Chapter 21:
Time passed outside the walls of Avenger Tower without acknowledgement from its inhabitants. While the world was turned entirely on its head outside their windows, life inside remained exactly the same.
The fallout from their imprisonment at the hands of the group that had kidnapped them was enormous. The entire building had become a kind of web of empty hallways and awkward silence.
Ever since the group had broken out of their prison, Tony Stark had holed himself up in the inner confines of his part of the building. The doors remained locked, the blinds drawn, and for three solid weeks the genius did not emerge. Nobody save for his AI robots Dummy and You were permitted to approach him, JARVIS the only one able to elicit any kind of verbal response from the billionaire. His habits became more and more eccentric with every passing day. Sometimes he would stay awake for days at a time, sleep for only two or three hours, then wake up and return to work. Tony refused to have any contact with the outside world, ignoring pleas from SHIELD to help them against Loki (who was apparently back now, not that he cared). He drank almost constantly, often launching into drunken rages where he shouted at the robots and walls, broke things, and threw tools around.
Other times he would end up sprawled unconscious on the cold concrete floor for over twenty hours at a time, shirtless and often missing a sock, shivering until Dummy would cover him with the red comforter from his bed. On these days he would wake up slowly, breathing the smell of the blanket deeply, desperately searching (though he would never admit it to anyone) for some small trace of Steve, of the way he smelled. These were the days he would spend the morning crying, mourning without reprieve the loss of the only person he had ever really been in love with, and beating himself up for missing a man who had admitted to being "sickened" by the idea of their relationship.
On these days JARVIS made a point of keeping a video camera trained on him, a phone primed to call the emergency services and Pepper Potts in case Tony should one day decide that it wasn't worth it anymore, that he couldn't take the pain of not having Steve.
On the other side of the building Steve Rogers was faring just as badly. His entire team, and his entire life had come crashing down around him in the span of just a few hours.
Three weeks ago everything had fallen apart. In the course of one night he had found out that his boyfriend had been cheating on him with Bruce Banner; and been told by Clint (and later Fury) that Natasha, who he had lived with, fought alongside, and babysat for had been secretly assisting Loki in his return the whole time. She was gone, Clint had been holed up with his daughter and ignoring any and all attempts to contact him, Tony had sealed himself in his lab (not that that was necessarily a bad thing—Steve knew he couldn't yet handle seeing him), and Bruce was currently drifting in and out of consciousness in his part of the building, monitored by JARVIS. He was another one Steve couldn't stand to look at right now. The very thought of those messages, the thought of Bruce and Tony together in the ways that Steve had always thought were to be held sacred between Tony and himself made him want to throw up.
Even Thor was gone, and his absence was felt. Where the huge Norse god could once be counted upon to liven a place up with his booming voice and unintentionally ridiculous antics, he was no longer living in the tower at all. When Loki had taken over, Jane had insisted upon hiding him away somewhere in the middle of nowhere to protect him. His younger brother was stronger and more dangerous than ever before thanks to the power of his sceptre, and Jane had known that Loki would probably try to find and destroy his older brother. So far they seemed to be flying under the radar, miraculously when one considered how difficult it is to attempt to hide Thor anywhere.
This left Steve alone.
He alone had tried to fight off Loki, but it hadn't been enough. He had been distracted and unused to fighting without his teammates. The demigod had thrown him thirteen stories from the Empire State building, through a window. The serum had stopped him from being killed, but it had left its mark. Even with his incredibly advanced healing he was still in a cast and bandages. His left foot and hand were encased in plaster, and his whole body was scratched and sore from the glass.
Steve was tired. He felt old and weary, and most of all alone. To pass the time, he would sit in his rooms all day, gradually wallpapering his room with drawings. It kept him busy, he supposed. The problem was that no matter how hard he tried; Tony managed to insert himself into everyone until his walls were just a blur of Tony Stark's face, a montage of the man he loved smiling, sleeping, laughing, thinking; a sea of different emotions in charcoal, spread on a sheet of ivory pages, and peppered with small water stains from where his tears had fallen.
The Avengers as the world had known them were now a thing of the past. Outside the tower walls, Loki had taken over completely. SHIELD had fallen to him in a matter of hours leaving Loki unbridled access and control over the rest of the world. The various assassinations and take-overs of the government's superpowers around the world had gone off without a hitch. Many of the planet's citizens had not even realized that a change in power had been made until the demigod had hijacked the airwaves of all public media outlets and broadcast a very public speech to the world that informed them of his new laws as the supreme ruler of Earth.
Seemingly overnight, anyone who attempted to deny or rebel against that fact disappeared, never to be heard from again. It had only taken a matter of days to find that the world could settle easily into its new rule. People went on with their lives for the most part, their heads bowed low to avoid the attention of the ruler and his army of spies and police. With all the dissenters having disappeared, all that was left was the general population, apathetic as a rule to anything that did not directly interfere with their day-to-day lives. What did they care if one man now controlled all the governments of the world? Their lives for the most part could still go on unhindered. Some were even convinced that it was an improvement, given that with no hope left to fight for, the power struggles of the world seemed to disappear. They did not know of the mass slaughters of all who dared to speak against the great ruler.
Life went on in silent oppression, while the planet's ruler reclined on a throne he'd had built for himself, an impressive piece of gold and lush fabrics. The Avengers were for all intents and purposes gone after such an absence from the public eye. Many assumed that they had been defeated, not knowing of the private torments inflicted on them while they hid in their tower only a few miles from the very place where the throne resided.
Their heroes had disappeared; let them down in their time of need. The people of the word gave up on them, and allowed themselves to be subjugated by the new ruling. The general rule seemed to be "don't rock the boat".
Only the bravest among them held out a silent hope that someone would emerge from the ashes, rise up and bring down Loki. They were the idealists who held out the belief that man was never made to be a pawn in the plans of greater beings, that only humans should be able to rule humans. They were the ones that waited every day for someone to rise up and tip the proverbial boat right over, to shake the foundations of Loki's rule, and bring freedom back to a world that desperately needed it.
The problem was that they were human, without a prayer against the powers of demigods and magic. They knew they didn't have a chance without the power of their heroes behind them. This was the sticking point for the resistance, or would have been, had one of their number not been a young woman by the name of Jane Foster.
My apologies (as usual) for the delay. I don't even have a good reason beyond the fact that life is ridiculously busy.
R&R please!