We Can't Go Back

A Lot of Life Left to Live

"Pick up the damn phone, Tony," she says as she once more gets his voicemail.

It must be the hundredth call when he finally picks up.

"Uh, little busy right now," he says.

"New York! I was reading Selvig's notes and he needs a power source consistent enough to keep the portal open," she says.

"The tower," Tony says.

"Yes!"

Steve and Tony had just finished getting debriefed by Fury after Coulson's death. They were at rock bottom and they needed a course of action. Thank god Lizzie actually did the research on all this. He kinda wished she was here for a moment until he remembered all the distruction that had just been done to the ship by Barton and gang. That's when he put together exactly what everything she said meant.

"Lizzie, you got to get out now," he says.

"Lizzie?" Steve says as he gets to his feet.

"Loki is attacking Stark Tower which is currently where your sister is residing," Tony says.

"Tony! Relax! I'm already out. I called Happy as soon as I figured out. I put the tower in lockdown but I doubt it'll hold for long," she says.

Lizzie isn't a coward but she knows she's a liability. She's never been a fighter, at least not the physical kind. No, she always left that to her idiot brother and ...him. Even thinking his name is still too hard sometimes.

Tony has turned his back to Steve which annoys him to no end. What gives him the right to keep information about his sister from him? He's going to make a grab for the phone when Tony hangs up and turns back to Steve.

"She's safe. She's being brought somewhere safe," he says.

"Why didn't you let me speak to her?" Steve asks.

"The first time you talk with her, it isn't going to be a quick 30 second phone call and we have work to do. Loki is heading to New York," Tony says.

He knows he's right, they have a job to do and the reunion will just have to wait. That doesn't mean he has to like it.

Lizzie's fingers move faster than they ever had as she scans through every camera in New York trying to keep an eye on her brother. From the moment the quinjet went down, she had been jumping from camera to camera to keep her eyes on him. She knows that if something happens, she will have little to do but watch in horror but she can't not look either.

She can sense Happy behind her as she manically taps away on her laptop. She is currently sitting in one of Stark's estates upstate. It is the closest place he could get her without finding a plane.

She is watching Steve protect a group of civilians in a bank as he fights off some aliens. He gets hit with some kind of grenade and he goes flying out the window and on to a car below. She barely has time to watch before she feels a ripping pain through her torso. It feels like her ribs were suddenly crushed. She groans and at first Happy just think she's groaning out of her brother being hurt but once she starts spitting up blood, he rushes over.

"What happened?" He asks.

"I don't know," she says.

She moves into diagnostic mode and begins analyzing the pain. Though even with her years of medical training, she has no answers. Her symptoms are linked to blunt force trauma but she didn't get hit with anything.

To distract herself from the pain, she turns back to Steve. She lost him for a minute but she finds him fairly quickly. She's back to being consumed by watching her brother that she doesn't notice the cuts appearing on her upper arms and bleeding through her shirt. She does however notice the sudden gunshot wound that blooms in her side as she also watches her brother get shot on screen.