[A/N I rewrote this a million times, trying to make it more interesting. So yea.]
Part 18.
I awoke the next morning with a massive headache, probably due to a lack of sleep. I wished I could have slept more, but daylight was already coming in through the windows, so I must have woken up from that.
I stumbled out of bed, still slightly sleepy, and almost knocked over Tony's flat-screen and then even the framed picture of the Avengers in New York fell victim of my unruly movements. I wondered since when I wasn't a morning person anymore before remembering that I had dated Tony Stark, night animal, for 3 weeks.
After neatly combing my hair, dressing into clothes I deemed appropriate (including the pants Tony had bought for me when we went shopping in NYC) and brushing my teeth several times because to me there is nothing more annoying than the taste of sleep lingering in your mouth, I went to fetch some breakfast from the kitchen- and dining-area. It wasn't any different from a regular morning when I saw Natasha and Bruce with their heads on the table, looking like zombies and Thor and Barton fighting over what to make for breakfast this morning.
"I demand chocolate cake!" Thor shouted, throwing his fist on the counter and waving a chocolate cake recipe in front of Barton's face.
"Yes, Thor I heard you the last 5 times," Barton rolled his eyes, "And I said we will eat your cake for desert."
"I want it NOW" Thor complained, looking like a 6ft baby on steroids.
"Why don't you just make both?" I suggested, grabbing an offered cup of coffee by a not even half-awake Natasha. Barton shrugged and looked at Thor, who was still looking sullen but agreed on making both toast with bacon and chocolate cake (because everyone knows that's the most delicious combination in the world). I took a sip of my coffee and noticed that it tasted a little.. weird. "I don't take sugar in my coffee." I commented, and Natasha gave me a death-glare that could only mean that I had to deal with it because she had put her effort into it despite her obvious lack of sleep. So I went back to sipping my sugary coffee without any more protests. "So, long night yesterday, eh?" I asked, trying to make some conversation because I was really starting to feel uncomfortable under Natasha's glare (she was keeping an eye on me to see if I was really actually drinking her coffee and not secretly throwing it in the sink).
"Well, some people haven't been idle. Bruce and I were trying to hack into JARVIS' system."
"I know that I'm not exactly an expert, but I thought hacking into JARVIS was close to impossible."
"Close being the key word." Natasha smirked. When I was about to ask the obvious question of whether they had succeeded, Natasha held her hand up. "But we didn't need to hack into JARVIS. Tony granted us access to most of the software. We can look at the commands history, and I think we might be able to get JARVIS to work for us again using a guest account. We won't have access to everything because Tony Stark isn't really one to allow people into his personal business. But we have everything it takes to use the greatest software in the world." Natasha smiled.
"Oh- Okay." I said, confused. "So did Tony knew he would somehow come into danger and was he trying to steer us in the right direction to find him?" I asked, only mildly mesmerized by Tony's scary amount of brain cells despite all the alcohol he'd drunk in his life.
"Exactly." Bruce said in a fond and proud way and I think we were all starting to realize how much we were missing our textbook narcissist.
"Wow." I mumbled, "So something must have happened that night that convinced him that he needed to tell us how to find him." Natasha nodded, distracted by finding one of Tony's high-tech tablets. When she returned to my side, she showed me the command list. The list was featuring only the last 20 or so commands from an estimated million commands Tony had ever given to JARVIS. Natasha smiled and rubbed my shoulder gently, pointing to one command in particular. She hit the play button and we heard Tony's voice echoing through the room (I was strangely affected by hearing the sound of his beautiful voice again).
"JARVIS, make sure to keep track of mr Rogers' position, altitude, health and location at all times for me. Lose track of him for one second, and you will be donated to the University of Techonology and Energy management, are we clear?"
"I already feel sorry for slapping him." Natasha mumbled, then turned to me, "You are so lucky, Steve Rogers, for encountering love like this. I wish I had something like that." She sighed, and I was convinced that her eyes darted to Barton (still busy with cooking his damn bacon) for a split second.
"I feel kind of bad for not checking up on him now." I said, scrolling through the rest of the commands. There wasn't anything that stood out in particular, but I couldn't help but think that Tony was trying to tell us something. Why leave a hole in your software so that your friends can get into your system, and not include anything else but a list of commands?
"Don't be, we all thought he was just jerking around as usual. He didn't anything to suggest otherwise, so it was all on him, really." And maybe Natasha thought she was making an incredible amount of sense, but Tony had said something that suggested that the crap that had been coming out of his mouth had been nonsense. He had told me he loved me, and I was so angry at myself for taking that as an incentive to distrust the hurtful things he had said.
"We shouldn't have believed him. We should have tried to figure out what was wrong and helped him. You know he always tries to do things on his own."
"Steve, don't blame yourself for this. This was Tony's own, perhaps stupid, choice. All we can do now is follow his hints and track him down." I nodded, but wasn't entirely convinced. She was right, however. Since I had failed Tony before, or at least that is how I felt about it, I would do everything in my power to get him back. So I settled down on the couch with one of the tablets, looking around the command list and a few files containing documents Tony had been filing online on his private server. Thor served me some chocolate cake and a cup of steaming coffee and I went to work.
It was already starting to get dark when I decided to take a break. I had already thrown everything that I thought would not be of use in one of Tony's virtual bins (I was just starting to learn how to literally throw floating pixels into other floating pixels), and was left with well, a lot.
Barton and Natasha had retreated to their bedrooms (yes, plural, they had decided that whatever happened on our movie night should not be repeated and left it at that), Bruce was toying around in Tony's workshop, probably not someone who slept a lot and Thor had driven to Jane's a few hours ago.
Since everyone was gone, and I had expected to be alone, I startled when I heard a voice right behind me and turned around to wrap my hands around the insulters throat in reflex. What I saw was the face of no one other than Loki, and for a moment I was only seeing red. He had to be the cause of Tony's disappearance, and yet he had the guts to show up at the Avenger's tower like it was his right.
"I wouldn't do that, if I were you." He said in a sing-song tone, mocking smile spread across his face.
"Give me one reason why I shouldn't decapitate you right now." I spat, hands tightening around his throat threateningly.
"I have Tony." He shrugged, and I stared at him for a moment, frustrated beyond words that sentiment was indeed a chemical defect found on the losing side[1], in this case. I then let go, allowing the God to straighten out his clothes before flopping down next to me on the couch. "Oh, and I've still got the gauntlet of infinity, that makes every argument you have invalid." Loki grinned, and I wanted to wipe that smile of his face so badly, but he had Tony, so I couldn't.
"What have you come for, Loki? Have you come to tease us? To tell us that we'll never find him? Because you're wrong, we will find Tony and free him from your grasp." I said warningly, although I realized that I really wasn't in a position to threaten Loki with anything while that gauntlet was still pointed at my face.
"No.. I have come to make a deal. I will give you a hint on how to find Tony, and you will hand in your shield." And this was so incredibly difficult, because I didn't want to make the same mistake as Tony made. I didn't want to be one of those people who don't think things through and I wanted to ask help from my team-members. But when I thought about Tony somewhere, trapped, all human and defenseless, I felt like there wasn't any option for me but to agree.
It was only later, hours after the God had left with my shield that I realized that this must have been the exact same position Tony had been in, too. He had probably been told by Loki that I would get hurt if he didn't accept Loki's deal, and then he'd had to make sure that we wouldn't get in his way. All that just so he could save me and I suddenly saw the games Loki was playing.
And I felt so stupid because I had allowed myself to be part of his games. The only thing Loki had to do was threaten one of us with the possible pain of the other, and he could get anything he wanted from us, without even using the stupid glove or the tessaract.
I couldn't believe I had fallen for his schemes, and I didn't know how to play this, either. Because as long as Loki had Tony, he could make all the deals he wanted, and as long as he had the glove, he could get anything from Tony he wanted, too.
What I was mostly curious about was why he didn't just get it over with and kill us. And then something occurred to me. The last thing Loki needed to concur the Earth (beside his gauntlet, his magic, and his army), was something that Tony and I knew. Something planted inside our heads and that was why he couldn't just kill us. He would have to break us apart piece by piece, but now that I knew that he wasn't going to kill us anyhow, I at least knew that this was a game I could play if I wanted to.
And that gave me hope that maybe, just maybe we had a chance of winning against him.
[1]quote from Sherlock BBC
[A/N I hope this made sense? I mean if it doesn't, just tell me.]