Bender [s.r.]

0.5

I walked into the bridge where silence laid thick like a heavy fog in the room. The men turned to me as I walked in. 

I had managed to find my way back to my room before hand and changed into a t-shirt and my comfortable mom jeans with converse. I was a little dizzy in the head and my arm was wrapped up. But I'm fine. I'm good.

"You should be resting." Steve commented, standing up to help me over.

"I'm fine, mild concussion, that's it. Plus to get my energy back, all I need is a juice box." I chuckled. "Plus how can I rest? Everyone is scattered. We really just need to stick together at this point." I sat down in between Steve and Tony at the table and in front of us, Nick stood. 

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small deck of cards. "I passed by Phil's locker on my way here. I guess he never asked you to sign them." I muttered as I laid them out on the table neatly.

"We're dead in the air here." Nick spoke up, cutting through the new-found silence. "Our communications, the location of the Cube, Banner, Thor... I got nothing for you three." He sighed. "I lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming." Tony swirled the chair around, looking very distant as Steve and I remained silent, but he shuffled through the deck of cards.

 "Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number, though because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea, Stark knows this, Andie knows a little bit, called the Avengers Initiative." Nick said, I looked up from my hands in my lap, Steve's eyes moved over to me for a second before returning to the deck of cards. 

"The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people to see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea. In heroes." Tony stood up at Nick's last words, not facing us, but walking right out of the room.

"Well," Nick started, breaking the silence. "It's an old fashioned notion."

~~~

I knocked on the door to where the cage once was with Loki in it, but instead it took his brother down for a flight. Tony turned and gave me a small glance, which I took as a come in.

"Did he have any family?" I asked the man, standing on the same ledge has him.

"No." He shook his head. "Well, not that anyone knew."

"Married?" I wondered.

"No." He shook his head again. "There was a cellist, I think."

"I'm sorry, I know I didn't know him as well as you. But, he was a good man." I spoke sincerely.

"He was an idiot."

"Why?"

"For taking on Loki alone." He stated.

"He did take on Loki alone, but he was doing his job." I sighed, running a hand through my messy hair.

"He was out of his league. He should have waited." Tony shook his head, looking over to me.

"I guess this time there wasn't a way out." I muttered. Tony shook his head and turned on his heels. "I'm sorry Tony."

"Yeah." He muttered, walking out.
"Tony, you know that Loki wants to make a scene by taking us out, one by one, right?" I asked before he had the chance to walk out the door.

"That was only the previews. This is opening night." Tony nodded, turning to face me as I turned to look at him. "He wants everyone at his feet bowing to him right? He wants a monument built to the skies with his name plastered..." Tony suddenly clued in. "Son of a bitch." He muttered.