Disclaimer: I do not own Iron Man 2, Thor, or the Avengers, along with the characters, the quotes, and everything else associated with Marvel.
Apologizing for any spelling/grammar mistakes beforehand.
Chapter 27
They arrived at the Helicarrier around noon, New York time. The aircraft carrier floated on the ocean, dull shades of gray against the water's blue. The deck hummed with commotion. landing after landing of jets rubbed the runways raw, while the vertical-landing Quinjets simply fluttered down.
Natasha instructed Banner to stay put while she looked for Rogers and Coulson as instructed. Fury came on her comm. "Coulson here yet? My connection with him is gone for some reason."
"No, not yet," Natasha replied.
"Tell him to meet me at the bridge when he does. We're initiating target retrieval for the people taken, he'd want to be here. You come along, too."
Even if Fury hadn't insisted her presence, there was no way she'd bypass the opportunity. She contacted Coulson next. "I'm on the Helicarrier."
"Can you see our Quinjet? We're on the one that's landing. The 42V-6A."
Natasha headed for the aircraft in question. By the time she reached it, its passengers were coming out. Not a trace of doubt shadowed Coulson's face as it had that afternoon weeks ago, when he, Natasha, and Clint had huddled by that diner near Rogers' residence, watching the newly de-iced man walk and breathe within a conversational range yet doing nothing to initiate contact. A glowing mist of suppressed excitement now adorned Coulson's expression, and invisible strings of charged restlessness pulled the corners of his mouth into a permanent smile.
"Agent Romanoff, Captain Rogers," Coulson introduced.
"Ma'am," said Rogers.
"Hi," she said, then to Coulson: "They need you on the bridge, they're starting the face trace."
Coulson left. "See you there."
Natasha took a step closer to Rogers. She caught a waft of laundry detergent and leather when the wind blew. Rogers' arms hung stiff by his side, hands halfway to fists. With the sun beating over his face, he squinted at her, didn't know what to do with her, didn't know what to say.
She moved into a walk, and he immediately followed. "There was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice," she said. "Thought Coulson was gonna swoon. Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?"
He turned to her with a confused smile. "Trading cards?"
"They're vintage. He's very proud."
"He's... very enthusiastic. About... about..."
"You?" Natasha chuckled. "Coulson's alright. If you ever feel uncomfortable then tell him. He'll listen."
Rogers hmm'ed a reply, his attention now focused ahead. Banner was in sight, customarily playing tug-o-war with this hands and teetering around, looking at the maintenance crew.
"Dr. Banner," Rogers called. He held out his hand.
Banner turned. "Oh, yeah. Hi. They told me you'd be coming." He shook Rogers' hand.
Just then, Fury sounded in her ear. "What's going on out there, a meet-and-greet?"
"Coulson thought they'd do better to acquaint themselves first without S.H.I.E.L.D's interference." Natasha explained.
"S.H.I.E.L.D's interference? They're standing on a huge metal hunk of S.H.I.E.L.D. They're breathing S.H.I.E.L.D."
"I'll bring them in right away, director."
"Good. Make it quick, we're taking off."
Rogers and Banner were walking towards the edge of the deck, still conversing. Natasha followed them to inform, "Gentlemen, you may wanna step inside in a minute. It's gonna get a little hard to breathe."
A sudden spike of activity around them heralded his words. The Helicarrier shook as it prepared for flight. Ignoring her message, the two men strayed further to the edge.
"Is this a submarine?" Rogers asked.
"Really? They want me in a pressurized, submerged metal container?" Banner added.
The turbine-engine hybrids, shattering the gray glass of the ocean as they surfaced, contradicted their comments and doubts. Without the water to suppress their whirs and buzzes the noise exponentialized within seconds. Splashes of frothy water spewed onto the deck. The ground beneath them began to rise.
Banner laughed. "Oh, no. This is much worse."
"Director Fury is waiting." Natasha took a few steps closer. The nearest engine spun acrid winds of salt and oil that collided against her face and clothes and whipped back her hair.
Banner said a joke about Fury that she didn't catch. Rogers smiled, and the two turned around to face her. "Shall we, agent Romanoff?" Banner asked.
Walking inside the Helicarrier triggered memories, these were the same corridors she had taken Selvig through when she had first fetched him from New Mexico to S.H.I.E.L.D. Selvig, right. In Loki's possession now. No use brooding on a known fact, no use thinking about anyone; she had a job to do, an agent to be.
Natasha dropped them off at the side entrance to the bridge. To cue their arrival, she nodded to Fury, who paced on the elevated platform at the head of the operation, and set off to find a vacant control screen in the rows set out across the room. All occupied, as expected. Overhead Fury shouted commands that sent the seated agents' hands flying over their screens and the others darting like bees among the rows, buzzing in and out of exits. Maria Hill strode around to check progresses and re-issue orders. Lift-off required the most amount of human facilitation, and if Fury scheduled the face trace to now, she'd have to make do with speculating. There simply wasn't space for her.
With a quiet sigh, she walked along the rows against the wall and down the center, where the efforts concentrated on tracing S.H.I.E.L.D's lost members. The left side was all for Loki, the right wing for Selvig and a few others, and dead center was Clint and Blake. She glanced over the screens as she paced their aisle. No results yet.
Fury was now talking to Rogers and Banner at the head command station, overlooking the flurry of activity. She meandered towards them, making intermittent stops at different agents to track their progress.
"... our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the clear," Fury was saying.
"And where are you with that?" Banner asked.
Coulson chipped in. "We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cellphones, laptops. If it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us."
Natasha crouched next to the frontmost monitor and flicked the screen for statistics. 15% and counting, and just for the preliminary global search to reduce the number of potential matches. She diverted her focus from the picture of Clint next to it. "That's still not gonna find them in time," she said.
"You have to narrow the field. How many spectrometers do you have access to?" Banner asked.
"How many are there?" Fury returned.
"Call every lab you know, tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm based on cluster recognition; at least we could rule out a few places," Banner suggested. "Do you have somewhere for me to work?"
"Agent Romanoff?" Fury called. "Will you show Dr. Banner to his laboratory, please?"
Natasha rose from her kneeling position and gestured for Banner to follow her. "You're gonna love it, Doc. We got all the toys."
"Really? You have the Commodore 64?"
What was that? She frowned slightly. "I'm not sure..."
"Oooh." A shadow of amusement crept into his tone. "You're very young."
She set aside the unease under her skin from his comment and brought him to his lab, the location of which was mentioned in her brief. Once she dropped off a somewhat-impressed Banner, Natasha bumped into Coulson, who had waited outside the lab's doors. He held a blue duffel bag that he then dumped into her arms.
"I took some time to remodel your uniform. I have Barton's in my locker." He gestured with a limp hand to the bag. "I had a crew at P.E.G.A.S.U.S design a few new handgun models to update you with the Phase Two tech, too, but they didn't make it out when... you know..."
Natasha opened her mouth but couldn't say anything.
"Put it on. I want you to take Cap to Germany. You'll pilot with Rumlow."
"Did you find Loki?" She eyes snapped up.
"Yeah, and it's looking fishy, but we can't delay any longer."
"No, we can't." She squeezed the duffel bag against her chest.
Natasha found a bathroom to change into the suit. She pulled apart the drawstring on the bag. Inside rested the folded uniform, still the customary black as her last one. When she shook out the suit a miniature tranquilizer gun that he had bundled inside the fabric dropped with a hollow clang onto the floor.
She knelt to wrap her hand around the weapon. Holding the cool metal summoned Coulson's presence, and she could imagine him next to her, imagine the expression on his face.
They both knew that she was the only candidate to bring Clint back if they wanted to guarantee his well-being.
Natasha put on the new suit and slipped the tranquilizer into her belt.
In the hangar bay, Rogers waited by their Quinjet in the Captain America uniform history had dressed him in. His shield was on his back, his mask loose about the back of his neck. In the predominant blacks and grays of his surroundings he stood out like a target.
It was night-time when they arrived in Stuttgart, Germany, the location for Loki given to them hours ago before the flight. According to the satellite scans he had not moved from the addressed building, where a gala was taking place. Natasha ran surveys on the human activity there as they hovered high overhead, waiting for signs of disturbances.
"We can't just sit here and wait for something to go wrong," Rogers said. "Loki could have brainwashed everyone in there or used another approach that wouldn't show up on the screens. It might be too late even now as we speak."
Natasha eyed the scans with tight fists. If only she could drop down and see the situation herself. But her place as co-pilot chained her to the Quinjet, as with Rumlow, and Rogers with that eye-catching outfit had no use lurking among a crowd. No other agents came on board with them, and they had no backup team. The three of them realized and brooded over this critical flaw in their circumstance, and the stuffy scent of why-did-we-not-bring-another-agent filled the air.
"Captain, you can sit co-pilot for me, I'm not really doing anything other than assist in emergencies," Natasha said. "I can go in and find Loki before he does anything dangerous or at least notify you on what's already happened." Her fingers ran along her seatbelt until they met the clasp, but Rogers' objection paused her.
"We had direct orders from Fury." Rogers crossed his arms and frowned, but his eyes flicked from the data screens to Natasha, out the jet's front window and back.
"You think he'd care about something this minor in the grand scheme of things?" She asked. "I've done worse than ditching my agenda, we'll be fine. Plus, Coulson didn't assign me the pilot for a reason. So I can get out if needed be."
"Well..."
Rumlow spoke up. "Agent Romanoff knows what she's doing. If anything goes wrong down there she can contact you to join the fun with Loki. I can manage this baby bird fine." He patted the side of the jet.
Rogers uncrossed his arms and swung them by his side. "Sounds like a plan, then."
Natasha was reaching for a parachute from the wall compartments when Rumlow's sudden bark of curses reined her attention. She rushed to his side to find the screens, dark with low human activity meer seconds ago, stolen by a red rash that plagued across the digital map. They were too late. Something had happened.
"Scratch that, Cap. All yours." Natasha threw the parachute behind her in Rogers' direction, but it was the thud of the heavy bag on the floorboards that replied to her. She turned around. A blast of chilling wind replaced where Rogers had stood a moment ago. The back of the jet gaped wide open.
"Shit. He used the emergency lever," Rumlow said, and pressed a button to close the ramp.
Natasha reclaimed her seat at co-pilot, and together, they swung the jet closer to the red patches on the map.
As abrupt as the redness had appeared it had faded away. "Captain?" Natasha called, adjusting her comm. "Can you give us an overview?"
"I'm getting there. Two more blocks." A few seconds later: "Bring the Quinjet closer. A lot closer. Loki's out in the open. There's like, five of him."
Rumlow snorted. "Five, huh. What the hell."
They flew fast, and they flew low. Low enough that when they arrived where the coordinates laid, the buildings, the lights, the people—hundreds of them—looked nothing short of shocking. Rogers parted the ocean of crouched down bodies towards a green and black clad figure ahead of him who held a stick glowing with blue energy in a hand—no different from what the Tesseract emitted. Natasha flicked a switch on the control boards above her head to activate the public address system. Rumlow lowered a machine gun from the belly of the jet.
"Loki, drop the weapon and stand down," she commanded.
A blue beam hurled toward them. They deflected in time with a violent jerk on the jet controls. Rogers kept Loki occupied from then on. Natasha took the time to reposition the Quinjet. On the ground, the kneeling crowd scattered in screams. The blue blur of Rogers' suit whizzed and clashed with green and gold.
"The guy's all over the place," Natasha muttered.
Rumlow huffed in brittle humor. "At least there's not five of them."
Even with one, Loki already had Rogers tossed like a rag into the air a few times. Right now they were matched. Unless they had reinforcements on their side, this could drag out, and time automatically favored the god. Natasha took the machine gun controller from Rumlow and tried to re-aim when—
"Agent Romanoff, you miss me?"
The images on the screen jerked and contorted to a blaring PA SYSTEM OVERRIDE. AC/DC's "Shoot To Thrill" followed without a break in the beat, piercing from the Quinjet's sound system. Despite her recent efforts to avoid Stark, Natasha smiled.
A ball of orange light trailing gray smoke passed under the jet. From it two more orange beams blasted into a frozen-in-place Loki, and sent him crashing to the ground. The Iron Man suit rose in a confetti serenade of glowing sparks. By some stationery threat, Loki did not retaliate, but remained where he had fallen.
Rumlow directed the jet to land. Stark hauled Loki to his feet by his collar. Rogers retrieved the golden stick—a scepter, now that she got a closer look—from where it had been flung beside a stone pillar.
The ramp lowered. Stark pushed an oddly compliant Loki into the closest seat and strapped him in. Natasha shifted in her seat to look. Black leather, green cape. The gold aura around Loki had faded away. Shrouded in the shadow of the jet's interior he resembled a dark smudge on a piece of paper. Long black hair sleeked away from his bone-white face. This man, alien, god, whatever, had taken the Tesseract. Taken Clint. Oh, how she wanted to throw him into an interrogation room until he had blabbered every dirty scheme he had planned, but Coulson calling him the God of Mischief stilled the enmity tossing in her veins.
The mask on Iron Man came off, and there Stark stood, his eyes on Natasha passive. He opened his mouth to say something, but Rogers emerged from behind him, pushing pass with Loki's scepter in hand.
"Let's get out of here," Rumlow said beside her.
They had flown deep into the snowy-capped Alps when the first rumbles of thunder threatened. For the crew on board, the sound mocked their silence, drilled holes into the emptiness where speech should fill and into everyone's eardrums, writhing to their brains to warn about the tension abound. Stark was staring at her. She could see it reflected on the front windows. He knew that she knew, and that insight stiffened her posture so that her body wouldn't conform and relax into her seat.
"I see you're over France." Fury's voice cut into her ear, the first human voice since Loki and Stark had joined them. "How's my boy?"
"Surrendered easily enough when Stark showed up," she reported. "Too easy."
"Then why didn't anyone go after Barton and his men? Don't think we've won this round, Romanoff. They still got what they needed."
"Barton was there?" Her voice dropped. "No one told me."
"Too late now. Just another bunch of loose ends we need to figure out. Loki. He saying anything?"
"Not a word."
"Just get him here. We're low on time."
Her conversation affected the others, and Steve began murmuring not long after. "I don't like it," he said.
"What, Rock of Ages giving up so easily?" Stark jumped in.
"I don't remember it being ever that easy. That guy packs a wallop." Rogers reflected Natasha's earlier thoughts.
"Still, you are pretty spry, for an older fellow. What's your thing? Pilates?"
"What?"
"It's like calisthenics. You might have missed a couple things, you know, doing time as Capsicle."
Rogers was silent for a moment, then he started again. "Fury didn't tell me he was calling you in."
"Yeah, there's a lot of things Fury doesn't tell you."
Why did she hear that everywhere lately?
A nearby charge of thunder and lightning split the night sky and jolted the jet. What remained from Stark and Rogers' soured conversation came to an abrupt stop. Except this time the famished roar of thunder rushed to fill the empty space.
"Where's this coming from?" Natasha asked.
Another crackling shriek from outside. Another branch of lightning ripped. Another hesitant second of silence, and Rogers spoke. "What's the matter, scared of a little lightning?"
"I'm not overly fond of what follows." Loki pronounced his first words since his capture.
The chaos crawled louder. Closer. Until it had reached its peaking point and the jet dropped a few feet and staggered, thrown off-course by an impressive weight cannoned into the top of the jet. Stark's and Rogers' blurred reflections darted to life on the front window. Together with Rumlow, Natasha ran an analysis on the damage done and struggled to re-balance their jet to the winds. If Loki had this sort of allies on his side, they'd have a hard time just getting him to the Helicarrier.
The hiss of the ramp unlocking interrupted the boom of the thunder. Stark's figure retreated and dimmed in the glass.
"What are you doing?" Rogers shouted.
An audible skirmish of metal against metal chased his question. A third figure emerged into sight, or what sight she had while concentrating on routing them out of the clouds. Stark hit the floor. The strange figure plucked Loki from his seat. Then they vanished. Jumped off the jet. Natasha turned to see the fray but caught nothing more than a flap of red cape, billowing with Loki's black robes, shrinking with distance from scraps of fabric to a dot, then nothing.
Stark returned to his feet. "Now there's that guy." His voice had mechanized.
"Another Asgardian?" Natasha asked.
"That guy's a friendly?" Rogers.
"Doesn't matter," Stark answered. "If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract's lost."
"Stark. We need a plan of attack," Rogers said.
"I have a plan: Attack."
In a firework of light Stark shot out of the jet. Rogers couldn't hold still, either. He grabbed a pack, hoisted and strapped it on.
"I'd sit this one out, Cap," Natasha said.
"I don't see how I can."
"These guys come from legends, they're basically gods."
"There's only one God, ma'am." Rogers reached for his shield. "And I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that."
He jumped.
Another out. Now it was just her and Rumlow.
She fiddled with uncooperative fingers for the controls linking her communication to Fury. Thor was not on S.H.I.E.L.D's guest list, at least to her knowledge, and she was certain the intruder to be him. She saw the pictures. Red cape and tall and that lightning show. "Director Fury, we've bumped into someone."
"Literally?" Fury's voice held an exasperated lilt.
"Yes and no. It's Thor. He grabbed Loki and jumped our bird. Rogers and Stark went after them."
"Bring 'em all in. They'll sort out that they're all on the same side."
"I don't think they're aware of that, director."
"Well what do you want me to do? I need you in the air as the anchor. Rumlow's not competent. Stark's got a bug in my communication and I can't get in a word with him or Rogers. He's tuned it to a one-way. If you hadn't reached me first I couldn't have contacted you at all. All we gotta do is sit back and let them rough things out."
Sure enough, short of a quarter-hour and a disturbing fluctuation of energy readings in the area later, a dot of light broke the murky darkness of the trees. Another dot, duller, followed. When they landed with clangor onto the ramp it was Stark holding Rogers by the shield, Thor anchoring Loki by the base of his cape. The two sets of people dropped into the chairs on opposite sides, without a word, but with a lot of noise.
For the rest of the flight the passengers conversed through metallic clinks and pacing footsteps, rough breathing and four sets of eyes glancing, avoiding the others.
Once they arrived at the Helicarrier, a pack of security circled Loki to escort him away. Rumlow directed the rest of the jet's crew for a meeting with Fury.
Stark walked behind Natasha, Thor and Rogers in front. At a quieter part of the corridors a cold metal hand closed around her upper arm and hauled her into an empty lab room. Stark's eyes shone cold, rusted iron.
"What are you doing with the faux Jericho?" His ground his question between his teeth.
"Nothing. I've never even seen it."
"Then what did you plan to do with it?"
"Stark, I'm on S.H.I.E.L.D orders. We won't-"
"Which gives me twice the reason for suspicion."
Natasha wrenched her arm from his grasp. "How did you even know it was my assignment?"
"Because I was suspicious. Still is. And if-"
"Look, S.H.I.E.L.D has no wayward motives regarding that bomb. I was sent to retrieve the weapon from the wrong hands. Nothing more."
Stark scoffed. "Yeah. The wrong hands. S.H.I.E.L.D knows I'm capable of getting Jericho back by myself, yet why are they so insistent on getting ahead of me?"
"Stark Industries doesn't need another blow to its reputation and you're doing exactly that by playing detective adventures around the globe."
"Why the hell would S.H.I.E.L.D care about me? They care about my suit. They care about my stuff. I looked you up, Miss Black Widow, through all those trap doors and dead-ends S.H.I.E.L.D set up. You might be a world-class spy but you're a blind dog to the shit stinking right under your nose. I'm gonna get to the bottom of this, Romanoff. I will not fly dark."
The gears on his armor hissed and spat as he left her to rejoin the others, but he ran into Coulson.
"Stark, I need you for a minute." Coulson said.
"Oh, so you need me. Not the suit? Are you sure? Go ask Fury if he's sure."
"Ms. Potts is on video. I'm holding the call for you."
Stark shut his mouth and followed Coulson away.
Natasha barely registered their exchange. Her mind was fixed elsewhere.
Resourcefulness stood as one of S.H.I.E.L.D's most upheld pillars, she'd known from the beginning; but maybe it should never have been categorized as such.
This was hoarding.
Thanks for reading!