The black lady

part 1.7

The team, the so-called avengers was in pieces, hulk or banner was AWOL. No one was sure where about he landed. The lab was destroyed any data which had been found on the tesseract location had vanished with the destruction. Thor was missing having been thrown out of ship in a glass cage. Despite Cecilia best efforts agent Coulson had not survived and passed into the realms of the dead, if the director was to be believed. The lady herself had been taken by Loki in his escape. Leaving tony, Steve, Natasha and a recovering clint on the, dead in the air, on the hellicarrier.

Which lead up to this moment.

Tony standing looking at the empty space where the cell had been and the red stain mark on the wall – a pair of broken dark shades in his hand. Steve walking in a moment later. "Did he have a wife?" he asked used to the tales of a widow from his time in war.

"No. There was a cellist, I think"

"I'm sorry. He seemed like a good man" Steve tried to helped the grieving male.

"He was an idiot" Tony stated bluntly. While Steve glanced at him in confusion.

"Why? For believing?"

"For taking on Loki alone?"

"He didn't, Cecilia was there. He was doing his job"

"She had already stated that she wasn't a fighter, what good would Downton do? He was out of his league. Should have waited. He should have..." his voice drifted off.

"Sometimes there isn't a way out, tony" Steve tried to reason with the upset man.

"Right. How did that work for him?" tony commented sarcastically.

"Is this the first time you lost a soldier?"

Tony snapped towards him; anger written on his face. "We are not soldiers! I am not marching to fury's fife!"

"Neither I am" he's got the same blood on his hands as Loki does. Right now, we've got to put that aside and get this done." Steve stated getting back to the point. "Now Loki need a power source, if we can put together a list..."

He stopped talking watching as tony looked back towards the blood stain. You could hear the gears whirling in his head. As sometime seem to click, "He made it personal"

"That's not the point"

"That is the point. That's Loki's point. Hit us all right where we live. Why?"

"To tear us apart" Steve said slowly gaining the understanding that tony was after.

"He had to conquer his greed. But he knows he has to take us out to win right? That's what he wants. He wants to beat and he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience"

"Right, I caught his act at Stuttengard"

"Yeah, that's just a preview, with a Trojan act like Downton said. She knows what happened before we did. That's way she gone as its now the opening night. Loki's a full-tilt diva. He wants flower, he wants parades, he wants a monument built in the skies with his name plastered..." tony paused, Steve glancing at the genius who had a dawning of understanding appear on his face.

"SON OF A BITCH!"

~~Elsewhere on Midgard~~

Cecilia, drifting awake from a moment to feel a hand run though strains of her dark hair in a smoothing pattern. It felt like her head was filled with water – words unclears and sight blurry. Her physical state was appalling – if she could think clearly the lady would have been disappointed. And if her family could see her now... There was a mumble of words that her brain was unable to make out, followed by a warm sensation of tingling though her body. The pain pulsating thought her body lessen slightly as once again she was dragged back down into the depts of dark void once more.