114So this chapter has been the bane of my existence since the first draft but I think it came out pretty well. Apparently I hate writing rewrites of canon as much as I hate reading them because this chapter is pretty much my version of the opening battle in Age of Ultron. You'll start to see that this story is going to pick up part of the plot from Age of Ultron and it made sense to use this scene as the bridge for it.
On a personal note, things in my real life are hopefully starting to settle. In the last two months I've gotten an up close look at how little the justice system will do to prevent crimes (because it's not enough to know that someone has a history of violence to keep them away from you, even if you have the violence on a security camera footage) and I fell into a deep depression (to where I could hardly get out of bed). But I finally was able to get a cease desist for harassment/stalking and am doing all the right things to help my depression from this horrible situation. All in all, this difficult chapter couldn't have come at a worse mental health time for me and I'm so happy it's finally posted. Please be gentle with it :)
Thank you all for the comments/reviews/kudos! I can't believe how quickly this story has grown and there's a whole lot more coming down the pipeline.
"I'm not leaving this jet until someone tells me how the hell something like this" –Tony slammed his hand down on the grainy picture of Loki's scepter being brought into some dingy bunker– "just goes missing from a locked down SHIELD facility! And don't you dare say it's classified!"
ooOoo
"We'd like to know that too," Maria Hill said, breaking the long, tense silence that had everyone on the jet feeling uneasy. "I swear, when we first found the signature Fury, himself, confirmed the scepter was secure."
"Well, it sounds like you have a security problem, Agent," Tony snapped.
Another painful pause. "We're looking into it."
Tony assumed she knew more than she was sharing, but didn't press the issue when he saw the last photograph in the file. Taken in the same compound where Loki's scepter was located, sat a box filled with Phase 2 weapons — the weapons SHIELD used the Tesseract to make last year. Evidently, their third objective on the mission, ranked between retrieving Loki's scepter and rescuing the captive twins, was to secure the stolen weapons.
Because everything always comes down to weapons.
Tony started doing some back-of-the-napkin calculations to figure out precisely how dangerous the weapons could be with the Tesseract still stored in Asgard. Nothing on Earth could compare to the power of the Tesseract, so there wasn't much to worry about if these guys couldn't actually operate the weapons without the energy from it. Unfortunately, according to Tony's calculations, as well as Agent Hill's refusal to refute them, the situation wasn't looking promising.
Tony turned a deaf ear as soon as Steve and Clint turned the subject from the tech into a half-hour rant on the ethics of using children in political agendas. Once again, Hill claimed she didn't know about the scepter or weapons until after they had identified the twins. Partway through, Nat suggested they abort altogether, arguing that they weren't properly prepared for the mission given the new information. At some point, Bruce calmly left the call and ended up in the back of the jet wearing a pair of headphones for the rest of the trip. No one needed to ask why, nor dared to interrupt him.
And Tony? He actually stayed quiet, trying to concentrate on the weapons while convincing himself not to take his suit to fly straight to SHIELD and take everything they had with whatever force he deemed necessary. His anger, though, kept circling to the twins, and he eventually found himself agreeing with Steve, for the first time since they met, that SHIELD had crossed a line by using the kids. A year ago, hell, even a month ago, Tony would have scoffed at Cap's all too perfect moral compass. He might have even made some snarky comment about Steve's need to save everyone. Now all Tony could think of was Harry; of learning how his son was being used by both sides in a magical war, and how eerily similar to the situation these twins — someone else's son and daughter — were in. First, their captors used them for reasons Tony still hadn't discovered, then SHIELD used them to motivate the Avengers to find the scepter and weapons.
What were the Avengers supposed to do now? Turn a blind eye as they run past the twins' locked cells? There was no way Tony, or any of them, could do that. Not that Tony would say as much in his current company. He had a reputation to uphold.
The rest of the flight to Sokovia was a somber affair. Being up since three in the morning with Harry — did the strange window thing seriously happen less than twenty-four hours ago?! — meant Tony had no chance of staying awake throughout the second half of the trip if he intended to be on his game for the mission. And he fully intended to be on his A-game because if he wanted to get home to clean up the mess he left, he definitely needed to bring his best on this mission. Fortunately, everyone knew better than to bother him, meaning Tony got a few hours of semi-decent sleep by the time they picked up Thor in Berlin. Most people wouldn't consider it an ideal amount of rest, but Tony had worked harder on less. It was the story of his life, and he was thinking Pepper was right — something needed to change there.
With Thor in tow, they suited up, and before they knew it, Clint was landing the jet on the outskirts of a remote forest a few miles from the compound in question. They'd walk the rest of the way on foot, including Tony, to avoid tipping off the camp with the sound of his thrusters.
"I have heard there is a new young Stark in the ranks," Thor jubilantly said to Tony as they exited the Quinjet together. Steve and Bruce were already out planning their route with JARVIS on the handheld holomap, and the spy twins were following behind Tony and Thor, a place he didn't feel entirely comfortable with them being.
"Y'know," Tony said loud enough for the rest of the team to hear, "for a piece of need-to-know intelligence, it sure reached Europe fast."
As a gambling man, Tony would have put his bet on Natasha as the leak and not second-guessed himself at all. He would have lost every penny of that bet.
"I called him last week," Steve replied. With a wave of his hand, the holomap closed. Steve pointed north for them to head out. "Thor is part of this team. The team deserves to know about any potential distractions—"
"Distraction?!" Tony abruptly stopped walking. Behind him, Bruce shifted to the left to avoid running into him. "Who thinks my kid is a distraction? He hasn't even been here a month yet."
"Fury's words, not mine. I'm just following orders," Steve said, as if that made it any better. Steve would follow orders off a cliff; a fatal flaw Tony would never do. Hell, had Fury and Tony followed orders a year ago, Midtown would be nothing but a crater.
"All kids are a distraction, Stark," Clint added, jogging up beside him. Taking the lead, he called over his shoulder, "You'll learn."
Thor clapped Tony on the shoulder of his armor, giving him a slight push to restart their hike. "Don't listen to any of them. In Asgard, the birth of an offspring is a momentous occasion, one we celebrate for the entire month afterwards. We shall start the festivities when we return to New York."
"You know I'm always up for a party. In this case, you're about fifteen years too late." Tony stepped onto an old log, satisfied by the way it broke under his foot like nothing.
"Hey, at least you got to skip the diaper phase and terrible twos," Clint teased. Tony wanted to ask how the hell someone like him would know, but Clint kept on joking, "Could you just imagine a twenty-something Tony Stark in the men's room changing a diaper? Or dealing with a screaming kid because he doesn't want to leave the park? All while dressed in a Tom Ford suit and nursing a hangover."
"Laugh it up, Birdbrain." Tony scowled because, no matter how much he wanted to laugh it off and say Clint was exaggerating, Barton actually understated the mess Tony had been during Harry's toddler year. "Let's see how much help from the air you get today. Oh, don't worry, I won't let any fatal shots get by, just a stray one or two. Enough to rough you up a bit."
In the way only a well-trained team could do, they dropped the banter as soon as the Quinjet was out of view and the dense forest surrounded them on all sides. This was a scenario they'd trained well for throughout the year. They all fell into their respective roles — Steve setting the pace and navigation, Nat and Clint, weapons at the ready, scanning the canopy for any incoming danger, Thor and Bruce taking the rear for reinforcement should a fight break out. Tony usually flew ahead, giving Captain America the lay of the land, but given their goal of secrecy, he stayed in step with the spies; his gauntlet ready to fire should the need arise.
A little more than halfway to the compound, Steve signaled to stop. Tony scanned the area in front of them. An outline of a stone bunker appeared on his HUD, so he asked JARVIS to check for people. Empty, yet Steve still wanted to verify for himself. To no one's surprise, the "all clear" message came through their comms less than a minute later.
The hike seemed to go on forever. All the trees looked the same and with no official paths or roads through the area Tony really had no way of knowing if they were moving anywhere. In fact, had it not been for the terrain map of their progress continually updating their location, he might have accused Steve of leading them in circles.
More than once, Tony almost said "screw it" and took to the skies. They didn't really need the element of surprise for this. It wasn't like it helped them on any of the other five missions the team had been on this year, so it wouldn't take much to convince himself that a more direct approach would be better. Then Pepper's voice came into his head, warning him how alerting the enemy of their arrival by starting a fight among the team would probably get the twins killed and the weapons further hidden, so he passed the time brainstorming ways to add soundless thrusters to his next suit.
He had scrapped his third idea when Cap's voice came through his comm, instructing them to proceed with caution as they approached the top of a hill. His instructions, though firm, were with good intentions since the forest on the other side had been cleared out to make room for the four-structure compound; three ancient stone buildings and a large tent, just like they had briefed on in the Quinjet. If Tony remembered the pictures correctly, two of the structures held the scepter and weapons, and the tent probably held their supplies, ammunition, food, and water. No doubt they weren't getting regular deliveries out here.
As small and easy of a job as it first appeared, Tony didn't like it. Something felt odd about the entire scene, starting with the layout of the area. Unless they discovered a complex network of tunnels and bunkers beneath the three stone structures, the entire camp appeared too simplistic to hold anything of real value, especially compared to the previous locations the Avengers had been deployed in search of the scepter. Except for the people. JARVIS identified no less than four dozen people on or about the compound, far more than the tiny tent center could support. Finally, on top of the abnormally large team, the people he saw outside the structures were… wandering… around. Because that was the most accurate description of the chicken dances he saw them doing, simultaneously moving in a random and a scheduled cadence, unlike any guard watch he'd ever seen. Based on Captain Rogers' intrigued expression, the legitimate military soldier agreed.
"Alright, listen up, team," Steve announced in his trademark motivational speaking voice, the one saying he knew they were basically screwed, but had a job to get done. "By the looks of it, I think we all agree we're about to be outgunned down there–"
"Why, thank you, Captain Obvious." Tony gave the best salute possible in his clunky suit.
The speech ended up being more strategic and far less rallying than Tony expected.
They started with a layout of the compound, going through the potential places where their objectives — the scepter, the SHIELD-made weapons, and the twins, in that order — might be. They unanimously agreed that the building on the Northeast end of the compound most likely held Loki's Scepter. Most of the robotic-acting soldiers were guarding it, narrowly avoiding each other with each short pass, and of the three, they concluded the Scepter would be the most guarded. The weapon location came next, easily identifying the Southside building near the tent. As the only two-story building, it best resembled the building they saw in the photographs where the crates of weapons were delivered. This left the small, reddish structure to the East for the twins, assuming they weren't being held with the Scepter or the weapons. Sending a separate group to check it out was risky, but one they all thought necessary to avoid unintentionally leaving the two kids behind.
"We'll do this in teams," Steve commanded as they finished the briefing on the compound. "Clint, you and Nat find the twins. Get 'em out and to the bunker we passed on the way in. We'll meet you there."
Clint secured his bow and gave a nod.
"Thor and I will handle the weapons. We'll grab and go as many as we can and transport them up here in as few trips as possible. If we have time, we'll start moving them to the bunker with Clint and Nat." Steve turned to Tony. "Can you still track the scepter here?"
"I'm going to assume that's a rhetorical question." Tony scoffed. "Jay, pull up the signature and lock it on the map." At his command, a blinking blue dot appeared on a map of the compound JARVIS compiled during their briefing. Being within a half-mile of the object, the signal was weaker than it should have been. However, it confirmed their suspicion of it being somewhere inside the Northeast building. Tony shrunk the map to the corner of the HUD. "Anything else?"
"As soon as you have it, fly it directly to the jet and get back here for air support," Steve unhelpfully instructed. Tony would have done that without being ordered to, anyway.
"I'll handle ground support out here," Bruce quietly added from the edge of the hill, peering down at the camp. "Unfortunately, the Big Guy will do more harm than good down there, so I'll protect the weapons and the area between here and the bunker after Clint, Nat, and the twins make it there."
With the "teams" — a loose term in Tony's mind since he was working solo — all set, they moved on to timing. Ideally, they wanted to maintain the element of surprise; it was the reason they landed the Quinjet so far away and took the trip on foot. To do so, Steve suggested Tony fly out and around the forest to enter the camp from the North. This would allow the others to enter as discreetly as possible. Which, in itself, would be difficult coming from the top of a ridge with little tree cover leading into the camp. Nat planned out a route they could take on foot to keep them as covered as possible. Finally, if they stayed hidden throughout all of it, they had to synchronize Tony's exit to the Quinjet perfectly, and therefore Tony was given strict instructions not to fly out with the Scepter until the last of the weapons were secured.
Of course, as with most of the well-laid plans in Tony's life, all hell broke loose as soon as they stepped down the hill. Tony barely made it into the forest when dozens of angry men stormed out from the treeline around the camp.
"So much for the element of surprise," Tony grumbled, taking a sharp turn to soar into the fight by sending off a targeted charge right into the line of people heading straight into Nat and Clint. In the distance, the sound of Hulk roaring, followed by trees snapping and short-lived yelling, vibrated through Tony's armor. "Change of plans, Cap. Might I suggest we do this as efficiently as possible? I'll clear you landlubbers a path on my way to the Scepter, but then you gotta take it from there."
"Copy that," Nat answered for their leader as she and Clint worked in tandem on a group of guards swinging through the trees, attempting to engage in a hand-to-hand fight against which they had no idea how badly they'd lose. "Get the guys in first. They have more to move."
Agreeing with Nat, Tony hovered above Steve and Thor, ready to help if needed. Thor used the force of his hammer to take large, sweeping blows, sending enemies flying off into the distance, while Steve threw his shield, expertly banking it off the trees like a pinball and colliding with at least three people along its path. Just as the shield was losing momentum, Tony saw Steve touch the button on the inside of his glove, instantly recalling the shield and taking another half-dozen people down along the way.
"Hell yeah!" Tony exclaimed, unable to hide his excitement at seeing his latest creation in action. "You are so welcome, Captain America. Now let's get you guys into the camp and kick some ass in the process!"
"Language," Steve admonished.
"Oh, c'mon, old man," Tony teased, a friendly smirk hidden behind his mask, "you can't say we haven't rubbed off on you over the last year."
"You'll be happy for the reminder when your kid doesn't have the mouth of a sailor," Steve said. He lined up next to Thor and securely held out his shield to the God of Thunder. Like they had practiced countless times in the Tower, Thor slammed his hammer onto the shield, sending a wave out to knock down another set of incoming soldiers. Unfortunately, another set came in right behind them.
Despite Steve's disapproval of Tony's choice of words, 'kick some ass' was precisely what they did. In fact, if Tony wasn't so busy gloating over their victory, he might have noticed how easily the opposition went down. One swing of the hammer and Thor took out another group. Then Tony flew past a set hiding out in the trees and knocked them out with little effort. But all Tony could focus on was getting Steve and Thor to those weapons and being the one soaring through, he had the best position to get them there.
Upon finally reaching the stone two-story building, Steve and Thor stopped short of the heavily guarded door to take cover behind a boulder. Tony was about to fly in to take down the guards and blast the door off until bolts of lightning came crashing down to the Earth, causing everyone blocking the duo to fall to the ground. At the same time, an open-air vehicle with two large firearms mounted on the top came driving in behind the boulder, engaging Tony in a blast-for-blast battle while Thor and Steve headed for the building.
"Thor! Watch out!" Steve called through their comms. "RPG on the roof!"
"Of course there is." Tony sighed at the sight of the enormous weapon perched on the roof. He lifted his arm to fire at the two soldiers running to it, but stopped as Steve's shield soared into the sky, effectively taking down one man. With only half the job completed before the shield returned to Steve's arm, Thor's hammer came slamming into the RPG hard enough to knock it down, but unfortunately, not before the grenade deployed.
"Heads up," Tony warned his teammates on the ground. Without time to think, Tony locked his arm missile onto the moving weapon and sent it off, breathing a sigh of relief as he watched it explode far enough above Thor and Cap that they hardly felt it. "Get in there and secure those weapons. Time for me to check on the spy twins. See if they need help with their twins."
Navigating across the camp brought its fair share of obstacles. Tony dodged gunfire and explosions from every direction, engaging only with the few enemies who stood directly in his way. By the time he reached the East end of the camp, he saw Nat and Clint standing back-to-back, surrounded by incoming soldiers. At first glance, Tony couldn't tell whether they had the situation completely under control or if they were just trying to stay afloat. With a steady barrage of gunfire from Nat and a variety of arrows from Clint, they held their own, but made little headway in getting into the building.
"Need a hand?" Not waiting for an answer, Tony shot at the line of people on Clint's side, knocking them straight to the ground. "No need to thank me."
"Good," Clink chuckled. "I wasn't going to."
The small reprieve was short-lived as another round of people came filling in behind the fallen.
"We got the weapons." Steve's voice said through their comms. "Thor and Hulk are going to clear the way for me to get them back up to the ridge. I think I can get them all in one round."
"Copy that," Tony replied. He blasted a line in the ground between Nat and the group shooting at her. "At this rate, you'll be long gone before we find the twins or the scepter."
"Hey, boys," Nat said, grabbing Tony's attention and nodding at a 50-gallon oil drum sitting off to the side of the building they were attempting to infiltrate, "you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Without a word spoken between them, Tony and Clint shifted their plan to redirect the approaching group to the left side of the structure. Once they had everyone on the same side, Nat kicked the oil drum, sending it rolling into the middle of the group and taking down another few in its path. Clint then fired an exploding arrow into the oil drum, causing the whole thing to immediately explode with an impressive fireball.
As soon as the dust cleared, Clint and Nat ran into the building, leaving Tony hovering above, ready to shoot down any survivors. Confirming there were none, Tony pulled up the scepter beacon on his HUD and took off into the sky.
"I'm heading to the scepter," Tony announced over the comm.
Ignoring the chattering that came in reply — Thor reassuring them he and Hulk were handling the perimeter, Steve saying how he was taking the weapons to the bunker, and Clint giving a play-by-play of the containment cells they were searching and, so far, coming up empty-handed — Tony slowed down as he approached the building. Something about the sight in front of him felt very, very wrong, and it took two laps around the building to figure out what it was.
"Uh, guys," Tony said skeptically, "either we scared the guards off the scepter or something fishy is going on because it's a ghost town over here."
Tony flew around the building again, paying closer attention to the signature blinking on the HUD map during the trip. "Hey Jay, are we sure the scepter is in there? Based on the map, the thing should be on the outside."
"I can confirm that the signature you identified is correctly marked," JARVIS answered. "Whether it is the scepter, I cannot tell."
Tony groaned. There wasn't much else he could do besides check it out himself. "And is there anyone waiting for me on the other side of this door?"
"I detect no lifeforms."
"Yeah… that's not suspicious at all," Tony muttered. "Who would think to guard something as powerful as the magic death stick? Well, here goes nothing."
If Tony thought no one guarding the scepter was suspicious, the scene he walked into when he blasted down the door was flat out unbelievable. True to JARVIS's word, there were no lifeforms in the cramped, dusty computer room. Instead, he walked into seven bodies still sitting at their respective stations, like the ambush had been too fast to even move a muscle. With his hand raised, ready to fire if the assailant suddenly returned, Tony walked by each body, confirming through his HUD that they were dead.
Tony lifted the head of the last soldier. "Talk to me, Jay," he said, warily. "What happened here?"
"Based on their temperature and the ambient temperature of the room, I estimate they were killed over three hours ago," JARVIS said. "There is no sign of a struggle. With no obvious wounds, an exact cause of death is impossible to ascertain."
"Well, that's comforting." Tony felt anything but comfortable.
Tony inspected the room, waiting long enough in each corner and air shaft to look for hidden people or weapons that might have killed seven supposedly highly trained HYDRA troops in a matter of seconds without time to respond. After confirming that he was alone and the air was free of any hazardous chemicals, he exited his suit and practically ran to the nearest empty computer desk. To his surprise, it started up with a touch of the screen. Tony acted quickly, gaining access to the database to give JARVIS full rein to copy it all to headquarters.
Distracted by his coding, Tony startled at the sound of Natasha in his ear, "We've found no sign of the Maximoff twins anywhere on the premises. It's your call, Cap, but I don't think they were ever here."
There was a long pause while the reality of the situation passed through the team. They'd be returning without the one, or two, people they had come for.
"Meet us at the ship," Steve finally replied, solemnly. "How about you, Tony? Have you found the scepter?"
"I have a room of corpses but no scepter yet," Tony answered. He turned his attention to the room. "Supposedly, it's–"
"Sir," JARVIS interrupted mid-scan of the room, "I'm detecting an air draft along the North wall."
Tony slowly stepped up to the wall in question and ran his hands down its edges. Please be a secret door. Please be a secret door. His left hand crossed a ridge in the corner, triggering, as he'd hoped, the entire wall to slide sideways. Through the darkness in front of him, Tony could only see a rusted metal staircase leading underground and away from the main room — unironically in the same direction as the signal on his map.
"Standby, I think I found something," Tony whispered, more to himself than his teammates.
He didn't hesitate to enter the stairway, and the temperature seemed to plummet as soon as Tony took the first step down, practically pulling him down the steps towards where he knew he'd find the scepter. The stone walls on each side of the staircase made it narrow and claustrophobic, and each step he took creaked beneath his boots, sending flakes of rust into the darkness below. As he approached the bottom, the air had become thick with the smell of damp stone and something metallic.
"JARVIS?" he asked into his earpiece. "You there, buddy?"
But all he got was static.
At the bottom of the stairs, a passageway led to a long, curved corridor. Fluorescent lights flickered half-heartedly in their casings, casting irregular shadows along the concrete walls. Tony continued down the corridor, staying close to the wall in case he encountered any unexpected visitors, until he reached an old, thick metal door. It hung half-open, not enough to see what it protected, but Tony was confident he'd find the scepter there.
Tony stepped through, breath catching at the cavern in front of him.
The room was circular and wrong. Wrong proportions, wrong lighting—too dark in some places, too bright in others. The walls were lined with archaic-looking consoles that were almost too obviously hastily wired together and blinking with an outdated code. But it was the center that captured Tony's attention. The scepter stood on a steel pedestal, propped upright like an offering, like it was waiting for him to retrieve it. The gem atop it pulsed with slow, deliberate light, which he couldn't seem to stop staring at despite knowing exactly how much damage it could do.
Tony approached the scepter slowly, unconsciously, holding his breath the entire way. Every logical part of him screamed, 'this is a trap'. He knew what a trap looked like. He'd walked into plenty with and without the Avengers. There were no guns. No guards. No defenses. Just a scepter, waiting in the darkness for him.
"It feels like this thing is watching me."
His hand trembled, reaching out, unsure if he should touch it or not. The moment his fingertips brushed the scepter, the world around him began to unravel. The air thickened, and the cavern's echoing sounds dulled, muffled as if he'd been submerged underwater. Red bled into the edges of his vision, pulsating in sync with the pounding in his chest, quickening until something cracked inside his skull. Tony collapsed to his knees on the cold stone floor, the breath knocked out of him by a force that didn't touch his body but shot straight through his mind. When he looked up, the scepter room was gone.
He was in the Tower's conference room, sitting across from Harry. Everything looked as it had the first day he'd met Harry. The table was spotless, the light from the windows warm and golden. Tony opened his mouth to ask what the hell was going on, but before he could get the words out, a sharp red light flashed across his vision. In a blink, the scene shifted. Now he was in the kitchen, cooking breakfast beside Harry. He watched Harry's hands fold the dough like a pro. It was all so vivid, Tony swore he could reach out and touch him.
This wasn't real. He knew it wasn't, no matter how much he wanted it to be.
Another crack split his skull, sharper this time, and the red light flared again — hotter, angrier.
Suddenly, he was outside his house in Malibu, standing shoulder to shoulder with Harry. The salty breeze curled around them, warm and clean. Malibu still felt more like home to Tony than New York, and the idea of sharing it with Harry filled Tony's chest with quiet hope.
Then the world fell apart. A blast rang out from somewhere deep inside the house. The sky flickered. Windows shattered. The ground beneath them shook violently as the perfect vision buckled and broke apart. His house was crumbling; the walls caving in, concrete crashing down in thick clouds of dust.
Tony stood unharmed in the chaos, but Harry wasn't. He was pinned beneath a heavy beam, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. His eyes locked onto Tony's — wide with betrayal, with pain. "You said you'd keep me safe, Dad," he rasped.
"Tony?"
A firm grip on Tony's shoulder shook him out of whatever trance he'd been forced into and back to the present. Steve stood directly in front of him, his icy blue eyes almost staring through Tony into his soul. Past Steve, Tony saw his Iron Man suit, Natasha, and Clint standing guard around the scepter, both simultaneously keeping watch for any invaders and observing Tony from a distance.
"What the fuck happened?!" Tony jumped to his feet. He grabbed hold of Steve's outstretched arm to steady himself when his head felt dizzy from the movement. "Did you see… How is it possible… When did you get here?"
Steve's face contorted into at least a dozen different expressions of concern, more than Tony thought was possible. "We lost you on comms about ten minutes ago. I sent Clint and Nat to check it out. They called me when they saw the suit upstairs downloading data without you anywhere around. We found you in a–I don't know how to explain it. You looked far away from here, if you get what I mean. Are you alright?"
"Peachy keen, Cap," Tony dusted the dirt from his pants and walked to his suit, breathing easier once it enveloped around him. He strolled up to the scepter, hoping he looked more confident about the damn thing after whatever he'd experienced. Tony half expected the world to disappear again when he grabbed the scepter with his suit on too. Thankfully, nothing happened this time. "Let's get this bad boy to Thor. I think we all agree it's safer in Asgard than in SHIELD's so called safe custody."
Natasha slyly grinned. "Fury's going to absolutely love hearing that."
"I've never given a damn what Fury thinks and I'm not about to start now," Tony scoffed. If anyone saw how rattled he still was from his ordeal, they said nothing. They all simply followed behind him up the rickety metal staircase, passed the sitting morgue, and on all the way to the Quinjet.
On the way through the forest to the jet, they talked about the debrief plan – how they'd send Thor to Asgard with the Scepter before any of them contacted Hill or Fury. By then, it'd be too far out of SHIELD's reach for either of them to do anything about it. They talked about how the entire mission seemed odd, from the robotic guards to the dead bodies in the computer room, and agreed they all needed a hot shower and a good night's rest before returning to New York. Tony knew the perfect place they could go.
What none of them knew was that two people had been watching them in the scepter room and were still there, plotting their next move.
"You let him go?!" Pietro stormed out from the shadows up to his sister's face. "What was the point of me setting all of this up if you were just going to let him walk out?!"
Wanda slowly shook her head. "I got what I needed from him," she answered confidently.
Pietro wasn't so convinced. He had stood there, alone, right in front of them, exactly what they'd wanted. They had spent months after escaping Strucker's lab, working out different ways to draw Tony Stark out of his Ivory Tower. And Wanda let him stroll right out from them.
"Fine," Pietro conceded. "What did you learn?"
Her hands glowed red as a sinister grin crawled up her cheeks. "He has a son."