Out of Time ★ [1] ✔

Avengers Assemble

Andi wanted her space. She didn't look well to be honest. Before I left her to her thoughts, she had a faraway look in her eye.

"Are you sure you're all right?" I'd asked.

She'd just stared out the window without turning. "Yeah."

"Do you want to be alone?"

"That's the last thing I want." She'd turned to me. "But you should talk to Tony."

I hadn't questioned her further, and I'd left her alone.

I found Tony in the detention lab where Banner's cell was kept, gone after being dropped to the earth. He stood in front of the empty hole with his hands clasped tightly behind his back. I leaned against the railing at the entrance, crossing my arms over my chest. "Andi's going to be all right."

Silence.

I swallowed. "Was he married?"

Tony didn't turn to me for a reply. He just looked at the hole in disappointment and failure. "No." He sighed. "He was a...cellist, I think."

"I'm sorry," I said, "he seemed like a good man."

Tony cleared his throat and stepped away from the hole. "He was an idiot."

"Why?" I frowned, confused about his disrespect for Coulson's death. I pushed off the railing. "For believing?"

"For taking on Loki alone."

"He was doing his job."

He scoffed. "He was out of his league. He should have waited. He should have..."

"Sometimes there isn't a way out, Tony." I walked towards him.

"Right." He stormed past me to leave. "How did that work for him?"

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

He whipped to face me, enraged. "We are not soldiers!" he growled through clenched teeth. "I'm not marching to Fury's fife."

"Neither am I. 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." I watched him as we turned to Coulson's blood stain on the wall. "Now, Loki needs a power source, if we can put together a list—"