"This is bad."
"Shut up, Thor," Clint mumbled.
"I fear the worst."
"THOR." Natasha this time.
"Have we looked everywhere?" Steve said.
Bruce tolerates this statement. "Yes, we have. Something tells me he doesn't want to be found. Did you ever think of that?"
Steve was pacing Stark Tower's lounge floor, not even pretending not to be worried as hell. "I don't want to think that."
"Well, it seems the most likely. It's Tony," Natasha quipped.
The others fell silent again, and stared out the window at the dawn. Yeah, Tony.
Somewhere very far off, Tony wrapped his eager hands around his very own Veridite scepter, and the green glow it threw over his features suited him.
It was three weeks before the Avengers caught sight of Tony or Loki again. Then, as Taylor Swift would say, one typical Tuesday, all Hel broke loose upon Manhattan. The Chitauri were back, after so many days of completely avoiding any tracking radar, and they were pissed. At Tony Stark. And Loki.
In fact, pretty much everyone involved here was pissed at Tony Stark and Loki.
"I know you are hiding him," an alien voice was grinding loudly through the window as a hovercraft loomed menacingly out the window of the tower's main floor. Inside, the whole crew glared back with a combined ferocity of astonishing power.
"You're wrong; we don't have anyone. Either one. Who are you looking for, anyway?" Natasha growled.
"That pestilent mortal Tony Stark," the voice all but choked, as if Tony inspired nausea in more ways than just drinking too much, "who has been taunting us across realms with his creations, killing our people, and scheming with that insolent wretch, Loki of Asgard."
Steve's head was whirring with more than just confusion now. Now something else entirely was starting to creep in. He clenched his fists.
"You don't have any quarrel with us, sir," He spoke evenly. "We do not have what you seek. That's my honest word."
At his side, Clint was squinting like the bird of prey he was. "Lucky for him," he added under his breath. The others shared this particular sentiment at this particular moment.
What the actual fuck, Tony.
"It's not nice to talk about people behind their backs, kids."
Speak of the genius billionaire playboy philanthropist. Guess who just dropped from the sky, blazing in a very scratched up iron suit. And just behind him, a commandeered Chitauri vessel, which Loki rode like a regular pro. His grin was feral.
"Shit." Bruce absolutely could not place nice any longer. Bruce was no longer Bruce at this point. The window was no longer a window, either.
In the shattering rain of glass, Tony and Loki buzzed into the building just as the big green guy rolled awkwardly onto the balcony, yelling garbled gibberish.
"Miss us?" Tony's voice rattled through the suit and the Avengers all began screaming at him at once.
"Take that as a…guarded yes? I know, it's just so hard to admit feelings sometimes. Anyway, I'll just be grabbing a few things then I'll be on my—"
Hulk: smash.
In a few bzzts of electricity, the suit wasn't going anywhere for a bit. "Ow."
Loki lept off his spacecraft and didn't seem to notice when it shot into a wall and embedded itself there. He darted over to where Tony was practically melted into the floor, full of an aching sense of deja vu. When the others tried to surround him, Loki crouched like a wild animal and bared his teeth, brandishing his Veridite scepter. They backed up instinctively.
"Stark is not to be harmed," he growled.
"Seriously man call me Tony," came a pathetically small voice.
"Alright, alright, we're not gonna hurt him, we just wanna talk," Steve started, but at this point the Chitauri were already shooting in through the broken window, and starting to climb in.
"Second thought, maybe we should rain check that," Clint shouted as they all flew to arms and hardly noticed as Loki pried Tony from the suit and they flew right the hell out of there on Loki's aircraft.