October 6th

6:00 pm

The Avengers Compound

Tony stood in the center of his lab, surrounded by holoscreens that basked the room in an eerie blue glow. Bruce couldn't help but noticing how much paler it made his friend look, not to mention how much deeper it made his bags look. Yet, the man was somehow functioning and absolutely refusing to take a moment to breathe. Not that Bruce had ever really expected him to, but it certainly wouldn't kill anyone to try.

"Don't tell me to calm down right now, Bruce," Tony snapped at his friend and turned his screen back around to type frantically on. "Peter's missing. Clint's missing. Nat's missing. SHIELD's back. Ross is after half my friends and hates the other half. I had to send Pepper to Canada just to make sure she was safe, damnit!"

He hadn't even paused in his scrolling to look over at Bruce. In fact, he typed with a renewed vigor that would likely give him arthritis a few years early. Bruce resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. Dealing with this man was more often harder than dealing with a five year old. He had no self-preserving tendencies and when he was stressed the mere idea of sleep flew out the window.

"Look, Tony, we all care about Peter and we don't want anything to happen to him..." Bruce sighed, putting a hand on the other man's shoulder and attempting to gently pull him back. "But you can't let the fact that it's him stop you from figuring this out. And you can't let it stop you from keeping yourself alive. What would he say if he saw how you looked right now?"

Tony had braced his feet in a stubborn refusal to move, but did finally glance over at Bruce when his fellow genius asked the question. He was right, of course, and normally Tony would feel guilty enough at the image of Peter's pouty-puppy look. But--no, he couldn't give in to that, not when it was Peter who was missing. God, anything could be happening to the kid even as he stood there. He could be in pain, he could be scared, counting on Tony to find him. Meanwhile--

Tony felt helpless. 

He had brought Peter into this life, into the limelight of General Ross' power-hungry gaze. Sure, the kid was already out and about--but Tony had given him upgrades, encouraged him and welcomed him into a life of inevitable pain and tragedy. He had brought him into Avengers business just to have an advantage. 

Growing to care for Peter the way he eventually had--that had never been a part of the plan. The kid had been...Well, he had been a pawn in his and Steve's feud. He hadn't deserved it, any of it, and Tony had spent every day since trying to make it up to him, whether Peter knew it or not. The kid grew on people fast, it was his talent, among other incredible things. Tony was no exception.

The point was--None of this was never meant to happen. And, as usual, it was all Tony's fault. He had to fix it. Somehow, he had to fix it.

"Tony." Bruce had both of his hands on Tony's slumped shoulders now, and the billionaire allowed himself to be turned away from the screens. "I'm only asking a few hours. I'll keep your search program running. Steve is still out trying to track down Nat and Clint, and you know that him and Bucky are too stubborn to quit. Wanda said she wanted to try something and if all else fails we have a guy who can run across the country in just a few minutes. We are going to find them. But you won't get to be there if you run yourself into the ground before then, alright?"

Bruce was aggressively thinking, Wow, I'm a hypocrite, the entire time he was speaking, but he decided to shove that voice away. 

Tony...logically he knew that his friend was right. He'd ruined himself enough in the past to know that. His head told him to sleep, but his heart still argued. Being in the dark...it was confusing and he did not like it. 

Somehow, he found himself nodding along after a few moments of hesitation. Bruce patted him on the shoulder and led him back to the elevator, like a parent herding their kid to their room. He'd done it to Peter enough, hadn't he?

His mind dimly wondered when it was that he had actively accepted that Spider-Man was his kid. 

Bruce could only sigh in relief. Especially when Tony didn't change his mind halfway up the elevator flight. It was a miracle and if Bruce believed in any god, he'd be thanking them right about then. Tony didn't even bother brushing him off when he walked the man all the way to his room. 

Back in the kitchen, he flipped Rhodey a thumbs up, signalling that his mission had been accomplished. Then he poured himself a cup of black coffee from the apparently never-ending supply that was constantly being brewed. They should just get more coffee brewers, really. One was not enough to keep--he didn't even know how many superheroes were living under one roof at that point. Tony didn't even realize his bad habit of taking in strays. Or--actually, that was probably Steve. Tony just went with it. 

He huffed into his coffee, steam still rolling off of it and fogging up one of his glasses' lenses. He and Rhodey shared a tired look over their nearly identical mugs, sharing a silent thought, before silently sipping the black. 

The doctor then rubbed his head, squared his shoulders, and made his way back down to Tony's lab to continue the man's technological search.

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Bucky sighed sharply through his nose, frustrated. Steve clearly noticed--superhearing, and all--but didn't comment. Bucky only wished he had the composure of Captain America. He also wished that he didn't have to be the one everyone depended on to do stealth shit when their resident spies decided to pull disappearing acts in the midst of a crisis. He was an assassin once, so what? He was only good at it because he killed anyone who saw him, not because he sneaked past them. Otherwise, he was about as stealthy as Steve--that is to say, barely whatsoever.

He thought that this was kind of a useless trip anyways. SHIELD was back, for one, if Peter's friend, Ned, was to be trusted. Then again, he had also said that both Phil Couslin and Nick Fury were alive somehow, and Bucky was pretty sure that they weren't. Well, Fury, maybe. Bucky had tried to kill him once upon a time, and the man was seriously stubborn when it came to staying alive.

Anyway, if SHIELD was back--the Fury and Coulsen part aside--it wasn't hard to guess where Nat and Clint had gone. They had never really quit SHIELD. Maybe they tried, but they were both super-spy heroes through and through.

If anyone was more stubborn than Nick Fury, though, it was his best friend, Steve Rogers, the living legend himself. And he wasn't going to let his friends go off without making an attempt to find them. 

Next time, he can track down spies himself, Bucky vowed, just after they had hit another dead end. They hadn't even left the garage yet!

"If they didn't take any of Tony's cars, how did they get out? We would have noticed if they stole a jet. And Tony's got way too many alarms around this place--not to mention miles and miles of forest past that. I don't understand."

Was Steve talking to himself? Maybe. Was Bucky going to answer just to convince Steve he wasn't prone to talking to himself? Eh. Maybe?

Bucky scratched the back of his neck as they two stood at the mouth of the wide-open garage. There were cars of all kinds inside, ranging from multi-million dollar ones, to mini-vans, to full on tanks, and rovers that reminded him of the warthogs from Halo. 

Did Bucky play video games in his spare time? Also maybe. In his defense. he lived with Scott Lang, Clint Barton, and Pireto Maximoff. When training wasn't going on, gaming was. 

Wow, he really needed to focus.

"I mean, they're as close as you're going to ever get to meeting ninjas," he pointed out, honestly unworried for both Clint and Nat. "They can take care of themselves and they probably left for good reason. You know them."

Bucky was using his worry to focus more on the fact that Peter disappeared and the only unreliable assurance they got was from a sixteen-year-old civilian. Not to mention the pressure that Ross is putting on not just Tony--but everyone. Every single damn country that signed those accords, every hero that's brave enough to show themselves, and he was especially coming down hard on Wakanda. They hadn't had much conversation with King T'Challa, despite him being on good terms--friends--with the team, but from what they had gathered he was shouldering a lot of stress because of the Accords.

But Steve was something of a mother-hen, and with all that already going on, Nat and Clint running off was not what he wanted or needed. 

"Yeah, I know, I just..." Steve shook his head, crossing his arms and scowling at the floor. Really, his scowls are more of a pout than anything, but Bucky let him have his moment. Steve did indeed look up after a second in defeat. "I'm worried. As always."

"You don't have to protect everyone all the time, Steve," Bucky told him slowly, as he found himself doing far more often than he was comfortable with. 

Steve gave him a dry smile, also recognizing the string of words. "You know I'm still going to try."

"I know."

They shared a look and Bucky barely withheld a chuckle. Unfortunately, the silence only lasted a moment before it was rudely interrupted by the sound of crackling comms.

"How far out are you guys?" Scott's voice pipped in their ears. Both winced when the mics screeched. The hero on the other line awkwardly said, "Uh, sorry."

"We're still in the compound," Steve told him, gesturing Bucky to follow him back upstairs. "Why? Have you found something? Is something wrong?"

"I don't know. Maybe? An alarm sounded from the north...I think it was the north..." Scott paused. "Anyways, it's red and blaring 'INTRUDER ALERT' so I'm assuming it's not anything good."

Shit, Bucky thought with an eyeroll, sharing a look with Steve and sprinting the rest of the ways up the stairs. Because they needed something more stressful.

"Maybe it was Nat or Clint that set it off?" Steve suggested, hand to his ear as they burst upstairs. 

"They're too good for that," Bucky told him firmly. "Scott, where exactly is it coming from?"

It was Rhodey's voice that replied through the comms. "The woods in the northeast. Since it went off, a few sensors around it have been activated as well. FRIDAY, what's going on over there?"

On the overhead speakers, the female voice responded immediately. "It seems that a fortified militaristic unit is approaching."

"WHAT?" At least seven different voices shouted through the compound. If anyone had been sleeping, they were likely wide awake now.

"Why didn't you tell us about this sooner?" Tony's voice was shouting from his room just down that hallway that Steve and Bucky had paused in. 

Just in front of them, Hope's door exploded open as well and she came stomping out, somehow already fully in costume. She was absolutely fuming and turned her glare of the two super-soldiers quite quickly. 

"They seemed to be jamming my sensors until only a few seconds ago," FRIDAY answered coolly.

There was a flash of organic blue light and suddenly Pietro was there, hair a mess and pajamas ruffled. He had a confused look on his face that was likely warranted. 

Bucky and Steve shared another silent look. Bucky gritted his jaw, wondering if it was a coincidence that Clint and Nat had disappeared just before a militia appeared on their doorstep. Could it be SHIELD? It didn't seem their style. That left a surprising amount of options, but very few of them actually likely. 

Steve took a deep breath and tapped his comm on. 

Then, he commanded, "Suit up."

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