"All our work is gone," Bruce said as they all gathered in the lab. From the large windows they could see that the sun had started to rise in the distance. "Ultron cleared us out. He used the internet as an escape hatch."

Natasha spoke up from beside Elizabeth. "He's been in everything. Files, surveillance."

Elizabeth readjusted the leather jacket that sat on her shoulders comfortably. "He probably knows more about us than we do about each other," she muttered as she rested her chin on her hands.

"What was he talking about?" Bruce asked her suddenly as he turned around from the table he was facing. "About your whole dead parents stuff?"

Elizabeth shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. "I honestly have no idea," she said lightly. "I know just as much as you guys probably do," she tried not to let it get to her. How that stupid piece of metal managed to know more about her family than her.

"And your brothers?" Natasha asked questioningly as she crossed her arms over her chest. Steve and Natasha already knew the whole story but she guessed they felt there was something she was holding back.

"Again," Elizabeth repeated as she let out a breath of air tiredly. "I know absolutely nothing. They left me in the dust years ago." No one spoke for a minute after that, all lost in their own thoughts.

Rhodey pushed himself off the table he leaned on while cradling his broken left arm to his chest. "So if he's in your files and he's in the internet," he stated with a thoughtful look on his face. "What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?"

Maria's head perked up from where she sat, picking glass out of the bottom of her foot. "Nuclear Codes?" she asked the group.

"Why would he want nukes?" Natasha asked with a frown on her face. "He said he wanted us dead."

Steve shook his head as he ran through exactly what Ultron had said to them. "He didn't say dead," he corrected as all eyes turned to him. "He said extinct."

Clint entered the room with a worried expression on his face. "He also said he killed somebody," he reminded them.

"But there was no one else in the building except us," Elizabeth informed the team before pulling herself up to sit on one of the empty tables.

Tony tore his gaze away from the dismembered part of one of his suits and turned to face the team for the first time since the fight. "Yes there was," he said sadly with his head hung low. Taking out a device from the inside of his vest, he showed them what Ultron had done.

In the center of the room was a yellow holographic structure that she recognised as Jarvis' system. Instead of it being intact like they all remembered it looked as if someone had decided to take him apart piece by piece.

Bruce walked up to the holograph with a wrinkled nose. "This is insane," he whispered sadly as he looked around at what had been done to the AI.

"Jarvis was the first line of defence," Steve explained with his gaze on the floor. "He could have shut Ultron down. Which makes sense why he would go for him."

"No," Bruce shook his head with his eyes still on the holographic system. Everyone turned to look at him questioningly, not understanding where he was going. "Ultron could have assimilated Jarvis. But this, this isn't strategy. It's rage."

At those words, she also felt a strong pull of that emotion coming from outside of the room. She turned her head just in time to see Thor stalk into the room angrily.

"Well there's a lot of that going around," she warned the team. Elizabeth watched as Thor walked right up to Tony and lifted him off the ground by his throat.

"Come on," Tony told Thor in between gasps of air. "Use your words buddy." She could feel that Tony wasn't scared of Thor, knowing that his teammate wouldn't kill him.

Lifting Tony higher in the air, he scowled up at the man. "I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark." He said distastefully.

"Thor," Elizabeth calmed his emotions down enough for him to release his grip on Tony. "What happened to the Legionnaire?"

Sending one last glare at Tony he turned to tell the team what had happened. "The trail went cold about a hundred miles out," he stated. "But it's headed north, and it has the scepter. Now we'll have to retrieve it, again."

"Well, genies out of that bottle." Natasha commented, "Right now our main problem is Ultron."

"I don't understand," all heads turned to look at the soft spoken Helen Cho. She was staring at the body of one of the legionnaires that they had destroyed. She was looking at it calculativley, as if trying to understand how it worked. "You built this program, why is it trying to kill us?" She asked Tony.

Instead of answering her seriously, the man started to laugh. Like genuinely laugh as he typed away on his computer, his back facing them. From beside him Bruce was shaking his head at the man, telling him to stop it.

Taking a step towards him, Thor pointed his hammer at him. "You think this is funny?"

"No," Tony turned around with a suppressed grin on his face. "It's probably not, right?" He looked around the room to see everyone's exasperated expression, laughter still evident on his face.

"Look," Thor began with annoyance clear in his voice and emotions. "This whole thing could have been avoided if you didn't meddle with something you don't understand."

"No, really." Tony said with the utmost intention to shut up the God of Thunder that stood before him. "I think it's a hoot that you don't get why we need this."

Elizabeth was trying hard to use her abilities to make sure nothing got out of hand. Knowing from past events that when two members of the team went at it, they really went at it. And the rest of the team would be caught in the middle like children in a parents divorce.

Tony spun on his heels until his eyes locked onto Elizabeth's. "Stay out of this," he told her sternly, noticing his change in mood.

All attention was diverted to the two. Everyone except the two in question knew that if anyone was going to cause something it was Elizabeth and Tony. Both had the undying need to always be right.

"Why?" Elizabeth raised an eyebrow at him challengingly.

"Cause your whole mind magic thing is making me calm down," he told her slowly as his arms pressed firmly against his sides. "And I don't wanna calm down."

He took a deep breath before speaking to her again. "You forget that this is partly your fault too," he commented.

Elizabeth's eyes went wide as she hopped off the table and walked up to him. "My fault?" she asked him in shock. "How the hell is this my fault?"

The group listened closely, not knowing that she had anything to do with this. "You are the one who told me to do something about what I saw," he referenced to the conversation that they had a few days ago.

"I thought you were gonna get a massage or rewatch all the Star Wars movie!" She exclaimed as she ran a hand across her face tiredly. "I didn't think you were gonna create a murder bot."

"We didn't!" Tony exclaimed in exasperation. Elizabeth could feel his anxiety kick in and immediately felt bad. "We weren't even close," he turned to look at Bruce who stood behind him. "Were we close to an interface?"

Bruce didn't seem to know how to answer. Thankfully, he didn't have to since Steve jumped in to the conversation. "Well you did something right," he told Tony with a crease between his eyebrows. "And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be different than SHIELD," the man continued.

"Anybody remembered when I carried a nuke through a worm whole?" Tony change the subject as he pointed up to the roof. "Saved New York? Recall that?"

"A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space, we're standing three hundred feet below it." As Tony spoke all his unwanted fears and nightmares from that day came flashing through his mind. "We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all day long but that up there?"

He pointed up to the sky once more with his eyes wide and somewhat full of fear. "That's the endgame," he told the team. "How are you guys planning on beating that?" He asked with a shake of his head, not knowing what kind of answer he'll get.

"Together," Steve answered Tony from beside Elizabeth with a solemn look.

Tony looked back at Steve thoughtfully. "We'll lose," he told Steve. It wasn't an 'if' or a 'might'. It was a statement that he believed would one day come true.

Steve knew it too, deep in his heart. "Then we'll do that together too," and he really meant it. He knew that he was meant to be a soldier and he was prepared to lay down his life for his job. Always have and always will.

Elizabeth knew what this meant. And she knew she was willing to lose with these people by her side. Because what more did she have to do with her life. Suddenly a single person came to her mind, taking her by slight surprise.

She lowered her gaze to the ground, the words Steve were saying went in one ear and went out the other. Elizabeth wondered what would happen to Bucky if she were to die. She was worried that-

The sound of something ringing from the back pocket of her jeans cut her thoughts off. Taking her phone out in her hand, she felt it vibrate softly. As if knowing that she was thinking about him, the familiar number popped up on her screen.

"Who's that?" Natasha asked, seeing Elizabeth's frozen face.

"Excuse me," she didn't answer the question and she brushed pass Thor to leave the room. "I have to take this," she mumbled at everyone's questioning looks. Steve made a move to call after her but she was already out the door.

Elizabeth found a little corner far away from the team that she was sure they wouldn't be able to hear her. Checking around once more to make sure no one was near her, she answered the phone.

"Bucky?" She greeted as she pressed the phone against her ear in anticipation.

"It's nice to hear your voice again, Lizzie." She heard him say in a low voice over the other line. She didn't want to admit it but his words made her heart turn to mush.

Elizabeth smiled to herself. "I just called you last night," she joked as her eyes were fixed on a spot against the wall. Looking down at the floor below her, she saw the remains of the fight from last night. Glass was everywhere and there were pieces of metal laying around.

"Whatever," Bucky said. His mood lifting instantly once her heard her voice. "I'm here," he informed her through the phone as he took a look at the new apartment he sat in.

"Where exactly is here?" She asked, silently hoping that it wasn't somewhere too far away from her. Even though she knew deep down the further away, the better.

She heard him take a deep breath before answering her. "Uh, Bucharest."

"Isn't that in Romania?" She asked. "How'd you end up all the way over there?"

"Yeah," he confirmed her first question. "I don't know, I just thought it would be a nice place. Plus they have an aquarium here, I thought you'd like it."

Elizabeth didn't feel like telling him they had an aquarium in almost every state there was. She also found it so sweet how he had chosen the place based on something that she mentioned to him once.

"Lizzie?" Bucky's voice broke her out of her thoughts. "Are you there?"

"Yeah, I'm here." She smiled as she spoke to him. "Maybe we can go there sometime," she suggested.

"Sure," he agreed, staring around at the empty apartment. Waiting for when she'd come to see him and he could finally call this place home. "You gonna come visit me out here?"

"Of course," she answered him. "You're stuck with me. What's the address? I'll fly out as soon as I can."

He told her the address as she memorised it, not letting herself forget. They said their goodbyes and a quick 'see you soon', before he hung up the phone.

Elizabeth was about to put the phone back in her pocket when she felt it vibrate again. Checking the screen, she saw that this time it was a single text from Sam.

'He's gone. No trace at all, but we were close. Pass the message to Steve.'

She knew that she shouldn't have felt happy at the fact that Bucky had left just in time. Yet she could feel a proud smile creeping onto her face.

Elizabeth told Steve the news Sam had told her quickly as she pulled him to the side. The man hung his head low as he rubbed the back of his neck.

"I knew we should've left last night," He muttered. Elizabeth knew that it was completely her fault that Steve felt the loss he did in that moment. And she really wanted nothing more than to tell Steve everything. All that had happened between her and Bucky since the moment he knocked on her door nearly a year ago.

But she knew deep down she couldn't, Elizabeth couldn't simply betray Bucky's trust like that. No matter how much it pained her to see one of her closest friends in pain. "Don't worry," she told Steve as she patted his arm comfortingly. "You'll find him eventually."

Elizabeth watched Steve carefully, waiting to see if her poor choice of words gave anything away. If it did, he didn't show it. "Thanks, Lizzie." He looked up at her with a sad smile. He pushed himself off the wall the two were leaning on before starting to make his way back into the room.

"Steve," Elizabeth called out without moving from her place. He turned around mid-step, signaling he was listening. "Do you think the team needs me right now?"

"Well, I think the team always need you," he told her sweetly as she shook her head at him. Some hair falling out of the ponytail she had tied it in.

"That's sweet," she began with a smile. "But that's not what I meant. I was wondering if I could disappear for a few days."

Steve thought for a moment with a crease between his brows. "Define disappear," Steve said as he saw the same sneakiness in her eyes that he had when he tried to enlist in the army all those years ago. "What's going on?"

"Ultron knows more about my brothers than me," Elizabeth covered her real reason up. "So, I wanna check out what's going on with them and what he meant when he said they 'needed my help'." She wasn't completely lying. What the metal man said did get to her head, but they weren't her number one priority right now. Someone else was.

A few feet away from her, Steve nodded his head. "Yeah, sure." He told her, "I'll call you if we get a lead on Ultron."

"You better," She said before taking a step toward him. "I don't wanna miss out on the fun," She smirked at Steve before patting him on the back in a friendly manner. "I'll be back in a few days, Cap."