The Tower

Steve

The mission to the HAMMER facility had been a complete wash. No, Bucky. No, Wanda. Clint had been taken. They now had Alexa in custody but the fact that that seemed to be what she wanted, put no one's mind at ease. Everyone was paranoid about going back to the Tower because of it, so instead, we were taken to their SHIELD friend's secret base.

The mood, in general, was one of defeat.

The fact others had rallied helped. Thor coming down from Asgard and Rhodey flying in was great. Scott Lang joined them too. All agreeing to stay until we had our missing numbers back.

For me though, I was not coping well. I was in a strange place with strange people. I felt like I couldn't help. Everyone was in work mode and anytime I went near them I worried I was just in the way. I also had a deep mistrust of Coulson because Tony had let it slip that he'd once had a thing with Nat and Clint and it had only ended when he faked his own death. Everyone else seemed to forgive him for it, but my mind kept swinging back to how awful I felt right now that we had no idea where Wanda, Bucky, and Clint were, or even if they were alive, and how much it would hurt if they faked their death. I assumed there must be some reason that everyone else was okay forgiving him for it. When I looked at him I just saw a liar who thought it was okay to shatter the hearts of the people who loved him because of some 'prime directive'.

So I avoided him.

I avoided most of them if I'm being honest. I withdrew to places in the building that were empty. If someone came into them, unless they were specifically looking for me, I just moved elsewhere.

I hurt. I kept thinking that all the words that had helped me in therapy had been a huge lie to further this plan to take down the Avengers. I couldn't see why exactly that would be, but she wasn't a therapist. She'd never wanted to help me. So maybe this whole thing was wrong. All the things I had struggled with and only now started coming to terms with reared up again. Building on my fear and isolation. I stopped eating. I barely slept. I just existed in a perpetual state of stress that was eating me alive.

It wasn't until about four days into it when Sam came and found me that I started turning around.

"Here you are." He said opening the door to the small office I'd hidden myself away in. "Why are you sitting in dark?"

I shrugged. "Just keeping out of the way."

He came over to me and crouched on the floor in front of the chair I was sitting on. "When was the last time you slept?"

I shook my head. "Don't know. It's not ... I can't..."

He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me tight against him. I rested my head on his shoulder and just listened to the slow rhythmic beat of his heart. "Oh, princess. I'm so sorry. We've all been so caught up we forgot you had no experience with this kind of thing."

"Not your fault," I said quietly. "I just want them back."

"I know. We all do." He pressed his lips to the crown of my head. "We're going to get them."

"I want to help, but what can I do? I just thought it best if I stayed out of the way. I was gonna cook. But I don't know this place." I babbled.

"It's okay. We shouldn't have had our heads so far up our asses." He said. "Look, Bruce just sent me down to find you. He wanted you to come look at something for him. But you need sleep. Go have some. Take Steve he hasn't slept since he got here either. He might if he thought it would help you sleep too."

I nodded my head and went looking for Steve. I found him in an operations room with Natasha, Coulson, and May. He looked exhausted. His normal straight posture gone, as he sagged on his feet. Dark circles under his eyes, and three days of facial hair grown in.