THIS IS STEVE TALKING. HAS ANYONE ELSE NOTICED THAT I HAVE A DIFFICULTY WITH INTRODUCTIONS? PFFT. ANYWAYS, ONWARDS NOBLE STEAD
Tony let out a loud yell and launched himself from the bed; Thor was barely able to grab him as the God watched in shock. In fact, everyone in the room watched in shock as they saw what was happening on the screen.
The man was heading straight for the top of the table; the former S.H.I.E.L.D agent gripped the gun in his hand as he ran for Loki, his eyes sparkling with insanity and hate. His muscles had shrunk from lack of food so that his skin was sunken and shallow, his cheek bones and jaw were heightened and raised but hidden beneath blood and dirt. Ragged and torn clothes hung around them like they were wearing their dad's clothes as a child. But, regardless of his hunger and exhaustion and pain, he kept on fighting to move forward. For a single moment I was proud of him; exceptionally proud of the man that was capable of doing something that even the Avengers weren't. But then I remembered that Victoria Stark was sat next to Loki.
She threw her head around to stare at Loki, panic and fear lighting up her face, she shook with fear as she watched Loki frozen from his own fear. Then his hand flew out, whacking into her so that she fell down, chair falling on top, her hand reaching out for Loki's.
The former agent braced himself as he got ready to fire his gun, his shoulders contracting as his arms rose; he pulled the trigger and smiled as it flew at his target. But then he roared in agony because the bullet had landed in a wall as Loki's form vanished and appeared behind him; the sceptre flying out and landed in the man's chest, just like Phil.
"Tory…" Tony mumbled, struggling against Thor as he whimpered; trying to get closer to the screen to see what was happening. "…Tory, please be safe. Please."
There was chaos in England as in America Tony Stark began to break again; the people on the screen began running towards the exit, screaming as they went. More gun shots were fired by Loki's guards as they ensured Loki's safety, the God ran across the room, dropping the sceptre, heading for Victoria like his life depended on it.
The camera span to her as they rushed to get a special moment between the couple. Tory was fighting against the people around her, screaming for Loki as tears were rushed down her face and then Loki reached her. Pushing people out of the way to get to her; his hands resting on her face and pushing back the tears and holding onto her; pulling her up so that she was leaning on him, hiccupping as she pulled herself to him.
And that's when I felt the bitch hit me in the stomach; she was voluntarily touching him, clinging to him like she would to me when she had that nightmare. Her shoulders shaking on his chest as she held herself to him like he was her anchor to the world. She was depending on him… she was falling for him.
Falling for the monster that was destroying her world and trying to kill her friends and killing her people. She was falling in love with a nightmare that was trying to break her like a twig and then bend her around his finger. This was the brute that was trying to decimate an entire race… it wasn't me.
Let's be honest, that's what I was pissed off at. That she was falling for someone and I wasn't that man.
"Steve! Help me!" I jumped and looked up at Thor as he fought to keep Tony down; remarkably no matter how hard Thor pushed, without hurting him, he wasn't able to keep the desperate man down.
I jumped up and pushed him down, pulling Tony's hands away as he tried to hit me, Thor let out a yelp as Tony bit down on his hand. Pepper had run into the room and forced Tony's head onto her lap, calming him as he burst into tears.
"He was touching her…" He said, bitterly, turning his head into Pepper's lap as he cried, clinging to her hands.
I looked down at the man and turned to Thor, grabbing his shirt and pulling him from the room, giving them some privacy.
He pushed himself away from me but stayed close as we walked through the house and onto the roof; Clint moving out of his nest to join us on the patio balcony; his face dark with anger as he stood next to me.
"You see it?" I asked, knowing his response.
"Watched it on their screen." He muttered, pointing at the house in front of us. "Fucking bastard; I knew him, the guy, he had great aim and even better determination and Loki speared him like a piece of chicken." The hate in his voice was unimaginable. It was the worst kind of growl I'd ever heard and this was from Clint; the man was an amazing assassin and killer but he was gentle most of the time, always sarcastic, always quick but gentle. "Look, Thor, I mean no disrespect to you, to your father nor to your people but when I get the opportunity I am going to put an arrow through Loki's eye and kill him. I'm sorry if you hate me for that but-."
"Clint Barton, you are wrong. I do not hate you for your anger or your brutality; but I do hate you for letting you think you're going to be the one to kill Loki. He is my responsibility and my problem; it's my duty to kill Loki as penance for letting him plunder your world so." Thor said, leaning against the wall and glaring down at the ground with disgust as he spat out the words.
"You're all wrong," a new voice said, we all glanced around and saw Natasha stood there, arms folded against her chest and her chin jutting out. "I am the only one that can sneak up on Loki that makes him mine. I won't have the rest of you getting hurt by that bastard when I know that I can kill him simply. He will die because of my bullets or my knife. I won't have either of you feeling the guilt that you're bound to feel when you kill him; don't wear that face Clint, you throw up after every kill and you see their faces when you sleep, even though you know that you're killing bad men. And Thor, he's your brother, you spent centuries with Loki and I don't think you have the stomach to kill him, even after all of this. But I have red on my ledger and I don't care if I add a little blue blood to it." Then she looked down at the ground and whispered. "Besides, I owe Bruce."
"That wasn't your fault, Nat." Clint began but Natasha moved her eyes up to glare up at him with malice.
She moved over to stand near us, the wind making her hair fly up and whacking her around the face, her skin pale in the dark moon light. Her blue eyes glinting as she began to fill up with tears.
"You guys do realise, though, that the second we kill Loki, Tory's dead? That's why Loki took her, so that we don't get to him."
We were all silent as we thought about that. Were we really ready to kill Loki if it meant giving up Tory? The girl that had helped all of us without an incentive. The innocent girl at the edge of a war that was pulled in by us bastards and then left to die… Was I ready to do that? To give up on a girl that I claimed to have feelings for? The only answer to that was no.
No, I wouldn't let that happen and if Loki had any kind of prayer of getting out of this alive; neither would he.
"Then we have to get to her, before we get to him." I said, gaining their attention and making them realise that I was never going to let them kill her, nor them.
"How are we gonna do that?" Clint asked, desperately. "We don't even know where they are."
I turned my head and smiled at him, raising an eyebrow. "Yes, we do. Don't we, Natasha?"
Natasha stared at me for a few seconds before she blanched and looked away, swallowing, she stared at the house below ours, etching every detail of the roof into her mind.
"We don't know that, Steve…"
"Yes, we do. You said so yourself, that palace that they were in looked familiar, you're right. It did; it was the Helicarrier."
"The flying fortress?" Thor echoed in his medieval tenor. "How are we meant to get in there?"
"Well, I don't know about the rest of you but… I can fly." Tony's voice said, appearing from inside the doorway, we all span to face him. Staring at the sick man as he limped across to us, his hand on his heart as he coughed up phlegm.
"Dude, that's gross." Clint mumbled, pulling away from him.
"I blame, Natasha, she was the one that had it first." Tony mumbled as he reached Thor, checking his hand and wincing. "You'll get it next."
"I thought your illness was because of your heart machine magic thing…" Clint as he rolled his eyes at him, moving across to whack my away so he could stand with us.
"No, according to Pepper it was just me being a sissy and this thing not liking the flu." He said, tapping it once with his index finger. "So, if I had died it would have been your fault." He gloated in Nat's face, eyebrows raised as she blinked once.
"My conscience would be fine."
"Yeah but you'd miss me during the nights."
Hawkeye sighed and jumped between them both, intervening before Natasha hit him. Wiggling a finger in her face before turning around to look at Tony with a frown. "You don't have a suit though; how are you going to fly?"
"I have a few," He sniffed. "At my penthouse."
We were all, except for Thor, staring at him in shock as he looked up at the stars, smiling at them as if there was nothing wrong with the world. This man was insane; literally insane, a lot worse than Loki.
"You cannot be serious." Natasha said, breaking the silence finally with her low tone. "We're in Texas; your penthouse is in California."
"Which means that we need to get their quickly and with our biggest muscles." Tony replied, flippantly.
"You're asking us, to risk our lives to get your suit? Stark are you out of your mind!" Clint yelled, reaching to grab him but Stark jumped out of the way and glared up at hi, growling.
"No. Not for me; for Tory. Who, by the way, you owe."
Clint drew back and his face clouded with guilt and Tony looked away from him, everyone else lapsing into silence as we watched Clint try to restrain his anger as he looked at Tony with contempt.
"I… I didn't mean it like… we all owe her." Tony muttered, desperately trying to backtrack what he had said. "…but Clint… you know that we need to get up to the Helicarrier to get to Loki, to save the whole World."
"I'll go." I whispered, speaking for the first time since Tony had got there. He didn't like the sound of my voice anymore; he didn't like to hear me talking.
I saw him nod but say nothing, his chest bouncing out as he released a breath and his eyes looking away from me but his shoulders tensed and the knuckles on his pale hands whitened.
Thor was the next to agree.
The next morning we set out, piling into the Land Cruiser whilst Pepper and Jane watched on, their eyes dry as they watched us. Clint and Fury got into a second car next to us, but they weren't going with us.
No, their plan involved the S.H.I.E.L.D. database about the others. The mutants, the skilled, the talented, the odd; but most of all the people that would help us take back the Tesseract and kill Loki.
The only thing that occupied my mind, 24-7, the only thing that kept my head hurting and awake and… that was the only thing that I could think about; killing Loki. Watching the manic desperation to be loved vanish from his eyes. That was the only thing that I wanted to do now.
We had reached the 13th hour in our 23 hour car journey, the night was rolling past us as Tony gripped the wheel, his eye lid drooping but every so often they'd snap open as Thor's leg would kick his chair. He let out a snore and curled up more on my shoulder, mumbling something about Loki's hair.
I leaned forward and gripped the shoulder of Tony's seat, whispering. "Do you want me to take over?"
"No, I don't want to sit next to the God of drool, thanks."
I fell back against the chair's front and felt Thor move away, going to the window and slamming his cheek on it; Tony's eyes caught mine in the reflection of the mirror and looked at me, icily.
"I can't help it, you know." He muttered; his hand circling the wheel around so that we turned a sharp corner. The brown eyes watching the road, again. "The… anger."
"You don't have to explain-." But he cut me off, quickly, his tone sharp like a snake.
"Yes, I do. I have to hate you because I don't blame you, I blame me, I blame her, and I blame Loki. But you, let her go, you let her do something that she wanted whereas I wanted her caged up so that she wouldn't be able to hurt herself. But you let her go. And I know that given that moment, I would have done the same but… I just need to take this anger out… somewhere."
"I know, Tony. I know." I mumbled, looking away and blinking against the harsh stinging in my eyes.
We parked the car a few miles out from Tony's penthouse and began our walk to it; panic and fear and childish complaints pushed aside as adrenaline and fight began to pump in our veins.
We saw the penthouse get closer and closer, the way that the Chatari swarmed around the doors before they shrieked from the pain of Thor's lightening.
I hope this is good, I know that I've been gone for ages, there's just loads going on down here, I'm sorry and I'd like to say thank you to Opera Hiddles and Tea who reminded me and spurred me on, have an internet hug.