[A/N

To anon 'Daisukino':

I'm happy to hear about your interesting uhm.. fetish? :P Thank you very much for your review. And yes, I ADORE Benedict Cumberbatch. Ever since I became obsessed with Sherlock, I have been doing little else than drooling over him.]

Part 22.

There was a lot to get used to, now that the tower was destructed. At first, I was afraid that we would split up, but it seemed that none of us really considered that the right option. Luckily for us, Tony had more than a few billions on his bank account that we would gladly spend for him. We had sent Natasha house hunting using the argument that she was a woman, and that she was good with houses and stuff. She had shot back that gays were supposedly just as good, and that's when Clint decided he'd had enough and shouted at us to stop stereo-typing, or he was going to put Natasha in the kitchen to make him a sandwich, and have me wear pink boa's.

Anyhow, the real problem was that the house we had in the end decided on buying had only 3 bathrooms. Which would have been enough, had we not been 5 completely different adults which all seemed to have a bad case of ADD.

"It's all Natasha's fault, she was in charge of buying a house." I complained when I was squished between Thor and Bruce while brushing my teeth. Both Natasha and Clint were having a shower, separately, so we had to brush our teeth with the three of us squished into a little cubicle. Bruce's arm hair was heavily irritating me while it scratched against my arm, and of course Thor was enriching his speech with large gestures and he almost knocked me out twice.

"We should have accompanied her! Such a task is not to be given to a woman." Thor said, arm waving theatrically, and I thought I almost lost my head, being able to duck just in time and in return getting pressed into Bruce. Which normally, wouldn't be a problem. But one, I wasn't wearing a shirt and two, I had seen Bruce naked on too many after-Hulking occasions that being this close to him shirtless could just not be not awkward.

So when everyone had finally brushed their teeth, showered and somewhat dressed themselves up for the night, it turned out that the walls and floors of the house were just a little too thin. Just thin enough for me to hear Thor's phone call with Jane in the other room, or Bruce's exited voice as he skyped with his new flame, Jenna. Or Natasha and Clint who were pretending to be scolding each other while really, every word that fell from their lips indirectly said I love you.

And back was the loneliness, and I would be willing to give anything in the world to have my sarcastic, addicted, self-destructing, smart-ass genius back.

The next morning, I woke up to find myself completely disorientated because of waking up somewhere that was no Tony's bed. It turned out that I was late again as I could already smell coffee and fresh bread.

The bathroom was, thankfully, not overly crowded, but I did almost slip over Natasha's spilled make-up remover and Thor's gigantic bar of soap he left lying around on the bathroom floor. So after making myself look semi-presentable, I went on my search for breakfast. Just follow the delicious bread smell!

When I finally found everybody in the kitchen, Thor had just started explaning the new seating-arrangements to the rest. They were looking very serious, though, so I wondered what was up.

"Since when is choosing a chair such serious busniess? I asked Natasha, putting an arm around her shoulders.

"No touching!" She hissed, shrugging my arm off. "Don't get too cocky now, eh?" She said warningly, for now semi-carefully removing my arm from her shoulders, and I didn't want to know what would have happened to it had chosen to leave it thre. There is only so much super-serum can do..

"You hugged me!" I exclaimed, pointing at her while recalling the interesting moment she had run up to me and hugged me.

"We were almost dying!" she shot back.

"Still, you did hug me!"

"OH, shut up, Cap." She waved her hand, dismissing the subject while I was not even half-way through teasing her!

"Thanos." Thor said later, when we were all sitting around the table, munching on our food. He was wiggling his eyebrows in such an exciting manner, that for a moment I thought they'd come off. Thor had mentioned this guy before. Once when explaning that that is whom Odinson got the gauntlet from ages ago and he mentioned them last time when we figured out Tony's location.

"Thanos?" we asked Thor in semi-unison after recovering from the anti-climactic declaration. Thor nodded excitedly, looking at us as if he expected us to know what kind of genius plan he had just come up with.

"Well?" Natasha asked impatiently, moving her hand in a circle to get him to explain everything.

"Wait," Thor raised his eyebrows, "You don't know who Thanos is? From the moon Titan? Avatar of Death? No?" Thor was starting to sound desperate when we all continued looking at him like he had just thrown his armour out of the window. He smiled at us. "I sometimes forget how little you know of the world in which you live." So basically, he ended up making us all feel like little ants that could be stepped upon at any moment, as Loki had once nicely put it.

It was at least 100 eye-rolls, an irritated Bruce, a dozen-or-so face palms and tens of head-desks later that Thor had finally explained everything.

"OK, so basically," Clint began, trying to sum it all up before he was rudely cut off by Thor who seemed to have learned exactly zero Earthly manners since he had begun living here.

"There is no 'basically' in this case, brother." He laughed, "This guy, this Thanos, he has the ability to end all life as you and I know it. To give him back his gauntlet would be to continue a centuries old power-play between moons and planets. It is insanity!"

"We could make a deal." Clint shrugged.

"I think there have been made too many dirty deals already." I spat, "Who says he will keep his word?"

"We will have to trust him." Clint answered uncertainly, "I mean we need to get Tony back and stop Loki before he has dealt too much damage and before he has enough control over that gauntlet to take over the Earth." Thor laughed again, and it seemed like every time Thor laughed, one of us ended up feeling stupid.

"You are thinking about Earth now? The small planet Midgard is of great importance to me too. But not important enough to risk the destruction of Asgard and other planets that Thanos could interpret as an enemy, just to save its population from oppression. We aren't thinking globally anymore, we are thinking universally."

"Oh- Oh so, so now you are offering up the entire race 'human' to, to that maniac?" Bruce spluttered angrily. "You have got to help us speak to him, Thor!" This made Thor think for a long while, probably wondering how bad Earth would be treated in the hands of his brother (or better said, how Jane would be treated in the hands of his brother).

"There isn't anything I can do, anyway. We need a powerful energy source and a portal to be able to travel to Titan. Preferably the tessarect, or the portal Heimdall used to patrol. We don't have either." Thor said, voice surprisingly soft compared to usually and shoulders hunched. "So basically," He mimicked Clint perfectly,

"This planet is doomed."

[A/N meh]