To the end of the line - stucky

Bratty Steve

Agent Hill had been coordinating people for hours now from the S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters. Every small town in Alberta had agreed to search, and all her best agents were looking from the skies, but it was still worrying. There were roughly one hundred and thirty thousand square miles of Forrest to look through, even the best team couldn't find every crevice or cave in that area.

It was unbelievable that only earlier today, the team were on a mission and nothing was wrong. There was a chance they could lose three of them today, but Maria liked to think herself an optimist and was sure the boys could survive on their own with all their training and enhanced abilities. If anyone can, they can.
And Clint, who may not technically have a superpower or be enhanced in any way was the most skilled person she knew. He had the determination and natural talent to master anything he wished. So she was sure he could get through this too. At the end of the week, everyone would be back in avengers tower bugging her about using the important computers to track down Tony's school crushes for a joke. Or tricking her into eating chocolate full of ghost peppers. She hated them at the time, but if it brought them all back together, she'd scoff that bar down as quick as Tony goes through women.

"Agent?" A young woman said, appearing in the doorway. "Sorry, I've just been told to tell everyone the New Year's Eve Stark party tomorrow has been cancelled".

Oh, she'd completely forgotten about that. It was the party of the year. Though most of the team hated sucking up to big political figures, they always looked forward to relaxing as a team after.
They'd sit in the big room, surrounded by remnants and reminders of the party, with shoes off or ties undone. The formality's gone and replaced by relaxing discussions and drinking games.

"Thank you, Agent", she nodded through the emotions. The woman looked sympathetic as she smiled and walked away.

It sounds ridiculous, as the majority of the group was older than her, but the team were like her children. She gave them instructions, reminded them of important things and kept them safe, watching them closely. Whilst they followed whatever she said, between causing havoc and calling her for the most ridiculous things, like Tony's stolen the whole pack of doughnuts and won't give them back. That was a funny call.

But there was no energy like that in the tower today. Sam and Wanda had taken over the small room staring at the news on the tv. Nat was sitting with Clint upstairs in the Medbay, and no one had seen Tony since he left earlier. He was probably using bad coping mechanisms to deal with it, such as drinking or working constantly and forgetting to eat. In short, they had all spread out and were trying to cope with everything, mostly alone and feeling lost.

For the moment, she was completely free. Everyone around her knew what they were doing and could organise themselves, so she decided to start helping the team.

Sam and Wanda still sat in the separate room so she started there.

"Hey guys", she said, not to startle them.

They didn't answer but nodded or smiled tightly in acknowledgement. Every news channel had been replaying similar stories of the missing avengers almost on repeat.

"We should turn this off", Maria suggested. It was unhealthy for them to sit and watch whilst they could do nothing.

Wanda listened, and they all sat staring at the black screen.

"Everyone's doing everything they can, we have a lot of help". The words wouldn't even make a dent in the way they were feeling, they all knew that, but they would help eventually.

"I hope they're together", Wanda said softly.

The other two thought about it, horrified by the fact they might have crashed and been thrown in different places, but Sam didn't think like that.