Chapter 18 – The Lies Are Ending

A/n: Hello all; I hope you enjoy this chapter as I know you're all loving the action chapters. Love y'all!

XxxBellaBellaxxX: I know right; I get the same image and it never fails to make me laugh. Clint's going to freak out trust me.

Ashtree1165: Prepared for the booting of Piper because he's quite hard to write and I always forget that he's there and occasionally needs dialogue. I'm glad you think I'm portraying Toni well

Booklover2526: Did I ever actually confirm that? Hmm… wait and see. I still do cry cause it's Phil

paisley15: I'm so looking forward to writing that scene. The changes I'm going to make are purely because Toni is a BAMF; no regrets! That's one of my favourite moments to. The first time I saw it I was like OMG they're working together. I love the brief Tony/Clint interaction during the battle as well as Clint's other scenes but that one especially. Nope, I noticed it too. He relies on strength a lot more than the others.

Kit Kat: Then I'll do it for you :) I keep giving myself more projects when I haven't even finished this one /lol/

LaNaturalBreezeOf-Books: All action chapters in this story are like dedicated to you because of your amazing reviews after them :D Love ya

Dragones: As you wish :) Loving how long that more was :D

Maeleana: I'm glad the descriptive passages are good.

The scene changed to show Erik Selvig putting the final touches to the portal opener containing the Tesseract on the roof of Stark Tower. Meanwhile the door to Clint's room opened as Steve walked in. "Time to go," he told Natasha who was the only one in the main room.

"Go where?" She asked curiously.

"I'll tell you on the way," Steve told her.

"I didn't want SHIELD to know where we were going until it was too late to stop us helping," Steve said simply, "I knew they could overhear what we were saying and I also knew that while Fury was on board with the Avengers idea there was no way that everyone working there was. The attempt to bomb Manhattan was just the end product of that distrust."

"Can you fly one of those jets?" he asked knowing he couldn't.

"You could have asked Toni, she can fly them," Natasha pointed out.

"Yeah but that's because the basic idea and design were both mine and so I made it so it would be controllable for me," Toni replied, "plus I was getting there under my own steam anyway so it would have been slightly awkward if I was the only pilot available."

"I can," Clint said emerging from the bathroom.

Steve gave him a calculating look before Natasha indicated that she believed that Clint was truly back and then he began to speak, "You got a suit?"

"Just wanted to make sure," Steve muttered but Clint just waved off his apology. If it had been the other way around Clint would have been a hell of a lot worse than just exchanging signals with Natasha in trying to find out if he was back or not.

"Yeah," Clint said calmly.

"Then suit up," he said before leaving the room.

"You keep stealing my lines Cap," Toni teased, "find some of your own."

Back on the ground Thor hesitated before leaning down slowly to grab hold of Mjolnir. Even in the half-light he was under it was clear that he was relieved when he managed to raise the hammer.

"It was a great relief that I had not become unworthy once more," Thor confirmed.

On the helicarrier the team began to assemble their weapons. Cap pulled up his shield which had been repaired from the damage done in Stuttgart.

"You're welcome," Toni said as she had been the one who had repaired it before she had come into the room with Coulson for the briefing.

Clint neatly clipped his quiver of arrows onto his back as Natasha powered up her Widow's Bite in advance. Toni was working at a bench with SHIELD's insufficient tools to make as many repairs to the suit as she could. Sparks flew from the helmet as the eye sockets lit up with power once more.

"It's hard to repair something that complex in a place which I refuse to give my more sophisticated tech in case they end up misusing it which they probably would on at least some occasions," Toni sighed. The suit hadn't really been working to a degree she would have liked even before the fight and having to change to the Mark VII.

Thor raised Mjolnir above his head and lightning began streaming from the top of it right up to the heavens. This caused a vortex of dust lingering in the air from the crash to form and spiral at the speed of a hurricane.

Toni powered up the Iron Man suit and the holographic display flickered into life. Steve walked straight through the sea of Agents scrambling about making repairs with Clint and Natasha right behind him. As the three boarded a quinjet the Agent aboard said, "Hey, you guys aren't authorised to be in here."

"You'd think SHIELD agents would be smart enough to know not to attempt to mess with two of SHIELD's best operatives plus Captain America but no," Bruce piped up.

"That would imply that they have common sense and they've already more than proved that they don't," Toni laughed, "they change my designs in an attempt to look superior to me although they know I have a genius level IQ, they can't even navigate towards a massive body of water judging on a non-complicated direction without a navigation system. Not having common sense appears to be a quality that they overlooked when hiring Natasha, Phil and Clint but not many of the others."

"Son, just don't," Steve said in a cautionary tone.

"You never sounded more old-fashioned," Clint joked and it was true. It was probably one of the most old-fashioned things he had ever said around any member of the Avengers.

The scene changed to show Fury shuffling Coulson's cards within his hands whilst standing in the control room. "Sir," Agent Hill said as she approached Fury.

"Agent Hill," Fury said clearly knowing what she was about to say.

"Those cards," she continued hesitantly, "they were in Coulson's locker, not in his jacket."

"WHAT?!" the entire group including Piper chorused upon hearing this news. Toni, Clint and Natasha were of course particularly affected by the news having known him best but Steve was not all happy about wilful destruction of property for selfish reasons.

"JARVIS," Toni said her tone full of barely restrained Fury.

"Yes, ma'am," JARVIS replied.

"Run a search on all known aliases for Agent Phil Coulson through every hospital in the United States and then look for John Does that match his description in those same hospitals," Toni instructed, "if you don't find anything search any private sector that we know of for the same thing."

"Running search Miss Stark," JARVIS informed her accepting the order.

"He might not have been lying about Phil being…" here she paused for a fraction of a second, "…dead but I have to double check just in case."

"Knowing Fury he went the whole hog and Coulson is still alive," Clint said hoping that was true as it would certainly reduce the guilt he felt over the whole Loki situation. Maybe it wouldn't be so crippling anymore and he wouldn't be as compromised.

"Well JARVIS will be done with that scan soon so I suggest we get watching this infernal movie over with," Piper suggested and exactly on cue the picture began to play again.

Fury sighed, "They needed the push," he explained.

"Maybe we needed a push but we got it from the attack and thinking Coulson was dead. The cards were far too much," Steve said angrily.

Hill gave him a sceptical look as Toni in full Iron Man regalia darted past the window at high speed. "We have an unauthorised departure from Bay 6," an Agent called in over the PA.

"They found him," Fury realised, "Get our communications back up, whatever you have to do. I want eyes on everything."

"Yes, sir," Agent Hill acknowledged.

Back in New York Toni flew over the New York cityscape heading towards Stark Tower as the repulsors in the boots of the Iron Man suit continued to falter occasionally.

"Too complex for SHIELD equipment," Toni muttered when she was given questioning looks, "needed the stuff at the Tower to completely fix the Mark VIII."

The Tesseract began to throw out a slight field of neon blue energy as the device to create the portal powered up. "Ma'am, I've turned off the arc reactor but the device is already self-sustaining," JARVIS informed Toni as she drew to a halt hovering above the rooftop.

"Shut it down, Dr Selvig," Toni said trying to be reasonable.

"Thank you for trying Friend Toni," Thor sighed. He still didn't know exactly how his friend had been brought back but assumed he had just gotten caught up in the fighting.

"It's too late!" he shouted up to her, "She can't stop now. She wants to show us something! A new universe."

"I tried," Toni said plainly before aiming her repulsors at the Tesseract and firing but a force field formed instantaneously around the Cube and it fired off a burst of energy that sent Selvig flying off hitting his head in the process and Toni spiralling through the air.

"I guess I owe you more than I knew Lady Toni for freeing my friend," Thor said simply.

"Plus the fact that without Selvig I would never have been able to close the portal," Natasha told them.

"Okay Natasha you could have easily freed him yourself. You didn't need me to do it and besides I don't need your gratitude. It needed to be done so I did it," Toni said brushing off the compliments. She didn't quite know how to deal with comments like that which were genuinely meant.

The crowd on the streets looked up at the loud noise gasping as they saw a figure they must have guessed was Toni spiralling away. She quickly managed to steady herself and stay in a single place in the air. "The barrier is pure energy," JARVIS relayed, "It's unbreachable."

"Yeah, I got that," Toni replied before turning to face Loki who stood on the observation deck smirking up at her, "Plan B."

"Wait you already had a plan B," Clint said baffled.

"Please, I was up to Plan G by that stage," Toni scoffed, "and I had Plans H-J mapped out by the time I got inside."

"Ma'am, the mark VII is not ready for deployment," JARVIS informed her regretfully.

"Then skip the spinning rims. We're on the clock," Toni provided as a solution before landing on the pad which initiated the sequence which removed her suit.

"What are you doing?" Piper and Clint chorused. The others weren't that surprised other than Thor and he didn't see how it was worth commenting on. "I didn't know this was a viable plan," Clint said shocked.

"I did," Steve admitted. Toni had told him that it was option but not one so high up on her list.

"And you let her!" Piper practically shouted.

Before Toni could indignantly point out that she didn't need a babysitter Steve beat her to the punch, "Toni is a grown woman and I don't see how I can stop one of the strongest women on the planet from acting in a way that she sees fit. And I shouldn't have to because she's intelligent enough to know what she's doing."

"Thank you Steve," Toni said giving him a rare smile, "Piper, I need to talk to you outside now!"

Piper reluctantly rose to his feet and left the room with Toni following flashing Steve one last smile for his comment. As the door closed behind them thanks to JARVIS Toni began to tear into Piper, "What the hell is up with you Piper?! The moment we got together you seemed to keep spiralling downwards into this person who suddenly doesn't believe I can do a single thing for myself and is overly sensitive to every tiny thing. I saw a person die for the first time at the age of eight there is no way you can believe I've been affected any more adversely by the deaths recently. And I've been Iron Man for much longer than we've been together. So what is your problem with everything that I do to protect people?"

"Because all you do is hang around with people who are more like you than I am. People who can keep up with you and what does that make me?" Piper snapped, "And you constantly put yourself in danger and I don't know if I can cope with it."

"Piper," Toni said a little more softly but still angrily, "that makes… no made you my boyfriend. The one person in my life who never betrayed me and you have always been important. But if you get like this because we're together then I'm sorry but this isn't working. I should have known my one long term relationship wouldn't work out."

"Fine," Piper said clearly losing his resolve, "now seeing as I'm no longer involved with your group I hope you don't mind if I retire to my office to forge your signature on some less important forms instead of watching that awful thing."

"Feel free," Toni said and as Piper was about to leave she called out to him, "You're still the first person who ever gave a damn about me so thank you."

With that she turned and walked back into the living room where the Avengers were still sitting where she had left them tactfully trying to pretend that they hadn't been listening to everything that had just been said intently. She appreciated it as she didn't think she was ready to talk about it yet. She went back to her seat next to Clint and instructed JARVIS to play the footage again as Clint squeezed her arm reassuringly.

As the armour began to be pulled off by the mechanical arms Loki turned and began to make his way into the Tower itself. "Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity," Loki joked with a sinister smile.

"No I'm not imagining it, he is kind of hitting on you," Natasha said. She had noticed that Loki was being slightly flirtatious towards Toni when they had first met but she had brushed it off as unimportant back then but suddenly it seemed a hell of a lot more important.

"My brother always had a weakness for warrior women," Thor admitted, "It's one of the few things that we still have in common."

"Uh actually, I'm planning to threaten you," Toni said matter-of-factly obviously having realised Loki's attraction to her as she pulled her hair out of its bun despite the fact that she knew she'd probably have to keep fighting.

"You should have left your armour on for that," Loki laughed clearly wondering how a girl who reportedly had no physical skills could possibly threaten him.

"I think he thought I would be easy to win over to his side," Toni scoffed, "maybe even without that stupid sceptre."

"Yeah," Toni said nonchalantly heading down the stairs, "Its seen a bit of mileage, and you've got the glow stick of destiny. Would you like a drink?" she finished cheekily as she walked behind her personal bar.

"You're actually offering a guy with a creepy crush on you a drink in the middle of a crisis," Clint said astonished, "only you Toni."

"Stalling me won't change anything," Loki said clearly thinking he had caught onto the entirety of Toni's plan.

"No, no, no! Threatening," Toni emphasised as she grabbed a bottle of whiskey, "no drink, are you sure? I'm having one."

"You really are playing him for all you're worth aren't you," Natasha laughed.

Loki was clearly growing frustrated with Toni's strange comments so he turned to the window and spat out, "the Chitauri are coming. Nothing will change that. What have I to fear?"

"The Avengers," Toni said simply pulling the lid off of the ornate glass bottle that held the whiskey. Seeing Loki's confused look she shrugged and continued, "That's what we call ourselves. We're sort of like a team but not really. 'Earth's mightiest heroes' type thing."

As she poured herself the drink Loki said calmly, "Yes, I've met them," the implied 'and gotten away from them,' went unsaid.

"What is your play here?" Steve said confused not quite getting it yet.

"Doubt," Toni said simply.

"Yeah," Toni said with a smile, "it was always going to take us a while to get any traction; I'll give you that one. But let's do a head count, here. Your brother, the demigod," as Loki looked away in frustration at her having brought him up she quickly reached out for a pair of bangles that were sitting on the counter and slipped them around her wrists, "a super soldier, a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend."

Steve felt very flattered that Toni had even admitted this at all because whilst it hadn't been to his face (which he knew was unlikely to ever happen unless she thought she was really going to die) she at least admitted it to someone.

"A man with breath-taking anger management-issues," she continued earning a slight smirk from Loki.

"Okay, I knew you weren't bothered by The Hulk but breath-taking," Bruce said disbelievingly.

"I like him," Toni said with a smile.

"A couple of master assassins, and you, big fella, you've managed to piss off every single one of them," she concluded.

"You left out yourself on purpose I take it," Natasha asked.

"Of course," Toni said knowing Natasha was really just asking for confirmation and that she shouldn't be insulted in any way by the comment.

"That was the plan," Loki said.

"Not a great plan," Toni said sliding up onto the bar and sipping at her drink, "when they come, and they will, they'll come for you."

"I have an army," Loki said tensely.

"We have a Hulk," Toni said conversationally as if they were simply comparing shoes.

"Oh I thought the beast had wandered off," Loki jibed trying to put Toni off but it wasn't working.

"You're missing the point," Toni told him jumping down from the bar and walking towards him, "there is no throne. There is no version of this where you come out on top. Maybe your army comes and maybe it's too much for us, but it's all on you. Because if we can't protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it."

"You should have mentioned that phrase when Fury was trying to make us have a collective catchphrase," Clint teased.

"If we had to have one that would have been okay I guess," Natasha sighed. She had been the one who had vehemently disagreed with the entire idea as she found it completely ridiculous. Mind you she hadn't exactly been alone in that. Thor was the only one who had really liked the idea.

"It loses its dramatic effect if used too often though," Toni pointed out.

She drained the last of her drink as Loki advanced on her now obviously angry with her. "How will your friends have time for me when they are so busy fighting you?" he snapped.

"Oh god," Clint muttered so nobody but Natasha and Toni heard him. He couldn't bear thinking about one of his friends being taken over by that monster especially not one of the girls. Plus with the looks Toni was being given by Loki in that scene it really didn't bear thinking about.

Loki raised the sceptre before Toni had time to react and pointed it at her chest but with a clink it bounced off the arc reactor.

"You're immune," Steve said breathing a sigh of relief.

"I think it's because this thing," here Toni tapped where the arc reactor was under her leather jacket, "blocks the pathway to my heart. Which means the magic can't get to it. I had to thoroughly check it over afterwards though just in case the magic had messed with it. That is on top of the whole going to space thing which could have been disastrous in so many ways."

He attempted it again but the same thing happened and Toni didn't even try to prevent it obviously having figured out it wouldn't work on her. "This usually works," Loki said reverting back to his confused state.

"Well, performance issues, it's not uncommon," Toni quipped.

"And you had to bring it back to that," Bruce sighed.

Thor was simply sitting there staring at the screen almost blankly. Toni's interactions with his brother were as hostile as anyone else's and yet they didn't quite seem to be at the same time. The weirdness of their interaction was starting to give him a headache. He much preferred just charging in but he knew Toni preferred thinking things through first.

Loki attempted to lunge at her for that comment but she kicked his arm out of way throwing the glass she had been holding away from her so she had the use of both of her hands. He tried to get to her again but she ducked underneath his lunges which he wasn't expecting. He hadn't even been expecting her to fight back.

The others apart from Natasha were staring at her in shock when they saw she could fight without her suit. "Come on guys," Toni sighed, "don't assume. I lived with Natasha for a year and you didn't think I managed to nag her into teaching me a few things."

"So that's why you said you knew how hard Natasha's hits were," Clint realised, "I mean she mentioned in passing that she was assigned to you and I know she moved in here because you two didn't hate each other during that time but I didn't know you were as close as that."

"Shopping and drinking," the two girls chorused and the guys decided to leave it at that. They were never going to understand how girl's minds worked so it wouldn't do them much good to keep trying.

Eventually Loki tired of swinging at her and used the sceptre to fire off several shots around her meaning she had to focus all her attention on them and he used the opportunity to grab her by the throat. He threw her across the floor and she hit the ground with a loud thump and was clearly in pain as she pushed herself up, "JARVIS, anytime now," she said quietly.

The room had tensed up a little now that she had actually been hurt instead of just dancing on the edge of being so.

As she managed to scramble to her feet Loki grabbed a hold of her throat again and spat out, "You will all fall before me."

"Deploy!" Toni said anxiously as a door on the other side of the room began to slide open. She managed to spit the word 'deploy' out again just before Loki threw her out of the window.

Steve looked immensely worried despite the fact that they knew Toni would survive this but the others guessed he had just got caught up in the movie and it had slipped his mind that these events had already happened. It had happened to them all at one point in the movie especially during scenes where they weren't featured and hence didn't know what happened aside from second hand accounts from those who were there. Toni's accounts it seemed were just like her file. Empty of most of the relevant information or anything that might worry anyone.

Toni stretched out her arms and legs to get more surface area and hence slow her down as Loki was practically knocked over by a folded up suit blasting out of the compartment it had been hidden in and flying through the window. It opened up slightly to scan the bangles on Toni's wrists and once they flashed red in confirmation it opened completely and began to put itself on Toni.

"And that would be the other reason that you went in to confront Loki wouldn't it?" Bruce asked rhetorically, "and you knew he couldn't get at the suit because of the failsafe which is those bracelets."

"I needed to use a different suit as the Mark VIII needed to undergo serious repairs before I could even think of using it in any sort of fight. If the flight stabilisers are going the first thing I do is try and change if at all possible. And there are a lot of fail safes in those suits. I learned my lesson after the first time. For example if it's not stored in a place I personally approved or currently on me after a while the suit will self-destruct on command to stop others getting their hands on one of them," Toni informed the team, "haven't needed to use that function yet though."

Just before she crashed into the crowd her mask slipped over her face and the systems activated meaning that she could fly up and avoid a collision. "And there's one other person you pissed off," she said angrily as she came up level with Loki again.

The other Avengers thought as Loki probably had that she was finally about to tell him that she was pissed off at him too but that wasn't what happened.

"His name was Phil," she concluded. Loki raised his sceptre to fire on her again but she beat him to the punch and struck him with an energy beam that sent him flying backwards across the room.

On the roof the Tesseract finally got up to the correct level and as the blue energy began to spin around it the moment came and a huge blue energy beam fired up at the sky and the portal was formed. On the other side of it the Chitauri saw the light from Earth's sky and began to fly through.

"Right," Toni said turning her display screen from defence mode to attack mode, "Army."

"And so begins lots of shots of us beating up aliens," Clint joked. Someone might have responded but JARVIS interrupted, "Miss Stark I have completed my scan of the hospital network and a man named Mr Daniel Cooper is registered at a private medical centre run by SHIELD. His records state that he was admitted with a stab wound to the back. He is currently in a medically induced coma and it seems has only been recently transferred to the facility."

"Daniel Cooper is one of Phil's aliases," Natasha said shocked.

A/n: Broke 4K and updated earlier than the other 4K ones. Oh how I love Mondays :) I have so much more time to write