over a black graphic tee with the word "HURLEY" emblazoned in gold across the front, put his hand up to cover the small microphone protruding from the headset he wore.
"Thank you, Teddy," Tony Stark said without turning around. "How do I look, do I look...?" He let the sentence trail off, talking not to the young man in the doorway, but to the woman who was currently straightening his tie.
"You look fine, Tony," Pepper Potts said with a smile. "Sharp, you look sharp. Definitely."
"Now, see, I was more going for 'impressive,' 'fantastic'... 'grand' maybe," Tony said before turning around. "Teddy, what are you still doing here?" He asked the young man.
"It's Freddie, actually," Freddie said with a smile. "And I just wanted to say, sir, I'm a big fan."
"Freddie, I knew that," Tony said as he and Pepper began to follow Freddie to the stage. "I was just testing you, to see if you remembered it."
"His own name?" Pepper asked in amusement.
"Mm-hm, yeah," Tony said.
Freddie chuckled. "That's alright," he said as he stopped just short of the stage door. "And for the record, sir, you've got me impressed."
Tony smirked and turned to Pepper. "See?" He said. "Freddie knows what to say."
"Maybe he should take over my job, then," Pepper shot back with a smirk of her own.
Tony only had enough time to let out a scoff and say "Yeah right," before he stepped onto the stage, the flashes of several cameras lighting up as he stood in front of the podium.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Tony said into the microphone. "...Well, I'm here."
Members of the small audience laugh lightly, and Tony gives a half-smile before starting.
"In regards to the, wild, accusations that I am resigning as CEO of Stark Industries," Tony started, getting straight to the point of the conference. "I just want to say... it would be nice, to take a break from all the business and the responsibilities of... running the company, so that I could focus all my attention on my work as Iron Man. But," He amended quickly, "despite all the benefits such a move might incur, there would also be severe drawbacks, and I have no intention to resign at this time."
One of the reporters raised a hand, and Tony pointed to him. "Go," he said.
"Mr. Stark," The man asked. "Rumor has it that Stark Industries is suffering financially due to the extra time you spend doubling as a superhero. Is this true?"
"Absolutely not," Tony said. "If anything, productivity has increased since we rebuilt and renovated last year, and since, excepting that unfortunate incident last May, there have been little to no attacks on the city from hostile alien forces-"
Here there was another general chuckle from the audience.
"...My work as Iron Man has been mostly for the benefit of the company itself," Tony finished. "Including the installation last month of a new Arc Reactor that powers not only the tower..." He paused for affect. "But also... the majority of the industrial district. Yes, ms. Pink shirt."
He pointed to the reporter in question, who lowered her hand. "Mr. Stark," she said. "In regards to the attack on the city last year-"
"Wow, we're back on that subject," Tony interrupted. "I thought we'd thoroughly explored all topics on the Chitauri last year, when it happened."
"This question has more to do with the Avengers, really," The reporter said. "The group of superheroes, of which you were a part, has not been seen since the attack last year," she said. "Has it been disbanded?"
"Excellent question," Tony said. "No. It has not. But since, as previously stated, there have not been any major attacks requiring the immediate attention of a group of powerful super humans, the Avengers have not been needed."
"So you haven't resigned your position as an Avenger, then?" Another reporter asked.
"Resigned my..." Tony trailed off, looking at the reporter in surprise. "No, I have not resigned my position as an Avenger," he said. "Where did you hear that, Insinuations Weekly!?"
There was another general chuckle, and the reporter who had asked the question smiled sheepishly.
"So first, I'm quitting the company to focus solely on my work as Iron Man, and now, I'm quitting the Avengers to focus solely on Stark Industries," Tony summed up. "That's a... real swing of the pendulum there, it's not... well balanced, it's either one thing with you guys or another, there... is no middle road..."
He noticed Pepper, who had moved to the back of the conference hall, signal him to move on. He took a deep breath. "My involvement in the project known as the Avengers Initiative," He said, getting back on track. "Was originally no more than a consultation position, but, after the incident last year involving the, uh, 'hostile alien armada of doom,' I was able to sign on fully."
"What do the Avengers plan to do now?" One reporter asked.
Tony looked at him. "...We're on call," He said. "In case of a worldwide threat. Until such an event occurs, and, I sincerely hope it won't," he amended. "Then we will all continue our separate work. What did you expect, you want us to be besties, hanging out, having parties, maybe... crashing a few high-society events... possibly literally?"
"Mr. Stark," One reporter said, raising his hand. Tony pointed at him. "That would be awesome," The reporter stated.
Tony smirked as the crowd laughed. "Yes." he said. "That would indeed be, awesome, however, since we-"
He was cut off as there was a sudden loud bang and a flash of blinding light on the stage a few feet away from Tony. The small crowd screamed and jumped and ducked, while security rushed up on stage to pull Tony away from the figure who now stood where the light had been.
"Wait, wait, stop," Tony said, pulling away from the security officer as soon as he got a chance to see the man. "...Thor!?" He exclaimed, hand over his heart in surprise. "Jeez, don't do that! You about gave me a heart attack!" He walked back to the center stage and sighed. "Smile, you're a celebrity."
The crowd was now silent, staring in shock at the Asgardian, who looked around at them as well before turning to Tony.
"Friend Stark," he said, his face grave. "Assemble the Avengers."
Suddenly all the cameras began flashing faster and faster, and the reporters jumped up and began pelting Thor with questions.
Tony stepped up to the podium and held up his hands, quieting the room down long enough to say; "Ladies and gentlemen, it appears we are going to hang out."
A bullet whistled past Natasha Romanoff's ear as she swung down off the catwalk onto the armed man below. With a simple move, she snapped his neck and somersaulted off his limp body onto the floor as he fell. Above her, the man who had shot at her ran to the spot she had vanished from and leaned over the rail, gun pointed at her.
She smirked, his eyes were wide with panic. "NE VOUS DÉPLACEZ PAS," He yelled in French, ordering her to freeze.
A black arrow embedded itself into the man's back and he dropped his gun with a grunt, going limp himself.
Natasha caught the gun and turned quickly as a man ran from around a corner. She noticed he was of a higher rank than the others. She raised her hand and shot the gun out of his hand before he'd even finished raising it, then she ran forward and jumped, using her legs to bring the man to the ground, where she pinned him to the floor and pressed the borrowed gun into the back of his neck.
"Là où est Monceaux," Natasha said quietly, asking the man for the location of her target. The man didn't answer, only gasped in fear.
"Dites-moi l'emplacement de Monceaux ou mourez," she said, pressing the gun into his neck, offering him either cooperation or death.
"Je sais pas," the man said, declaiming his knowledge. "Monceaux gauche le bâtiment sur vos arrivée!" He declared, Monceaux had left the building when she and Hawkeye had shown up.
"Mauvais Choix," She said, cocking the gun. Bad choice.
"PATIENTER!" The man yelled desperately, raising his hands as far as he could from his position on the ground. Natasha waited.
"Il s'échappe du toit," The man said. "Il a un hélicoptère. Je jure!"
Natasha smirked. Monceaux was headed for the roof, where a chopper was waiting for him.
"Merci de votre coopération," she said, thanking him. "Je n'ai pas eu le temps pour le découvrir moi-même. Vous avez rendu mon travail facile, vous avez effrayé chiot." She clicked her tongue in disappointment, while the man held his breath, very much the coward she had just called him. "Très bien," she said with a sigh. "Je ne vous tuerai pas." Taking the gun, she hit him over the head with the hilt, knocking him out.
Standing up, she reached up to her ear and clicked on the com device. "Clint," she said. "Monceaux is heading for the roof, he's got a chopper."
"Yeah, I picked up on that," Clint's voice said over the com. "I'm already on my way. Meet me there?"
Natasha smiled as she walked over to the nearby service lift. "I wouldn't miss it," She said.
Stepping off onto the roof, she walked calmly out onto the deck, Hawkeye had taken out the guards and the pilot, and he was standing over Monceaux. Over the cityscape, a quinjet was coming into view.
He gave a half-smile as she walked over, and she smiled back. "Well, this was easy," Clint said. "And here the director said we might have trouble with it."
"Hmm," Natasha hummed non-committedly, gazing at the quinjet as it flew gracefully past the glittering lights of Paris. The Eiffel Tower rose up over the rest of the city and a brisk wind blew Natasha's hair out of her face.
"It sure is beautiful," Clint said, following her gaze. "The city of love, and all that stuff..."
Natasha turned to Clint and raised her eyebrow. "...That's right," She said.
"How about we grab a bite to eat," Clint suggested. "While we're in the neighborhood."
"What about the mission?" Natasha asked. "Won't the director be angry if we miss the debriefing?"
"I'd say he'd be... furious," Clint quipped. "But I'd like to see him try and stop us."
"Are you serious in asking the lady to dinner in Paris?" Monceaux asked in heavily accented English, looking up at Clint incredulously. "After you both infiltrate and cripple my headquarters, kill my soldiers, and hold me captive to turn me over to those that would kill me?"
"Are you kidding? This is Monday morning at the office," Natasha said, looking Monceaux over in distaste.
"Besides," Clint said. "It's either that or pick up the pieces when your weapons cartel hits the rest of the world."
Monceaux sighed. "Fair enough," he said.
The quinjet landed then, and several SHIELD agents hopped off, training their weapons on Monceaux. "So, Natasha," Clint said. "If we're gonna leave, we've gotta do it now. What'd'ya say?"
"I haven't had Escargot in awhile," She said.
They were about to turn and leave when one of the Agents called for them to wait.
Clint and Natasha exchanged a glance; did they go anyway? Or did they give up their date to deal with more work?
They kept walking, and the Agent ran after them.
"Agent Hawkeye," the Agent said, jogging to catch up. "Agent Black Widow, this is urgent."
They both slowed to a stop. "Fine..." Clint said with a sigh. "What is it?"
"It's Mr. Stark, sir," The Agent said quietly. Natasha narrowed her eyes, Stark had better have a good reason for interrupting their mission, and, inadvertently, her date. "He says It's about the Avengers."
"Why does he think that will make us come back?" Clint asked, lowering his voice as well. "We're on the clock for SHIELD. We can't just drop everything and fly to New York on Stark's whim."
"Thor's back," The Agent murmured. "He's the one who ordered the meeting. He says it's a matter of planetwide security."
"Why is this secret then?" Natasha asked. "You're whispering as if no one else knows. If this is a matter of planetwide security, shouldn't SHIELD be involved?"
The Agent shrugged. "All I know is what Mr. Stark told me," she said, causing Natasha to narrow her eyes once again. It appeared Stark had spies (sympathizers, followers, whatever you wanted to call it) in SHIELD. She would have to look into this later.
She looked at Clint, who looked back at her and then shrugged. "Whatever you want to do," he said.
Natasha sighed. Why was it always up to her? Now there were three options: Go on a date, go to a debriefing, or go to a secret meeting of the Avengers.
"...Tell Stark we're on our way," She said finally. The Agent ran off and she turned to Clint. "I'll have to take a rain-check on the Escargot," she said.
Steve Rogers was trying very hard to get back out into the world. Very very hard. And although his year of taking baby steps was paying off, he still sometimes felt like he was drowning in a sea of loud noises and bright colors and technology swallowing everything up like a whirlpool. Especially when he had to make snap decisions about normal everyday things. Like ordering a coffee.
As he stood in line behind a man wearing a weird kind of earring that left a gaping hole in his ear, he looked around the coffee shop, trying not to look like he was staring.
Over in the corner, a girl in tattered denim pants and a bright green tank-top sipped some sort of blue drink through a pink straw while she typed away on a very small orange computer. Considering that in his day, most women didn't even wear pants, the entire sight was still bizarre to him, no matter how often he saw it.
Sitting around a table in the middle of the shop, three middle-aged women gossiped loudly while they knitted. Aside from their strange clothes, they were knitting hats that resembled some strange sort of cartoon bird, and one of them was smoking a cigarette.
Through the window, he could see a group of young boys, wearing shirts that more resembled aprons than actual shirts, short pants that really needed to be pulled up higher and introduced to a belt, and black baseball caps with strange symbols and designs on them. The caps weren't even put on the right way, Steve noted.
The youths were laughing and talking loudly, a few words drifted in as someone stepped through the door, and Steve found himself blushing at their extensive vocabulary. One of them had a skateboard, and he was doing strange stunts with it, flipping it up in the air with his feet and then trying to land on it. Steve thought several times that the boy was going to fall and hurt himself, and he kept trying to avoid watching.
Finally, it seemed, the man with the weird earrings and the sailor's tattoos picked up his drink and walked away, and Steve stepped up to the counter.
"Hello, welcome to Starbucks, what can I get for you?" The lady behind the counter said with a smile.
"Uh..." Steve said, looking up at the huge menu. It seemed to stretch on for miles, and he didn't recognize a single word. Zeroing in on the first thing he saw that only had one word in the name, he turned back to the girl. "One Espresso, please," He said.
"Hot, iced or blended?" She asked.
He remembered that he liked cold coffee, that had been one thing that had surprised him in a good way in this futuristic world. He liked cold coffee.
"Which one's cold?" He asked.
He must've asked the wrong question, because the girl looked at him as if he had two heads or something.
"Um, iced is cold," She said. "As well as blended. Iced coffee is when we pour the cold coffee over ice, blended is when we blend the coffee and ice chips together."
"Oh," Steve said. "Um, I... I think I like it blended, please."
"Alright," the girl said, typing the umbers into the little cash-register computer thing on the counter. "What size?" She asked him.
"Uh, small," Steve said.
The girl blinked. "Our smallest size is Tall," She said with a rehearsed smile. "Our sizes are Tall, Grande, Ventri, and now, Trenta."
"Um, I'll take the... tall," Steve said.
"Okay then," the girl said. "Would you like an extra shot?"
"Sure," Steve said without hesitation. He had no idea what it meant, but he was done with this whole ordeal. He just wanted to pay for the thing and leave while he still had a shred of dignity left.
"What kind of milk would you like?" The girl asked, explaining before he had the chance to ask. "Whole milk, skimmed milk, or soy?"
"Whole," Steve said. At least he knew about milk.
"And finally, would you like whipped cream on that?" The girl asked.
"Surprise me," Steve said, deciding not even to try and make a decision on that one.
The girl smiled at him. "You're not from around here, are you?" She asked.
Steve gave a dry chuckle. "I guess you could say that," He said.
"Well, can I get your name to write on the side of the cup?" The girl asked. "That way we know who to call for when the drink is finished.
"Steve," He said. "My name's Steve... Rogers."
"Nice to meet you, Steve Rogers," The girl said. "My name's Leslie Walker. What are you doing tonight?"
Steve was momentarily confused by her name. When he had... gone under, Leslie had been a boy's name.
"Uh," he said. "I don't- I don't have any plans..."
"Great," Leslie said. "How about you swing by after my shift, I can show you around town, we can grab a bite to eat, maybe hit the clubs or something."
Wait a minute.
She was asking him out on a date!
"Uh..." He stammered. "Th-thanks, I, uh, well, thanks for the offer, I'm, um, I can't... um, sorry, I'm just... no."
The girl looked confused, hurt, and put off all at the same time.
"Sorry," Steve said, red in the face. "It's not you, I just... I'm not ready to be in a relationship right now," He said, finishing with something he remembered hearing on... some television show he'd been watching a few weeks back.
"I see," Leslie said, all professional now. "Well, Steve Rogers, your drink will be ready in a few moments."
As Steve stepped out of the cafe with his tall blended Espresso with an extra shot topped with whipped cream, he glanced at the young boys and walked quickly down the street. He'd been trying to get back into the world, really, he had, but... everything was just so strange to him. He couldn't even walk from his apartment to the Starbucks on the corner and back without blundering through everything. The cars, the streetlights, the cell phones, the clothes, the hair...
A girl walked by, she was wearing black ripped clothes with lots of chains and buckles, and her hair was a strange color of purple.
He felt like he'd just stepped into a science fiction novel about aliens and outer space. No, wait, he'd actually had experience with aliens and outer space. He could handle aliens and outer space. He couldn't handle having to remember to push the button to wait for the light to change so he could walk across the street. He ended up standing on the street corner for several minutes, waiting for a chance to cross.
When he reached his apartment and stepped inside, his phone was ringing. Putting his coffee on the end table, he walked over to the device and picked up the receiver.
"Hello?" He said anxiously. Hopefully it was SHIELD. He wanted it to be SHIELD. He didn't think he could stand hearing another automated voice offering him special deals on cruises, in clipped tones and words that didn't flow together, after a long blast in his ear from a fog horn. Not today.
"Cap, hey, it's me, Tony," Stark's voice said over the phone. Steve let out an audible sigh of relief. It wasn't SHIELD, but it was better than... that other thing that called.
"Tony?" He asked. "What happened? Is something wrong?"
"Does there have to be something wrong in order for me to call you, see how you're doing, how you're... settling in?" Tony asked.
"Tony, this is the first contact we've made in a year," Steve said.
"And I feel bad about it, really I do," Tony's voice said. "I know, I should've called. I should've... checked in, maybe dropped by, I could've given you a housewarming gift or something. They had those back in your day, right?"
"Yes," Steve said bluntly. When Tony didn't say anything right away, Steve sighed. "Is there anything you wanted to say?" He asked. "Because I'm not having the best day, so if that's all..."
"Okay, so there's something wrong," Tony said. "You got me. Yeah, whatever. Something's wrong. Thor's here, so come on down to the tower, we're all gonna hash things out and figure out what's going on. You've got a few hours before the ninjas roll in from France, so it's no rush. Get here on your own time."
And then the line was dead.
Steve looked down at it for a second, not entirely sure what had just happened. Then he sighed, looked around the apartment, grabbed his jacket and his coffee and stepped back outside. Going down to Stark Tower to deal with a volatile group of superpowered shell-shocked emotionally imbalanced clashing personalities? He could definitely handle that. It was nothing compared to ordering a coffee.
Bruce was the easiest to track down.
He was in his lab, working on the schematics for a project he and Tony had been working on, when...
"Doctor Banner," JARVIS said over the intercom. "Mr. Stark requests your presence in the conference room. It appears Mr. Odinson has arrived, and the Avengers are being summoned."
Bruce stopped what he was doing and froze, before letting out a chuckle.
Considering what had happened the last time the Avengers had been needed, he wasn't sure he would be happy with whatever was going down now.
"Any information on the situation, J?" He asked, standing up.
"No sir, Mr. Odinson insisted on all Avengers being present before he divulged any information," JARVIS said.
Bruce sighed. "All right," he said. "Fine. Tell him I'll be right up."