09. I stole them

Dr. Bruce Banner could solve every mathematical, physical and possibly even bio-chemical problem (including various sub-disciplines of the sciences) in the world, at least technically. He could not, however, solve the problem of how his throat lost his voice, how his arm lost its hold on his coat and how his eyes began to blink nervously.

All because of Natasha Romanoff.

The Black Widow, female, is considered the most venomous spider in North America. The venom of the black widow spider is 15 times as toxic as the venom of the prairie rattlesnake.

Not that Black Widow, he chided himself as he ran a shaky hand over his face. He walked in, gulping. There was no need to confirm the safehouse. Natasha was here and he could see Clint (shooting daggers at him from beside her) too. The woman who opened the door looked young for managing a safehouse but he had seen younger S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

Like always he could feel his skin crawling at the disgust he felt at everything related to S.H.I.E.L.D. except right now his face was pink with shameful apology. He stopped in front of Natasha, foot nervously tapping, hands deep inside his pockets. Why did he feel so horrible when she had betrayed him? And yet, it felt a lot like he had.

Natasha stared back with a steely gaze and a whole minute passed with extreme discomfort until she walked to the couch, taking care to sit as far away from Loki as the space made possible.

That was when Bruce saw the God of Lies, sitting smugly on the couch and a part of his brain welcomed the terrifying distraction. It was as if his grey cells kicked back into working. He opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish, pointing at Loki and then looking at Clint, Natasha and the other woman.

He didn't even look back as he bolted towards the door.

"It's alright," Clint drawled lazily, shooting an arrow that caught the cloth on Bruce's shirt, pinning his arm to the door frame. "He hasn't hypnotized us or anything. He physically can't. Tony's got him under control. He's on the team."

"That's exactly what a hypnotized person would say," Bruce struggled with the arrow, trying to get free. "Let me go or you'll see what happens when I get anxious and-and it's not pretty."

Natasha's voice was emotionless when she spoke, "As much as it pains me to admit it, Loki is on the team."

He stopped struggling and looked at everyone, "Are you guys crazy? Have you forgotten what he's capable of? There's no way..."

Loki got up and Bruce flinched visibly, walking several steps backwards, "Ah, Dr. Banner, I am extremely pleased you remember me. I must say everyone in this room is at least a percentage crazy and it takes time adjusting to this—" he wrinkled his nose as he dramatically looked around the apartment, "—but believe me, I have reformed. I am—how do I put it—a most goody-two-shoes, boring, crime-fighter like my br-Thor. It sucks but don't worry, I'll get back in character the second I can."

Bruce tore his shirt sleeve, finally freeing himself, "You guys seriously agreed to keep him?"

"I didn't," Clint commented dryly. "I'm waiting for his little parole to get over and then we'll fight, man-to-man."

"You mean man-to-God, right?" Loki laughed.

Natasha ignored the jibe, "We agreed for a very short period of time because Steve, Thor and Tony believe this is the best."

"Fury?" Bruce asked.

Natasha shrugged, getting up and disappearing into the bedroom. Clint looked at Naz apologetically, "I'll just go check up on her. You'll manage here?"

"Yeah," she sounded a bit light-headed.

"Okay."

Naz rubbed her hands together wondering what to say and smiled shortly at Bruce, "So, I heard you turn green when angry?"

Bruce gave her a look.

---

The crack of the slap resounded across the apartment.

"How could you leave like that?"

Tony rubbed his cheek as he glared back at Naz, "Because I can."

"Where the hell were you? And don't say that you were with Pepper because I checked."

He gasped angrily, "You called her!? Stop meddling in my affairs, okay? I can damn well do what I like. You don't have the right to-to question what I do. You are no one to do that."

Her voice was high-pitched as she replied, "I was so worried! Maybe you don't care enough about yourself but I do. Do you even realize—you know what, I give up. Go do what you like. You obviously don't think of anyone but yourself." She caught Loki staring at the two of them and spat, "Both of you."

"What did I do?" Loki asked with surprise.

Both Tony and Naz rolled their eyes and stalked off.

Across the room, on the kitchen counter, Bruce shrugged mid-way through eating his second bowl of cornflakes, his suspicious eyes never leaving Loki.

Clint walked into the apartment smelling faintly of cigarette smoke. He gave a quick nod to Bruce before stealing his bowl of cornflakes, shoving several spoonfuls in his mouth.

"Oye," Bruce frowned, trying to get the bowl back as Clint held it out of his reach, "go get your own."

"No," Clint smirked, "go get yourself another one."

Bruce jumped up trying to reach the bowl while Clint laughed, turning the bowl out of his reach once again, milk spilling from it across the counter.

"Don't make me angry, Barton!"

"Ooh, I'm scared, Banner. You're making me feel a bit green with all your jumping around."

"I think I liked you better when we didn't talk."

"That was before you tried to mess with my best friend's heart," Clint accused.

Bruce pushed Clint vehemently, "Don't you dare accuse me of things you know nothing about."

He caught Clint off-balance and the bowl slipped out of the agent's hand.

Within a second Loki was there, languidly reaching out for the bowl, his fingers catching it easily. He placed it in front of Bruce, "It would be better if you two didn't take out your anger on someone else's crockery."

He walked back as quietly as he had appeared, settling on the couch with his nearly-finished book.

Bruce looked at the bowl in front of him, feeling sick. He pushed it towards Clint, "I'm not hungry anymore. You take it."

Clint looked at it and getting up, threw away the contents. He turned the tap on full, focussing on the sound of water as he washed the bowl. By the time he placed the clean bowl on the shelf he was ashamed of what had started off as a joke.

"Banner," he said, "I shouldn't have said what I did. I'm sorry."

It was a very sparse attempt but enough for Bruce to nod his head, "It's okay. Tempers high in this safehouse."

Clint nodded, "I don't think the Avengers are made to sit out together for too long."

"True."

The awkward conversation ended there, much to the gratitude of its participants, with the reappearance of Tony, still wearing his Ironman boots, carrying out large sheets of paper. "I have some info that might help us step up our game. Finally."

"I wouldn't mind knowing what's going on for once," Clint agreed, walking towards the couch and pulling open the mattresses so that everyone could sit.

Bruce took a deep breath, brushing back loose curls from his forehead before walking forward to help Clint lay out the mattresses. As they sat down expectantly, Tony winced finding he couldn't bend his leg, "Yeah, I'll just sit on the couch with Rudolph."

He smiled innocently as he slowly propped his broken leg across Loki's lap. Loki frowned pushing away his leg slightly but when Tony persisted, he gave up his half-hearted attempts and pretended not to notice Tony.

"So, I went to Stark Tower today," Tony announced.

"YOU WHAT!"

"Isn't it Avengers Tower now though?"

"Are you suicidal?"

"Oh where you broke your leg?"

"So what did you find on your little excursion?"

Tony waited for everyone to calm down, "Well, you know how I am. I can't bear the idea of those filthy aliens—no offence, Rock of Ages—getting their hands on my stuff. I only went for a look-see but I managed to hear some very interesting things." He paused for dramatic effect only to have a pillow thrown on his face.

"Go on, idiot," Natasha commented drily.

"Okay, okay, no need to hit the patient please. Yeah, so Loki was right. The place is crawling with Chitauris but get this. They've got quite a few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents working with them too."

"Mind-control?" Clint asked, his voice betraying something akin to nerves.

"I don't know. I couldn't get too close to everyone that was present but no creepy blue eyes as far as I could see. They're all building something in the basement. It looked something like this," Tony pulled out a sheet from his bundle.

An immaculate drawing of what looked like a simple instrument was on it. Two huge rings intersecting each other wired at symmetric intervals.

Loki picked up the paper. "It looks a bit like what--"

"—Selvig was building?" Clint said.

"Indeed, it does," Loki said, handing back the paper. "If it is the same, it's useless. It cannot transfer a being as powerful as Thanos. It took a tremendous toll even on me to be able to make the journey and that was when I had the Tesseract. However, the Tower is built on a natural spacevault so maybe if one knew how to manipulate the Veil between the worlds, one could bring Thanos here."

"Very good," Tony nodded. "I came to the same conclusion myself when I saw the absolute wreckage it was surrounded by. Mostly dead Chitauris and it wasn't pretty. From what I overhead, the engineers down there have been employed to fix the spacevault. In trying to transfer huge amounts of energy, the spacevault collapsed on itself. They're at the moment battling the possibility of black-hole tearing open. I bolted as fast as I could when I heard that. My poor lovely Tower."

"So, we know a bit but we don't know who's controlling all this? How do we stop it? Etc. etc.?" Natasha asked.

Tony raised a finger to interrupt her, "My dear Romanoff, I saved the best for last." He handed over what looked like blueprints, "I stole them. I'm quite sure you recognise the place in them?"

She looked at the blueprints and then at him, "No way."

"Yes way," he giggled. "I know where to find their headquarters. And guess what it's standing on? An artificial but incomplete spacevault. Not very large but I suppose they're desperate."

"Where is it?" Bruce asked, not understanding the joke.

"It's the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters," Clint said grimly, recognising the blueprints too. "They've taken over the agency."

"Somebody called the 'Commander' is sending orders to Chitauris all over the world from this location. Aliens have replaced Fury, I suppose. The way they were talking I can assume that S.H.I.E.L.D. was, as usual, attempting to create its own spacevault—they called it the Breacher—and it's going to be complete in less than 48 hours."

In the silence that followed, Naz asked the question that was in all of their minds, "Is it powerful enough to let Thanos through?"

Tony shrugged, "If I was building a machine of that size and power, I would do my best to acquire the best batteries in town." He looked at Loki pointedly, who got up abruptly, walking to the windows angrily.

He heard Stark say almost pityingly, "They didn't think finding Loki would be a problem. They're not even trying to search. I don't know what that means."

There is a whole world out there.

There are whole worlds out there.

Loki closed his eyes, back to the others, their voices muting against his thoughts. Immediately the clamouring memories surfaced, hitting every cell in his body with the lingering of pain, despair and fear. He opened his eyes.

There are no worlds out there for me. He placed his hand on the window. Still in a cage, always in a cage. He couldn't even feel the wind on his face. He couldn't hear the world. The world had disowned him.

A fitting punishment for one who had cared so less.

And yet, it hurt.

Sometimes, when he was alone, which was often, he could admit to himself, that he would always be in a deadlock with himself.

He walked back to the clear, authoritative voice of Romanoff who was saying, "Well, it is clear what our next steps should be."

"It is?" Tony asked.

Naz understood, however, and so did Bruce and the two of them looked at Natasha, knowing she wouldn't stop now.

"I'm going to the headquarters for a recon. Contact Steve and Thor and anyone else who might be able to come. By the time, I'm back, I'll have enough information to formulate an attack on the place."

"Steve and Thor are closing breaches."

"I don't think breaches are going to be a problem anymore if, my dear Stark, that machine is completed and Thanos is here. Am I right, Loki?"

Loki stiffened at being addressed directly and looked briefly at Naz before turning away to answer, "You are right, Agent."

"Good, then it is clear." She got up, "If I'm not back by nightfall, formulate a plan anyway."

As she went into the bedroom, Naz followed and watched with helplessness as her friend readied herself for the mission. If this was a puzzle, it would be an easy one. The chances of Natasha coming back were very slim.

"I wish I could stop you," she finally admitted.

Nat smiled, "I'll be back."

"I wish I could do something, anything to help you," she hated how her voice wobbled mid-sentence. A familiar voice whispered in her head, so weak.

Natasha stopped suddenly, "Hey, you do. You help so much." She looked at Naz and then moved forward to pull her into a quick, short hug, "Yeah, you take care and look after those dumb shits." She put the last gun into its holster and turned around with her blank expression, "If I don't come back—and I'm emphasizing the word if—tell him I'm sorry but if given a chance at that decision again, I would do it the same all over again."

Naz straightened, "I will. Good luck, Nat. Be back soon."

They walked out together into the living room where the atmosphere was quite grim. Clint walked forward from his place on the kitchen counter, "I'm coming."

Natasha stared back at him.

"We're a team, Nat. Besides, I'm your senior, you can't argue with me," he smiled.

"Fine, old man, but I'm not going slow for you," she smiled back.

As Naz closed the door, she heard Nat scold Clint, "You've been smoking again, haven't you? What happened to kicking the butt?"

"N-no, I haven't been smoking."

"I can smell it on you."

"N-no? That was Tony. Yeah, that was Tony."

Hearing the sound of Natasha's laugh, Naz prayed this wasn't the last time she would hear it.

***

I mean to update every other day and yet I find myself unable to even get on Wattpad most of the time. Thank you so much, college.

Anyone catch that title reference? ;)