A/N: I live! I'm back and once again have internet access, so updates will return to being semi-regular, because this is still by far my favorite story. Go ahead and read!

Title: Fear of Infinity

Author: liketolaugh

Rating: T

Pairings: None

Genre: Drama/Adventure

Warnings: None

Summary: When Loki mentions two more Infinity Stones, aside from the Tesseract, that fell to Earth thousands of years before, the Avengers are thrown into a centuries-old war between Dark Matter and Innocence - also known as the stones of Mind and Soul.

Disclaimer: I only wish I owned D. Gray-man, and the Avengers are but a dream that is not my own.

Soon enough, they had settled on an abandoned street, hiding away from the remaining forty-seven percent of the population long enough to recover their bearings.

Steve, Allen soon noted, was frowning at his hands, which were smeared with red. Allen frowned and headed over to him, concerned.

"What happened?" he asked, looking at them. The gloves were cut open, and there was a smear of red that was clearly blood, though the cuts were already healing. He'd forgotten that Steve possessed a healing factor.

Steve frowned. "My shield cut me," he explained, slightly disbelieving. He hadn't really taken more than a dim note in the heat of battle, but now it concerned him.

Allen frowned, too. "That's odd," he murmured. "It should have compensated for it – dulled the blade where you caught it. Did you make it angry with you?"

Steve gave him a disturbed look. Allen just looked at him expectantly.

"Innocence… is a little more sentient than most people know," Lavi explained, coming up beside them and picking up the still-active shield to examine it with interest, noting that the edges were as sharp as any blade. "I told you about the voices."

"That is characteristic of any item of great power," Loki allowed cautiously, watching as Steve's hands finished healing. "It would be far more alarming for it to be insentient, though I am not certain how the Stones are special in this."

"Great," Clint muttered."

"Is that why my gun wasn't shooting well?" Natasha asked suspiciously.

"Probably," Lavi admitted, setting the shield down.

A series of loud crunches signaled the Hulk's arrival, and they looked up at him as he approached in huge, clumsy footsteps. Finally, he announced, in a low, displeased tone,

"Green light not like Hulk."

Loki crossed his arms and started grumbling about independent items of power that didn't do as they were meant. At some point he started glowering at Tony's arc reactor, so Tony figured he was using fond memories to support his arguments to himself.

Tony let himself lean against a still-intact wall and smirked. "JARVIS, disengage the armor," he ordered.

A moment passed in which nothing happened. Tony frowned.

"JARVIS?" he inquired.

JARVIS' voice came clipped and inflectionless, as it always did when he was worried. "I seem to be unable to disengage the armor, sir."

There was a long silence. Lavi opened his mouth to make a guess. Tony beat him to it.

"Innocence, disengage the armor."

As if to say 'you only had to ask', the Innocence sparked out from the arc reactor to cover the armor in a bright green light. A moment later, it sank into his skin, not a trace left behind, and he fell a few inches to land neatly on the ground and grin.

"I think it likes me."

Loki grumbled, but he was the only one speaking, and even that soon trailed off in favor of a furrowed brow. Tony's grin faltered almost imperceptibly, fading slowly as it sank in.

It was some time before anyone actually spoke, but finally, Lavi shattered the silence with a wide, too-casual grin.

"Well, obviously it's not a true bond," he said conversationally, as though they'd been discussing the matter for some time.

"Right," Allen agreed readily. "Mr. Stark just made a deal with his Innocence. Exorcists do it all the time, and the effects aren't always permanent."

"And with circumstances like these, it's almost certain not to be," Lavi continued, tone painfully casual. "So there's really no need to report it to Central. It's not even worth mentioning outside of my report to the old panda. He doesn't read those anymore, anyway."

"Fair enough," Allen conceded with a smile.

Loki's eyes narrowed in suspicion, but Tony beat him to it, fingers drumming on the rim of the arc reactor.

"Let's say," he said, expression careless, eyes intent, "that it was a true bond. What then?"

Allen was the one who looked at him and smiled.

"Well, then you would be an exorcist."

"Which means…?" Loki let the question hand, one eyebrow raised.

"Exorcists are the Order's most valuable asset," Lavi explained, green gaze focused on something a thousand miles away, or perhaps a thousand years ago. "They are the only offensive forces at its disposal. Because of this, numerous attempts to replicate their abilities or even they themselves have been made, but each one has ended in dismal failure. So instead, they make sure to keep the ones they do have, which can mean anything from treating them before anyone else, to tying them down if they try to run, or even transplanting the brain of a dead exorcist into a new body."

He didn't say 'they can never escape.'

He didn't really need to.

Lavi blinked, eye refocusing on the here and now, and smiled cheerfully. "But that doesn't matter, because you're not an exorcist."

To his credit, Tony barely blinked, flattening his hand over the arc reactor, before he smiled, as cheerful as Lavi's. "Of course not. I don't have crazy eyes."

While both exorcists tried to figure out what that had to do with anything, Clint resisted the urge to say that he kind of did.

"And if you start hearing voices," Allen added, voice quiet, hand drifting to his ear, "don't tell anyone." He smiled, strangely fond. "Don't worry. It'll look after you."

Tony glanced down, to the reactor that kept him alive, now filled with an entity that apparently liked him. "Will it, now," he muttered, with a humorless smile.

A camp was already being set up for those whose homes had been destroyed by the time the Avengers and the exorcists had arrived. Bruce had de-Hulked, and Thor had taken it upon himself to carry him, ignoring the looks shot at him, which ranged from concerned to wary.

They ended up sharing four tents near the edge of the encampment, and then another for Natasha, which she soon found herself sharing with another woman, who, fortunately for Natasha, preferred to keep to herself.

Nonetheless, she ducked into Clint's tent soon enough, and before long, Loki, Thor, Tony, and Steve joined them, crowding everyone out of the tent and causing them to end up circled outside.

At that moment, Lavi popped back out of his tent, looking at them expectantly. "Anyone hurt?" he asked offhandedly, green eye flicking over them.

"We're fine," Steve assured him, giving him a concerned look. "Are you and Allen alright?"

Lavi whistled appreciatively. "Damn. Superheroes, man." He shook his head, grinning. "Allen's got a burn on his leg, but besides that?" He grinned and punched the air. "Score!" He winced. "Ow."

"You liar," Clint accused with a grin as Lavi bit back a curse and clamped a hand over his arm.

"Yeah, yeah," Lavi grumbled halfheartedly. "Shut up. Damn invincible superheroes." He shook his head again. "Allen's going to go help out around camp. Anyone else?"

"I'll help," Steve volunteered immediately, making to stand. "The people around here were nice enough to let us in, it's the least I can do."

"You sound like Allen," Lavi complained, chuckling a little anyway.

"I will help also," Thor offered. Loki rolled his eyes, but nodded anyway. He'd gotten used to repair work, after. Even if this wasn't his fault.

Mostly.

"I'll ask Brucie when he wakes up," Tony asserted. "Then I'll go… move rubble. Or something." Just remembering the destruction made him uncomfortable.

And he had a lot to think about, anyway.

Natasha and Clint didn't say anything, but they nodded, too. Coulson just tilted his head toward them and slipped off silently to go on alone.

Soon enough, Allen emerged from his and Lavi's tent, the only evidence of the apparent burn on his leg being a slight limp, almost unnoticeable. "Let's go," he said with a smile.

They went to the first unofficial director they saw, easy to identify by the concentration on their face and the people occasionally going to them for direction.

The man smiled at them in gratitude and then sent them off in teams – Loki and Thor to move debris, Natasha and Clint to set up more shelters, and then Allen and Steve to hand out food.

They'd been passing out food with no word to each other for quite some time before Steve finally spoke, asking the question that had been bothering him for some time.

"How long have you been doing this?"

Allen started slightly and looked up at him questioningly. "Doing what?"

"Hunting akuma."

Allen let out a little 'oh' sound and smiled. "Since I was about ten. That's when Master Cross took me in and made me his apprentice. I wasn't officially an exorcist until I was fifteen, though."

"Why when you were ten?" asked Steve, disturbed.

Allen paused, his face shutting down. Then he smiled again. Blankly. "That's when my Innocence activated."

There was more to it. Steve didn't ask.

They worked in silence for a few more minutes. Every time they ducked into a tent, Allen would smile at the occupant, friendly and supportive, and Steve, either a step behind or a step ahead, would smile, too, apologetic and earnest.

Steve, again, was the one who restarted the conversation. "You seem to really enjoy this."

Allen looked up at him, smiled, and nodded. "I do. Everyone here is so brave, and it is partially my fault, so I feel like I should help. Besides, it's nice to be able to meet all these people." His expression was comfortable, almost content, like he was more at home handing out food to people he'd never met than anywhere else. He looked at Steve. "You seem like you understand. Don't you?"

Steve thought back to refugee camps and ambushed towns and nodded. "I do."

Allen smiled, as if to say 'See?', and turned away, poking his head gently into the newest tent. "Ma'am? Would you like something to eat?"

Steve smiled and they went back to work.

25 Days to Invasion

Now this chapter I like, even if it's not all that exciting. For those who may be concerned that this will become a trend, I promise that Tony is the only Avenger scheduled to become an exorcist. He just fits the bill so well. I swear, the only thing keeping him from being an exorcist in canon is the lack of Innocence in his universe. Anyway, please review and let me know what you thought!

By the way, a friend of mine said something about my writing and now I'm kind of curious. How old do you people think I am? *curious look*

Edited 3/26/2015