New York, United States
April 2011
Steve stared at the portal, willing Tony to come back through.
Light bloomed through it: the explosion.
He waited as long as he dared, but - they really couldn't handle any more of those things. They couldn't handle the Tesseract collapsing and blowing up the city and they definitely couldn't handle it if another nuke came in.
"Close it," he said quietly.
It was the hardest order he'd ever had to give.
He heard Natasha huff with exertion. Seconds later, the blue beam flickered and died.
Steve slumped.
They watched the portal with bated breath, saw it flicker and writhe and begin to close.
It was nothing more than a swirl of rapidly shrinking black-and-blue in the sky above New York when the gleaming form of Iron Man tumbled through.
Cheers immediately burst from Steve's exhausted team but died almost instantly as they realized that something was very, very wrong.
"He's not stopping," Thor said, and began to whirl Mjolnir, but even Steve could see that he'd never get there in time.
That was when the Hulk came flying out of nowhere and slammed into Tony's falling body.
With Iron Man limp as a ragdoll in the Hulk's left arm, the beast slammed into an old brick building, slid down four stories, and leaped off again. He landed on his back and skidded half a block with Tony clutched to his chest, coming to rest fifty feet from Steve, Maria, and Thor.
As they got there, Hulk shoved Tony off his body with a clang, and scrambled back to his feet with a snort.
The arc reactor was dark.
Steve reached down and wrenched Tony's faceplate off, tossing it carelessly behind him. The man was nonresponsive.
"Come on, Stark," Maria said quietly.
The Hulk roared suddenly and loudly right in Tony's face. All of them flinched, and Tony came awake with a jolt, eyes wide and gasping. The reactor flickered back to life.
"What happened?" he said. Tony's eyes were wide and frantic, jumping around between all of them one by one. "Please tell me nobody kissed me."
Steve stared at Tony for a second, and then a surprised, exhausted laugh forced its way out of its throat.
"We won," he said.
Tony slumped back down to the pavement. "Yay, go team. Uh - you know what we should do? Food . There's this shwarma place? About two blocks from here. I don't know what that is but I want to try it."
"We've a lot left to do," Steve reminded him. "You have to find Pepper, remember?"
Tony's eyes closed. "She didn't answer my call."
"She was probably watching the news," Steve said soothingly. "Or cell service is down. Stark Tower is fine. We need to head off, coordinate the National Guard and the army and the rescuers…"
"I need to get out of sight," Natasha said tightly over the comms. "I'm a walking target for half the intelligence agencies on the planet."
"Use the tower," Tony said tiredly. "There's a safe room halfway between the penthouse and the one below it. Press… left side of the fourth stair down and say "Tony sent me". JARVIS'll let you in. Lay low for a couple days, no one will find you."
Natasha hesitated. "Thanks."
"Yeah, no prob," he said, tried to move, and winced. "Ahhh. Think I got a broken rib or three. JARVIS, get me out of this thing?"
"Hydraulic removal systems and translocation systems all offline," JARVIS said.
"Then use the emergency auto release. I've got other models."
With a hiss and a clank, the suit simply fell apart around Tony's battered body. Steve and Maria helped him push the pieces aside and climb slowly to his feet.
A gasp and thump made them all spin around to see Hulk shrinking and turning a light skin color once again, until the naked form of Bruce Banner lay shivering in the fetal position on the pavement amid the ruins of his pants.
Tony's eyes widened, and he took off for the sidewalk.
"Stark! Where are you going?" Maria shouted, but he didn't reply, instead vanishing into a shattered storefront halfway down the block.
Steve decided to trust that Tony wasn't just phobic about nude male bodies and knelt next to Banner. "Hey," he said quietly. "Dr. Banner. Can you hear me?"
Bruce looked blearily up at him. "Steve."
"Yep. We survived," Steve said. "Thanks to you."
Bruce closed his eyes, relief sweeping his face. "I… wasn't sure. That it would work, I mean."
"The Hulk saved all our lives," Maria said firmly. She was always very closed-off; Steve was glad to see that her face softened when Bruce looked her way. "And hundreds, if not thousands, of others. We wouldn't have survived long enough to close the portal."
"Here," Tony broke in. Steve looked up and saw that he was holding out a brand-new set of clothes: button-down, pair of boxers, jeans, and tennis shoes. "There's a clothing store a block down. Don't give me that look, Rogers, I keep spare cash in the soles of my suits and I left about four hundred dollars hidden behind the counter with a note. Put your righteous guns away."
Steve snorted.
"And if not for you, Loki would still be running around out here," Natasha said over comms. "You battered him up pretty good. I hate to say it, but he's gone now. And, Stark, I'm at the entrance to your safe room, and I've found the unconscious bodies of Darcy Lewis and Jane Foster inside."
New York, United States
April 2011
When the team stepped out of the elevator in Stark Tower, Tony stared with wide eyes.
It had escaped the worst of the devastation, but there was still a lot of damage, including a body-shaped dent in the center of the penthouse.
Bruce squinted at it. "I think I made that."
"Looks a little small for the other guy," Tony said flippantly, hiding the worry twisting in his gut.
Bruce shot him a look. "With Loki."
"Like an Asgardian rag doll! That must've been fun," Tony said, thinking briefly of Coulson.
"Where's the safe room?" Clint interrupted.
Tony rubbed his fingers over the arc reactor. "This way."
He led Barton and Bruce across the penthouse to the back stairs. They led up to Tony's private floor or down to the first of the R&D levels. JARVIS opened the doors for them, and they stepped into the stairwell.
Romanoff flipped upright when she saw them from a perch on the stairs.
"Sheathe your claws, it's just us," Tony said. "Are they inside?"
Romanoff nodded. She pressed down on the left side of the fourth stair down from the landing, and the staircase collapsed inward until a door just barely tall enough for her was visible.
Barton whistled.
Tony ducked into the safe room beyond.
It was small by Stark standards, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and an entertainment room that showed clearly the signs of both Tony and Pepper's decorating hands. The furniture was sleek and modern, perfectly efficient, but one of the two desks was a disaster and the other was neat as a pin.
"Do you use this as an office?" Barton asked, poking through the papers on Tony's desk.
"Not really," he said absently, checking the first bedroom. It was the one with bunk beds, and it was empty. "Just… we like to keep backups of important things in here. You know. A failsafe."
"Ever had to use this place?" Barton asked.
Tony shook his head.
He glanced in the second bedroom, the one with the king-sized bed that he and Pepper had chosen for themselves, and flinched when he saw the on and muted television screen. Somebody was talking about him - about Tony - and the origin of Iron Man. He saw shaky video of the battle on the ship, when Pepper had Extremis, and -
gunfire and explosions rocked the air. Tony was desperate, searching, screaming, fighting. His muscles burned like the fire around him. He was a fighter but this was worse, this was Pepper, he could lose her lose her lose her-
He was hanging from the roof above the first arc reactor prototype, while Shane marched toward him in the massive, bloated, warped version of Tony's elegant suit; he was screaming at Pepper to push the button; he knew he was about to die-
He was crawling across the floor of his lab, the old arc reactor mocking him from the place of honor Pepper had made for it, his salvation if only he could reach it; the pain in his chest was turning up like a dial every second and he was gasping, he knew cardiac arrest wasn't far away, and the only reason there was a chance of survival was Pepper Pepper Pepper-
" Stark ."
Tony blinked and stared at Romanoff.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, I'm… I'm fine," he snapped. "Why'd you wait so long out there? You could've told me where they are."
"Third bedroom," she said, looking at him oddly. "And I've been in here for at least two minutes. You weren't responding."
Tony smirked at her, but it felt lackluster. "World doesn't revolve around you, Romanoff."
He stepped into the last bedroom.
Darcy Lewis and Jane Foster were sprawled on each of the double beds. They looked awkward, as if they hadn't fallen asleep there - as if they'd fallen asleep somewhere else and someone had moved them.
Pepper. Only she and Tony and now Romanoff and Barton knew about this place. He realized that he was uncomfortable with all of them invading what had been designed as his and Pepper's space, even though they had enough room for others - no one else had ever been in here. Tony had built it himself.
Romanoff strode past him with a glass of water.
"Wait!" Tony said. "Don't get the mattress wet."
Barton snorted.
Romanoff hauled Darcy into a sitting position and splashed water in her face.
She sputtered and blearily opened her eyes. "Whaaa… huh?"
"Darcy," Tony said tightly.
"Who…"
"Tony Stark? Your employer? Billionaire playboy philanthropist? Iron Man?"
"Sorry, you're not that memorable," Darcy said, shaking water out of her eyes. Tony reared back.
"It bites!" Inwardly, he was relieved. The return of the sass meant Darcy was back to herself.
Romanoff repeated the process twice with Jane, but the scientist didn't wake up.
"Do you remember what happened?" Bruce asked Darcy gently.
She made a face and started trying to pat her hair down; it was kinked and awkward-looking in the back. "Mostly. It's kinda fuzzy. I know we got off the Quinjet and Pepper met us; she was asking - if you were okay, Stark - and then she told us we could come up here until we had a communication from SHIELD. I wanted food and Jane came with me up to the penthouse. Then…" She hesitated. "Then we realized Loki was in the building somewhere."
Barton sat up straight. "How could you tell?"
"Their eyes," Darcy said. "They turn bright blue. I saw it on the footage when that hardass lady agent was taken."
Barton snickered. Darcy glanced his way, and her eyebrows slowly crept up her forehead. Tony stifled a laugh.
"I get it," Darcy said, looking smug. "Well. Anyway. There was this scientist dude who wandered up into the penthouse and Pepper told him off for coming up there - here - whatever, and he was acting all weird and poking around. That was when I noticed the eyes, and he left, and Pepper said she knew a safe room where we could wait and keep trying to contact you. She led Jane and me down here and we were sitting around the table watching the news… I don't remember much after that."
"Much?" Tony said, grasping onto that word.
"Tea," Darcy said. "And something about mothers."
"Mothers?" Barton asked, but Tony understood.
"Pepper's mom lives about five blocks away," he said numbly. "She drugged the tea so Foster and Lewis would stay here and went after Sara."
" He's met Pepper's parents? " Barton whispered to Romanoff, but Tony wasn't listening. Steve and Maria were out there, handling the cleanup and directing rescue efforts. He fumbled in his pocket for his phone with fingers that shook just the slightest bit.
It rang, and rang, and rang.
"Tony, he's probably busy," Darcy said. He could feel her eyes on him: sad, but not pitying.
"He'll answer," Tony said. Because I need him to.
Steve picked up the phone. "Tony, now is not the best-"
"Pepper's gone," Tony said brusquely, and gave Steve the address. "Has anyone looked in that area yet?"
There was a pause and muffled shouting in the background. Tony kept his face calm but his grip on his StarkPhone was white-knuckled.
"There are some National Guard patrols down that way, but none have gone up in the buildings yet, and that address is on the tenth floor. Tony-"
"Keep rescuing, Cap," Tony said tersely, and hung up. He glanced at the rest of the team in the safe room. "Tower's yours. Food, water, beds, condoms, whatever. I'm going after Pepper."
He took two steps toward the exit to the safe room. A click sounded from behind, and Tony froze.
"You're not going anywhere," Romanoff said, voice like steel. "Judging by your movements, you've a broken rib that could puncture a lung unless you get immediate medical attention. I believe there is a medbay one floor down, I seem to remember that our friend Bruce here is a doctor."
Tony turned around and stared at her. "Are you seriously holding me at gunpoint?"
"Can you do anything?" Romanoff asked Bruce.
The other scientist hesitated. "I… if it's already punctured an organ, he's going to need surgery, and that's not something I can do. But I can do an X-ray and make sure it's not immediately life-threatening."
"Good," Romanoff said. "Come on."
"Hey! Hello! Uh, I don't know if you've noticed me standing here, but I feel I should inform you that I don't take orders well," Tony snapped. "I am going after Pepper, and you should really get out of my way."
"How will it help Pepper if you kill yourself searching for her?" Romanoff demanded.
Tony paused.
Romanoff glared.
"Fine," Tony said, voice cracking. "But the second they declare me stable, I am gone , and I will fly through you if you get in my way."
Romanoff didn't bother to answer, just followed him intently out of the safe room and down to the medbay.
Tony was bare-chested on an exam table, poking disinterestedly at the tight wrapping Bruce had tied around his ribs. Bruce kept wrapping it and glanced at Tony. "You're not to put on so much as a gauntlet for a month."
"No," Tony said instantly.
"Yes, or this won't heal right and your recovery will be longer," Bruce said, showing an uncharacteristic sternness. Or maybe it was characteristic. Tony hadn't seen firsthand the man's face before he Hulked out, but he'd heard from Steve that it was somewhat… unusual.
Tony quirked an eyebrow. "What if I don't care?"
"You'll care when you refracture your two ribs from lifting something heavy or taking the recoil from a gauntlet shot and puncture a lung and then die," Barton pointed out. He was messing around with his bow, duct tape, and three scalpels. Tony was vaguely curious about what exactly he was trying to do, but he also was having a difficult time caring about anything other than-
The phone rang.
Tony scrambled for it, making Bruce yelp and fumble for the end of the bandage. Tony ignored his fussing and picked up. "Steve?"
"They found her," Steve said. "It's not good."
Tony's heart stopped.
Steve kept talking, something about critical condition and being rushed to a hospital, but Tony's ears were ringing and he couldn't hear.
"Bruce," he said, and stood up. "I need a car."
Stark Tower
May 2011
Jane poked at the scepter. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah, but I was sure before I started hitting myself with gamma rays, and we all know how that turned out," Bruce said, running a scanner over the scepter.
Jane laughed and lapsed back into a comfortable silence.
She was technically supposed to be working on the astrophysics research that Tony was funding, but Erik was off somewhere in Thailand checking out rumors of a gravitational anomaly - Jane was still pissed she hadn't gotten to go, but Erik pointed out she had gone to the last such rumor, and she reluctantly caved - and she needed him to wake up and check her calculations before she could proceed. So she'd wandered into Bruce's lab, which took up the other half of the third R&D floor down from the penthouse.
Jane liked to watch the other scientist work. His field was so different from her own, but she had always been interested in just about anything that came under the heading of "science," and he focused on it as intensely as she did her own.
They'd had one interesting conversation the first time she did this, a week ago - four days after the Battle of New York. Fury wanted them to jump right on studying the scepter, and Darcy set Jane an alarm to remind her to eat. She realized Bruce probably hadn't eaten either and took him a plate of food.
He'd given her a weird look, and she called him on it.
"Most people are too frightened to work with me once they know… about the other guy," he said at last, picking at the omelette."
Jane had said, "Well, you're under control now, right? So we're good?"
"...Yes."
Since then, they had wandered into each other's labs at least once a day, and occasionally Tony joined the unofficial science powwows. Jane had discovered that while neither of them was an expert in astrophysics, they could help her work through problems, and she could do the same for them.
Her StarkPad, which she'd been issued when she started at Stark Industries, buzzed. Bruce's dinged at the same time. They exchanged looks before grabbing the clear black-edged tablets.
Steve's face appeared on both. "Bruce, Jane," he greeted. "We have a meeting upstairs in three minutes. Are you in the middle of anything?"
"Nothing that can't be put on pause," Bruce said. "What's going on? Is everything okay?"
Jane and Steve both knew he meant, is there any news of Loki ?
"Everything's fine," Steve said. "Bring anything conclusive that you have on the scepter. Thor will be here in ten with Fury."
Jane's eyes narrowed. "When is he leaving?"
"Today," Steve said, and hung up.
Bruce and Jane exchanged a glance and simultaneously began putting Bruce's computer network to sleep.
Bruce collected Tony from the floor above on the way. Tony came out and Jane's eyes widened at his appearance: bags under his eyes, greasy, messy hair, and a sickly pale shade to his skin. He looked like Jane had after she spent four consecutive days awake when she was an intern, drinking straight drip coffee every hour and running nine different experiments.
Queasy guilt immediately hit Jane's stomach. She had forgotten, in the glow of new data on Einstein-Rosen bridges that had significantly advanced her hypotheses after better readings on Thor's more recent arrivals, that Pepper was still in the hospital in critical condition.
The three of them emerged from the stairwell, blinking, and found Steve, Maria, Clint, and Darcy sitting around the conference table. Clint looked half asleep, Darcy was on her phone, and Steve and Maria were sitting very straight. The Loki-shaped dent in the floor was still there, to Jane's delight.
She took the empty seat next to Darcy, who was leaning back and texting furiously. She was the sole exception to the tense atmosphere around the table.
"What's going on?" Jane asked.
"What's going on is that Sir Asshole is about to leave and he's insisting on taking the Tesseract with him," Darcy said without looking up. "As you might guess, it's making a lot of people pissed."
"Lemme guess," Tony said distractedly, wandering toward the bar. "Fury wants to keep it, Steve and Maria want it gone, you think I'm going to want to keep it, and everyone else is on the fence?"
"Steve and I are on the fence too," Maria said. "But, yes, you're mostly correct."
"I usually am," Tony said, and poured himself a glass of something golden and sharp-scented. Jane didn't care for liquor - she didn't understand why anyone would voluntarily deprive themselves of their rationality - but she got the feeling it was rather a lot of alcohol, especially for ten in the morning.
As Tony came and collapsed into a seat, Jane stared incredulously around the table. Most of them seemed hesitant . Did they not understand this?
"The Tesseract is dangerous," Steve said.
Jane fixed him with a glare. "So are you. So is everyone at this table." Maria, Clint, and Steve looked at her with shock as she continued. "Do you know how easy it would be for me to set up an Einstein-Rosen bridge to fail and release an energy blast that would vaporize everyone within five hundred miles? Very. Easy. I can't make them work right but I know how to make one go badly wrong. Everyone at this table is dangerous, but that doesn't mean we're locked up or buried. We know this technology exists now, and we can't just - just bury our heads in the sand! We have an opportunity here, and we should use it!"
"Jane," Steve said. "It's already been shown that the Tesseract can be used just as easily by the wrong hands as the right."
"And you're always right, aren't you?" Darcy asked. Jane glanced over. Darcy was on Twitter now. How does she do that?
Steve glanced at Darcy, but Jane couldn't read his expression. People weren't her area of expertise. "My point is that it's an incredible opportunity," she snapped. "For - for humans as a whole! If we can understand what the Tesseract is, where it comes from…"
"It is an Infinity Stone," Thor said.
The team whipped around, Clint coming awake all at once with a knife in his hand, aimed at the intruder.
"Oh," he said, and yawned. "You."
Thor ignored him and strode through the open balcony doors. "The Tesseract is an object of limitless energy with powers over space and travel. It is far too dangerous to be trusted to human hands."
"Way to put your foot in your mouth, big guy," Darcy muttered when Jane splayed her hands flat on the table.
"This is ridiculous ," Jane snapped, standing up so she could look Thor in the eye. Or closer to it, at least. "Asgard is lightyears ahead of Earth's technology! This is a chance for humans to begin our own advancement! To provide clean energy and protect our planet, to make the kinds of scientific discoveries that haven't been seen since - ever! It would be an unprecedented rate of advancement-"
"And there's the rub," Darcy said, watching Thor. "Odin's got his panties in a twist because he's afraid Earth will catch up to his high-and-mightiness. It's harder to rule the ants when the ants have guns too."
Thor's jaw tightened visibly, and Jane saw, to her shock, that Darcy was right. She had thought - she didn't know what she'd thought. People weren't her strong suit. That Thor was afraid, yes - trying to protect humans, sure, even if he was being an idiot about it - but this ?
"Thor," Bruce said. "Why don't you give us a minute."
Thor nodded once, tightly, and stalked out of the room.
Tony was halfway through his drink and looked self-destructive, which was consistent with the image he'd worn the last week when he wasn't at the hospital. Jane noticed him surreptitiously checking his StarkPhone every few minutes and concluded that in all probability he was either checking for updates or looking at the time so he could go back. Jane decided she wouldn't find any help there and faced off with Steve. "We can't let him take it," she argued.
"Jane, do you know who I am?" Steve asked.
She paused. "Captain America. Except you don't want to be called that anymore. If you're asking whether or not I know my history, yes, I am aware of your abilities-"
"The organization known as Hydra, which was the primary opponent I fought in the war, had their hands on the Tesseract," Steve said heavily. "They made energy weapons of unfathomable power with it. The strength of a nuclear blast contained and focused into firearms that could be aimed at a single person with no fallout, no radiation. The consequences of that technology falling into the wrong hands were devastating. We almost lost."
"So we're more careful this time," Jane argued. " We have the Tesseract right now, not Hydra! Not even SHIELD! We can work on it here with SHIELD funding and SHIELD scientists but we control it. You can't just resist progress because it's dangerous. If we did that, we would live in a society where books and the Internet were banned or censored!"
"Jane's right," Darcy said. She was still leaning back and looked bored with their conversation, but her tone was focused, firm. Jane knew that because she knew Darcy. "It's like a power tool. Anything powerful can be used by the good guys or the bad ones. The Internet? Chainsaws? I mean, come on, Steve, what exactly would you call predator drones?"
"I'm not so sure we're the good guys," Tony muttered. "At least judging from the television. And who wants to be a good guy anyway? The villains get the best lines."
Steve rubbed his forehead. "My point is that I've already seen what kind of damage this thing can do."
"And we've all seen the kind of damage he can do," Darcy said, and pointed at Bruce.
Steve shot her a look.
"What? It's true," Darcy insisted. "He's the Hulk, people! And I'm not saying we need to lock him up or anything. I'm saying that studying what exactly happened to Brucie could be useful in some sciencey way and we shouldn't either slit his throat or dump him in a hole or shoot him into space or some shit just because he could go ape on us and we wouldn't be able to contain him."
"I'm not sure whether or not that was a compliment," Bruce said, but Jane didn't think he looked angry. Though she could be wrong. When she was wrong it was usually about people.
Darcy twiddled her fingers at him. "There was probably one buried in there somewhere."
"So we keep the Tesseract," Steve said. "Clint? Maria? You've been oddly quiet."
Clint blinked and sat up straighter. "Whaa?"
"Pay attention," Steve said.
Clint threw up his hands. "I haven't slept in forty-three hours!"
The rest of the team stared at him.
He sighed. "Fury has me helping with shadowing some gang that's in the city right now. A crew he suspects lifted four million dollars' worth of weapons from a transport convoy in Spain last month, but there's not enough evidence. And on top of the fact that now, according to the media, I'm an Avenger - yeah. No sleep for me. Tony, can your robots make sandwiches?"
Tony waved a hand toward the makeshift kitchen that had sprung up to the side of the bar in a way that could have been either affirmative or negative. Clint stood up and walked over there. "I see both sides of this one. I'm gonna sit it out. Just, if we keep the thing, let's not try making any more portals for a good while. Once was enough."
"Well, we didn't get a chance to really study the quantum fields generated around the portal, or gravitational anomalies at the portal's lip, or-"
"Jane, you're not helping your argument," Darcy said.
Jane stopped talking and kept herself focused with an effort; her mind wanted to keep hypothesizing about the effects of the portal on gravity, light, sound, and atmosphere, but it was socially abnormal to check out of an argument in which one was participating, so she made herself stay in the moment.
Jane realized that everyone, even Tony, was looking at Maria.
The woman raised her eyebrows at them. "Oh, it's coming down to me now?"
"We're a team," Clint called. "And like it or not, you and I are on it."
"Speaking of which, where's Natasha?" Steve asked Clint.
Jane eyed Clint's coffee while he shrugged. "Fury has her busy with something or other. She's lying low for a bit. There's footage of her during the fight and talk of the "Black Widow". Apparently the SHIELD higher-ups aren't too happy about it." Clint glanced at them once, poured three more cups of coffee, and balanced all four mugs over until he could slide one each in front of Jane, Bruce, and Tony. Jane murmured "thanks".
"And what would she say?" Steve asked Clint.
"Keep it," Clint replied without hesitation. "She'd see its potential as a weapon and say keep it. It is somewhat concerning that we know about all these alien cultures with weapons way ahead of ours who could probably stomp us out before breakfast."
"Hmmm," Steve said.
Maria took a deep breath. Jane opened her mouth but Darcy shot her a look and Jane closed it again.
"If we do keep the cube… we don't give it to Fury," Maria said.
Darcy leaned forward. "You say that like every word cost you a hundred bucks."
"I'm disobeying orders and the trust of my organization," Maria said. "But I think it needs to be said. Fury is many things, but I think we've already seen he's too secretive to allow this project to fall into only his own hands."
Jane noticed that Clint was staring at her
"There's one other thing," Bruce said. "The scepter? I've been going through my initial readings, and… The signature is disguised and I don't want to break the casing for fear of setting off an explosion, but I suspect that there is a power source within it that is equal to the Tesseract."
Darcy's eyes widened. "Does Thor know that? Or Fury?"
Bruce shook his head. "No one does."
"I have a plan," Darcy began.
The balcony doors flew open, and Thor stormed in, just as the sound of helicopter rotors split the air and a SHIELD bird came in for landing on the pad. Fury leaped out and walked toward them, followed by three technicians carrying a case.
The Tesseract.
"We've decided," Jane announced. "We will be keeping the Tesseract."
"Jane, you do not understand that with which you tamper," Thor said, raising Mjolnir in her direction.
Tony, Steve, and Maria were instantly on their feet facing him.
Thor looked taken aback. "I would not harm her-"
"Then maybe don't point a weapon in her direction," Maria said. "Here on backwards Midgard, we call that threatening behavior."
Thor slowly lowered Mjolnir.
"I hate to break up the reunion," Fury drawled, "but it seems that we need a mediator for this family drama."
"I can mediate," Darcy said. "Thor, calm down, we're keeping the Tesseract. See? Mediation."
"I think Fury meant himself," Clint said.
Steve raised his eyebrows. "With all due respect, sir, I don't think 'mediation' is your strong suit."
"You may be right," Fury said. "I want to keep the Tesseract, Thor. What are you going to do?"
"It is too much a risk to leave in human hands," Thor said. "I must insist on returning it to safety in Asgard's vaults."
"No," Darcy said flatly. "You have enough relics. The Tesseract will sit and collect dust and get forgotten in the stagnation of the Asgardian people. We're keeping it."
"Stagn- no. The Tesseract comes with me." Thor's fists were clenched. "If need be, though it pains me greatly to consider, I will remove it from your possession with force."
"You can't beat all of us," Steve said flatly.
Thor looked around, and Jane saw him noticing Bruce's deceptively calm demeanor, Clint and Maria's quiet wariness, the supersoldier and the genius inventor, and realize that they were right.
His eyes skipped right over Jane and Darcy in what Jane concluded was a warrior's threat assessment. Jane examined herself and decided that made her irritated.
"Then I will return with Asgard's forces and overpower you," Thor said heavily. "My - friends, will you not listen? I am trying only to protect you from yourselves."
"If we give up the Tesseract, then we keep the scepter," Darcy said.
Silence fell.
"Loki's… scepter?" Thor looked confused. "It has power beyond Loki himself?"
"It appears to be independent of Loki," Bruce said. "Beyond that, we cannot tell what it is or how to wield it, but I… can accept this compromise."
"Darcy-" Jane began.
Darcy shot her a look that seemed to be loudly telegraphing a message that Jane couldn't decipher. "No, Jane, let's not start a war with Asgard over the glowy cube of death. Bad plan."
Jane gritted her teeth and decided to trust her friend.
"Captain?" Fury said. "Stark?"
"I'm donating ten million dollars to start a fund for those injured in the battle," Tony said. "I need to go… see Pepper."
Fury sighed. "Stark, have you even been listening?"
"Keep the scepter," Tony said. "Sounds good. I'm leaving." He stood up and left, moving gingerly.
Steve watched him go with worry in his eyes. "This seems… an acceptable compromise."
Clint waved a hand.
"Thor, can you take this deal?" Fury asked Thor.
Thor frowned at Jane. "Lady Jane, will you not simply yield-"
"Nope," she said.
"Then I will take the Tesseract and leave you Loki's weapon," Thor said, and held out a hand to Fury.
After a long, tense moment, in which Jane began to wonder whether Fury still considered the Avengers his subordinates or would let them make their own decisions, the SHIELD director nodded, and his lackeys handed over the case.
"Thank you," Thor said.
"Thor, I would like a word before you leave," Fury said.
Thor nodded once, and the two men walked out onto the balcony and stopped next to the helicopter while Fury's entourage climbed on board. With the doors closed, it was impossible to hear what was said, but both of their faces were serious.
"So he's treating us like a team now," Steve said at last.
"Aren't we?" Jane said.
Steve shrugged. "Not like I have anywhere else to be."
"What was that display?" Maria asked.
Jane realized she was examining Darcy.
Darcy sat back and raised her eyebrows. "A negotiation."
"For the scepter," Maria said.
Darcy smirked. "Thor wasn't gonna back down anytime soon on the Tesseract, and Bruce just told us that the scepter has something in it potentially just as powerful as the Tesseract. I pushed Thor about the Tesseract so he'd see my other option as a reasonable compromise and leave the scepter here."
Comprehension dawned. Jane shook her head and sat down. "This is why I let you handle the people side of things," she muttered.
Darcy laughed.
Steve and Maria had an expression on their faces that Jane recognized as the one people wore when they realized they'd been significantly underestimating Darcy Lewis. Jane smiled to see her friend taking her place among these people and holding her own. Darcy's genius was subtler than Jane's, and less appreciated, but certainly still there.
"Now the real question is, do we tell Fury what's in the scepter?" Darcy asked.
Steve blew out a breath and sat back. "I don't fully trust him."
"He has access to way more money and personnel than we do," Jane pointed out.
"Jane, you work for Tony Stark now, remember? You've got at least as much access as Fury," Darcy pointed out. "And I don't trust Fury either. Giving a clandestine government organization access to this kind of power with no checks? I can't imagine how that could go wrong. Oh, wait , let me think..." She tapped her chin, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
"Somehow I think she's being sarcastic," Clint stage whispered.
"I do think we should keep him involved," Steve added. "He means well, and there are worse people in this world to be part of this project. And that way we can have access to all his old Tesseract files."
"But how do we know he's actually giving us the information?" Darcy argued.
"Tony will take care of that," Jane said confidently.
Darcy sighed. "Fine, you've made your case. I'm not telling him, though. I have a date in an hour and I need to go change."
"A date?" Jane asked.
Darcy shot her a look. "I do have a life. See ya."
She vanished into the elevator.
Steve stood up as well. "I'll go speak with the Director. Clint? Maria? Do you need anything?"
"I'm on permanent assignment to you as a point person for the media," Maria said. "There's footage of me from the battle, so people recognize me, and I mostly operated in an administrative capacity anyway, a lot of which I can handle digitally. Clint's been recalled, effective tomorrow. Fury says the world is in upheaval right now and he can't give us a honeymoon."
"Come on," Jane said to Bruce. "Let's get back to the scepter."
She was a scientist. All this social networking was tedious and frustrating and would just be so much simpler if everyone just said what they meant, but no, it had to be secrets and hidden motivations and lying. Things Jane didn't know, not like she did her physics: nebulae and plasma and quantum fields.
But if that was the price she had to pay for this chance, she would pay it.