[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Tony attacked the Mark V.
He'd commandeered Fury's engineering labs and chased three protesting SHIELD guys out. They could find other workspaces, and Tony needed these specialized tools.
He took a soldering gun to the cracks in the armor, creating ugly but effective repair jobs. He just needed a sealed carapace to make it to the tower, then he could retrieve the Mark VII and take Loki down.
Tony was going to told a repulsor to Loki's head. He was going to either kill the Asgardian or throw him in a hole so deep he'd never crawl out. He was going to avenge Phil Coulson, who'd been more Pepper's friend than Tony's but a friend and a good man nevertheless. He was going to get payback for those people in Stuttgart and for Maria Hill.
Tony knew he wasn't a hero. But maybe you didn't have to be to get things done.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Clint knew he shouldn't be here. He should be in the bridge, helping Fury coordinate the repairs - he'd do a better job than Lang, that was for damn sure. But he wasn't. And that was a problem.
Then again, this was Maria. Clint's friend and - colleague, although neither word encompassed what Maria was to him. They'd gone through the SHIELD academy together and jockeyed for top spot the whole time. The competition had spawned some friction at first, but once they got out of the academy and weren't in the exact same stream all the time, they'd gotten closer. Maria's ambition and calculation were great complements for Clint's more easygoing wing-it attitude; she focused on rising in the administration, where Fury recognized her potential and took her under his wing while Clint made a name for himself as a highly effective field agent, albeit one with a track record of ditching orders. They worked well together, and Maria'd overseen plenty of Clint and Natasha's ops over the years.
Now she was lying unconscious and strapped to a gurney, sweating buckets and occasionally twisting and mumbling restlessly. Needless to say, Clint was concerned.
To hell with Fury and his orders. Clint was staying right here until he knew whether Maria would be all right.
He wiped her forehead, realized that his water pitcher was almost empty, and went to refill it.
When he stepped back into the room, Maria was sitting halfway upright, body rigid as a tree and wide eyes staring at him.
"Maria," he said, setting down the pitcher. "It's okay. You're gonna be fine."
"You know that?" she whispered, laughing mockingly. "Is that what you know?"
"Yeah," he said firmly.
Maria closed her eyes and slumped back down, shuddering. "I have to flush him out."
"You're fine. It's fine. We have time."
"No," she said, turning to look at him again. Her expression was more normal this time, a trace of the focused, driven, intense woman he knew and - cared about reappearing. Clint hid his relief. "He's going to make his move soon. Today."
"Do you know where?" Clint asked.
She shook her head. "He didn't… I didn't need to know. They didn't tell me."
"Do you remember… much?" Clint asked.
Maria was trembling now, he saw, trembling all over. "You don't know what it's like, Clint. To be… unmade. To have someone else go in and… write over everything you are."
"I do."
Both Clint and Maria flinched, turning to stare at Natasha.
She stood in the doorway of the recovery room. "You don't know who you are anymore. You don't fully trust yourself; you always wonder if one day you'll let down your guard and there the controls are again, waiting to take you over. You remember being controlled, being someone you're not, wanting things you don't and shouldn't want, and it terrifies you."
Maria was staring at Natasha. "Does it… does it ever get better?"
Natasha smiled faintly. "I find that revenge helps."
"I suppose if I stuck a knife in Loki, I'd - sleep better, I suppose," Maria said.
Natasha stepped around to her other side. She and Clint started undoing the restraints.
Clint didn't know what to do with this new development. Natasha and Maria had always had a thin layer of I-don't-fully-trust-you sitting in between them, which was why Clint usually went in for operational briefings. Maria couldn't get past Natasha's past and Tasha knew it.
He really, really hoped this was a good sign, and that Maria wouldn't do what Maria often did after someone saw her vulnerable: shut down, shut them out, and act colder than ever. Tasha wouldn't take that well. She didn't bare herself like she'd just done lightly.
In fact, Clint had a sneaking suspicion that she'd done it for him.
Maria stood up slowly, testing her limbs, and winced. "I'm sore. And I need a change of clothes."
"Here." Tasha grabbed a backpack from the floor outside the small room. "Tactical suit and basic toiletries. Go change."
"What now?" Maria asked.
Natasha quickly summarized the situation, softening nothing and leaving nothing out, a proper soldier's report. Clint saw the news of Coulson's death hit Maria like a blow - Phil had been like a father to her - and how she squared her shoulders and bore it.
Everyone in this room was made of steel inside.
"We don't know what's going on," Clint said when Tasha was done. "We can't talk to anyone until communications come back online, which means we also can't track the cube. So… just be ready for anything, I guess."
"I'll go change," Maria said. "And… freshen up, if I can." She took two steps toward the attached bathroom and then hesitated, glancing at Tasha. "I… Thank you, Agent Romanoff."
Natasha raised an eyebrow. "Clint here once told me that friends use first names. Maria."
Maria nodded once, stepped into the bathroom, and closed the door. Clint heard the shower start up a second later.
His relief was crippling. His Maria was back, and she and Tasha were allying for the first time in all the years the three of them had worked together.
Now if only they could find Loki and wreak a little havoc, the better Clint would feel.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Natasha slid a sideways look at Clint, taking in the absence of the tension that had gripped him since Hill - Maria - had been compromised. She was… happy for him, she realized. He cared a lot more about Maria, and Maria for him, than either of them would admit. Maybe now they'd get their chance.
Which meant she couldn't take him with her to go after her Soldier.
Natasha realized that with a sick feeling that she hated instantly, because it meant she'd come to care . She'd found someone she would miss.
With a lurch, she realized she'd miss more than just Clint. Prickly Maria, cocky Stark, principled Rogers, the unassuming Banner - they were all kindred spirits, of a kind. All of them screwed up and bitter and broken so many times that they'd learned to rely only on themselves and a very few, very trusted companions. It was an uncomfortable epiphany.
Perhaps when she had her Soldier back, she'd keep in touch with these people. She didn't think they would continue working for SHIELD. She and her Soldier would go their own way and do as they wished and paint Russia red with the blood of everyone who ever used them and manipulated them and kept them apart.
A small smile grew on her lips at the thought.
"How'd you get her back?" she asked.
Clint glanced over. They sat side-by-side on the bed. "Cognitive recalibration. Apparently if you hit someone really hard on the head, you knock a couple things loose. Like creepy mind control."
"Good job," Natasha said.
"Thanks."
"We've got to stop him," she muttered.
Clint laughed hollowly. "Who's we?"
"Whoever's left."
"So not Banner."
Natasha shook her head.
"I'm going to fight an alien god with a bow and arrow," Clint muttered.
"You sound like you again," Natasha said.
Clint looked at her. "Huh?"
"Since you got Maria back. You were a little… off."
"You don't sound like you, though."
Natasha gave him a questioning glance.
"We're not soldiers, we're spies," Clint elaborated. "You especially. Now you want to wade into what's probably going to be one hell of a war. Tasha, you're a black ops agent. If you go out there you're violating every rule in your rulebook. What did Loki do to you?"
"I'm surprised you think I care about the rule book," Natasha said.
Clint waited.
"Fine," she said irritatedly. "He hurt you when he took Maria, and by extension me."
"I didn't know you cared," he said.
Natasha sighed. "You're in an exclusive club."
"Card-carrying member of the Natasha Actually Likes Me club," Clint said, suddenly laughing.
Natasha smirked. "I wouldn't go that far."
He swatted her on the shoulder.
Neither his smile nor hers lasted long, though. Natasha was torn between this fight and thoughts of her Soldier, trying not to think about what might've been done to her in the intervening years, or where he might be.
She registered that the shower had turned off sometime in their conversation. "Maria'll be done soon."
Clint sighed. "And then we go find whoever's left."
"Me and Stark."
They looked up and saw Steve standing at the door.
"How many interruptions can a man get?" Clint complained.
Steve blinked. "I'm sorry, am I intruding?"
"No, come in," Natasha said. "Banner?"
"No sign of him. Stark's convinced Loki's going to use the arc reactor at Stark Tower to power his device. We're going to suit up and go check it out."
"I thought the Iron Man suit was damaged," Natasha said.
Steve shrugged. "I trust Stark to get it working."
"When do we leave?" Clint asked.
"Now. Fury's distracted and he'll saddle us with minders who'll only slow us down if he knows." Steve gave them a hard look.
Natasha kept her face unreadable. "You're asking us to willingly and consciously go behind our superior's back."
"Yes."
Clint snorted. "I'll admit this is not what I expected of you, Cap."
"Don't call me that," Steve said. "Captain America… he died in the ice. He gave everything he had and then some for this country. I'm still figuring out exactly who I am in this new century, but it's not that noble Captain who always followed his orders to the letter. I've got my own right and wrong." He stopped. "Sorry. Didn't mean to start speechifying."
"Touching," Maria said, hauling open the bathroom door.
Natasha and Clint both tensed. Natasha's hands strayed to the shockstick at her belt. Maria had always been a stickler for the rules. If she tried to shut this down or go running to Fury...
Maria squinted at Steve.
"Bravo," drawled a fifth voice, and Tony Stark stepped around the corner of the doorway, clapping sardonically and kicking it shut behind himself. "I think I like this version of Stephen Rogers a hell of a lot better than the one in dear old Dad's bedtime stories. So." He swept his eyes over Natasha, Clint, and Maria. "Is anyone gonna be a tattletale today?"
"I agree with Steve," Natasha said, standing. "Playing by Fury's rules hasn't worked out so great this far."
Clint shrugged, eyes on Maria.
Fury's left-hand woman - well, right hand now that Coulson was gone - blew out a sigh. "I suppose you have a point. And you really should have someone responsible along for the ride."
Clint smiled instantly. "Kay, that's everyone, let's go. How're we getting there? Jet? Submarine? Do we all get Iron Man suits? Or is Thor gonna carry us in a monkey chain?"
Maria snorted. Clint shot her a gratified look.
"Jet," Steve said, then froze, staring at Stark. "Stark, are there cameras in here?"
"Probably. Nick Fury is like Exhibit A of People Who Rely On Paranoia. But no worries, I always carry a jammer on me and it's been going since I showed up to eavesdrop on your speech. Excellent performance, by the way; you should sell tickets. Speak freely, old man."
Steve rolled his eyes. "All right. We're taking a jet, Stark his suit. We'll meet at the Tower unless we get there after the fight starts - we're kind of dead in the water here."
"Radio updates?" Maria asked.
Stark shook his head. "I had JARVIS get me a report from the bridge on my way here. Loki's virus-" Maria winced- "seems to have turned our own jamming fields back on us. No comms, no radio, nothing for eight miles out. We've gotta get out of that range and hopefully recall Jane's jet. Right now… Nothing."
"Then let's go," Clint said.
"Hold on." They all looked at Maria. She spoke slowly, as if weighing each word before it left her mouth. "Fury, Coulson, and I instituted a fail-safe in the hangar. No jets can launch unless there's express permission from the bridge. The doors won't open."
"Stark, can you get around it?" Steve asked.
"JARVIS?"
Stark's AI spoke from his master's StarkPhone. "I believe I can modify the code used on the Pentagon and imitate a bridge release for the Hangar Three bay doors within one hour. Will that suffice?"
"Should be fine," Stark said.
"Suit up, then. Meet at Hangar 3 in an hour. Get there without being seen on camera if possible, although in this chaos I doubt anyone will notice." Steve looked around at this group of people that had somehow, some way, become something resembling a team. Natasha looked at Clint and Maria; all three of them stood to lose or endanger their positions at SHIELD over this, but not a hint of hesitation showed on anyone's face.
"Looks like we're all sick of following the rules," Stark said snidely, reaching for the door. His comment appeared mostly aimed at Steve. "Welcome to the dark side."
Natasha caught Clint's eye roll in her peripheral vision as she followed Stark out the door.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
"Sir, we have an unidentified launch from hangar bay 3."
Fury whipped around and stared at the understandably nervous third-year agent. "What did you just say?"
"Th-there's been an unauthorized launch from Hangar 3," the agent stammered.
"Get me eyes on that bird!" Fury snapped. Inside he was cheering.
The chaos around him intensified. Slightly. Seconds later, a video feed from one of the escorts popped up on Fury's screen.
He would never get tired of being the one giving the orders.
"It appears… that Captain Rogers, Agent Black-" Fury smirked a bit at Romanoff's code name- "and Agents Barton and Hill have hijacked a jet."
" Hill?" He'd been expecting the rest of them to make a run for it, but- "What the motherfucking hell does she think she's doing?"
"I don't know, sir, but that's definitely her in the cockpit."
Fury gritted his teeth. He had wanted to keep Agent Hill. She was a brilliant woman and they'd worked well together for years.
But any war has its casualties. And the rest of it was still going according to plan.
Fury set his jaw and ordered the escorts to stand down, let the jet leave. Lang questioned him. "That's the Avengers," Fury snapped. "Focus on the important things, like maybe getting our engines back online!"
"Yes, sir!"
He watched Lang jog away. Hill was an idiot, and she'd made her choice. Odds were she would die in the firefight to come. And if she didn't?
Depending on what she saw, if she survived, Fury might have to eliminate her himself.
New York, United States
April, 2011
Tony skimmed one building after another, his suit almost scraping on the glass of some corporate high-rise, and aimed for Stark Tower. Inside the suit, his eyes were narrowed and his jaw clenched. That Loki had taken his tower, his masterpiece and hard work, and turned it to this purpose -
It was galling.
Sure enough, when the top of the building came into view, there was Selvig, working around a complicated device with the Tesseract at its heart. As Tony noted the separate components of the device but even with the aid of JARVIS he couldn't quite determine how it all worked, which was unfortunate, because he was deathly curious.
A beam of blue energy shot from the top of the device into the sky.
Too late.
"Selvig!" he shouted. "Shut it down!"
"It's too late to stop it," Selvig said, smiling manically up at Tony. "He wants to show us something! Something beautiful! A new universe!"
"Ohhh-kay, you sound like a cultie." Tony raised his hands and blasted the device.
He was hurled backwards, ears ringing, fighting to stabilize the suit.
"Owww," Tony complained.
"Sir, the shield is composed of pure energy. It's unbreakable."
"Yeah, noticed," Tony growled, brushing sparks off his arm. Selvig had been tossed aside by the blast and wasn't moving, but the Tesseract and the device sat unharmed. "Plan B."
He glared at his battered suit and dropped thruster output, falling to the landing pad.
"The Mark 7 is not ready for deployment-"
"Then skip the spinning rims, we're on the clock," Tony snapped.
As he landed, the pad splintered beneath his feet and began to remove his suit piece by piece. Tony stepped through the gauntlet but paid little attention. He'd done this dozens of times, and his focus was taken up by the smirking idiot with a god complex down below on Tony's balcony, strutting like he owned the damn tower.
Tony resisted the urge to clench his fists. He might be just a human in his thirties, but he was far from normal, and it was time to teach Loki that he might've forcefully taken over this tower but it would never be his.
And Tony also had to find Pepper.
"JARVIS, get me a lock on Pepper," he murmured.
JARVIS spoke to Tony's earpiece. "Ms. Potts was last recorded on the corporate level, half an hour ago."
"Lewis and Foster?" They hadn't been able to raise the Quinjet on the radio, and the younger women's last known destination had been Stark Tower.
"Hangar logs on the roof show they landed two hours ago. They appear on the camera feeds en route to their rooms."
"Get messages to their rooms," Tony said softly, and stepped into the building.
He descended the stairs to the bar and the homing bracelets behind it. Loki paced slowly into the lower level, eyes fixed on Tony.
"Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity," Loki said with a smirk.
"Uh, actually, I was planning to threaten you." Tony grabbed a bottle of Scotch and poured himself two ounces.
"You should have left your armor on for that."
Tony shrugged and took a drink. "Yeah, it's seen a bit of mileage. Drink?"
"Stalling me won't change anything," Loki said, still with that haughty smirk. Tony supposed it wasn't too different from his own self-satisfied default expression, but then again he wasn't genocidal. Jury was still out on the "crazy" front.
"No, no, no, threatening!" Tony said, and poured himself another ounce. "No drink? You sure?"
"The Chitauri are coming," Loki said. "Nothing you can do will change that. What have I to fear?"
"The Avengers," Tony said, swirling his glass.
Loki looked puzzled.
He shrugged again. "That's what we call ourselves. Kinda like a team."
"Yes," Loki said. "I've met them."
Self-assured little bastard. "Yeah, well takes us a while to get any traction…" Tony held Loki's eyes and slipped the bracelets on behind the top of the bar. "But let's do a head count here. Your brother, the demigod-" Loki made a face- "a supersoldier, a man with breathtaking anger management issues, a couple of master assassins - and you, genius, you've pissed off every one of them."
Satisfaction crossed Loki's face. "That was the plan."
"Shitty plan."
Was that a subtle nod? Tony narrowed his eyes and started down to the lower level. There was some sort of conversational subtext here that he was missing.
"I have an army."
"We have a Hulk."
Loki arched a brow. "I thought the beast had wandered off."
Tony briefly, briefly allowed himself to wonder where Banner was and if he'd show. "You're missing the point," Tony snapped. "There's no throne here. There's no version of this where you come out on top. Maybe your army comes and maybe it's too much for us, but guess who's going to take the blame?" He fixed Loki with a glare. "We might not be able to defend the Earth, but you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it."
"How will your friends have time for me," Loki said, stepping closer, "when they're too busy fighting you?"
Tony felt his eyes widen and tried to step back, but he was too slow. The scepter pressed into his shirt.
And stopped against the arc reactor with a clink .
They both watched the power fade.
Loki did it again, harder, pinning Tony in place with a viselike grip on his bicep. Same result.
"This usually works," Loki said.
Tony made a face. "Well, you know, performance issues - not uncommon -"
Loki's face went from calm to wrathful so fast Tony blinked. Right before the Asgardian grabbed Tony around the throat and threw him across the room. "You will all fall before me," Loki snarled.
Tony choked out, "JARVIS, any time now!"
Loki stormed over and seized Tony again just as he was getting back to his feet.
"Deploy," Tony said, and then Loki threw him out the window.
Tony thanked his stars for the martial arts training he'd been doing for years. It was the only thing that kept him functioning through the adrenaline and fear: he curled into a ball and took the brunt of the impact with a blow that left bruises all down his left side but hopefully no broken bones, and then spread out into a skydiver's fall.
Wind howled across his face. He couldn't breathe, couldn't see; tears streamed from his eyes and he squinted them almost all the way shut. There was no sound but the wind but a glance aside caught a flicker of red light near his bracelet.
Half a second later, cool metal wrapped around his wrists.
Tony fell, and fell, and the suit folded itself around him, and with each shifting scale of iron and gold alloys, Tony's heart settled a bit more.
Here, at least, he was in control.
The ground filled his field of vision when the faceplate locked into place. Tony instantly whipped himself around and gave full power to thrusters, stopping his descent feet above the pavement and shooting upwards with a roar.
The Mark VII was even better than he'd anticipated.
Loki was just picking himself up off the floor when Tony drew level with the busted window. One more thing for Loki's tab. The suit must've hit the Asgardian on its way out, which gave Tony no small amount of pleasure.
Loki looked at Tony, scepter in hand and perfectly still. Tony had to admit he cut a majestic figure standing there with that terrifying helmet and the scepter and all the armor.
"There's one more person you pissed off," Tony snarled, and raised a hand. "His name was Phil."
He blasted Loki in the chest.
The Asgardian flew backwards and slammed into the bar.
Poetic justice, bitch, Tony thought.
That was when the sky tore open.
Tony immediately shot backwards through the air, away from the tower, to get a better view. The beam of blue Tesseract energy was rippling and rumbling and slowly expanding into a disk that shredded apart across the middle, revealing a stunning view of stars and nebulae that was unfortunately ruined by the alien craft that came through it by the dozen, shooting at the city below.
"Right," Tony said, slightly dazed. "Army."
But he couldn't meet it. Not quite yet.
Tony dropped along the outside of the tower, following JARVIS' directions. Pepper's rooms were… were…
"Stark!" Rogers' voice crackled through the comms link in his helmet. "What's the situation?"
"What, did you stop for drive through?" Tony snapped. "Where are you?"
"Ten minutes out."
"I'm looking for Pepper. There's an army pouring out of the sky. Hurry."
"Leave off the search," Steve snapped.
Tony kept looking. JARVIS reported no signs of Pepper, or of Foster and Lewis. "Rogers - Steve -"
"Look, I know you want to find Pepper," Romanoff broke in. "But you need to go deal with the army first. Stark Tower is probably the safest place in the city right now. Loki will be focused on us, and the Chitauri won't bust it down, not with the Tesseract on top."
"Fine," Tony breathed. He couldn't tear through the whole tower anyway; there was no time. "Fine. Copy. I'll go blow something up; I've heard it's therapeutic."
He muted their line and ordered Jarvis to keep a running scan through the tower for Pepper, Foster, or Lewis. Tony had a soft spot for the astrophysicist and her sarcastic friend, and Pepper - he didn't know what he'd do if he lost her.
JARVIS put the blinking light indicating the ongoing scan in the bottom left of Tony's HUD, and Tony fired his thrusters to the max, shooting skyward to meet the coming army.
New York, United States
April 2011
Thor almost fell out of the sky when he saw the destruction raining down on the Midgardian city.
He was no stranger to battlefields, but this was something beyond almost all the wars in which he'd ever fought. The enemy showed no restraint, no strategy; they fired at citizens and fighters alike and toppled buildings with their strange craft. Thor tore apart one such craft with a lightning bolt and smashed several others as he flew, but it was useless: there were too many.
Loki. Loki was doing this. Loki had brought this to the peaceful realm Thor so loved.
He'd managed to find his way back to the SHIELD airship, where the one-eyed Fury had informed him that a city known as New York was under attack, although the airship itself had no ability to move and so would not be there until after the battle. Thor had stopped long enough to orient himself and find sustenance - battles required significant energy expenditure - and as soon as he'd eaten his fill from the Midgardian ship's "cafeteria," he'd used Mjolnir to launch himself into the sky. Thor navigated by the sun as Fury had instructed, keeping it roughly to his left and flying in the direction known as "south," following the coastline.
It hadn't been long before he felt the energy pulse as the portal opened, and he pushed himself even faster.
And there on the horizon was Stark Tower, with the blue Tesseract bolt shooting up into the sky, Chitauri pouring from it like flies descending on a carcass.
Thor aimed for the Tower now, knowing that's where Loki would be with his penchant for grandstanding and his desire to see the battle unfold.
Sure enough, there was the silhouette of the man who'd once been his brother, lean and dangerous against the skyline.
"Loki!" Thor bellowed, landing hard. "Shut down the Tesseract!"
"There's no stopping it," Loki snarled back. Alarm rang in Thor's head. Loki looked deranged. "There is only the war!"
"So be it," Thor growled, and raised Mjolnir.
Loki attacked with a simple overhead blow. Thor blocked and returned with a heavy strike, but Loki moved with that strange whirling fighting style that Thor had never fully understood, and he was not where Thor expected.
A blow to Thor's knee almost sent him to the ground. He twisted, rolled, snapped to his feet. Loki was already swinging the strange scepter. Thor blocked, sidestepped, struck again: every move was thwarted by Loki.
He realized that he was actually trying.
Since when was Loki so skilled?
A Quinjet spun into place beside the tower, engines roaring. Thor reached for Mjolnir while Loki turned and fired once from his scepter, tearing a hole in the wing of the jet; it spiraled toward the ground.
"Enough!" Thor shouted.
Loki swept the scepter at him viciously. Thor ducked inside its reach and grappled Loki into submission with his greater strength, staring into those bright blue eyes.
"Look around you!" Thor shouted over the explosions. "Look! You think this madness will end with your rule?"
"It's too late," Loki said desperately, staring intently at Thor. Almost as if he were willing Thor to - something. "You can't stop it."
"No," Thor said. "We can. Together."
He'd do anything to fix this. And when it was done, then he would snap that wretched scepter and throw Loki in a hole.
Loki looked back at him, and his face softened a fraction, vulnerability and desperation bleeding through the mask.
His eyes flared with that manic energy that had driven him in the bowels of the airship, and he stabbed Thor in the side.
"Sentiment," Thor heard him hiss.
He crumpled to the balcony.
Loki stepped back.
Thor sprang upright, seized Loki, and slammed him to the balcony hard enough to make it shake. The scepter skittered across the balcony and Loki collapsed, bleeding from the face, near the edge and the shattered glass railing.
"Loki-"
Loki rolled over and off the edge.
Thor ran forward and saw Loki on a Chitauri craft, soaring away at the head of a squadron. He gritted his teeth.
Fine. If Loki wanted war, then a war it would be, and Thor knew who would win.
He readied himself to fight.
New York, United States
April 2011
Steve crawled out of the wreckage of the Quinjet with Barton, Natasha, and Hill behind him.
They'd worked with Stark to take down one alien ship after another, Stark getting a tail of them like comet trails and Barton picking them off with his guns. They were ground-bound now. Time for a new strategy.
They were on an overpass. Chitauri soared their direction, energy blasts eating the pavement, but the sky soldiers veered away to spare several dozen ground troops sprinting in their direction, still a block and a half away.
Barton swung an arrow into position. "Let's have some fun."
A fresh round of explosions split the air. Steve ducked, then looked to his right: below the overpass, on a ground-level street, a squadron of airborne Chitauri were rocketing along, shooting seemingly at random into the screaming crowds below.
"Those people need help," Steve said.
"Go," Natasha said, spinning her pistols into her hands. She gave him a savage smile. "We've got this."
"You can hold them?" Steve asked.
"Cap- Rogers," Barton said, "it would be my genuine pleasure."
Steve nodded once, looked at Natasha and Hill ready with their guns, Barton with his bow, and prayed they'd be alive the next time he saw them. "Don't die."
"Likewise," Hill said drily.
Steve dove off the side of the overpass.
He landed in a roll to absorb the shock and was up and running in the span of seconds, sprinting toward the trapped people.
New York, United States
April 2011
Clint fired arrow after arrow into the oncoming army before they were on top of him and the battle went hand-to-hand.
He preferred the cleanliness of a shot from afar, but he was an expert in close-quarters combat and he'd been trained in part by the Black Widow, so Clint waded in without fear.
One Chitauri after another fell to his fists and arrows and feet; he fired from bare feet away sometimes, or simply stabbed an arrow through a Chitauri eye socket. He moved in perfect sync with Natasha and Maria, their training taking over and turning them into a perfect unit.
He took advantage of a brief reprieve, jammed four arrows from nearby corpses back into his quiver, and ducked behind a parked car. Natasha did the same thirty feet to his left.
"Maria?"
"At your eight o'clock," Maria said in the earpiece. "Covered."
"Looks like there's a new wave coming," Natasha said.
Clint peeked through the car windows, then glanced at his friend.
They stood simultaneously, firing one after another. Clint took the baddies on his side and Natasha the pack on hers, as they always did, ducking behind the cars' thick engines for cover when they had to. Clint's bowstring warmed and sang in his hands and Natasha's twin Mausers barked in her hands one after another.
"It's just like that time in Budapest all over again!" she said with a smirk.
"You and I remember Budapest very differently," Clint said.
An explosion and then screaming erupted behind them.
A bus had been thrown by a Chitauri blast and tipped against a wall, the people trapped inside its busted exoskeleton.
"I got it!" Clint sprinted away, past Maria, who slid forward one car to another to take his place guarding Tasha's flank. He compartmentalized his worry and kept running.
There was a little boy crying and clinging to one window while his father tried to push the child out.
"Here!" Clint shouted, swinging his bow across his back, all his senses tingling and alert for an attack from behind. He'd know if someone came near.
The kid stared at him, tears and dust streaking his face.
"It's okay, kid. Here, I got you. Ready?" Clint said, forcing his face into a soft smile. His expression wanted to be manic, but that would probably just frighten the kid.
The boy sniffed and nodded.
"On three, okay? One… two… three !"
The little boy let go of the window and dropped into Clint's waiting arms.
He parked the eight-ish-year-old against the bus and reached up again to help the little boy's father down. "Get off the streets," he told them. "Stay together, find basements, subway tunnels, anything like that. Don't go up the buildings; stay out of the middle of the streets."
The father nodded once, picked up his boy, and took off.
Clint helped down one person after another, shouting at them to move quickly and repeating his instructions to the father and son. When hands stopped coming out of the windows, he smashed the door with an arrow and hauled open the frame, letting more people flood out.
They vanished down the street away from downtown New York.
Clint took a deep breath, stretched his right bicep, and went back for Tasha and Maria.