WE'RE NOT A TEAM EVEN WHEN WE FIGHT SIDE BY SIDE IN WARS
WE'RE NOT A TEAM EVEN WHEN WE PROTECT EACH OTHER WITH OUR LIVES
WE'RE NOT A TEAM UNTIL WE LEARN TO TRUST
"Your brother made a mess."
Her head hurts from the continuous conversation she's forced to uphold with the Council, who has been replaced by dumber idiots than the first ones. They've been going around in circles and Liz is fed up and losing patience.
Still, she rephrases the explanation she's explained five times now, "I understand that, but your soldiers aren't equipped to handle this. Give the Avengers a chance to fix it. If anyone can do it, it's us."
Councilwoman Gao, who Liz tolerates better than she does the rest smiles at her, more authentic than the others, "We trust you, Ms. Stark. You saved us last year with the debacle from SHIELD, but you have to understand that this has more to do with than just a city."
"Which is why you need us. No one knows this monster better than Tony does and we have two enhanced aligned with Ultron. You don't stand a chance."
She knows that convincing them to let them fight is her only option. Convincing any of the Avengers, specifically Steve, to step out of this war is impossible, even for her.
She's hanging on the thin line and by some grace, the Council seems to finally understand the simple point that she's been making for the past twenty minutes; Ultron cannot be fought by anyone else other than the Avengers. The call ends with curt goodbyes and a thinly veiled threat of consequences if the outcome is anything but victory and when the lights shut down in the room and bathe her in darkness, she stays there, knowing that outside that door, there's a battle being fought.
Elizabeth Stark didn't choose this. She doesn't want this. She didn't get a choice to be a hero like the Captain. She didn't have an epiphany the way her brother did. She wasn't born to greatness like Thor or trained to be a hero like Clint and Nat. All she got was a lightning bolt that didn't ask her if she was okay with the world using her as it's punching bag.
She walks out the conference room and nearly bumps into Clint whose pacing in a way she's never seen him do before.
"Clint?"
When he spots her he points to the hallway that leads to Tony's lab, "Retrieved the cradle and brought it here but,"
"But what?"
"Ultron got Nat, Liz."
She forces herself to remain calm, "Got? Like he took her."
Clint nods and says, "Tony tried tracking her down but Ultron's severed the signal. I'm going to try and radio connect to her but"
Liz cuts down any chance of pessimism, "We're going to find her. Honestly, we're talking about Natasha here. Best chances are that she'll save herself."
Elizabeth Stark and Clint Barton could hold a competition for being Natasha Romanoff's number one fan. The amount of belief the two of them have in their mutual best friend could be enough to save her from the red on her ledger that she's always going on about when she gets drunk beyond comprehension.
They have more things to worry about when the surgeon and the archer walk into the lab and are met with the sight of several large wires connecting the cradle that's supposed to hold Ultron's body to several interfaces with familiar coding that Liz vaguely recognizes.
Tony appears from under the cradle, takes one look at Liz's furious face and runs in front of the cradle, unconsciously protecting it, "I can explain."
She stares at both him and Bruce, Clint right behind her, "You have two seconds before I blow that thing to hell."
"I found Jarvis."
That isn't what she was expecting, "What?"
Tony, who always had difficulty staying on track due to his brain's need to think and create and challenge and defy, tries to break it down step by step, "Jarvis scattered itself into the net. I found him and we have this and if we can put Jarvis into this, we win."
Liz shakes her head, "that's what you tried last time, and you lost."
Tony knows that she's not shutting the idea down. Elizabeth has always been explicitly vocal about her opinions and he knows that if she wanted the program gone, she would have told him so and then blew it to hell, as she had eloquently phrased it moments ago.
"Last time I wasn't there to shut it down suppose it didn't turn out right. Last time I underestimated Ultron. This time I have precautions set," he shows Liz the series of algorithms he and Bruce came up with in case of failure, the same algorithms that Tony started to create ever since he walked into the lab after Ultron's first attack and saw his project fail, "I don't make the same mistake twice, Lizzie."
She knows. She knows better than anyone does. She was there when he made modification after modification in his suit, in the lab, to Jarvis and the security system. She was there when he made an arc reactor that was significantly less easy to rip off. She was there when he programmed Jarvis to detect an explosive from miles away, giving anyone in the tower enough time to get out of there. She had helped him make a suit that would provide him with some oxygen in space, a suit that would withstand a nuke, a suit that is nearly impossible to burn off.
Tony isn't done convincing her, "This is enough to give us a powerful ally."
She states the obvious, "But what if it isn't an ally."
"Then we shut it down before it can become anything else."
She looks at Clint who has been silently watching the exchange. He won't involve himself into this, not when the jargon and language are too complex for him to completely grasp the topic at hand. He usually trusts Stark to figure things out and this time is no different.
He does have conditions though, because he really wants to get home to his family, "As long as you're a hundred percent sure that this won't bite us in the ass, I don't care what you do."
Tony and Bruce look at Liz, knowing that the whole operation lies in her affirmative.
She gives it.
"I want to check over the numbers and the programming and I want full control of the operation including destroying that thing if it comes to that." She knows her brother won't destroy it unless it's a very last resort; he's sentimental about his creations like that. She, however, is not.
"I'll be finding Nat," Clint says before moving out of their way.
Tony hands the tablet to Liz and she's feeling a kind of nervousness she hadn't felt since she was opening college acceptance letters at an age too young to even think about college. But she presses the button regardless; some instinctive part of her telling her that she's doing the right thing. Her hand still pulses with electric shocks though; that same instinct was the one that told her to shove a miniature version of an electric chair into her neck.
Soon enough the device is powering up and Liz's heart has risen to her throat and Bruce looks excited and Tony looks determined and Steve walks in, followed by the Maximoff twins and commands them to stop.
Then Steve is throwing his shield at the monitors causing it to bounce around but not really dent the expensive tech and Tony has his gauntlet on his hand and is firing at Steve. Bruce has Wanda in a chokehold, the telekinetic girl's fingers red with power, and Clint has broken the glass floor of the lab to aim an arrow at Pietro who had been cocky in a way that reminded everyone in the room so much of Tony Stark.
It's the wave of pure power, incomparable in strength in the form of lightning sparks that travel through the ground and up the walls and light up the room in variant shades of blue that gets everyone to stop; forces everyone to freeze.
They look at Elizabeth who simply stands there as if she hadn't nearly shocked everyone, Steve's shield goes down, the red in Wanda's finger disappears, and Tony relaxes, taking a few steps back to isolate him from the fight.
Liz looks at the group of people whom the world calls Avengers, "Stop fighting."
Each word is enunciated enough to betray anger as if the red in her eyes and the small sparks travelling down her fingers don't do enough to account for how angry she is.
Steve, ever the fighter, steps forward, "Liz, you can't do this," he says, referring to the cradle.
She raises a brow in challenge, "They tell you that?" She looks at the two twins who have somehow found a way to stand side by side, united in a way that this team, this family could never be. The thought irks Elizabeth.
"Liz," Steve starts. Starts to reason. Starts to protest. Starts to convince, she doesn't know. She doesn't care.
This is beyond Ultron. This is beyond the cradle and the Maximoffs and the fight.
So Liz doesn't give Steve the chance to argue, or reason, or protest, or fight.
She looks at the twins, realizing for the first time how young they look, how scared they look. She looks at the twins and addresses them first, "No offence to the two of you or anything, I'm all for redemption and second chances but tell me Steve," her gaze now pierces the Captain, "tell me how you find it easier to trust the two people that helped Ultron get this far, that messed with our brains as if we meant nothing, but you can't trust my brother."
"It's not about trust."
"Yes, it is." There's a hint of a laugh in her tone; an incredulous, tired, bitter laugh that Elizabeth Stark has never made, "Yes it is. You said it yourself. We're a team. We're supposed to trust each other. You were supposed to trust that Tony, who is arguably smarter than all of you, knows exactly what he's doing better than they," she nods her head towards Wanda and Pietro without breaking eye contact with Steve, "do. If you can't have his back on him doing the one thing he does better than anyone, then how can you have his back on the battlefield?"
That strikes Steve. It strikes and hurts harder than it should, "Liz," He tries again.
The red disappears from Elizabeth's eyes and the electricity slowly dissipates, but she's not done, "We're not a team, not the Avengers, if we don't trust each other. That includes backing up our plays and informing each other of our plans." She's talking to both Tony and Steve and everyone else now.
They may be broken and fragmented with no saving grace left, but they cannot lack trust. Trust is what is supposed to keep them alive and Elizabeth cannot take chances when they're fighting wars bigger than themselves, when there's life up there, beyond earth that's hostile. She needs to know, she needs to be a hundred percent sure that the Avengers are more than just a poorly constructed team made of trauma and identical paths.
Tony's voice is soft, taking cues from his sister, "System rebooted and ready to generate. What's our call?"
He's not talking to all of them, Liz, Bruce and Clint had already made their calls. It's up to Steve now and the soldier knows it.
Tony lifts a portion of the burden he knows rests on the Captain's shoulders, "You say no Cap, we shut it down. No hard feelings. We'll find another way to defeat Ultron."
He knows he's done the right thing when his sister's hands slide into his and she squeezes gently in thanks. He squeezes back, hoping that he can relay that he agrees that staying together, that keeping their delicate trust is important, more important than his inventions.
Steve looks at Tony, Tony who had saved their asses time and time again. Tony who had built the most complex systems that Howard Stark could only imagine creating. Tony Stark, whose brain nearly outrivals his heroism, his heart. He looks at Tony and asks, "Are you sure this is going to work."
"98%"
Steve notices the small tilt of Liz's lips at the number but Tony mistakes his silence for hesitation or refusal.
"But the remaining two percent is Lizzie blowing up the thing so we're fine."
Steve nods, "We're fine. Do it."
And the button is pressed and the cradle shakes violently enough for Liz to create orbs of pure lightning and for Wanda to step beside the surgeon with her own orbs of red that gets her a smile from the youngest Stark. The cradle shakes violently enough for Tony to put on his armour and Steve to raise his shield and Clint to knock his bow, pushing Pietro behind him.
The world spins precariously when Thor rushes in the room after hours of not knowing where he was, rambling something about stones and power and then it tilts on its axis when the being soon to be named Vision breaks out of the cradle and into their lives.
They wonder when the world will stop surprising them.
She hopes she'll never tire of looking at the city lights. She hopes the world will not break her enough for her to stop appreciating the night sky. She hopes that she'll always be able to see the beauty in the world despite artificial beings and androids that shouldn't exist.
Elizabeth Stark hopes she'll never stop getting surprised by Steve Rogers when he sneaks up from behind her when she's occupied.
He mirrors her position, resting his arms against the railing, close enough that their elbows touch.
They speak at the same time, guilty for one thing or another, "I'm sorry."
Steve goes on, finding his words easily, "You were right. I should have trusted Tony more. I should have trusted you. I just wanted you to know that I would never endanger your brother in the battlefield."
She doesn't know it, she'll never know it, but the idea that Liz had thought so little of his capabilities on the field hurt more than any bullet or bomb could. He feels it now even when it's accompanied by that pleasant pain of watching her under the starlight.
She closes her eyes in regret and vigorously shakes her head, turning around and, for the first time, taking a step closer instead of away, and says, "No. No, I never thought that. I was angry and words were just flying out and I meant a lot of it, all of it, but not the part about not trusting you. You're Steve Rogers. You're programmed to save people. It's in your blood. I know you're going to have Tony's back. That wasn't right of me to say."
And for the first time, since the Avengers had slowly begun to intricate themselves into their lives, ever since they were inevitably drawn back into battles and wars, Elizabeth Stark pours out her heart, her fears her nightmare, to Steve Rogers, unobtainable, presently distant Steve Rogers.
She looks away from him and forces the words out because she owes him an explanation, "It just...Tony, he's the best of us. He's better than every single one of us. He's got this hero complex, has had it even before Iron Man, and it rivals all of ours. And sometimes," her voice breaks but she pushes, "sometimes, I'm scared that no one will realize it until it's too late."
"Hey."
He sees the teardrops and grabs her hand, forcing her to look at him. She attempts a smile, but the tears continue to gather in her eyes making the fake smile moot. Looking at the skies to hold the tears back, she tells Steve, almost desperately, "I can't lose my brother. He's the only thing I have left and I get scared when he gets hurt because losing him will kill me and-"
"I know." He tells her, because he realizes that Liz will not be able to handle telling him more and also because he does know.
Tony and Elizabeth Stark mean more to each other beyond words can describe and humanity can fathom. It took him, took all of them, a while to understand that they are one unit on the field, took them a long time to start treating them as such.
Liz wipes her tears with haste before staring at the sky again, and Steve allows them to be basked with a comfortable silence, the kind of silence that is hard to obtain with just anyone.
"The stars are prettier away from the city," Liz says after a long moment.
His answer is instinctive, he doesn't think before he says it, "I'll take you some time. After all this is over."
When the words are out, he mentally prepares himself for Elizabeth Stark's unique brand of deflection. Waits for her to crack a joke, or stare at him in confusion, or make an excuse to walk away.
He's shocked when she, almost immediately, replies with a simple, "okay" as if they're talking about mere facts of the world and not the complicated current between them that's getting harder to explain day by day.
Clint calls them inside and the scene parallels drastically to the one they had a night ago at a farmhouse so Liz turns around and smiles at him, looking at the ground to gather her courage, take a chance, make a leap.
She hopes her heart doesn't break when she stops falling.
"Remember what you told me on the roof yesterday?"
He nods mutely, scoffing at the thought that he'd ever forget.
Took him a while to realize that he's never going to forget anything about Elizabeth Stark
"Well, I'm 98 percent sure your feelings are returned."
She walks away then, Clint's yelling getting more loud and impatient and also because she wants him to think this through, be absolutely sure that he's on the same page with her even though it was him that admitted his feelings first.
Steve Rogers just thinks that maybe he's destined to watch Elizabeth Stark walk away after creating a tornado in his heart; ripping him up and then somehow piecing him back together again, better than before.