I Will Always Come Back for You

Chapter 31: Man On the Run

"So Fury is dead and Rogers is on the run," Loki summarized dryly. "What an eventful twenty-four hours."

While Lily kept her eyes fixated on the sky, she could tell that the god had an amused smile on his face. In his defense, nothing really interesting happened for him nowadays, but it still upset Lily a bit that he seemed to be taking so much pleasure in all of this.

"Yeah," she replied. "I just hope we find Steve before anyone else at SHIELD does."

They had to. Something was definitely up. Whatever Steve's reasoning for keeping his secrets, she knew for a fact that they weren't malicious or for selfish reasons. That just wasn't who he was. Maybe she just didn't have the full story yet, but from what she'd heard so far, she felt like labeling Steve a criminal was a little too rash for the situation.

"I must say, of all of the people I thought possible that we would fight against one day, SHIELD was not one of them," Loki remarked.

"No one said we're fighting SHIELD," Lily replied. "We're not there yet. All we know right now is that something's going on, and we're going to find out what. That doesn't always mean fighting."

"Fair enough," Loki said. "Though, one can only hope for such an outcome. As much as I enjoy our little matches, it has been almost three months since I have seen real battle."

"Trust me; you wouldn't want to fight SHIELD," Lily insisted. "While not everyone is quite as skilled as us and the Avengers, there are people who are, and their security is top notch. Going after them alone would be futile."

"That may be true. Though, as much as I hate to admit it, the Avengers combined might have a chance. Will they be joining us there?"

Lily honestly didn't know, but she had a feeling that the answer was going to be no. Steve and Natasha were definitely going to be there, but Thor was off-world, Tony and Bruce were halfway around the world for at least another day, and Clint...well, even if things hadn't been weird between them, he was off on a mission in some unknown country for who knew how much longer.

Besides, considering what was at risk, Lily thought it best to keep as little people involved as possible. The more people that tried to look for Steve, the more chance there was that SHIELD would pick up on it and put a stop to them (or worse, use them to find Steve). No, if Hill felt it necessary to call in her uncle, then so be it, but Lily wasn't going to be the one to pick up the phone. Especially not when she had Loki with her.

"It doesn't matter, because we're not going there to fight," Lily insisted. "If it comes to that, we'll deal with it, but right now, we have no reason to assume it's going to head in that direction."

"All right, then," Loki conceded. "What is the plan for when we land then, if not to infiltrate SHIELD?"

"Right now, all I know is that we're landing at a SHIELD designated airport in D.C. and from there, Hill is going to pick us up and take us in a van to what I assume will be some secluded location where we can continue looking for Cap without SHIELD intervention."

"You assume?" Loki asked.

"We can only talk about so much over the phone," Lily explained. "If she were to tell me exactly what the plan was, we'd be giving SHIELD all the more reason to be suspicious of us."

"More?" Loki questioned. "What reason would they have to be suspicious of you in the first place?"

"Captain America is my best friend," she answered. "I haven't heard anything from SHIELD yet, but I can only assume that they've been monitoring my communications since the moment Steve became a fugitive in case he reached out to me. I know that's what I would do were the situation reversed."