Clint walked out of the elevator as the doors slid open, revealing the common area of Avengers Tower. As he carried the load of laundry towards the couch for folding, he joined his best friend who was still recovering from all that she had recently gone through.

"How you holding up, Nat?" he asked, setting the laundry basket down on the table, and sitting next to her on the couch in front of the television.

"Oh, you know. Getting shot and tasing yourself all within 48 hours is always a fun thing to recover from," she muttered sarcastically. Natasha had returned to the tower about a week ago, informing the others of everything that had gone on. Fury had decided to go off of the grid for a while in order to regroup and figure out where this left the world. Ari had stayed with Steve while he was in the hospital, and they had just returned to the tower the day before. Sam was off in search of Bucky, and the rest of the team were left wondering how the fall of their employer and everything they had come to believe in would affect them.

"Mr. Barton, Miss Romanoff, I am sorry to interrupt, but Mr. Stark has requested that the team gather in the conference room," JARVIS voiced through his speaker system.

As Nat and Clint went towards their meeting, they saw that Ari was helping Steve walk along to the room. He was starting to regain all of his movements, but there was still a slight limp, as well as the pain coming from his shoulder that were causing things to be more difficult than he would like to admit. For the super soldier, this hit had taken him down hard. As the two pairs reached the door, they shared a small smile amongst each other, acknowledging how glad they were to be back together.

Soon, the whole team had gathered, and was left wondering why Stark had called them all here.

"Well, as you all know, this changes everything. We don't know who to follow. We don't know who the bad guys are and who we can trust. We don't even know if the Avengers are technically a thing anymore. All we know is that there is still a world out there that needs saving, and we are the only ones that know how to do it," Tony said, as he sat down between Pepper and Bruce.

"Stark, we don't even know if we are fighting on the right side of history anymore. For all we know, we've been unknowingly doing HYDRA's bidding for years…" Steve began.

"Rogers is right. How do we know that by continuing to meddle we will not continue to make things even worse?" Thor added, "I've been on this planet with nothing but pure intentions, and yet each time I have left things in catastrophe. I cannot continue destroying the things that I love because we have a hunch."

The others nodded in agreement, as they silently sat in the realization that they were completely lost. Clint and Natasha had never known anything but being soldiers. Now, everything they were taught, everything that they were trained to believe in was coming crashing down. Bruce had finally found a way to redeem himself from his years of darkness and rage, and now he was slowly going to slip back into that without anything to believe in. Thor didn't have the slightest idea of how to fix his brother's mistakes, and felt as though he was just making them worse. Steve had spent his whole life working towards the greater good, and now he didn't know if he had ever done good at all. Ari had spent the last 10 years of her life as a SHIELD agent, taking in the team as her own family. She started in SHIELD after she lost her parents, when her uncle had offered to take her in; but she had even lost him along the way. Now, this team sitting in front of her was truly all that she had left. Tony couldn't fathom that once again, he had landed himself in a place where all of the good that he had tried to do had come crashing down around him instead. It was as though they had all taken two steps backwards when they were trying to make a giant leap forward.

"Tony is right," Ari mumbled. At the confused looks of her teammates, she continued. "HYDRA is out there. Bad people are out there. That's not gonna change whether we continue to fight, or stay out of it. But we can at least try to do something about it. No, we don't know who to follow anymore. No, we don't know who we can believe in. But we do know that we can believe in each other. We're the Avengers, for God's sake! This is what we were trained to do. We were trained to take care of people for the greater good. Do we really need someone to tell us what that greater good is? Cause I don't know about you guys, but I think we can do a pretty damn good job at figuring that part out for ourselves."

"I, personally, know that I am excellent at acting on my own accord and not following any orders. I actually prefer it," Tony responded.

Steve looked up at his best friend, realizing how hard this would be on all of them, but also knowing that if anyone could do it, then it was their team combined who could.

"Ari's got a point. We're all the world has left, now. We can't leave them scrambling. The only people that we can trust are in this room, but that's just going to have to be good enough," Steve started.

"So what does this mean?" Bruce asked, waiting for his orders from the Captain.

Standing up to respond to Banner and his team, Steve took one glance at each of them, reaffirming his decision.

"We do what we do best. We Avenge. Together."

Hi, all! I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Next we will be moving into Ultron! As always, please let me know what you're thinking in the reviews! I'll have more up for you soon, and I hope that you have a great weekend. :)

-C.