Avenger's Tower Cave-in
This is set after Avengers: Age of Ultron, so Bruce and Thor are not present in the tower at this time.
"You think this is enough stuff? It's not like you've gotta totally move in to the new facility, Tony." Natasha said, lifting boxes onto a robotic luggage cart.
"Yeah, well... flying back and forth from New York to the facility, it just makes more sense to be able to stay there full time right now." Tony called back from deep in the Avenger's Tower basement, digging through boxes and piles of things and choosing what to bring and what could stay.
"You can't be serious." Natasha said, pulling a signed Captain America poster out of one of the boxes.
"My dad was obsessed." Tony replied, grabbing the poster and folding it neatly back into the box.
Natasha huffed out a laugh. "Clint said he'd take the last load in the quinjet."
"Alright, this should do it..." Tony said slowly, scanning the boxes one last time to make sure he didn't forget anything.
"Come on, Can man, Clint hates flying in the dark." Natasha dragged him up the first few stairs, letting Dum-E and You finish off the boxes.
Steve called from the top of the stairs. "Stark! Clint wants to get going! You guys finished yet?!"
"I always knew you hated the tower. I mean, first you call it big and ugly, and now you're rushing us out-!" Tony said, side stepping around Steve, who gave him an angry, disapproving look.
"Get in the quinjet, Stark." Natasha said, grabbing Steve's shoulder to tell him something.
Tony disappeared down the hall.
"He had a Captain America poster down there, it was Howard's. And it was signed." She said with an amused look on her face.
"I remember that!" Steve said with a reminiscing glance down the dim staircase.
"I forgot something!" Tony yelled, barreling down the stairs, effectively ending any moment Steve and Natasha had been having.
-LINEBREAK-
Clint was sitting with his feet up on the Quinjet's dashboard, humming while he cleaned a tip on one of his arrows with the edge of his shirt.
"Tasha', what could possibly be taking Stark so long?!" He yelled down the Quinjet's ramp, then when there was no response, he continued, "Hurry up!"
He heard a muffled, "They'll be done soon!" from Steve.
Annoyedly, he grabbed his bow off the ground and folded it up, placing it back carefully into his quiver's bow holder.
He left the Quinjet's cockpit and went down the ramp, gazing over the bright lights of New York city. Then, as if on cue,a metallic, shining missile appeared on the horizon, inching it's way closer to the tower as Clint made the assumption that no, that was not a bird.
"Steve! Stark! Tasha'?! Missile coming in fast, heading for the tower's base. Get out of the tower! Now!" Clint yelled into the commlink that he hoped one of them had remembered to wear.
Remembering to wear them wasn't an issue, since whoever had shot off that missile hadn't been sloppy. They had hacked Stark's systems and shut off the commlinks manually.
"Aw crap..." Clint mumbled as he sped his way into the Quinjet to take off before the tower went down. He just had to trust that one of Tony's suits had already gotten them out, that they had heard his warning.
The missile was seconds away from coming in contact with the tower's base, Clint could see ant sized people scampering into the streets, probably the last few lobby staff who hadn't left the tower for the night yet.
-LINEBREAK-
"Did you guys just hear Clint yelling?" Natasha wondered aloud as they turned towards the elevator to make their way to the Quinjet.
"Yeah, I think he said, 'Caw Caw!'" Tony said, laughing hard at his own joke. "Tough crowd."
"Comms are dead." Natasha deduced, tapping her earpiece repeatedly.
"Jarvis?" Tony called out to his AI, who had also gone silent.
Natasha grabbed both men and tugged them away from the elevator. "Where's the deepest part of the Tower?"
"Follow me." Tony said, following her thought process, albeit slowly compared to the quick mind of the Black Widow.
Steve looked a bit clueless as they ran towards a back room, where Tony shoved boxes out of their way to get to what looked like a ditch in the floor, but when examined closely, was actually an unconnected part of the floor. Tony slammed his fist on a button on the wall, and the three of them stood on the part of the floor, which zoomed quickly down into the depths of Tony's now-empty armory.
Just as the doors above them began to close, a loud, deafening sound blared through the tight corridor and debris rained down from the opening, effectively stopping the doors from closing.
The three of them reached the bottom of the armory and covered their heads with their arms as they hurried away from the opening in the ceiling.
Walls around them began cracking, and to Tony's shock, because come on, he designed this place to be indestructible, pieces of the cement walls fell around them, one of them sliding down Natasha's leg as she ran. She didn't make a sound, but it definitely wasn't just a scratch from the way Tony's face looked when he saw her leg.
Steve grabbed her and carried her the rest of the way to the farthest wall.
The wall around them started crumbling too, and to Tony's horror, Steve didn't make a move. Just sat there and looked over at the billionaire. There isn't anything else to do but hope we aren't buried alive, Steve's expression told him.
Then everything went dark as something big and hard hit Tony in the back of the head.
-LINEBREAK-
"Tasha'?" Clint murmured, watching the bottom portion of the tower crumple in on itself, leaving just the supports to keep the rest of it up. Which they did, actually sparing the top half of the tower from very much damage.
He flew the Quinjet down and landed as closely as he safely could to the pile of rubble that remained. Stark Industries employees tried to grab his arm and ask him if he was alright, and where were the rest of the Avengers?, but he ignored them, and ran towards the smoking remains of the bottom half of the tower.
He saw a large piece of the bomb's casing leaning backwards, inside a pile of stone and glass shards. He grabbed it and flipped it over, grimacing when he found the owner's name painted in white on the casing. Hammer Industries.
He'd kill Justin later, right now he had to find Natasha. And Tony and Steve, he supposed.
She can't be dead, right? He thought to himself. No, she survived Budapest, a collapsing building oughta be nothing compared to that.
People helped move the rubble away from the tower when they realized there were still people trapped inside. People who they knew as the Avengers. The least they could do was move a few rocks, right?
-LINEBREAK-
"Romanoff...? Cap?" Tony woke up to the sound of rocks settling around him.
He tried to move his right arm to lift a rock off his thigh, but found it was also underneath a rock, with a rock on top of that rock, which had another rock on top of it. Great, real life Jenga. He thought to himself, coughing out a cloud of dust.
"Tony?" Steve's voice came muffled through the rocks, followed by one loud cough.
"Where's Romanoff?" Came Tony's reply.
"Don't know, we got separated when the rocks started falling." He answered, the added, "Can you move?"
"Not unless I want a buildings worth of bricks on top of my beautiful face." Tony told him, blinking his eyes blearily against the thick dust that was swimming around him. "You?"
"Yeah, not much though. 1 foot in any direction, then thick walls, think I cornered myself." Steve called back.
Tony thought he heard Steve ask something else along the lines of "Are you alright?", but his thoughts were muddled and all he really felt like doing was shutting his eyes again and going to sleep...
"Tony?" Steve yelled after a silence.
"M' here, quit your whining." Tony said back, opening his eyes again to be assaulted by the evil army of dust.
"-alright?" Steve asked again.
Tony missed the first part of the question, but guesstimated that part. "I'm good...Can you see Natasha?"
"No."
"I'm over here!" Natasha yelled groggily, rubbing her own head, where a large bump was forming. When her hand came away, she didn't find blood. One less thing to worry about, she shrugged. Carefully standing, she found herself splayed out on a pile of rocks, right up against the armory's ceiling.
"I'm on top of the rocks, right on the ceiling. I can walk around..." She made her way slowly over to the ceiling's opening and found it plugged up with rocks.
"I can move rocks out of the way, dig out of here!" Natasha yelled down to Tony and Steve. "You guys okay?"
"For now. Be careful. One wrong rock and you'll bury my handsomeness forever." Tony yelled up to her, trying desperately to at least make himself some wiggle room, to no avail.
"Alright, here goes nothin'." Natasha said to herself, removing the first large rock from the pile, and thankfully, didn't bury her friends. Not yet anyway.
Did Clint have time to get out of the tower in the Quinjet? He would've tried to be a hero and come get them, would he have? She wondered to herself. Nah, he'd probably figure we were already out with one of Stark's suits or something, she told herself to calm her worries towards her... friend?
She continued digging up, while, little did she know, Clint was digging down.
I hope you've enjoyed the first chapter of this fic, I'm thinking it'll have 2-3 chapters.
Let me know if you're excited to find out what happens next! \/
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-MarvelLuver