Dented Iron (Hiatus)

You've lost drink privileges

After Alex left the group she found her way to the detention area where Loki had been held... and where Phil Coulson had died. She stood there thinking for a while and then she noticed Rogers had found his way there too.

"Was he married?"

"No. There was a uh- cellist" that's all Alex knew of Coulson's personal life... that and he liked supernanny.

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

"He was an idiot." Alex said looking at Rogers.

"Why? For believing?"

"For taking on Loki alone."

"He was doing his job."

Rogers stubbornness was making Alex angry. Alex walked towards the spot where Coulson was, Rogers moving to get closer too. "He was out of his league. He should have waited. He should have-"

"Sometimes there isn't a way out, Alex"

Alex scoffed and walked back to the door, passing Rogers. "Right. How did that work for him?"

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

"We are not soldiers!" she replied, barely keeping her voice below a shout. She wasn't a soldier; Coulson wasn't a soldier. "I'm not marching to Fury's fife."

"Neither am I." Alex questioned that, Rogers would follow Fury "He's got the same blood on his hands that Loki does, but right now we gotta put that behind us and get this done. Now Loki needs a power source if we can put together a list-"

Alex looks at the wall, seeing the dent where Coulson went down, the stain of red. Then she interrupts Rogers "He made it personal."

"That's not the point."

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

"To tear us apart."

Alex shook her head, mind going a mile a minute, she had Loki figured out now. "Yeah, divide and conquer is great but- he knows he has to take us out to win, right? That's what he wants. He wants to beat us; he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience."

"Right. I caught his act in Stuttgart."

"Yeah. That's just previews, this is- this is opening night. And Loki, he's a full-tail diva. He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument built to the skies with his name plastered...." Alex smirks finally realizing it "Son of-a-bitch."

"what?" Rogers asked as she raced past him "Stark Tower, get Romanoff" she called running to her suit. She needed it to work long enough to get to the tower.

With her helmet on she takes off, trusting that Rogers would gather the others. Alex took off and the jet followed behind her.

"Jarvis, initiate an evacuation. 10 block radius from Stark Tower, tell them the reactor's malfunctioning, anything. Just get the people out."

"Yes Ma'am"

Alex streaked over New York, moving as fast as she cold given the damage the Iron Man suit had suffered in the turbines. She sure wasn't at 100 percent... but whatever she had had to be good enough.

"Ma'am, I've sent a warning out and the businesses are evacuating, I also turned off the arc reactor. The device is already self-sustaining" Jarvis said as Alex got close to Stark tower, her home, her monument.

Now on the top floor stood a machine, perhaps eight feet tall. It was a rough cylinder with a focusing lens on the top and below that a chamber for containing the energies of the Tesseract. Dr. Selvig stood watching it and tracking data on a computer screen.