There was a flash of light, a bang and the little auxiliary stabilizer exploded, instantly filling the testing chamber with thick, acrid smoke.

"Jarvis, run the full ventilation routine for TC one," said Tony, and rested his forehead against the cold surface of his lab desk. The room filled with a low mechanical whirr and the air on the other side of the glass partition gradually cleared.

He expected that returning to his project would take the edge off the anxiety that was brewing at the back of his head since Romanoff's visit yesterday but he miscalculated and to say the work progressed at a snail's pace would mean giving himself too much credit. It was the third prototype that failed before it even fully charged.

Well, at least the backup power cells were solid. Just like Romanoff's intel. She reluctantly left him a USB stick before leaving and Tony dedicated a portion of the processing capabilities of his personal server array for chewing the data and cross-referencing it with what he had already salvaged during his excursions to various databases. So far, everything checked out. The data was a piece of impressive investigative work. And a major headache.

Sure, Tony suspected Loki's attack wasn't a standalone show since the very beginning, and sure, he knew a lot of things went down beyond the pretty faces of government agencies, he wasn't born yesterday and since last year and finding out about SHIELD's secret projects in the heat of the battle he decided to never allow himself be caught off guard with the shit Uncle Sam was pulling, ever again. Still, he already was doing everything he could to prepare for the former and what he found about the latter was nothing compared to this, perhaps because the net he was casting was a lot wider or because he didn't have Romanoff's experience with secrets that had secrets on their own. This meant bad news and he didn't yet think of a safe angle to handle it.

The fans stopped. "Do you require any further assistance, sir?" Jarvis asked.

"No, unless you know what I did wrong this time. That would be helpful."

"I find no error in your calculations, sir"

Of course there was no error, he did and redid the numbers himself. But no error meant that he got the edge parameters wrong. He would have to redesign the whole bearing setup from scratch.

"Any news on the Loki front?"

"I found some mentions of the designation Miss Romanoff provided, but I still have to confirm it."

"Bring it forth," Stark said. The screens flashed to life and a couple of scanned documents appeared, some old, written in Cyrillic with a typewriter on a yellowed paper, some more modern, in English, quite a lot of it censored with black bars, sometimes to the point there were just a couple of words left on the page. Tony skimmed through the contents. There wasn't much, mostly orders and freight bills and all that was left uncensored on them was some office and medical supplies, generic enough they could be coming from anywhere to anywhere. The black bar at the top of the sixth page caught his attention. It was one of the older files, and they were censored manually, using blackout markers, and whoever did it wasn't very thorough, because some of the letters still showed.

"What's that? Reteeck, Pelesck?

A recognition algorithm fired, comparing the outlines of letters to fonts in the rest of the document. "Polessk," it issued a verdict and assessed its accuracy at ninety-five percent.

Tony turned to the search engine, and yep, bingo. Labiau, previously Polessk, returned to its original German name after USSR collapsed and the Soviets left the area. A small town near the Baltic sea with a whole lot of twelve thousand inhabitants, a somehow still operational nuclear plant from seventy-two, on its merry way to becoming the next Chernobyl because the funding dried up in the nineties, a brewery, ruins of a thirteenth-century Teutonic castle. And a vacated military base.

"Can we find more on that?"

There was a moment of silence as Jarvis queried the databases. "The Russian troops left the garrison in ninety-two and it's been abandoned for ten years, until it was leased for a period of fifty years out to a foreign leaseholder under the name of Safe Future SSC."

It sounded suspiciously like a bogus enterprise. "Do we know who stands behind it, truly?"

"I'm about to find out," Jarvis said, "It appears to be a subsidiary of Department of Homeland Security, sir."

"Well, fuck."

Romanoff didn't argue when he told her to come over. She was eager enough and Tony spent the half-hour it took her to drive from whatever hidey-hole she crawled into for the night (he could trace the phone he gave her but he didn't, there was no need for now) to the Tower on wondering why. He came up with a couple of plausible answers, with the most obvious one being the one she gave him willingly already: she's spent a lot of time with Loki, under what seemed like less than ideal circumstances. There ought to be some leftover bond there, no matter what piece of shit the guy was. She apparently blamed herself for the situation, so perhaps she was the one who brought him to justice, thinking SHIELD would treat him fairly. Well, if that was the case, it turned to be a serious miscalculation.

Jarvis announced Romanoff's arrival just as she approached the garage. Tony wiped his hands in the grease rag and went to make himself another cup of coffee. Seriously, getting a coffee machine installed directly in the workshop was probably the most inspired decision he made designing the Tower.

"Tell me you found him!" she yelled, just as she walked through the door. Or strutted, more like.

"Coffee?" he offered.

"Depends on whether you're going to raise my blood pressure with your news or not."

"So, no?" Tony sniggered, then quickly added, before the scowl on her face turned into another angry outburst, "I found the location, but we might have a problem."

"What is it?" Romanoff grunted.

He pointed at one of the monitors. She studied the satellite image of the base thoroughly before speaking. "It looks doable. The security doesn't seem too extensive. That's a long-range scrambler, there," she said, pointing at a blob on top of one of the buildings, "but we can work around that with using low-frequency communicators. Those barracks look abandoned, so they are probably housing everyone in that new one here and it doesn't look too big, so I'd say, couple dozen guards in two-shift rotation, then some personnel? Can we get a recent photo?"

"This is live. I moved one of my satellites to get a feed. It should update… just about now," he said, and, as he did, the new image loaded. One of the cars disappeared and some dark dots moved around – guards taking their rounds.

She rolled her eyes. "Okay, so where's the problem exactly?"

"Here," he said and pulled up the classified document Jarvis got. "This is the founding document for Safe Future SSC, and that signature here is by then-current vice director of the DHS. And here's a lease for the base, just a month later. Same name."

"It's a US government-funded facility," she said and frowned. "So what?"

"Uhm, in case you didn't notice by now, I quite like my life of luxury and I'm not looking forward to exchanging it for a cell anytime in the immediate future. I'm already helping one public enemy in breaking out another from prison. I don't need another crime to add to that list. Like invading a military outpost of my own home country."

"So what? You're backing off?"

"No. But I do not intend to risk being caught and we need to do it right or I'm not doing it at all. We can't drag any more people into this, the fewer witnesses the better, we will also need a mode of transportation that couldn't be linked to my name, can be operated by one person and can cross international borders undetected. I'll also need some time to modify my armor for it to not be instantly recognizable in case I'm caught on camera."

"I can get us a Quinjet," she said. "What else do you need?

"Jarvis is working on the plans of the facility. He found some already, but they are old. It turns out the base was originally built by the Germans in the thirties and only then appropriated by the Soviets after they took control of the territory after the war. I got the original plans, but nothing on the upgrades and additions yet. And hell, the original Nazi bastards had some panache, it runs like fifteen stories down."

"Do we know what's down there?"

"Used to be bunkers and emergency provisions storage. Munitions, too. Some labs on the upper floors. Now? No idea, but I do have a few guesses…"

"Yeah."

Tony stretched his arms and swiveled around in his chair. "Now, where do you intend to get that jet?"

The March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, California was not the best-guarded place in America and the chain-link fence around its perimeter was far from the most secure anti-trespass measurement Natasha has ever seen.

"You're in?" Stark's voice screeched in her ear.

"Yep."

"You sure you don't want me to deploy the drone?" he asked, for what must be the fourth or fifth time in the last hour.

"No, Stark, I don't need your toys drawing attention to me," she snarled under her breath. She had better, less obnoxious ways of scouting her way. Not that Stark knew that, but she suspected his insistence stemmed less from his eagerness to help and more from the fact that he wasn't used to not being the star of the show and having to watch from the sidelines. Or just from plain old boredom.

"Okay, I-Spy, but don't complain if you're ambushed from behind," he said and chortled to himself. Natasha rolled her eyes. Stark could go from full-on serious business mode to a thirteen-year-old with ADD in a span of three seconds.

"I won't," she ground out through her teeth. "Better worry whether that script of yours will work."

"It's a rootkit, Romanoff," he said, sounding slightly offended, "I wrote it myself."

"Should I be reassured by that?"

"Elon might be a great guy, but his coding skills are nowhere near my level. I'd give him a few pointers, but… It will work, trust me."

She shook her head and peeked over the concrete barrier at the end of the airstrip. There was nothing but five hundred feet of open space between her and the target. She took a deep breath, stood up and ran.

"Not that one!" Stark yelled in her ear. "Take the one on the left, it's the upgraded version."

She grunted and turned. He did deploy the drone after all. She dove down and slid under the belly of the aircraft, then pushed Stark's card into the panel by the cargo hatch. "Now what?" she breathed.

"Give it a second, I need to… yep." The cargo door slid open. "Happy trails, Romanoff."

She plopped down on the pilot seat, put on the headset and flipped the switch on the console. The displays came on and the panel buttons slowly lit up. Another few buttons and the engines wound up and roared to life and the locks on the landing gear lifted with pneumatic hisses.

"Air control tower to unknown aircraft on runway three-two-A," said a woman's voice in the headphones. "Identify yourself."

She muted the microphone. "Stark? Why can't they recognize their own plane?"

"I might or might not have replaced the manifest with a quote from a Jurassic Park movie."

Natasha snorted and pushed on the side stick. The flight controller requested identification again, then proceeded with a warning of sorts, but Natasha wasn't interested enough to listen to what exactly it was.

"Okay, the rat is in and the gps tracking is off. You can get the hell out of there," Stark said. Natasha didn't need to be told twice. She pulled on the yoke and the plane peeled off the ground with a jerk and ascended. She got it to a couple of feet above the asphalt then pushed forward, gliding over the rest of the runway, above the fence, then the open field.

Sure, she could do it all by herself but it was just so much easier with Stark's support and she wasn't going to complain, not at all.

Flying felt just as amazing as she remembered.

"They are chasing you," Stark said, surprisingly calm.

"And?"

"Keep close to the ground and head for the valley up North. And turn on the retroreflective panels once you're past the town."

"The what?"

"The camouflage, Romanoff."

"I know what it is, but since when do Quinjets have that?"

"About this time last year?"

Well, that would explain it.

There were two jets on her tail, slowly gaining in. She put the engine on full throttle, the exhaust ruffling the treetops below.

"You just broke the sound barrier thirty meters over a residential area," Stark informed cheerfully.

"Shut up. They will be fine."

"Their eardrums might not be."

"I wish mine weren't, right about now."

"I don't recall your tongue being that sharp the last time around. Morbo the Annihilator has rubbed off on you, didn't he?"

It was a little, benign jeer but it hit her like a battering ram, stunning her momentarily.

"Romanoff?" Stark cued. "You still there?"

"Yeah."

"They are still on you. They got a green light to shoot you down."

"Watch me!"

She throttled the engines, swayed to the side and sharply turned into an arm of the valley. She killed the boost and turned on cloaking. The oldest trick in the books, it might be, but it still worked. Not two seconds later the jets passed by, just a few hundred yards from where she was sitting.

"Good job," came over the voice link. "I'm taking my ass out of here before they get back. See you at the mansion."

Quinjet hovered over Stark's impressive Malibu home as Natasha waited for the roof over the landing pad to open, watching the sun rise over Santa Monica. She didn't want to look at the ocean.

She checked and rechecked the maintenance report of the Quinjet system, then, after finding nothing out of order, inspected the vehicle visually, to a very similar end.

There's nothing wrong with the plane, she told herself. It's all going to be fine.

It wasn't about the plane, of course.

Stark was a decent guy. He agreed to help because he found the idea of torture repulsive, not because he had a hidden, ulterior motive and wanted to exploit the situation to his own benefit. He would treat Loki fairly. He would give them a chance to explain.

It's all going to be fine.

And, maybe, if she kept on telling herself that she would finally be able to believe it.

Stark's tires screeched on the driveway less than two hours later, which meant he was speeding most of the way. He walked in, leaned against the column dividing the kitchen from the living room area, stashed his hands in his pockets and glared at her with a quizzical smile.

She just got out of the shower – after she finished swimming in Stark's pool (why build an outdoor pool when there's an ocean just on the other side of the banister was beyond her, but it was there, so she took use of it) – and she sat wrapped in one of the fluffy bathrobes with an S embroidered with a golden thread on the chest she found in the bathroom closet, sipping iced coffee. The walk-in shower was bigger than some of the flats she rented in the past.

"Sooo… you come here often?" he quipped.

"Fuck off, Stark. I'd still have half an hour if you weren't driving like a madman."

"Made yourself at home, I see."

"Don't act like you give a shit."

Stark laughed and shook his head, came over to stand on the other side of the bar then leaned in on the counter. "I finished the new armor design yesterday," he said. "It's manufacturing as we speak and should be ready by the afternoon. I need a quick test ride and, if all goes well, we can go tomorrow."

"Why not today?"

"Well, we still need to go back to New York first because the armor is there, then wait for it to finish which wouldn't be done before five, four-thirty if I skip the flourish, then at least thirty minutes for a quick test run. Then we need to compensate for the time shift, which is six hours between US west coast and Sokovia, then the flight time – if we average eighteen hundred klicks per hour, which should be doable if the weather isn't too bad, it's two hours thirty, give or take. We would be there at, what, two in the morning?"

"That's good enough. It gives us at least three hours before sunrise and four before the shift changes," she said. "Let's go today."

He regarded her with a frown for a long moment. "Okay," he yielded. "I'm off to hit the hay then if I'm not to be completely useless. Debrief at noon?"

"Sure."

He turned to leave then stopped. "You should get some shut-eye too," he said and waved his hand. "There are guest bedrooms upstairs, just pick whichever you like."

She gave him a curt nod and he left. Then she sat there for long minutes, watching the ice melt in her glass. They were really doing it, after all this time.

All this time.

She only hoped it was not already too late.

"Okay, so this is what we know," Stark said and waved his laser pointer around. The screen changed, showing a cross-section of the base. "This here is the only unaccounted-for section of the compound." He pointed at the lowest level. "It runs on a completely separate subsystem and gives off no feed to the outside, so this is where I need to go."

It wasn't anything they haven't gone through multiple times already. The turn of phrase was new though. "You? What about me?"

"You're staying in the jet. We need to…"

"What? That's out of the question!" she protested. "I'm going in. That's not negotiable!"

"Romanoff, be reasonable. There are only two of us and one needs to stay to cover the rear. And which of us, A, can fly, B, wears an almost indestructible armor? Do you really think you have a better chance to get out of this alive than me?"

Yes, she wanted to say but bit her tongue before the word tumbled out. Because, as much as she didn't want to admit it, Stark was right. There were only two of them. It wouldn't only be way too risky for them both to go in, leaving their retreat uncovered, it would also mean that if they got caught there would be no one left who would… know. Her staying behind as backup was a strategically sound approach and she couldn't question it just because she wanted to feel useful. Not after seeing what mess that mindset put her in the last time.

She still had to put all her willpower into the nod.

"Great," Stark grinned. "Which leads us to the next question: how am I going to stop Count Monte Christo from trying to murder me on sight the moment I let him out of his cage?"

Natasha sighed and screwed her eyes shut. "He won't. Just… just tell him you're with me. He will cooperate."

"Your faith is astonishing, not gonna lie, but…"

"I just know, okay? You don't have to worry about it. He might not trust you, but he won't fight you as long as you don't attack him."

Stark stared at her, rubbing his hand against the nape of his neck.

"If something goes wrong just get me on the line," she added.

"Well, that's another issue. That won't be possible, most likely. The scrambler you so skillfully identified is just the tip of the iceberg, there are similar devices all across the facility. I have no idea what they are cooking down there, but they really don't like the idea of the smell of it getting out in any way. There are signal scanners too, so if I'm not able to use their own networks to broadcast, I won't be able to reach you until I'm out and there's like seven layers of subsystems and I'll have to crack it one by one as I'm moving through, just to link to the CCTV system."

"You think that's even possible to do? Without them finding you out?"

"Should be. I'll have an offline instance of Jarvis with me, I added proper modules to the suit central processing unit, he should be able to deal with most of the tedious work."

She nodded. Fuck, there was no way she would be able to do that alone.

"Romanoff? Loki can't speak with the…" he made a gesture at his face, changed his mind halfway through, and scratched his chin. "Right?"

She shook her head.

"I assume you found a way? What is it? Writing?"

"I taught him sign language, but I'm not sure how…"

The relief on Stark's face was palpable. "That's no issue. I'll just update Jarvis' database and he can act as translator."

She nodded in agreement.

There was a moment of very uncomfortable silence.

"Stark?"

"Yeah?"

"Just… don't hurt him, okay?"

"You're more worried about me hurting the alien who threw me out of my own window than the other way around?"

"Yes."

Stark sighed heavily and looked at his wristwatch for salvation. "We should wrap this up and go. We can smooth the kinks out on the way."

"Want to witness my genius in action, Romanoff?"

"This is how you're calling it?"

Stark snorted and struck a pose. For a couple of seconds nothing happened, he just stood there, with a boastful grin on his face and with his arms out in the classical Jesus-of-Rio stance. Then there was a rattle from the hallway, the staircase door flap broke off the hinges and projectiles flew from the now clean opening towards Stark, slowing down just as they reached him.

Those were armor parts, she realized, just as the pieces attached to Stark's forearms, calves, chest and lower back, then started unfurling around him. It looked less like a machine and more like a living organism, the plates shifting and falling to places, adjusting and reacting to Stark's moves. She stared, mesmerized.

It was obvious, now, what he meant by "major redesign" – it didn't look like any of Stark's suits she has seen so far. First of all, it was black, mostly, mixed with bits of dark gray around the helmet and a lot less bulky, looking less like the cumbersome exosuits he used before and more like an actual armor, especially with the reactor covered, like it was now.

The helmet folded back into the neck guard, revealing Stark's face, still grinning. "So? What's the verdict?"

"Impressive," she said, keeping her voice neutral. Stark was full of himself as it was and he didn't need further encouragement. "But did you really need to break the door for dramatic effect?"

"I was checking if it would work," he chuckled. "That what 'testing' means."

It's a wonder the building was still standing then. "It doesn't look as sturdy as your other suits," she pointed out. "Wouldn't that be an issue if we run into trouble?"

"I'm using a new alloy, that's why it called for a wholly new design. Fifty percent lighter, with only ten percent loss in tensile strength, similar bending resistance and some minor gains in shear and compressive strength," he boasted, then – seeing her undecided look – he added, "which means it's as good as it gets. It will be fine."

"Great. Let's go."

"The basement is like, what, forty thousand square feet? How do you intend to check it all?"

"I don't. We can't hook to the subsystem from the outside but once I bring Jarvis in, he can scour it for me. They ought to have some internal records, no way an operation with so many people runs on the word of mouth."

"Are we sure the route you charted will be clear?"

"Should be. The way the staircase is located away from anything important makes me think it's not often used, since the elevators are way more convenient."

"I don't like the odds of 'probably', Stark," she muttered.

"Relax, Romanoff. We will figure this out. We have an advantage, they wouldn't even know we were there until it's too late and I still have some awesome tricks still up my sleeve."

She didn't answer. They should've spent more time on the planning phase, it was too shoddy, too risky, too dependent on a blind chance… But every hour they wasted on deliberation meant another hour of torture for Loki and she couldn't allow that to happen, either. There was just no good call here.

"Don't worry," Stark said, "we will get him out. It's going to be just fine."

She nodded, her eyes still fixed on the distance behind the windshield. It was even less convincing than it was when she tried to tell that to herself.

"That place there, behind the trees," Stark said, pointing his gauntleted finger at the screen. They were hovering just below the line of clouds, while the Quinjet's radar system scanned the area. Stark put on his armor half an hour earlier and spent the time running a system check. "It's close enough and that ridge should cover the boosters as we descent. If you keep the panels on you shouldn't be spotted even if someone flies by."

"Do we have enough charge for that?" she asked, checking the energy cell status. It was at fifty percent already, just from flying over the ocean, and the cloaking was extremely energy-hungry.

"Should be fine, I won't be gone for more than two hours, so that would leave us with… twenty-two megajoules? We wouldn't be able to go as fast, but we should still make it back to New York."

"It's a small margin."

"Don't worry, if everything else fails, I still have a backup," he said and tapped his chest. "This baby could power five of those at the same time."

She nodded, turned on the cloaking and started the approach. She switched to manual controls and the plane rocked haphazardly.

"Steady now, that birch tree there looks sturdy," he warned.

"I know, Stark," she snarled and adjusted the flaps. The descent equalized. "There we go."

The plane settled down and she engaged the pneumatic locks.

"Smooth," he judged. He got up and curled his hands into fists. The helmet unfolded around his head. "Okay then," he said, his voice carrying a mechanical tint now, as it was amplified by the suit's speakers. "Here we go."

The hatch opened and Stark stepped out.

"Good luck," she whispered.

"Who needs luck if you're as awesome as we are?" his voice replied in the comm-link. "I'm closing in on the scrambler's range. Over and out."

The communicator went silent and she sat there, staring at the screen, watching the dot – Stark's gps marker – move away from her and towards the base. She closed her eyes and explored. She brushed past Stark first, still moving forth, then the guards in the security building by the gate. She went on, level by level, deeper into the bowels of the Earth, ignoring the energies swarming inside, looking for the specific one. And there it was, right at the very bottom. She could barely make it out, now, so far away and so… faint.

She released her scrutiny.

Stark was going to make it.

He had to.