Chapter 20
She suited up as she sent Steve looking for engine number three; the one that had been targeted by the incoming hostile forces. The one that was nearly impossible to make repairs to while they were still in the air.
Well, it was a good thing she wasn't just anyone, wasn't it?
"Toni," Ava's voice came through her mask, "You know what you're going to need to do, right? I don't care if you're Iron Woman or not; it's dangerous to go out there and try and restart the engine yourself."
"I can do this, Ava," Toni told her cousin, soothingly. "I upgraded these ships, remember? I know a thing or two about how they're designed."
"It doesn't change the fact that you're putting yourself in danger," Ava said, sounding less than impressed with her. "It definitely doesn't change the fact that you could get hurt."
"A lot more people will get hurt if I don't," she told her softly.
"Stark," Roger's voice came through her comms, cutting off her private conversation with Ava. She closed the channel off and switched over to the one he was on. "I'm here!"
"Good," she told him, as she flew to where he was, "Let's see what we got." She looked around, shrivelling the damage. Kepler, they really did just blow a hole straight through the helicarrier, didn't they?
Her screens immediately filled with the plan of the damaged section, as she looked over what needed to be done.
"I gotta get this super conducting cooling system back online before I can access the rotors and work on dislodging the debris," she murmured to herself. She looked over to where Steve was, as he looked up at her, lost. "I need you to get to that engine control panel and tell me which relays are in overload position."
He jumped over the debris, landing around where she told him too, as she flew over to where the cooling conductors were.
"What's it look like in there?" She asked him, needing to know what he saw.
"It seems to run on some form of electricity," he said, sounding a bit lost.
She took a deep breath; this was a man who was raised during the Great Depression. A man who hadn't known too much about technology or how anything worked. It would be confusing for half the engineers on the ship, let alone a man who'd been in the ice until recently for the last seventy years.
"Well, you're not wrong," she said, without a bite in her voice. She closed her eyes, as she explained carefully what it was that he'd need to do in order to restore power to the turbine.
She blew away some of the broken parts which were in the way of the turbine, as she stepped through.
"The relays are intact. What's our next move?" Roger's voice asked her, as she heard him working on the other end.
She looked at the damage, knowing what it was that needed to be done, "Even if I clear the rotors, this thing won't re-engage without a jump. I'm gonna have to get in there and push."
"Toni," Ava's voice called out. "Please tell me you're not thinking of doing what I think you're going to do.
"If that thing gets up to speed, you'll get shredded!" Steve protested in agreement.
"Then stay in the control unit and reverse polarity long enough to disengage mag-" she started before he cut her off.
"Speak English!" he stopped her, and she wondered just how much she would need to do to bring Steve Rogers up to speed with the modern world, and if he'd ever be able to understand a thing she said.
"See that red lever?" she asked, breaking it down into layman's terms. "It'll slow the rotors down long enough for me to get out. Stand by it, wait for my word."
She began to remove the debris from the turbine when Ava's voice came through her ears again, "Toni," she said, sounding slightly horrified.
"Ava, what's wrong?" she asked her quickly.
"He's here," Ava breathed, "I see him on the cameras! Harry's here, Toni."
"Where?" she demanded, "Are you safe, Ava? Tell me he's not near you."
"He's taken over the bridge of the ship," Ava said in her ear, "He and Barton are both there. They threw a grenade are armed. Toni, SHIELD isn't using non-lethal force."
"Oh Hell," she cursed. "Where are you, Ava? Are you safe?"
"I'm in the lab still," she said softly, "With the scepter."
"You need to get out of there, now," Toni demanded. "If Loki's puppets are here, they're here for him and for the staff. You need to get out of there before they come for you. From what I've heard the men under his control have no sense of recognition. They won't know it's you even if they see your face. Harry won't know you."
"What if they hurt him?" Ava demanded. "I will not have my brother killed simply because SHIELD can't use non-lethal force. There are other ways to neutralize the threat. These are just men, and unarmed, they're no danger if contained. I won't have them kill him, Toni!"
"I know," Toni soothed. "I'll come there and stop it."
"Stark, we need to you to get the engine working again," Rogers cut her off, coming over her comms again.
"Ava is in danger," Toni snapped back at him. "I need to make sure she's safe."
"The engine is more important than that!" He said quickly, before pausing. "Stark…Toni, if we don't get this engine working then we're all in danger. If the ship falls, we all die. Ava will die. The best way to protect her at the moment is to get that engine up and working."
"If anything happens to her-" she started but he cut her off.
"Thor, can you go to the research lab?" Rogers said, "Loki's men ae going to try and get scepter. We need you to keep Ava safe and get her out of there but keep the scepter under guard."
"Lady of Iron," Thor's voice boomed out, "I give you my word we'll keep her safe."
"Thank you," she said softly, as her heart raced. She kicked down the last of the debris, as the ship began to tilt.
"It's Barton. He took out our systems. He's headed for the detention level. Does anybody copy?" Fury's voice came over her headset.
"Stark we need to get the engine up and running," Roger's voice said with a grunt. "We're losing altitude."
She lowered herself down into the engine, as she began pushing one of the blades of the rotor.
"Yeah I noticed," she said, as her boosters fired more power. The rotor began to move slowly.
"I've been detained," Thor's voice roared out, "Loki tricked me. I'm locked in the cell."
"I have eyes on Barton and Carter-Sousa," Romanoff's voice came over the comms quietly. "They're in the detention centre."
"Ava!" Toni said quickly, "Get out of there now. I don't care about the scepter. I don't care if Loki's men find it. You need to get out of there now."
"Stark, you need to focus on the engine," Roger's voice called out at her. "She's a SHIELD agent; she can take care of herself."
"She's not," Toni said in anger. "She's a civilian and is only here because she wants to help track her brother down. She has no training and can't take on the rogue agents on her own. She's in danger."
"You brought a civilian on board?" he asked her, fury flaring in his voice. "This ship is no place for an untrained civilian. What were you thinking, letting her come?"
"Carter-Sousa women hardly take no for an answer if their loved ones are in danger," she snapped back, "Out of all people, you should know that better than anyone, Rogers."
She heard his sharp intake, and she knew he finally drew the dots and made the connection that she'd danced around this entire time.
"Barton's down," Romanoff's voice said with a grunt. "I lost eyes on Carter-Sousa."
She heard a grunt then, and Toni held he breath as her cousin's voice came back over the comms.
"I got Harry," she said, sounding out of breath. "I knocked him out. He's been contained."
She let out a sigh of relief as she heard Ava laugh a bit hysterically.
"Oh God I punched my brother," she laughed, a bit overwhelmed. "He's never going to let this go, is he?"
"No," Toni laughed, knowing that at the moment both of her cousins were okay. Well, now she just needed to ensure they didn't all fall to their deaths, didn't she?
She pushed with all her might, letting out a grunt, as could feel the ship straighten out.
"Cap, I need the lever," she said quickly, as the rotors picked up movement.
"I need a minute here," he said, sounding strained, and she nearly let out a cry.
"Lever," she said again, in desperation, "Now."
She watched in fear, as the rotor moved away from her hands, and she was slammed against the one behind her.
"Uh oh," she said to herself, as she ran some quick calculations in her head. She fell behind the rotors as she was slammed into the floor and dragged by the blades. "Help!"
And sure enough, the good Captain chose that moment to come through, as she fell into an opening and downwards. She powered up her repulsors, which staggered slightly, as she flew back into the ship, taking out a shooter who was aiming at the Captain, and fell on her back.
Her suit powered off, and she let out an exhausted sigh of relief.
"Agent Coulson is down," Fury's voice called out, and she listened, stunned.
"Paramedics are on their way," an agent said, and she could hear Fury shaking his head, as she knew what happened.
"They're here. They called it," he said, and she could hear the hurt in his voice.
She let out a pained sound. She could see Rogers' eyes trained on her, but she didn't say a word. What was there left to say? She might not have always liked the man; she and him had butted heads often enough with how much of a stickler to the rules he could be, and she was never one to follow the rules well was she?
But she was a Stark, and she was made of iron.
She would not break.
Nor would she bend.
She moved through the halls carefully, as she headed towards the med bay, unable to say a word.
"Toni," Ava said, as she entered the room Harry was being treated in. She looked over at her cousin carefully, and Ava shook her head as Harry nursed an icepack to his nose. "He's fine now. It seems being knocked unconscious was enough to break the connection. A little bit of cognitive recalibration if you will."
"Cognitive recalibration," Toni repeated drily, as she looked at him. "Glad to have you back, Harry."
He smiled up weakly at her with a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. She knew that haunted look all too well. The look of realizing that they'd unintentionally hurt innocent people. She'd had nightmares for months of all the innocents who'd died by her weapons, and she'd built the suit in an attempt to try and make it right.
"It wasn't your fault," she told him gently, as she placed a hand on his shoulder. "You didn't do it, Harry."
"It might not have been me, but it was my body," he said, shakily. "I'm the one who shot all those innocent people. I killed our own men. I didn't want to do it, but it doesn't change the fact that it was still me, Toni."
"I know," she said softly. "I know. Nothing I tell you can make this better. I can tell you it wasn't your fault all day long, but it won't help alleviate the guilt. It won't change anything that's happened. But what you choose to do with this guilt is up to you. Are you going to let it eat you inside and destroy you? Or are you going to do something about it and help bring this son of a bitch down? At the end of the day, he's the only one who is at fault. And it's up to us to stop him."
He nodded at her, as Ava gave him a grateful look.
"I should call your parents," she told them. "They'll want to know that you're okay. I promised Uncle Daniel I'll keep them in the loop."
She kissed Harry on the forehead, and gave Ava a quick squeeze on the shoulder, before leaving the room.
"JARVIS, call Uncle Daniel," she instructed, as she pulled out her phone.
"Calling," JARVIS said as she raised it carefully to her ear.
"Toni?" he asked, picking up immediately. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she said, smiling slightly. "Just a few scratches. Nothing that's going to keep me down, Uncle Daniel."
"Good," he said softly, and she could hear what he wasn't asking.
"We got him back," she said, "Well, Ava got him back really. Gave him a good punch in the face and knocked him out. It was enough to break the hold that Loki had on him. He's in the med bay now, but he doesn't have any injuries, other than a guilty conscious."
"I'm glad he's safe," her uncle said. "Look after him okay? He always took things personally, even if they weren't his fault. He blamed himself for months for not being able to find you. And when his mother was hospitalized, he spent a month straight trying to find any possible cure. I don't want this to break him, Toni."
"I won't let it," she promised him. "I'll keep him safe. I'll keep them both safe. Nothing is going to happen to either Ava or Harry if I can help it."
"You be careful too, Toni," Uncle Daniel told her gently. "Don't go doing anything foolish. I want all three of my children home in one piece, you hear me?"
She nodded, as her throat closed slightly.
"Give Aunt Peggy my love for me," she said, as she saw Rogers walking down the hall. She wondered how much of their conversation he'd heard, what with his super hearing and all.
"I will," he told her, "I love you, Toni."
"I love you too," she said, as she ended the call right as the Captain approached her. "Rogers."
He looked like he wanted to say something, and she wondered just what it was that he wanted to ask her.
"Fury wants to see us," he said finally, and she nodded as she looked in to see Harry smiling at something Ava said. "Are they okay?"
"They're fine," she said, smiling at the sight of them, "Probably better than they've been in a while."
He gave her a firm nod as they began walking down the hallway, towards the conference room.
"You can ask, you know," she said softly, as he looked over at her. "I know you're dying to ask."
"Their mother is Peggy Carter," he said, not as a question but a statement. She stopped then, turning to face him, knowing that they would need to have this conversation at some point. And well Loki was out there, and they had no idea what it was that he wanted, so now was as good of a time as any.
"Carter-Sousa," she corrected, and saw him flinch slightly. "She met Daniel Sousa while working for the SSR. He was a good man, and Aunt Peggy grew to love him. They were married and had Harry a few years after I was born, and Ava after that."
"I see," he said, and she knew it must have hurt him. Peggy had years to move on from him, but what did he really have?
"She loved you," Toni told him gently. "But she and Howard both believed you were dead. They searched for you for years, but they never were able to find your body. They never thought it was possible that you could have been alive, or I don't think they ever would have given up searching for you. But eventually she had to move on. Life went on, and she had a life of her own afterwards."
"Is he a good man?" Rogers asked he, and she could see that he wasn't asking maliciously or out of jealousy. Just genuine curiosity.
"He's the greatest," Toni said with a soft smile. "He and Aunt Peggy were there for me a lot after my parents…"
Her voice trailed off and he gave her a gentle look. She took a deep breath as she continued.
"He's the kind of man she needed. He never needed her to be anything other than herself. After the war women were expected to go back to their places, but she never could be anything like that. She was always her own woman. Uncle Daniel always respected that and followed her into danger more times than I can count. He stayed at home with the children just as often as she did, and the two of them were always equal partners in their marriage."
"Good," he said softly. "I don't blame her for moving on. I'm happy that she did. I would have hated if she pined away of me the rest of her life, but Peg was never one to pine, now was she?"
She laughed lightly at that, "No she most certainly was not."
"Do you know her well?" Rogers asked her, before backtracking, "I know you think of her children as cousins, and her as your Aunt, but do you have a close relationship with her?"
"She's my godmother," Toni told him as he listened to her. "She was the woman who told me that I didn't need to fall down to the role the world wanted me to play. A female CEO of a weapons company? The world hated that, but Aunt Peggy always believed in me, even when no one else did. I still remember meeting her when I was only a few years old. She had the prettiest red lipstick, and my father's respect, and she told me that I would re-make the world in my image."
"I always thought she'd make a good mother," Rogers said, looking a bit lost, and she placed a hand on his arm.
"She is," she said with a small smile.
"Ava takes after her," he said, looking back towards the med bay. "I don't know how I didn't see it before, but she's her mother's daughter through and through."
"You should see Harry," Toni laughed. "It drives Uncle Daniel mad at times how often the three of them jump into danger."
He shook his head, smiling lightly at the thought.
"We should go," she said, growing slightly somber, as she gestured her head towards the direction of the conference room. "We don't want to keep Fury waiting."
"Yes," he said, as they continued down the hallway.
She saw Fury standing there, as she took a seat next to Rogers at the table. She looked down upon seeing Fury's face, and she knew he must have been in pain over the loss of Coulson. Immediately, any of the earlier happiness she'd had over the discussion of her family left her.
"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket," Fury said, throwing a set of Captain America Trading Cards on the table. She looked away, knowing that she'd given him one of the ones he'd been missing from her father's collection. "Guess he never did get you to sign them."
Roger's jaw grinded as he picked the blood-stained cards up to look at.
"We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming," he paused to look at them. Roger's shoulders were hunched in defeat, and she barely raised her head. "Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea, Stark knows this, called The Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes."
She stood then, unable to listen anymore to what Fury was saying, as she walked off to the room where Loki had been held.
Tears were streaming down her eyes, and she struggled to whip them away, lest someone see and believe that she had a heart.
"Stark, wait," she heard a voice from behind her, as she looked down at where the cell once stood. "Toni."
She didn't look up at him, as he leaned back against a wall.
"Was he married?" Rogers asked her, and she barely shot him a glance.
"No," she shook her head, "He was seeing someone. A cellist, I think."
"I'm sorry," Rogers told her carefully, as he moved over to where she was standing. "He seemed like a good man."
She let out a watery scoff, "He was an idiot."
"Why?" he asked her, sounding disbelieving, "For believing?"
She shook her head, "For taking on Loki alone."
"He was doing his job," Rogers told her.
"He was out of his league. He should have waited. He should have-" she said with a wave of her hand, looking off distantly.
He moved closer to her, until he was just a few feet away.
"Sometimes there isn't a way out, Toni," he said gently, as she looked up at him.
She turned, unable to face him anymore, "Right. How did that work for him?"
"Is this the first time you've lost a soldier?" he asked, and she turned sharply to look at him.
"We are not soldiers!" she exclaimed in pain. "I am not a solider, Steve. Bruce isn't a solider. Ava isn't a solider. None of us are! And I most certainly am not marching to Fury's fife!"
"Neither am I!" Steve said in agreement. "He's got the same blood on his hands as Loki does. Right now we've got to put that aside and get this done. Now Loki needs a power source, if we can put together a list-"
She looked back at the wall at the exact spot that Coulson had died.
"He made it personal," she said softly, cutting him off.
"That's not the point," Steve said, sounding slightly exasperated with her, as he shook his head.
"That is the point, Steve. That's Loki's point. He hit us all right where we live. Why?" she asked, looking back into his blue eyes.
"To tear us apart," he said, with an understanding tone in his voice.
"He had to conquer his greed, but he knows he has to take us out to win, right?" she said, realization flowing through her, "That's what he wants. He wants to beat us, and he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience."
She paced, as thoughts flooded her mind, as she felt a pit of dread grow within her.
"Right, I caught his act at Stuttgard," Steve said, agreeing with her.
She started rambling on, and she could see the loss in Steve's eyes as he struggled to keep up with what she was saying.
"Yeah. That's just a preview, this is opening night. Loki's a full-tilt diva. He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument built in the skies with his name plastered-," she let out an exhale.
A warm light for mankind.
Bruce hadn't been lying when he thought Loki was talking about her with that statement. He had been, far more than any of them had known, far more than they had caught on. Because what had been all over the news just days before Loki's attack? What was the largest building in the world run on an independent power source? Which building would make Loki's victory all the sweeter when he defeated them?
"Sonofabitch!" she swore, before all but running out of the room.
