The Avengers x Y/N Barton

Pt. 9

The chains keeping Erik under Loki's spell are gone now. He feels light to the point he's afraid he'll start floating in the air uncontrollably like a party balloon filled with helium.

The only thing anchoring him to the ground is your voice ringing in his ears, assuring him he's going to be fine.

"The Scepter," he groans and hunches over the terrace to look at the lower level. "The Tesseract can't fight, but you can't protect against yourself."

His eyes glint with despair as he sees his creation providing the key to the locked gate of hitherto safe world. Under Loki's control it looked beautiful but now it's nothing but horror. Hell raining from the wormhole in the sky of which he's the designer.

"Doctor, it's okay, it's not your fault," Natasha observes his glassy eyes. "You didn't know what you were doing."

"Actually, I think I did," guilt's pouring from his confession. "I built in a safety to cut their power source."

"The Scepter may be able to close the portal," you surmise from his puzzled wording.

It make sense. There's nothing in your world able to defeat something originated in a different one. You need to fight fire with fire.

Natasha puts her feet over the ledge to jump down. Erik's perception of the world gets clearer as he sees her flinging the devilish wand into your palms.

She brings her hand up to shade her eyes and raises her voice for you to hear her. "Clint must have ran out of arrows by now-"

"Be careful," you guess correctly she wants to go look for him.

Erik navigates you to direct the spear towards the forcefield. "Right at the crown."

Hissing sparkles and thin streaks of black smoke light up when the tip of the spear brushes the flashing dome.

The energy pulsing around the construction protecting the Cube seems to be alive. It's magnificent. You feel the urge to protect it, as deep as was the antagonism in the lab.

You grunt and you grit your teeth together as you realize the sympathy for the creation isn't your own, it flows to you through your hands. The stone set in the Scepter foists it on you.

Activating earpiece, you send a message to the others, straining to keep the Scepter in the needed position. The power of both elements together is difficult to handle.

"I can close it. Can anybody copy? I can shut the portal down."

"Do it," Steve cocks his head sideways and clogs the empty ear with his finger to block the noise from surroundings and hear only the radio communication.

"Stark, these things are still coming," he doesn't understand Tony's request to wait.

"I got a nuke coming in. It's gonna blow in less than a minute," Tony's motive halts your pursuit. "And I know just where to put it."

The thrusters of his suit give him speed needed to catch up to the missile and redirect it from its original route, up towards the portal.

You throw your head back. "Come on, Stark," you whisper under your breath.

"Y/N," Steve instructs you hesitantly, "close it," he watches muffled explosion lightening the darkness above and lifeless Chitauri flopping down.

"He just needs more time," you protest.

"Doctor Barton, close it, that's a direct order!"

"It's agent Barton and I won't let him die there!" You hold onto a hope for a miracle to happen.

"Damn it," your voice cracks as you come to terms with the fact that you can't put Tony's life before saving the world. He reckoned his ticket was probably one-way.

Forcing the spear deeper, you connect it with the device.

The beacon fizzles out and the sky starts healing from its wound. The recovered blue canvas of atmosphere is blemished by a silhouette falling down at rapid speed.

Tony made it.

"He's not slowing down," Thor's spinning Mjolnir, ready to come to Ironman's rescue.

During the final spin before being lifted, he sees Hulk closing Tony in his hands like a rag doll and with two jumps bringing him in the middle of street.

"Is he breathing?" Steve rushes to check Tony's vitals.

Tony's head whips up as Hulk's booming bellow wakes him up from unconsciousness. "What the hell? What just happen?" He stays lying on the ground, sprawled as his muscles are too tired to allow him any movement. "Please tell me nobody kissed me!"

"We won," Steve looks around the silent street.

Tony sighs in relief and proposes to take a day off. "Have you ever tried Schwarma? There's a Shwarma joint about two blocks away from here. I don't know what it is but I wanna try it."

----

"Two agents Barton... It's gonna be confusing," Clint adjusts his sunglasses, watching Bruce transfering the Tesseract from a steel suitcase Tony's holding, into a stabilizer made by Erik. "Even more than it used to be."

Natasha throws her arm over your shoulders, "We'll address you as agent Barton junior! Or the second!"

"Or! You can stop making a mountain out of a molehill and stick with calling me Y/N," you squeal when Natasha slides her arm to your lower back and pushes you in Steve's direction as soon as he crosses her sight-line.

"Lab or field?" Steve wonders what your plan is, eyes peeled for Thor silently requiring bounded Loki to take ahold of the stabilizer.

You wave the new, celestial friend goodbye and watch the brothers dissolve in Tesseract's blue light. Loki will serve his time in Asgard's prison.

"I wanna make sure that the Scepter isn't misused and the history doesn't repeat itself." Once was too many times. "Agent Sitwell is joining me, and Mr. Secretary is finnishing the paperwork."

"So lab it is," he ratiocinates, admiring your devotion. "Can I call you?" He blurts out, voice an octave higher, almost choking on those four words.

With butterflies tickling your stomach, you confidently ask blushing supersoldier out. "Lets exchange numbers over a lunch, shall we?" If you don't stop denying the chemistry between you two, you have one of your doctorates for nothing.

"The addressing doesn't matter," Clint voices his intuition to Natasha while watching you getting on Steve's motorcycle. "In three years she'll be agent Rogers anyway."