This is the SECOND CHAPTER I'VE POSTED TODAY! If you haven't read the last chapter go read it.

19/01/20 - Chapter 2 of 3

Chapter Fourteen - The Aftermath

"Tony, even if he isn't Bucky, we need to help him."

"Okay," Tony nodded, decisive. "Let's do this. Jarvis, scan robocop for bugs and trackers."

Loki twisted his fingers impatiently as Jarvis scanned the furious assassin, who was still squirming desperately against Loki's spell. Loki couldn't leave his friends here but every second they wasted could bring his children a step closer to danger. Something had happened to SHIELD and Tony had told him that SHIELD could disable Jarvis. He knew that his and his mother's spells should hold, should protect the children from any attackers. But, what if they didn't?

"J says that he has three trackers and one bug, as well as a communication device in his ear. He thinks a focused blast from an EMP should be able to short them out, at least temporarily. I can do that with-"

"Then do it, come on!" Loki snapped. There wasn't time for this!

Tony didn't react to his outburst bar shooting him a concerned look, and instead stuck something that looked a bit like a grenade to the man that Steve thought was his friend.

There was a fizzing sound and the EMP glowed for a few seconds. The man went limp in Loki's magical hold.

"What did you do to him?" Steve demanded, rounding on Tony. Loki didn't care what had happened, he just wanted them to leave.

Tony looked at Steve incredulously, then shrugged. "Some kind of fail-safe that forces him unconscious, maybe?" he suggested. "Maybe the trackers aren't meant to be disabled, not even by Bucky-borg here? Someone could be controlling him, I don't know. Whatever, J says he's still breathing, so he should be okay for the minute."

Just then Bruce, Jane and Erik appeared in the doorway to the roof. Jane looked very pale, her shoulder was stained with blood, and she was being supported by the other two. Luckily, Bruce still seemed hulk-free, which boded well for the building, and the innocent people inside.

"Excellent," Loki spoke up barely a second after their arrival, hardly even registering the words coming out of his mouth he was so anxious. "Can we go now?"

Steve picked up the prone body of his assassin-friend and they all huddled close together in the middle of the roof. A second later they were in the Malibu mansion.

Loki wasted no time in rushing off towards the children's room, and almost collided with Thor in the hallway.

"Brother?"

"Thor, brilliant! I need you to pack some of the children's toys. You must meet me downstairs in five minutes."

"But why… what happened?"

"Someone assassinated the president. Well, not 'someone', the man who is currently unconscious downstairs did it. Then, SHIELD agents, or people posing as them, fired on everyone in the audience. I wasn't quick enough with my shield spell and at least two dozen people are dead. Something is going on, I think there is a high chance that we were targets due to our involvement in the Einstein Rosen bridge, and we still will be targets as we weren't killed. It's not safe for them here, Thor, I can't let them get hurt."

"Are you sure you are not overreacting?" Thor asked. Loki could have strangled him. "They should be safe here with the wards, should they not?"

"If I may," Jarvis said as Loki blinked away tears of frustration, "I do not believe Loki is overreacting. I have been researching around the world for an explanation as to what happened tonight and I have managed to detect other deaths of scientists and politicians that appear to have taken place around the same time. Something very serious has been happening worldwide."

"Do we know who is responsible?"

"Not yet. SHIELD however seems to be very heavily implicated in some of these proceedings."

"There is something going on Thor, they're not safe here."

"Okay," Thor nodded. Loki would probably have felt greater relief at this had his overriding emotion not been panic. "I'll get the toys. Where are you taking them?"

"Asgard is a good starting point as we can use the bifrost to get there. But perhaps from there to Jotunheim." Loki replied, pushing open the door to the kids' room and turning on the light.

"What's going on?" Sleipnir asked sleepily, sitting up in bed and squinting at the brightness.

"We're taking a surprise holiday on Asgard, help me wake the triplets." Loki said shortly.

Sleipnir looked at him sceptically, clearly wanting to scream bullshit at Loki's 'surprise holiday' excuse. "Right. Why?"

"I don't have time for that right now. Help me wake-"

"No! I want to know what's going on!" Sleipnir glowered at him. "Something's clearly gone wrong, you can't keep me in the dark like this!"

"Someone's trying to kill all of us."

"Oh no…" Fenrir said quietly, burying himself under the covers with a squeak. Loki pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. Admitting mortal peril in a flit of irritation had not been the best move.

"Why?" Sleipnir demanded, like that was more important than getting away from here.

"I don't know, and I don't have time for these questions, we have to go now, I have to keep you safe."

"Are we leaving again?" Hel asked, tugging on Loki's suit-jacket, her voice wobbling. "You promised we'd never have to do that again, you promised we were safe here. You said we were going to stay here. You lied! I like it here, you can't take this away from me."

Fantastic, Sleipnir was angry, Fenrir was terrified and now Hel was crying. This was not what he needed right now.

"Hel, listen. We're not leaving for forever, we're coming back, okay, as soon as the grown ups here have dealt with some bad people."

"How long will we be gone from here?" Sleipnir questioned. Loki couldn't answer. "How. Long?"

"I don't know!"

Sleipnir's breath was now coming in short gasps. "I need to tell my friends."

"That is not our priority right now."

"It's my priority. Humans don't live very long! What if by the time we get back they're all dead!" And before Loki could reassure him that he was fairly sure human lifespans weren't all that short Sleipnir had bolted out of the room.

"We are leaving in three minutes!" Loki shouted after him.

"Harrison and Ali might be dead before we get back?" Jormungandr, now fully awake, gasped, his eyes filling with tears.

Great.

Loki almost snapped that there was a high chance that he wouldn't have seen his friends much more anyway because as much as the triplets were having a whale of a time at kindergarten the teachers were becoming overly concerned about their references to war, killing their grandfather, and Hel's detailed knowledge of the stages of a decomposing body.

He reigned himself in however. He was their parent. He was overly stressed and in a terrible mood but he was responsible for their wellbeing and he couldn't make this even worse.

"I promise you they won't be. Sleipnir is feeling very anxious at the moment and he's forgotten that humans live to about eighty. I don't imagine we'll be gone very long, we probably won't even be away for a year. You will see them again."

"Except you can't keep promises can you!" Hel wailed. Loki was going to tear his hair out. This was too much.

"Don't you all want to see your grandmother?" he demanded.

"I do," Fenrir sniffled, popping his head out from under the covers.

"Wonderful, Fenrir, thank you. Would you and Stegosaurus please put your slippers and your dressing gown on and go help Uncle Thor pack your toys up."

"You're taking the toys to Asgard?" Jormungandr's eyes widened in horror. "There won't be any left here?"

Loki considered saying 'yes' but realised that lying would absolutely cause a lot more problems later. So, he settled on saying, "Well, there'll certainly be a lot less here so it will be a lot more boring."

Jormungandr considered this. "And you are sure my friends won't die."

"I'm certain," Loki told him, even though he wasn't.

"I suppose," Hel said slowly, "even if all my friends do die I can go and visit them in Helheim."

"Exactly, that's the spirit, everything will be fine," Loki said. "Now, please join Fenrir in putting on your dressing gowns and your slippers and come downstairs with me so we can take the bifrost."

One minute later he breathed a sigh of relief as he shepherded the children out of the room and they went down to find Thor.

What they found was Thor, Jane and Erik in the middle of a screaming match and Sleipnir frantically throwing toys and games around the room, trying to figure out which were the most important ones.

"Are we taking Pikachu?" he asked the triplets at the same moment as Jane said: "No. I am not some breakable glass object, I am staying!"

"What is going on here?" Loki all but screamed at the three of them.

"They have got it into their heads that I'm not safe here and they want to send me to Asgard to protect me."

"Jane you were shot, people died, please!" Erik begged.

"You need my brain, I can help here."

"And Alfar can see everything that is going on here so you can just do science from Asgard." Thor pleaded.

"But the Einstein-Rosen bridge-"

"Has been destroyed along with all research." Tony said, appearing in the doorway.

"What?" Jane shrieked. "That was our- our- I can't believe you'd do that. How dare you? How dare you do this without consulting us first."

"She has a point," Erik added, looking shell-shocked.

Tony shook his head. "I was an idiot, I trusted the wrong people again." He sighed, slumping against the doorframe. "SHIELD isn't SHIELD, it's Hydra. They've had a sleeper network inside of SHIELD for I don't know how long. They're behind the attacks. Jarvis found out two minutes ago, so I activated the grounded protocol. I won't let them have access to it, or the knowledge to build another one."

"So. All of that. For nothing." Erik said, sounding broken.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"I can't take this, I don't want to be here anymore," Jane sniffled.

"So, you will go to Asgard?" Loki asked. She nodded. Loki took a breath, relieved.

"I'm coming with you," Erik said.

"What about you?" Tony asked, turning around to the corridor behind him. "You should go, be safe."

Loki couldn't see Bruce but he could hear the man snort derisively. "It's fine, I can't be killed, I've tried."

"Right." Tony said. Loki felt like icy cold water had flooded into his stomach.

"That was too much information, wasn't it?" Bruce said as he came into view, his voice tinged with embarrassment and regret.

"Well, I'm glad you told us, buddy," Tony said, patting him on the shoulder. "Now just wasn't exactly the right moment."

Loki regarded Tony solemnly. "You're staying, aren't you?" he asked. There wasn't much point to it though, he already knew the answer.

"You know I have to," Tony replied. "I gotta stop them before this goes too far."

Loki huffed a laugh. "It's already gone too far."

"Yeah." Tony sighed. "Are you staying with the kids, or are you coming back?"

"Honestly, I don't know." Loki smiled grimly. "I should be with them, to protect them. But they should be safe with my mother, and here, with my powers, I could help stop his, I could save a lot of people."

"You know I don't want to put you in danger," Tony said. "But you're right about that."

Loki took a deep breath "Okay," he said. "Okay. I'm going to go to Asgard, check everything's okay, get the kids settled, and then I'll be back. A few hours. That's all. And… oh by the Norns where have Jane and Erik got to!?"

"They've gone with Thor to shove some important stuff into bags. They should be back soon," Sleipnir said, staring intensely at cluedo and clearly making a hard decision.

"We're running out of time!" Loki cried, tugging his hands through his hair.

"Lokes, hey, you don't know that," Tony said, drawing him into an embrace. "Clearly they're trying to off a lot of people tonight, we might not even be that high up their list."

Loki gave a dry laugh. "I just thought that we'd got past all of this, that we might finally be safe," he whispered into Tony's ear, quiet so the children wouldn't hear him.

"Guess that wasn't on the cards for us."

"Guess not."

Loki leaned into the kiss. It was beautiful and desperate and filled with anxiety and just what he needed to tether himself to reality, but he forced himself to break away. He could kiss Tony when they got back, there wasn't time for that now.

-Q-

"Are they gone?" Steve asked, looking up at Tony from where he was sitting on the floor.

Tony nodded, and tried not to think about how a part of him felt like it had been snatched away when his family had disappeared in the whirl of the bifrost. He stared down at Steve. "You know you don't have to hold his hand, right?" he questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"Maybe not," Steve said, reddening but pointedly not letting go of Bucky's hand. "But it's what he used to do for me when I was ill, or when I picked a fight I couldn't win and I couldn't move for the pain. I can't just leave him like this, alone."

"You know that might not be him, right? Someone could have given him Bucky's face as some kind of cruel prank."

"They can do that now?" Steve asked, horrified, and Tony couldn't help but laugh.

"With really advanced prosthetics, yeah." Tony shrugged, and parked himself on the back of the couch. "Didn't you see Red Skull rip his fake-face off though? This shouldn't be news to you."

"Oh yeah," Steve said, shaking his head and grimacing. "You know, I still don't know whether that was a mask or if he just got tired of wearing skin."

"Gross."

"Yeah. But wow, I can't believe I forgot that. I guess so much has happened that I just…"

Tony looked at Steve hesitantly. Was now the right time? Well, he had to tell him at some point, and they were all in danger. Time to rip the band-aid off.

"Hydra was behind the attacks."

Steve let go of Bucky's hand and sprang to his feet, horror and disbelief painting his features. "That can't be true!"

"Are we really gonna do this again?" Tony huffed, incredulous. "I'm not kidding, Steve, they're back."

"I'm not…" Steve sighed. "I'm not doubting you. I just don't want to believe this is happening. It seems like I went under the ice for no reason, like my whole sacrifice, loosing my time, losing my friends, was all for nothing."

"You literally stopped them from obliterating a city, don't be an idiot, Rogers." Tony rolled his eyes.

Steve looked awkward, and smiled weakly at him, "Yeah, I guess I did, didn't I? How did no one notice they were back until now?"

"Jarvis thinks they were hiding inside of SHIELD, a secret organisation growing inside a semi-secret organisation."

"You were working for them!?"

"Don't you think I know that?" Tony demanded. "Don't you think that after all the shit I went through with Obadiah I vowed I'd never work for an organisation hiding something like that again? Clearly I fucked up here. I destroyed the ER bridge remotely and I've wiped any trace of the science behind it from everywhere Jarvis can access. I think my security was good enough so no copies should have been made, but then again I thought my background check of SHIELD was good enough didn't I?"

He put his head in his hands and sighed. Suddenly, he felt an unexpected hand on his shoulder and he jerked away. "Hey, sorry, I just wanted to say that you did the best you could. I was meant to have destroyed Hydra back in the 40s, we both screwed up here."

Tony looked up at Steve, "Thanks," he said. They were nice words, even if he couldn't believe them.

"I failed Bucky though," Steve said. "I thought he'd died when he fell off the train, I should have gone back for him."

"No, don't beat yourself up over that, you couldn't have known."

"I should have done! After I rescued him from the camp, after Zola had experimented on him, he was ill, but then he was faster, stronger, more everything."

"At the time, did you think you would have survived a fall like that?" Tony asked pointedly.

Steve shook his head. "I don't know, probably not."

"Then it's not your fault," Tony said, clapping him back on the shoulder. "Besides, we still don't know if he's actually Bucky or not. Help me get him down to the lab, we can do some more tests and remove the trackers when we're down there. First, we're gonna need some more zip ties though because I'm not happy with the amount we used on him so far. And hey, when he wakes up, I guess you might get some of the answers to your questions."

"I guess. I just can't bear to think about what they did to him, it must have been awful. I-"

The doorbell rang.

"What the hell?" Tony exclaimed, getting ready to summon the suit with his newly-made metallic bracelets. "Jarvis, I thought I said maximum security?"

"I didn't think that would apply to Ms Potts, Sir."

"Pepper?" Tony practically flew towards the door as the Iron Man suit formed around him. "Is she okay?"

"She appears to have a head wound and a broken wrist, but nothing more serious. Before you should open the door you should know that there are other-"

"Too late," Tony said, throwing the door open. He was in his suit, he wasn't in that much danger.

"Pep, Happy!" he grinned, but his smile faded when he saw the third uninvited guest. "Natasha." He turned towards the last man at the door; he was wearing faded jeans and a ratty sweatshirt, but he had a state of the art bow slung over one shoulder and arrows tucked into his belt. "Robin Hood."

"We need your help," Pepper said, and it was clear that his CEO was having a hard time keeping it together. Tony wanted to envelop her into a hug but he was pretty sure she wouldn't appreciate that when he was in the suit.

"Everyone we know is trying to kill us." Natasha said bluntly.

"Yeah, that'll be Hydra." Tony replied.

Steve appeared in the doorway behind Tony while the rest were staring at him in various degrees of shock. "Hi Pepper, Happy, and, I'm afraid I haven't met you two yet?"

"Since when did keeping you a secret involve you answering doors?" Tony rolled his eyes.

"Since Loki's glamour on me dropped when the shooting started. I don't feel like I should be a secret anymore."

"Fair enough."

"I'm Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye," the bow-and-arrow man said. "And you're…"

"Steve Rogers, yeah."

Clint whistled under his breath. "Yeah, I thought so."

"How is that possible?" Natasha asked, frowning.

"Tony and Loki found me in the ice and def-"

"Can we discuss this when we're not out in the open?" Happy demanded, looking around, agitated. "There are still people trying to kill us and as your security-"

"Sure, sure," Tony said, stepping aside to let them file past. "Jarvis has scanned you to make sure you are who you say you are, so come on through."

"Why is there an unconscious zip-tied man on the couch?" Pepper called through as Tony was closing the door.

"That's Steve's childhood friend, he assassinated the president," Tony replied, coming back into the room.

"There is too much to unpack in there," Clint muttered while Happy took some not-so-subtle steps to put himself between Tony and the unconscious man.

"Yeah there is," Tony agreed. "So…"

"I know that man," Natasha said abruptly. Tony was glad that he wasn't the only one whose nerves made him startle at her sudden interruption. "People call him the WInter Soldier. He may be sleeping on your couch but he's a ghost story, most people in the intelligence community don't believe he exists. That doesn't stop him from being credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years though. I didn't believe he existed either, not until I met him five years ago."

"What happened then?" Steve asked, frowning, clearly trying to make sense of all this.

"I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, our tyres got shot out and we went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out, but he was there. I was covering the engineer, so he shot him straight through me. The engineer died instantly, but for me, well," she lifted up her top, "bye-bye bikinis."

"Yeah, I'm sure you look terrible in them now," Steve said sarcastically.

"Oh, she doesn't," Tony reassured everyone, remembering the underwear modelling photos that SHIELD had left for him to find as part of her cover story for being his PA.

"So, how does this fit with our theory that he's Bucky?"

"Who?" Pepper asked.

"My childhood friend, James Buchanan Barnes, I thought he'd died when he fell from a train in the alps, but, here he is. How is this possible?"

Natasha considered the assassin. "Well. He hasn't aged. Theoretically, if the Winter Soldier has really carried out assassinations for the last fifty years it would mean that either he doesn't really age, or the mantle is passed on. As he looks like your friend we're left with several options; he hasn't aged, maybe he doesn't age, maybe he's been frozen like you were, maybe he's a clone and they've been using different versions of him for a long time."

"Cloned?" Steve exclaimed.

"We won't know until we talk to him and run some tests," Tony said. Steve sighed in frustration.

"So, Stark, what were you saying about Hydra earlier?" Natasha asked.

"They've been infiltrating SHIELD, for who knows how long," Tony explained. "Today they activated their sleeper cells and it seems they've been taking out anyone who poses a threat to them. We had a celebratory dinner earlier tonight, the president, and high profile scientists and politicians were there. The man we have zip tied there, Bucky, the Winter Soldier, whoever, is the one who killed the president, but SHIELD, or rather, Hydra Agents there to protect us fired on the crowd and killed people. We were lucky to get out alive. But anyway what happened to you guys?"

"Well," Pepper began, still cradling her broken wrist. That would need to be seen to as soon as possible. "Natasha and I were planning on having a girls' night, like we do most Saturday evenings when she's not on a mission."

Tony nodded, this wasn't new information to him. After their breakup it had taken Pepper and him awhile to find their footing as friends again, but they'd managed it. Their attempt to become friends again had hit a stumbling block when Pepper had told him that she and Natasha were good friends and liked to hang out together. Tony hadn't been able to understand how she could trust someone like Natasha, someone who could lie to you as easy as breathing. Honestly, he'd been really scared for Pepper, but she'd told him that he had no right to judge who she decided to become friends with given that he was swanning round with Norse gods and frost giants, and Natasha hadn't killed her, so Tony had eventually decided to let it go. It didn't mean he was happy with it though.

"Clint was in town and Happy wanted to join so we expanded our girls night and ended up eating pizza and watching movies. Suddenly the windows blew in and we were being attacked by I don't know how many people…"

"Eight," Natasha interjected.

"One of them I thought was my friend, we'd been on missions together," Clint added.

"I knew three of them," Natasha said. "Clint and I dealt with them all. We stole a car from the garage underneath Pepper's apartment building and made our way over to you. We had to steal a few more cars on our way because more people were chasing us and the cars kept getting their tyres shot out or crashed."

"I did the best I could," Clint shrugged. "You got a medkit, Stark? 'Cause I think I've fractured a couple of ribs."

"Yeah there's one in the lab," Tony replied. "You and Pep need to be seen to so we can do that now we've all got each other up to speed. I can get Bruce to help you, he's done loads of medical stuff while hiding out around the world."

"It's fine, I can do it myself," Clint said, pointedly ignoring the death glare that Natasha sent him. "What? I fight people with machine guns and super powers with a weapon from the paleolithic era, I know first aid."

"You're getting help Clint," Natasha rolled her eyes. "This is non-negotiable. We all need medical help, anyway."

-Q-

Fifteen minutes later found them all in the lab, various injuries attended to. The Winter Soldier was zip-tied and chained (Tony, being an engineer, had had a few chains lying around, though, granted they were usually used for machines) to a chair in the middle of the room.

The Winter Soldier woke up and opened its eyes to find a number of weapons pointed at it. It forced itself not to lash out, this must be the lab, and these must be its handlers and technicians. It didn't know what would happen if it did try to harm anyone, but it had a feeling that it had done so before, and the consequences had been problematic.

"Ready to comply," it said automatically.

On to the next chapter in this hurried upload