Yes... Mr Stark?

[25] Avengers Avenging

I walk with Fury, dazed into the briefing room. I sit down in between Steve and Tony- the only people sitting at the table. They saw the blood on my hands and the tear marks that stained my face and they both look down. I don't change my facial expression as I think about Phil. Fury stands at the front and grabs something out of his pocket which he throws onto the table right in front of the captain. "These were in Phil Coulson's jacket. Guess he never did get you to sign them." The trading cards were now covered in blood, ripped and peeling. Phil is going to be absolutely devastated when he saw them, I'll have to buy him a new set. Steve picks the closest card up, and just looks at it.

"We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming." I almost snort. Yeah, you lost him. More like put him into a coma until you perform major heart and brain surgery to bring him back from the dead. "Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea, Stark and Rolling knows this, called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea... in heroes." Tony stands up and stares at the door, then walking off not wanting to hear the rest of the conversation. "Well, it's an old fashioned notion." Fury mentioned lightly.

Steve gets up along with myself and we both walk in silence towards the area I know Tony would be in. We enter the room that I was just in about 10 minutes ago and I walk over to Tony, wrapping my arms around his torso from the side. He wraps one arm around me and continues to look down into the dip in the floor where the cell use to be.

"Tony." I whisper into his side, trying to comfort him.

"Was he married?" Steve speaks up, on the other side of the room watching the two of us.

"No. There was a cellist though. She's going to be heartbroken." I tell him, releasing my arms from around Tony. My voice was dull, I sounded almost... dead. Ironic isn't it.

"I'm sorry. He seemed like a good man." He apologised.

"He was an idiot." I pull away and glare at Tony.

"Tony. That's the complete opposite of what he really was." I almost hiss, protective of the man who gave his life for us.

"Why? For believing?" Steve asked him. Tony starts to step back, walking around to the blood spot that now sat on the ground.

"For taking on Loki alone. Sam, listen to me. If he had just let us do it, he could've lived."

"But he was doing his job Tony." I tell him, amazed at his negativity. "His job is to protect the people of this world. He tried and he failed, there's nothing more to it. Stop being such an ass and have some respect." Steve's look told me just how much Tony was getting on everyone's nerves on the team. I really don't know how I get along with this boy.

"He was out of his league. He should have waited. He should have..."

"Sometimes there isn't a way out, Tony." Steve interrupts him.

"Right. How did that work for him?" They knock shoulders and I apologise to Steve with a look on my face.

"Is this the first time you've lost a soldier?" Tony turns sharply, making me bump into his chest but he catches me before I could fall.

"We are not soldiers! I am not marching to –" Tony hisses at the super soldier, but he grew a backbone and wouldn't have any more of Tony's sass.