ext_34821 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
cap_ironman2008-05-21 09:31 pm
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2008-05-21 09:31 pm
Entry tags:
Hostages to Fortune 2/7
Title: Hostages to Fortune 2/7
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan.
Warnings: No much, really. Some swearing and violence.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: The sequel to Readjustment. Things are finally settling down, and the Avengers are settling in. It's time for disaster to strike again.
X-posted to Marvel Slash.
And again, our thanks totavella for the great beta job.
Hostages to Fortune
The Meridian was located on the top floor of a very expensive downtown hotel, and was noted as much for the view from its large picture windows as it was for its food. It was only a three star restaurant, however. Jan had a feeling Tony had decided that a reporter from the Sun wasn't worth the expense of going somewhere with a fourth star.
Tony's flight had been late getting in, and Jan had been worried that she would be left to deal with Byrne, the reporter, by herself. That, or be reduced to begging either Sam or Carol to come with her. Steve was still refusing to talk to reporters, and she had learned by dint of long and unfortunate experience that the farther Hank and Clint were kept from the press, the better it was for all concerned.
Luckily for Carol and Sam, Tony had gotten to back to the Tower just in time to drop off his bags, change into a suit that wasn't wrinkled, and dash out the door for the Meridian. They had made it with seconds to spare, only to find that Byrne was apparently running late.
"And then after I was finished with Kooning, or rather, when Kooning was finished with me, I had to meet with Gyrich, and then with what I think may have been half the Pentagon, plus the Department of Homeland Security." Tony groaned, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "And Gyrich was actually the high point. I thought I'd never escape. I can't believe I actually volunteered to be Secretary of Defense once. I must have been insane."
"No argument there," Jan said. "I try to stay as far away from politicians as possible."
"I just feel bad," Tony went on. "I told Steve I'd be back this morning."
"I don't think he'll hold it against you." Steve hadn't quite started sulking when the projected arrival time had gone by without Tony putting in an appearance, but that was probably because he and Clint had been busy arguing over something. Jan hadn't bothered to pay attention to what, because it had been incredibly petty, and only the two of them had actually cared about it.
Tony's suit was perfectly pressed, and his hair was neat, mainly because Jan had whacked his hand down whenever he'd tried to reach up and mess with it, but there were circles under his eyes again.
"You look tired. Are you all right?"
Tony frowned. "Why do people keep asking me that?"
"Because a month ago you had cracked ribs and one arm in a sling." And two weeks before that, they'd all just been waiting for the point at which he would inevitably snap. Or at least, she had been. If Steve hadn't come back, she would have given it about another month.
"I'm fine. I just didn't catch much sleep when I was in DC."
"Trust me; we're all glad you're back. Steve spent the entire time stomping around and pretending he wasn't sulking."
Tony's eyebrows went up. "Did something happen?"
"Yes," Jan said, resisting the impulse to roll her eyes. "You went to DC."
"I'm sure Steve can survive a few days on his own." Tony shrugged, clearly dismissing her comments as an exaggeration. "I think he's happy with the way the team is shaping up." He grinned suddenly, the exhaustion fading from his face. "Before I left, I heard him singing in the training room."
Jan grinned back; she had a pretty good idea what Steve had been doing. "What was he singing?"
"Some show tune." Tony's smile got, if possible, even wider. "I think he was dancing."
Steve only did that when he was happy. "Singin' in the Rain or New York, New York?" she asked.
Tony looked blank.
"He always does Gene Kelly songs, even though he's really too big to dance like that. He does pretty well for the first minute or so, but then he always ends up tripping over his own feet. I think he gets embarrassed by the imaginary audience in his head." And, all right, she'd just as good as admitted that she'd been spying on Steve's training sessions for years, but really, who could blame her?
"How come I've never heard of this?" Tony asked. He was still smiling, not the soft expression he usually wore when talking about Steve, but an openly amused one.
"He doesn't do it if he thinks someone's watching." She leaned forward, lowering her voice, and added, "Wanda and I used to sneak into the monitor room to watch him any time he went in to practice by himself, on the off chance that he'd start dancing."
"It's good to know that he's happy in spite of everything that happened. I think he'd tell me if he wasn't, but it's still nice to have some proof." Tony's smile shifted slightly, into something closer to a smirk. "I'll have to tap into the security cameras next time."
"Oh, don't do that," Jan said. "Just call me and we'll meet in the monitor room."
Over Tony's shoulder, she saw Byrne enter the restaurant and exchange a few words with the maitre'de, who gestured at their table. "Put your game face on. The press is here."
Tony's smirk faltered, and then he was wearing the slick, polished smile he reserved exclusively for reporters. Jan fluffed her hair with one hand, and put on a smile of her own, one hopefully less superficial-looking than Tony's.
"Mr. Byrne." She stood and extended her hand as the reporter reached their table. "We're so glad you could make it here this afternoon."
"Ms. Van Dyne, Mr. Stark." He shook both their hands, and seated himself in the table's remaining chair. "Sorry I'm late. Traffic, you know."
"Is there something in particular you're hoping to discuss with us, Mr. Byrne?" Tony asked him, after the waiter had taken their drink orders. "We put out a press release after we dealt with the Venom virus."
"And an admirable exercise in brevity it was." Byrne smile at them toothily. "I think our readers would appreciate some more in-depth information. Just a few weeks ago, you costumed folks were fighting tooth and nail, and now you all seem to be best friends again. I can't help but wonder if there are any lingering hard feelings."
"I can only speak for myself, of course," Jan said, "but I'm thrilled that we've been able to resolve things in a way that's satisfactory to everyone."
"Satisfactory to everyone? You must be aware that there were a number of people who were very unhappy to see the Registration Act come to such an abrupt end."
"I'd like to think this past month has proven that public safety can be better protected without the Registration Act as it stood," Tony said smoothly. "It should be obvious by now that this country's superheroes can perform their jobs better when they're not being micromanaged."
Jan's lips twitched for a second, hearing that. Tony was one of the worst micromanagers she'd ever worked with. He made half the fashion designers in New York seem easy going and calm.
"The government is continuing the training program for younger, less experienced superhumans, as I'm sure you know, and Colorado and Wyoming's Initiative teams have been very successful working with the National Guard to stop those wild fires they've been having trouble with."
"And of course, it's been major news that the two of you, along with several other formerly registered heroes, have reformed an Avengers team with Captain America." Byrne raised his eyebrows, electronic pen poised over the PDA he had produced from a coat pocket. "That must have been interesting to negotiate."
"There wasn't as much negotiating as you might think," Jan told him. "When it came right down to it, Steve Rogers just wants the same thing we do, to keep people safe."
Byrne offered her a self-deprecating smile, and a small shrug, "I've been wondering if his miraculous return might have had something to do with his sudden change of heart."
Tony's smile was beginning to look strained. "I think the fact that the government was finally willing to take his concerns, and the concerns of the general superhuman population seriously had more to do with it. That, and the fact that the attacks on New York and other cities were more important than any individual quarrels."
"The timing worked out very nicely for you, didn't it?" Byrne said. "Captain America coming back just when you needed him. Talk about fortunate coincidences, huh?"
"Very fortunate," Jan said coolly. Where ever he was going with this, it was unlikely to be something they wanted to discuss. Tony could still barely mention Steve's temporary death without flinching.
"You must be thrilled." Byrne smiled again, adding, "Having a resurrected hero to act as your spokesman to Congress, having Captain America back at the head of the Avengers, all charges dropped and everything forgiven. And he never even had to set foot in a courtroom. It couldn't have worked out better for you all if you'd planned it in advance."
Jan stared at him for a moment, unsure if he was actually implying what she thought he was implying. Surely no one could possibly believe that Steve's death had been staged, not when it had been on national television.
Across the table from her, Tony had gone white. "This interview is over," he said quietly. "Leave. Now."
Jan was mildly impressed at his self-control; if she had been in his position, if it had been Hank's death and return Byrne was so unsubtly implying to be a set-up, she wasn't sure she wouldn't have hit him. "I can assure you, it wasn't something we could have possibly planned for. You can tell your paper that we won't be giving any more interviews if Registration or what happened to Steve is all you're interested in discussing. We've said all we have to say on those subjects, and I'm sure people are tired of hearing about them."
Jan looked away from Byrne, back to Tony, to see how he was handling this. He was blank-faced, but his hands, which had been folded loosely in front of him on the table, were now so tightly clenched that she could see his tendons.
"Mr. Stark, Ms. Van Dyne, please, I'm not making any accusations here-" Byrne started.
Jan ignored him. Their table was situated in a corner of the room, near one of the air conditioning vents, which had been blowing freezing air on her ever since they had sat down. Now, the cold air had suddenly stopped.
She glanced up at the vent curiously, and her eyes widened. White vapor was swirling out of it into the room.
She leaned across the table and put a hand on Tony's arm, nodding at the vent. "I think we might have a problem."
***
Tony was supposed to have gotten back to New York at nine a.m. Thanks to a combination of last-minute delays, it was now eleven forty-five, and he still hadn't arrived.
Steve had missed Tony while he was gone -- he kept thinking of something he wanted to say to him, or needed to ask him, and then remembering that he wasn't there. It was like reaching for his shield only to remember that he was wearing civilian clothing and didn't have it with him.
With Tony absent, the tower didn't feel like home, somehow. Possibly because most of his things were still in boxes, sitting unopened in the corners of the room he was sharing with Tony. Some of them were still sealed with packing tape.
It just hadn't felt like the right time to unpack them yet.
Steve finished toweling his hair dry and dropped the towel on top of the nearest stack of boxes, all of them neatly labeled in Jarvis's precise scrip. Jarvis had offered several times to either unpack everything for Steve, or return the boxes to storage, but neither option had felt right, so the boxes remained.
Steve pulled on a clean shirt, then guiltily picked the towel back up and went to hang it on the appropriate towel rack in the bathroom. He'd hoped that working out would alleviate the restless boredom that had been plaguing him all morning. Unfortunately, Clint and Sam had both refused to spar with him, claiming that he was just grouchy and looking for someone to hit, and beating up a punching bag wasn't nearly as satisfying.
What on earth could be keeping Tony?
At least his absence hadn't been as bad as last month, when Steve had found himself unable to sleep without Tony's warm presence in his bed to keep nightmares at bay. Only after he had finally given in and called Tony at sometime after one in the morning had he been able to fall asleep.
But there had been no nightmares this time, not the old ones of the explosion and Bucky's death, or the new ones of gunshots and drowning in blood.
Things were finally starting to get better.
Tony had seemed better lately, too, now that his ribs had finally healed and the Extremis-induced nosebleeds had gone away. He'd been less tense, as well. Of course, nearly a week arguing with politicians and military officials had probably put paid to that, but Steve was confident that it would only take a few hours alone with Tony to get him to relax again.
Hell, he’d been looking forward to getting Tony to relax. Only, of course, Tony wasn't there. It probably hadn't been fair to take his disappointment out on Clint, but when Clint had offered him a leering grin over the breakfast table (a good half an hour after Tony had been due to arrive) and asked if Steve had any "plans" for when Tony got back, the retort that Clint was just jealous because he was still single had been out of Steve's mouth before he realize d that he sounded incredibly immature. Clint had informed him that he wasn't jealous, and that he if he wanted a girlfriend, he could go out and find one, and more easily than Steve could have, too. Then Hank had started laughing, and Sam, traitor that he was, had announced that Clint was right, and things had gone downhill from there.
He would apologize to Clint later, Steve decided. Right now, he was going to go down to Tony's office, on the off chance that he'd already arrived and gone directly there. And given that Tony's employees seemed to need him to hold their hands for everything, it wasn't impossible that that was exactly what had happened.
Tony, unfortunately, was not in his office. Pepper Potts-Hogan, however, was. She was sitting behind Tony's desk, muttering to herself as she went through a stack of papers. "I spend a month in California, and everyone in this company misplaces their brain."
Steve hesitated in the doorway. Pepper must have sensed him somehow -- heard him, maybe -- because she looked up, stared at him for a moment, and then gave him a rueful smile.
"Tony's not here yet," she told him. "Or at least, I'm guessing that's why you're here."
"Oh," Steve said. He hadn't really thought Tony would be, but it had been worth checking. "Do you know when he will be? Here, I mean."
"Whenever he gets done with that reporter he was supposed to meet today. Janet Van Dyne grabbed him as soon as he came in the door; you just missed him, actually." She nodded at the corner of a suitcase that was just visible on the other side of the desk.
"Oh," Steve repeated, disappointed and feeling a little cheated. He could have seen Tony, if only briefly, if he'd thought to come and wait here earlier. Still, resenting whatever reporter they were meeting with was irrational and probably petty. "I'll let you get back to work."
"Actually, I've been meaning to talk to you." Pepper waved at one of the chair by the desk, adding, "Why don't you come in?"
Steve obediently came in, and sat. He didn't know Pepper very well, but she seemed nice. She was also oddly intimidating, but that might just be the effect of all of the stories he'd heard from Tony over the years.
"What did you want to talk about?"
"I've heard that you and Tony are involved now," she said, offering him a faint grin. Now that he was closer to her, Steve could see a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose; combined with the smile, they made her look impish despite her sharp suit.
Steve nodded, not really sure what he was supposed to say. He had no intention of hiding his relationship with Tony, but the idea that he could just come out and tell people that he was involved with another man was still new to him.
"Good," Pepper said. "I'm glad he's finally found someone who deserves him, instead of another stupid bimbo or a supervillain."
Steve grinned, feeling ridiculously pleased. Pepper was one of the only people left who had known Tony longer than he had, and her opinion was important to Tony; it was good to know that she didn't have any problem with their relationship -- though given how long she'd worked for Tony, the fact that Tony liked men as well as women couldn't have been much of a surprise.
"I never thought this could happen," he admitted. "But you have no idea how glad I am that it did."
"I wasn't exactly expecting it, either," she said. "I always thought you were as straight as they come."
Steve smiled a little. "Honestly, I always thought Tony was, too."
Pepper let out a short bark of laughter. "Really? You and Rhodey are the most oblivious men on the planet. I mean, for God's sake, Happy figured it out." She stopped, eyes suddenly moving away from Steve, toward her hand, where she would have worn a wedding ring, once. "Actually, I think Happy figured it out before I did. He was good at things like that. He knew Tony was Iron Man before I did, too."
Once again, Steve didn't know what to say. He had come back, and her husband hadn't. Just moments ago, he had been grinning ear-to-ear about him and Tony, but now, as Pepper stared silently at her hands, he felt oddly guilty. Guilty for being happy, for getting a second chance when her husband hadn't.
"I didn't know Mr. Hogan very well, but he always seemed like a real nice guy," Steve said awkwardly, "and I know Tony misses him a lot."
Pepper smiled, a small, sad smile. "There was a while there when the three of us were all each of us had. I guess it made us almost like a family."
"I know what you mean," Steve said. During the war, he and Bucky had been the closest thing to family either of them had had, and then, after that, there had been the Avengers.
"Now I don't know what to say to him, sometimes," she said softly, still staring at her hands.
Tony had been the one to turn off Happy's life support, when he had been slowly dying from a supervillain's beating. Pepper must have known; Tony wouldn't have done something like that without telling her first.
"I'm sorry," Steve tried. It was a clichÉ, but it was the least trite clichÉ he could think of.
Pepper looked up from her hands, catching and holding Steve's eyes. "Hurt him," she said, "and I'll make you pay."
"I would never hurt Tony." The words were automatic, said before he'd even thought about them.
"I don't think you would on purpose," she said, holding up a hand, "but, I mean, you come back from the dead, and suddenly you're bisexual? I know Tony can't have been in good shape when you came back; he was in bad shape even before. I saw what it did to him to fight you. You're probably pretty mixed up right now, and I'm sure he threw himself at you, and... Look, the last thing Tony needs at this point is for another relationship to crash and burn."
"I didn't like fighting him, either," Steve protested. It had been the worst few months of his entire life, made even worse because he'd known that, even if the rest of the world could be saved, his friendship with Tony was lost forever.
It still surprised him occasionally to wake up and find Tony in bed next to him.
"Captain America, Steve, have you ever been with another man before Tony?"
Steve could feel himself blushing. "I don't see how that matters," he said, more primly than he'd intended to. "Or that it's any of your business." He didn't actually add "young lady" to the end of that, but the temptation was strong.
"Oh, it's not," she assured him cheerfully. "But I answer Tony's phone and open his mail, so I know all of his business anyway."
Why did people keep assuming that he had just rushed into this without thinking and had no idea what he was getting into? All right, he had rushed into it without thinking, but Steve knew perfectly well what he was getting into and what he wanted. And he certainly wouldn't lead Tony on, regardless.
"If anything," Steve said, face hot, "I threw myself at him."
"Oh." Pepper flashed him a momentary grin. "I guess that makes a difference, doesn't it? But the threat stands. Hurt him, and I'll hurt you." She said this with such confidence that it never occurred to Steve to doubt that she could carry said threat out, and never mind that she was a foot shorter than him.
His Avengers communicator chose that moment to chime, rescuing Steve from the conversation.
"Rogers," he said as he activated it. With any luck, it would be Tony, announcing that he and Jan had finished with the reporter and were on their way home.
"Steve!" It was Jan's voice, something about it sounding strange. "There's some kind of airborne toxin in here. Everyone's going crazy. Panicking. I don't know." She was speaking quickly, almost babbling, voice shaking. "I- Oh God, we can't use force, they're civilians. And I'm compromised. Just- send someone." There was a shrill, drawn-out scream in the background, and the communicator cut off abruptly.
Steve closed his eyes for a long moment, hands clenching uselessly into fists at his sides, then exhaled, forcing himself to treat this like he would any other emergency.
All right, this was not good. Jan--and presumably Tony as well--were out there somewhere dealing with an unknown toxin and a bunch of compromised civilians that they couldn't afford to fight back against. And to make things worse, Jan had been exposed to whatever it was.
He stood, already moving towards the door. "Where are they?" he barked at Pepper.
"The Meridian," she said, all business. "It's on Wall Street." She snatched a sticky-note from the corner of Tony's desk and thrust it at Steve. "Here's the address."
Steve activated his communicator again. "Hank-" he started.
"I heard," Hank's voice came through sharply. "I'm contacting everyone as we speak. Falcon, Carol, Hawkeye, War Machine. Where should I tell them to go?"
"The Meridian," Steve told him.
There was a soft exhalation from Hank, and then, "Okay, I know where that is."
"Tell them I'll meet them there," Steve said. "Rogers out."
***
The white vapor completely filled the room now, hanging in the air like fog.
"I can't open the doors," Tony announced. "Something's blocking them on the other side."
That was so very much not what they needed. "Blast them," Jan shouted back. "We need to get these people out of here, away from whatever this is." They needed to get away from it. She was breathing the stuff in right now, had been for at least five minutes, and she had no idea what it was.
She did, however, have a pretty good idea of what it did to people.
One woman had been screaming in a loud, drawn-out wail for at least three minutes. She had backed into a corner, hands over her eyes, a salad fork still clutched in one white knuckled fist.
The rest of the room was just as bad. People were screaming, crying, and hiding under tables. Others had started throwing things and lashing out at everyone around them. If they didn't get out of here now, someone was going to get hurt.
Where were the others? She had called for them ages ago; why weren't they here yet?
Had something happened to them? What if they weren't coming, and she and Tony were on their own?
"Just hit it with a repulsor beam!" she yelled.
"I can't!" She couldn't see Tony's face -- he'd summoned his armor as soon as they'd realized the air was contaminated -- but he sounded as desperate as she felt. "There's too many people. I could hurt someone!"
"You have to help me." Byrne's hands locked around her arm as he fell to his knees on the floor beside her. "They've all gone insane! You have to stop them! You have to protect me!"
"Let go of me," Jan snapped, trying to jerk her arm away. It was no use -- he was bigger and stronger than she was, and with an unknown toxin filling the air, she didn't dare shrink down and hide. She would only poison herself quicker that way.
She knew how to fight. She had to remember that. She had combat training from some of the most skilled fighters in the world; she could protect herself.
But this man -- all of these people -- were innocent civilians who had been exposed to the same toxin as she had, and if she tried anything, she could hurt one of them, and as off-balance as she was right now, she might not even realize it, might really hurt one of the people she was supposed to be protecting.
She still couldn't just leave Tony to deal with all of this alone.
Byrne was still clutching her arm tightly enough that it hurt. He was hurting her. She was still clear headed enough to know that she couldn't hurt him, though.
She couldn't use her stingers at full size, but Byrne didn’t know that.
"Let. Go," she hissed. "Or I will zap you." He flinched back, releasing his death grip on her arm, and she shoved him toward the nearest table. "Get under there and stay down. You'll be safe there."
Byrne, thank God, did as he was told.
The screaming woman was still screaming. God, why wouldn't she shut up?
A blond man in an expensive business suit was brandishing a steak knife at another, equally expensively-attired, man. "Stay back!" he shouted. "No. Stop it! I said stay back!" and then he was lunging at the other man, knife extended in front of him.
Tony threw himself between them, the knife skidding harmlessly across the front of his armor. The man he had just saved screamed, and started pounding on the armor with his fists.
"Get away from him, robot!"
An older man had fallen to his knees beside his chair, one hand clutching at his chest. A dark-haired woman was sitting on the floor next to him, tears streaming from her closed eyes, rocking back and forth. Another woman was pounding on one of the doors with her fists, her perfectly manicured brown hands leaving smears of blood on the wood. There were people running back and forth from one side of the room to another, pursued by something only they could see; people clinging to one another in panic, motionless and whimpering; and one table of stock brokers had gotten into a fist-fight.
She couldn't do this. There were too many people, too much noise, and everyone was so big, and--
That man was probably dying. She couldn't give in to this. Jan started towards the older man, the one who looked like he might be having a heart attack.
Then she stopped, hesitating, as she heard a child somewhere start to wail.
It was a little girl, no more than three or four. She was standing in the middle of the floor sobbing, people rushing past her obliviously. "Mommy! Mommy!"
Someone was going to trample her, or worse.
Jan shoved her way through the crowd, ducking under a chair that one of the stock brokers threw at her. It crashed into the window, creating a spiderweb of cracks in the glass.
She picked the little girl up. Thankfully, instead of panicking further, the child clung to her, burying her face in Jan's neck, snuffling quietly. Her face was hot, and damp with tears.
Jan carried her back to the table she'd shoved Byrne under, absently murmuring to her as she did so. "It's okay, it's okay. You're safe now."
"Take her," she told Byrne, as she knelt by the table, trying to disentangle the girl's arms from around her neck. "Make sure nobody hurts her."
"No!" the child screamed. "I want to stay with you!"
"You can't go back out there." Byrne grabbed Jan's wrist, interfering in her attempts to get the little girl to let go. "It's not safe out there!"
"Stay with the nice man," Jan said through clenched teeth, shaking off Byrne's grip. The little girl hiccuped once, then let go, still crying, and latched onto Byrne.
He shuffled backwards, farther under the table, and jerked the table cloth down, hiding them from view.
The screams from the corner suddenly stopped, and Jan looked over just in time to see her begin to run towards the broken window.
Tony was in the middle of the stock brokers, trying to separate them. Two of them had ahold of his arms, and a third was battering at him with another chair, while the fourth attempted to detach one of the others away from Tony in order to continue their fight.
Jan took off after the woman, catching up with her just as she reached the window and grabbing her by the elbow.
There was a sudden flash of pain in her arm as the woman rounded on her and sank the salad fork she was still clutching into her forearm. Then she was free, and running for the window again, shattering the already cracked glass with one shoulder and falling through it.
Jan stood in front of the open window, air from outside blowing in onto her face, frozen with horror.
And then War Machine's bulky grey armor appeared in front of her. "Don't worry," he said. "Falcon's got her. And the cavalry's here."
***
At first glance, Wall Street looked perfectly normal, right down to the dozens of pedestrians clogging the sidewalk, everything from business-suited lawyers, to Japanese tourists, to teenagers in those ugly jeans that came pre-worn and paint-stained. Then the glass on the top floor window of one the buildings shattered outward, and a woman burst through it to fall screaming towards the street.
Sam banked left, then folded his wings and went into a steep dive, leaving Redwing to circle above the street alone. He'd only have once chance to grab her; the air was dead calm, with no lift to speak of, so once he'd lost altitude, he wouldn't be able to climb back up for another try, and if he missed, she was as good as dead.
He caught the woman around the waist, snapping his wings back out to halt their descent. She screamed even more loudly, and stabbed him in the shoulder with a fork.
There were days when Sam hated this job.
"It's okay," he shouted, trying not to drop her as she kicked at him. "I've got you! You're safe!" Whatever had happened to this woman, she clearly wasn't hearing him; she just kept on screaming and struggling.
Sam released her once they were within a few feet of the ground. As soon as her feet hit the pavement, she was off and running.
She made it about ten feet before she ran straight into Hawkeye. He grabbed her by the shoulders and the two of them promptly began struggling over the fork. "Look, lady, I'm not gonna hurt you, okay? Ouch, shit, will you stop that?"
Redwing swooped down to settle on Sam's shoulder, making a soft, chirring noise of protest at being left behind. Then Steve appeared at Sam's side, grabbing him by the elbow. "Can you get back up?' he asked, tone abrupt, no preamble at all. "War Machine's gone into the dining room, so if anyone else jumps, there's only Carol to catch them."
"No," Sam said shortly, responding in kind. "There's no lift here; I'd need to climb something and jump to get airborne."
"So we're down to two flyers. You're with me. We need to start evacuating the building." Steve was in crisis mode, all stiff shoulders and barked orders. "Hawkeye-" he snapped, turning and stabbing a finger at Clint, "take her to the paramedics. Then get back here and join us."
Clint gave him a deliberately sloppy salute. "Right away, oh fearless leader."
"There's an airborne toxin in there, Clint. Just shut up and do it."
They had no idea what the substance the people in the building had been exposed to, or how widespread the contamination was -- all they had was Jan's alarmingly vague description. If they were lucky, whatever it was had only been released on the top floor. If they were unlucky, the building had one those ventilation systems that recycled air from room to room, and the toxin had been vented into every part of the building by now.
The first thing Sam had done when he'd gotten the alert was to tell Hank to call whomever was in charge of the building the Meridian was located in and get him to have a copy of the building plans ready. The guy was supposed to be waiting for them in the lobby with the plans, ready to start the evacuation as soon as they got the go ahead from War Machine that it wasn't some kind of bioweapon.
The first cops and emergency personnel were just starting to arrive, with more sirens approaching in the distance, when Sam and Steve reached the building's tall, glass doors.
"Armor's filters say it's a chemical compound of some kind," War Machine's voice crackled over the commlink. "No live DNA or bio-organisms. Tell the emergency people standard gas masks ought to work."
Right. There was one piece of luck. Sam donned his own gas mask, then dislodged a disgruntled Redwing talon-by-talon from his shoulder. "Sorry, buddy. We don't have any masks in your size." Redwing informed him that if something jumped Sam while he wasn't there to watch his back, it would Sam's fault, and that he was going to go back up to the roofline to watch the humans' pathetic attempts at flight some more.
Sam extended one arm, letting Redwing walk down his shoulder to his wrist, and then flung him up into the air. Then he nodded to Steve and pushed open the door, hoping like hell that the building manager wasn't going to be hiding under his desk or screaming incoherently. The last thing they needed right now was to be stabbed with a Mont Blanc pen.
Once inside, their luck held. The lobby was filled with people, most wearing business suits, all of them lined up loosely along the walls by the door. The building manager, a tall, middle-aged man whose dark hair was receding in front, was waiting at the front desk with a sheaf of architectural plans.
"Here," he said, thrusting the plans at Sam. "This is everything we could find. Somebody hacked our computer mainframe and shut off our air system, not to mention all of the security cameras on the top floor, so none of this stuff's being circulated out, but we've also got no damn idea what's going on up there."
"That was a good move," Steve said softly, more to himself than to Sam or the building manager, and Sam was sure from the look in his eyes that he had assumed that their hacker was Tony.
Sam spread the plans out across the tall receptionist's desk, shoving a bowl of wrapped candies, a pen on the end of a silver chain, and a potted African violet out of the way. The building was old, only nine stories, and the stairwells were located at the east and west corners. Elevators were in the center, but they could count those out; anybody who could put a gas in the ventilation system could probably be counted on to tamper with the elevators.
"Sir, we need you to go outside and tell the police and firemen that they can start coming in," Steve told the building manager. "We've determined that the attack is chemical rather than biological, but they're still going to need breathing gear."
"I'll do that," the building manager said hurriedly. He was obviously desperate for an excuse to get out of the building, but Sam couldn't really blame him under the circumstances. "It's such a relief to have you people back."
"Go get the firemen," Steve repeated, already turning away to look at the plans. "If you see a man wearing purple leather, tell him to get in here."
The man raised his eyebrows slightly at that, but nodded and hurried to the head of the evacuation line. He pushed open the door and started ushering people out, looking oddly like Sam's old high school principal as he instructed people to stay single file, and no pushing, please. After the first six or so men and women had gone out, he followed them, and a red-uniformed hotel staffer took over the door-holding position.
"We'll take the stairs to the top floor," Steve said, one finger tracing the line of the stairwell on the map.
Sam borrowed Redwing's eyes for a moment, using the falcon's vision to look through the top floor windows. There was always a moment of disorientation when he did that, as the world came into sudden, startling clarity. He'd occasionally wondered if this was what it was like for nearsighted people when they put on glasses.
Jagged shards of glass still lined the windowsill of the window the woman had jumped from. Beyond it was chaos, people running, crying, hitting each other, throwing things. He couldn't see Jan, but War Machine and Iron Man both stood out clearly, each surrounded by people who were either attacking them or clinging to them.
"Looks like that's the main problem area," Sam agreed. He blinked, pulling his vision away from Redwing's and looking through his own eyes again. Steve was blurred for a moment, and then everything readjusted and was normal again. "Everyone down here looks pretty normal. But if we start bringing screaming, hysterical people down from the restaurant, that's gonna change pretty quickly." The two of them started towards the stairwell, keeping their pace to a quick walk. If the people crowded into the lobby saw them running, it wouldn't help in keeping the calm.
"We can keep everyone up there contained until Clint and the emergency personnel have cleared the lower floors," Steve said, pulling open the stairwell's heavy fire door.
Sam nodded. "If there are any medical emergencies, Ms. Marvel, War Machine, and I can fly them down."
"War Machine, Ms. Marvel," Steve said into his commlink, "The Falcon and I are coming up. Keep everyone contained on the top floor until we get there. If there's anyone who needs immediate medical attention, one of you can take them down to the paramedics by air."
"Copy that, Cap," Carol said. "I'm taking out the rest of the windows now; we need to get some fresh air in here. There's this white vapor shit everywhere, almost too thick to see through."
"Go ahead," War Machine's voice this time, "but get ready to catch more jumpers when you do."
They swept each floor as they went up, a quick walk-through to ensure that people were actually evacuating and that nobody was being overlooked. The first and second floors were nearly empty, the third floor entirely so, and as they climbed the flights of stairs between floors, they passed a good two dozen people going down. Some of them looked relieved upon seeing Sam and Steve. More of them went wide-eyed and started to hurry down the steps faster.
Sam wasn't sure it had as much to do with the recent Registration mess as it did the fact that superheroes showing up in the middle of a building evacuation had never been taken as a positive sign by most New Yorkers.
One woman broke into a near-run, grabbing a teenage boy's wrist and forcibly pulling him along behind her. "Mom," he whined, "it's Captain America and the Falcon! I want to see them kick ass!"
"Cap." War Machine's voice again. "I think we might have a problem up here. What ever this stuff is, it's got people totally freaked out; I think half of them are having full on hallucinations, and trust me when I say that I've seen what happens when superhumans are exposed to that sort of thing. It's not good. Tony and the Wasp seem like they're handling it, but Carol's got her hands full at the windows, and I don't want to be the only person up here if the Wasp flips out and grows to twenty feet. Not to mention that if Tony's been exposed, we've got to get him out of the armor before he panics and blows somebody's head off."
Sam and Steve exchanged glances. "Forget the building sweep," Sam said. "The firemen can handle it."
***
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven
Authors:
seanchai and elspethdixonRated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan.
Warnings: No much, really. Some swearing and violence.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: The sequel to Readjustment. Things are finally settling down, and the Avengers are settling in. It's time for disaster to strike again.
X-posted to Marvel Slash.
And again, our thanks to
tavella for the great beta job.The Meridian was located on the top floor of a very expensive downtown hotel, and was noted as much for the view from its large picture windows as it was for its food. It was only a three star restaurant, however. Jan had a feeling Tony had decided that a reporter from the Sun wasn't worth the expense of going somewhere with a fourth star.
Tony's flight had been late getting in, and Jan had been worried that she would be left to deal with Byrne, the reporter, by herself. That, or be reduced to begging either Sam or Carol to come with her. Steve was still refusing to talk to reporters, and she had learned by dint of long and unfortunate experience that the farther Hank and Clint were kept from the press, the better it was for all concerned.
Luckily for Carol and Sam, Tony had gotten to back to the Tower just in time to drop off his bags, change into a suit that wasn't wrinkled, and dash out the door for the Meridian. They had made it with seconds to spare, only to find that Byrne was apparently running late.
"And then after I was finished with Kooning, or rather, when Kooning was finished with me, I had to meet with Gyrich, and then with what I think may have been half the Pentagon, plus the Department of Homeland Security." Tony groaned, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "And Gyrich was actually the high point. I thought I'd never escape. I can't believe I actually volunteered to be Secretary of Defense once. I must have been insane."
"No argument there," Jan said. "I try to stay as far away from politicians as possible."
"I just feel bad," Tony went on. "I told Steve I'd be back this morning."
"I don't think he'll hold it against you." Steve hadn't quite started sulking when the projected arrival time had gone by without Tony putting in an appearance, but that was probably because he and Clint had been busy arguing over something. Jan hadn't bothered to pay attention to what, because it had been incredibly petty, and only the two of them had actually cared about it.
Tony's suit was perfectly pressed, and his hair was neat, mainly because Jan had whacked his hand down whenever he'd tried to reach up and mess with it, but there were circles under his eyes again.
"You look tired. Are you all right?"
Tony frowned. "Why do people keep asking me that?"
"Because a month ago you had cracked ribs and one arm in a sling." And two weeks before that, they'd all just been waiting for the point at which he would inevitably snap. Or at least, she had been. If Steve hadn't come back, she would have given it about another month.
"I'm fine. I just didn't catch much sleep when I was in DC."
"Trust me; we're all glad you're back. Steve spent the entire time stomping around and pretending he wasn't sulking."
Tony's eyebrows went up. "Did something happen?"
"Yes," Jan said, resisting the impulse to roll her eyes. "You went to DC."
"I'm sure Steve can survive a few days on his own." Tony shrugged, clearly dismissing her comments as an exaggeration. "I think he's happy with the way the team is shaping up." He grinned suddenly, the exhaustion fading from his face. "Before I left, I heard him singing in the training room."
Jan grinned back; she had a pretty good idea what Steve had been doing. "What was he singing?"
"Some show tune." Tony's smile got, if possible, even wider. "I think he was dancing."
Steve only did that when he was happy. "Singin' in the Rain or New York, New York?" she asked.
Tony looked blank.
"He always does Gene Kelly songs, even though he's really too big to dance like that. He does pretty well for the first minute or so, but then he always ends up tripping over his own feet. I think he gets embarrassed by the imaginary audience in his head." And, all right, she'd just as good as admitted that she'd been spying on Steve's training sessions for years, but really, who could blame her?
"How come I've never heard of this?" Tony asked. He was still smiling, not the soft expression he usually wore when talking about Steve, but an openly amused one.
"He doesn't do it if he thinks someone's watching." She leaned forward, lowering her voice, and added, "Wanda and I used to sneak into the monitor room to watch him any time he went in to practice by himself, on the off chance that he'd start dancing."
"It's good to know that he's happy in spite of everything that happened. I think he'd tell me if he wasn't, but it's still nice to have some proof." Tony's smile shifted slightly, into something closer to a smirk. "I'll have to tap into the security cameras next time."
"Oh, don't do that," Jan said. "Just call me and we'll meet in the monitor room."
Over Tony's shoulder, she saw Byrne enter the restaurant and exchange a few words with the maitre'de, who gestured at their table. "Put your game face on. The press is here."
Tony's smirk faltered, and then he was wearing the slick, polished smile he reserved exclusively for reporters. Jan fluffed her hair with one hand, and put on a smile of her own, one hopefully less superficial-looking than Tony's.
"Mr. Byrne." She stood and extended her hand as the reporter reached their table. "We're so glad you could make it here this afternoon."
"Ms. Van Dyne, Mr. Stark." He shook both their hands, and seated himself in the table's remaining chair. "Sorry I'm late. Traffic, you know."
"Is there something in particular you're hoping to discuss with us, Mr. Byrne?" Tony asked him, after the waiter had taken their drink orders. "We put out a press release after we dealt with the Venom virus."
"And an admirable exercise in brevity it was." Byrne smile at them toothily. "I think our readers would appreciate some more in-depth information. Just a few weeks ago, you costumed folks were fighting tooth and nail, and now you all seem to be best friends again. I can't help but wonder if there are any lingering hard feelings."
"I can only speak for myself, of course," Jan said, "but I'm thrilled that we've been able to resolve things in a way that's satisfactory to everyone."
"Satisfactory to everyone? You must be aware that there were a number of people who were very unhappy to see the Registration Act come to such an abrupt end."
"I'd like to think this past month has proven that public safety can be better protected without the Registration Act as it stood," Tony said smoothly. "It should be obvious by now that this country's superheroes can perform their jobs better when they're not being micromanaged."
Jan's lips twitched for a second, hearing that. Tony was one of the worst micromanagers she'd ever worked with. He made half the fashion designers in New York seem easy going and calm.
"The government is continuing the training program for younger, less experienced superhumans, as I'm sure you know, and Colorado and Wyoming's Initiative teams have been very successful working with the National Guard to stop those wild fires they've been having trouble with."
"And of course, it's been major news that the two of you, along with several other formerly registered heroes, have reformed an Avengers team with Captain America." Byrne raised his eyebrows, electronic pen poised over the PDA he had produced from a coat pocket. "That must have been interesting to negotiate."
"There wasn't as much negotiating as you might think," Jan told him. "When it came right down to it, Steve Rogers just wants the same thing we do, to keep people safe."
Byrne offered her a self-deprecating smile, and a small shrug, "I've been wondering if his miraculous return might have had something to do with his sudden change of heart."
Tony's smile was beginning to look strained. "I think the fact that the government was finally willing to take his concerns, and the concerns of the general superhuman population seriously had more to do with it. That, and the fact that the attacks on New York and other cities were more important than any individual quarrels."
"The timing worked out very nicely for you, didn't it?" Byrne said. "Captain America coming back just when you needed him. Talk about fortunate coincidences, huh?"
"Very fortunate," Jan said coolly. Where ever he was going with this, it was unlikely to be something they wanted to discuss. Tony could still barely mention Steve's temporary death without flinching.
"You must be thrilled." Byrne smiled again, adding, "Having a resurrected hero to act as your spokesman to Congress, having Captain America back at the head of the Avengers, all charges dropped and everything forgiven. And he never even had to set foot in a courtroom. It couldn't have worked out better for you all if you'd planned it in advance."
Jan stared at him for a moment, unsure if he was actually implying what she thought he was implying. Surely no one could possibly believe that Steve's death had been staged, not when it had been on national television.
Across the table from her, Tony had gone white. "This interview is over," he said quietly. "Leave. Now."
Jan was mildly impressed at his self-control; if she had been in his position, if it had been Hank's death and return Byrne was so unsubtly implying to be a set-up, she wasn't sure she wouldn't have hit him. "I can assure you, it wasn't something we could have possibly planned for. You can tell your paper that we won't be giving any more interviews if Registration or what happened to Steve is all you're interested in discussing. We've said all we have to say on those subjects, and I'm sure people are tired of hearing about them."
Jan looked away from Byrne, back to Tony, to see how he was handling this. He was blank-faced, but his hands, which had been folded loosely in front of him on the table, were now so tightly clenched that she could see his tendons.
"Mr. Stark, Ms. Van Dyne, please, I'm not making any accusations here-" Byrne started.
Jan ignored him. Their table was situated in a corner of the room, near one of the air conditioning vents, which had been blowing freezing air on her ever since they had sat down. Now, the cold air had suddenly stopped.
She glanced up at the vent curiously, and her eyes widened. White vapor was swirling out of it into the room.
She leaned across the table and put a hand on Tony's arm, nodding at the vent. "I think we might have a problem."
Tony was supposed to have gotten back to New York at nine a.m. Thanks to a combination of last-minute delays, it was now eleven forty-five, and he still hadn't arrived.
Steve had missed Tony while he was gone -- he kept thinking of something he wanted to say to him, or needed to ask him, and then remembering that he wasn't there. It was like reaching for his shield only to remember that he was wearing civilian clothing and didn't have it with him.
With Tony absent, the tower didn't feel like home, somehow. Possibly because most of his things were still in boxes, sitting unopened in the corners of the room he was sharing with Tony. Some of them were still sealed with packing tape.
It just hadn't felt like the right time to unpack them yet.
Steve finished toweling his hair dry and dropped the towel on top of the nearest stack of boxes, all of them neatly labeled in Jarvis's precise scrip. Jarvis had offered several times to either unpack everything for Steve, or return the boxes to storage, but neither option had felt right, so the boxes remained.
Steve pulled on a clean shirt, then guiltily picked the towel back up and went to hang it on the appropriate towel rack in the bathroom. He'd hoped that working out would alleviate the restless boredom that had been plaguing him all morning. Unfortunately, Clint and Sam had both refused to spar with him, claiming that he was just grouchy and looking for someone to hit, and beating up a punching bag wasn't nearly as satisfying.
What on earth could be keeping Tony?
At least his absence hadn't been as bad as last month, when Steve had found himself unable to sleep without Tony's warm presence in his bed to keep nightmares at bay. Only after he had finally given in and called Tony at sometime after one in the morning had he been able to fall asleep.
But there had been no nightmares this time, not the old ones of the explosion and Bucky's death, or the new ones of gunshots and drowning in blood.
Things were finally starting to get better.
Tony had seemed better lately, too, now that his ribs had finally healed and the Extremis-induced nosebleeds had gone away. He'd been less tense, as well. Of course, nearly a week arguing with politicians and military officials had probably put paid to that, but Steve was confident that it would only take a few hours alone with Tony to get him to relax again.
Hell, he’d been looking forward to getting Tony to relax. Only, of course, Tony wasn't there. It probably hadn't been fair to take his disappointment out on Clint, but when Clint had offered him a leering grin over the breakfast table (a good half an hour after Tony had been due to arrive) and asked if Steve had any "plans" for when Tony got back, the retort that Clint was just jealous because he was still single had been out of Steve's mouth before he realize d that he sounded incredibly immature. Clint had informed him that he wasn't jealous, and that he if he wanted a girlfriend, he could go out and find one, and more easily than Steve could have, too. Then Hank had started laughing, and Sam, traitor that he was, had announced that Clint was right, and things had gone downhill from there.
He would apologize to Clint later, Steve decided. Right now, he was going to go down to Tony's office, on the off chance that he'd already arrived and gone directly there. And given that Tony's employees seemed to need him to hold their hands for everything, it wasn't impossible that that was exactly what had happened.
Tony, unfortunately, was not in his office. Pepper Potts-Hogan, however, was. She was sitting behind Tony's desk, muttering to herself as she went through a stack of papers. "I spend a month in California, and everyone in this company misplaces their brain."
Steve hesitated in the doorway. Pepper must have sensed him somehow -- heard him, maybe -- because she looked up, stared at him for a moment, and then gave him a rueful smile.
"Tony's not here yet," she told him. "Or at least, I'm guessing that's why you're here."
"Oh," Steve said. He hadn't really thought Tony would be, but it had been worth checking. "Do you know when he will be? Here, I mean."
"Whenever he gets done with that reporter he was supposed to meet today. Janet Van Dyne grabbed him as soon as he came in the door; you just missed him, actually." She nodded at the corner of a suitcase that was just visible on the other side of the desk.
"Oh," Steve repeated, disappointed and feeling a little cheated. He could have seen Tony, if only briefly, if he'd thought to come and wait here earlier. Still, resenting whatever reporter they were meeting with was irrational and probably petty. "I'll let you get back to work."
"Actually, I've been meaning to talk to you." Pepper waved at one of the chair by the desk, adding, "Why don't you come in?"
Steve obediently came in, and sat. He didn't know Pepper very well, but she seemed nice. She was also oddly intimidating, but that might just be the effect of all of the stories he'd heard from Tony over the years.
"What did you want to talk about?"
"I've heard that you and Tony are involved now," she said, offering him a faint grin. Now that he was closer to her, Steve could see a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose; combined with the smile, they made her look impish despite her sharp suit.
Steve nodded, not really sure what he was supposed to say. He had no intention of hiding his relationship with Tony, but the idea that he could just come out and tell people that he was involved with another man was still new to him.
"Good," Pepper said. "I'm glad he's finally found someone who deserves him, instead of another stupid bimbo or a supervillain."
Steve grinned, feeling ridiculously pleased. Pepper was one of the only people left who had known Tony longer than he had, and her opinion was important to Tony; it was good to know that she didn't have any problem with their relationship -- though given how long she'd worked for Tony, the fact that Tony liked men as well as women couldn't have been much of a surprise.
"I never thought this could happen," he admitted. "But you have no idea how glad I am that it did."
"I wasn't exactly expecting it, either," she said. "I always thought you were as straight as they come."
Steve smiled a little. "Honestly, I always thought Tony was, too."
Pepper let out a short bark of laughter. "Really? You and Rhodey are the most oblivious men on the planet. I mean, for God's sake, Happy figured it out." She stopped, eyes suddenly moving away from Steve, toward her hand, where she would have worn a wedding ring, once. "Actually, I think Happy figured it out before I did. He was good at things like that. He knew Tony was Iron Man before I did, too."
Once again, Steve didn't know what to say. He had come back, and her husband hadn't. Just moments ago, he had been grinning ear-to-ear about him and Tony, but now, as Pepper stared silently at her hands, he felt oddly guilty. Guilty for being happy, for getting a second chance when her husband hadn't.
"I didn't know Mr. Hogan very well, but he always seemed like a real nice guy," Steve said awkwardly, "and I know Tony misses him a lot."
Pepper smiled, a small, sad smile. "There was a while there when the three of us were all each of us had. I guess it made us almost like a family."
"I know what you mean," Steve said. During the war, he and Bucky had been the closest thing to family either of them had had, and then, after that, there had been the Avengers.
"Now I don't know what to say to him, sometimes," she said softly, still staring at her hands.
Tony had been the one to turn off Happy's life support, when he had been slowly dying from a supervillain's beating. Pepper must have known; Tony wouldn't have done something like that without telling her first.
"I'm sorry," Steve tried. It was a clichÉ, but it was the least trite clichÉ he could think of.
Pepper looked up from her hands, catching and holding Steve's eyes. "Hurt him," she said, "and I'll make you pay."
"I would never hurt Tony." The words were automatic, said before he'd even thought about them.
"I don't think you would on purpose," she said, holding up a hand, "but, I mean, you come back from the dead, and suddenly you're bisexual? I know Tony can't have been in good shape when you came back; he was in bad shape even before. I saw what it did to him to fight you. You're probably pretty mixed up right now, and I'm sure he threw himself at you, and... Look, the last thing Tony needs at this point is for another relationship to crash and burn."
"I didn't like fighting him, either," Steve protested. It had been the worst few months of his entire life, made even worse because he'd known that, even if the rest of the world could be saved, his friendship with Tony was lost forever.
It still surprised him occasionally to wake up and find Tony in bed next to him.
"Captain America, Steve, have you ever been with another man before Tony?"
Steve could feel himself blushing. "I don't see how that matters," he said, more primly than he'd intended to. "Or that it's any of your business." He didn't actually add "young lady" to the end of that, but the temptation was strong.
"Oh, it's not," she assured him cheerfully. "But I answer Tony's phone and open his mail, so I know all of his business anyway."
Why did people keep assuming that he had just rushed into this without thinking and had no idea what he was getting into? All right, he had rushed into it without thinking, but Steve knew perfectly well what he was getting into and what he wanted. And he certainly wouldn't lead Tony on, regardless.
"If anything," Steve said, face hot, "I threw myself at him."
"Oh." Pepper flashed him a momentary grin. "I guess that makes a difference, doesn't it? But the threat stands. Hurt him, and I'll hurt you." She said this with such confidence that it never occurred to Steve to doubt that she could carry said threat out, and never mind that she was a foot shorter than him.
His Avengers communicator chose that moment to chime, rescuing Steve from the conversation.
"Rogers," he said as he activated it. With any luck, it would be Tony, announcing that he and Jan had finished with the reporter and were on their way home.
"Steve!" It was Jan's voice, something about it sounding strange. "There's some kind of airborne toxin in here. Everyone's going crazy. Panicking. I don't know." She was speaking quickly, almost babbling, voice shaking. "I- Oh God, we can't use force, they're civilians. And I'm compromised. Just- send someone." There was a shrill, drawn-out scream in the background, and the communicator cut off abruptly.
Steve closed his eyes for a long moment, hands clenching uselessly into fists at his sides, then exhaled, forcing himself to treat this like he would any other emergency.
All right, this was not good. Jan--and presumably Tony as well--were out there somewhere dealing with an unknown toxin and a bunch of compromised civilians that they couldn't afford to fight back against. And to make things worse, Jan had been exposed to whatever it was.
He stood, already moving towards the door. "Where are they?" he barked at Pepper.
"The Meridian," she said, all business. "It's on Wall Street." She snatched a sticky-note from the corner of Tony's desk and thrust it at Steve. "Here's the address."
Steve activated his communicator again. "Hank-" he started.
"I heard," Hank's voice came through sharply. "I'm contacting everyone as we speak. Falcon, Carol, Hawkeye, War Machine. Where should I tell them to go?"
"The Meridian," Steve told him.
There was a soft exhalation from Hank, and then, "Okay, I know where that is."
"Tell them I'll meet them there," Steve said. "Rogers out."
The white vapor completely filled the room now, hanging in the air like fog.
"I can't open the doors," Tony announced. "Something's blocking them on the other side."
That was so very much not what they needed. "Blast them," Jan shouted back. "We need to get these people out of here, away from whatever this is." They needed to get away from it. She was breathing the stuff in right now, had been for at least five minutes, and she had no idea what it was.
She did, however, have a pretty good idea of what it did to people.
One woman had been screaming in a loud, drawn-out wail for at least three minutes. She had backed into a corner, hands over her eyes, a salad fork still clutched in one white knuckled fist.
The rest of the room was just as bad. People were screaming, crying, and hiding under tables. Others had started throwing things and lashing out at everyone around them. If they didn't get out of here now, someone was going to get hurt.
Where were the others? She had called for them ages ago; why weren't they here yet?
Had something happened to them? What if they weren't coming, and she and Tony were on their own?
"Just hit it with a repulsor beam!" she yelled.
"I can't!" She couldn't see Tony's face -- he'd summoned his armor as soon as they'd realized the air was contaminated -- but he sounded as desperate as she felt. "There's too many people. I could hurt someone!"
"You have to help me." Byrne's hands locked around her arm as he fell to his knees on the floor beside her. "They've all gone insane! You have to stop them! You have to protect me!"
"Let go of me," Jan snapped, trying to jerk her arm away. It was no use -- he was bigger and stronger than she was, and with an unknown toxin filling the air, she didn't dare shrink down and hide. She would only poison herself quicker that way.
She knew how to fight. She had to remember that. She had combat training from some of the most skilled fighters in the world; she could protect herself.
But this man -- all of these people -- were innocent civilians who had been exposed to the same toxin as she had, and if she tried anything, she could hurt one of them, and as off-balance as she was right now, she might not even realize it, might really hurt one of the people she was supposed to be protecting.
She still couldn't just leave Tony to deal with all of this alone.
Byrne was still clutching her arm tightly enough that it hurt. He was hurting her. She was still clear headed enough to know that she couldn't hurt him, though.
She couldn't use her stingers at full size, but Byrne didn’t know that.
"Let. Go," she hissed. "Or I will zap you." He flinched back, releasing his death grip on her arm, and she shoved him toward the nearest table. "Get under there and stay down. You'll be safe there."
Byrne, thank God, did as he was told.
The screaming woman was still screaming. God, why wouldn't she shut up?
A blond man in an expensive business suit was brandishing a steak knife at another, equally expensively-attired, man. "Stay back!" he shouted. "No. Stop it! I said stay back!" and then he was lunging at the other man, knife extended in front of him.
Tony threw himself between them, the knife skidding harmlessly across the front of his armor. The man he had just saved screamed, and started pounding on the armor with his fists.
"Get away from him, robot!"
An older man had fallen to his knees beside his chair, one hand clutching at his chest. A dark-haired woman was sitting on the floor next to him, tears streaming from her closed eyes, rocking back and forth. Another woman was pounding on one of the doors with her fists, her perfectly manicured brown hands leaving smears of blood on the wood. There were people running back and forth from one side of the room to another, pursued by something only they could see; people clinging to one another in panic, motionless and whimpering; and one table of stock brokers had gotten into a fist-fight.
She couldn't do this. There were too many people, too much noise, and everyone was so big, and--
That man was probably dying. She couldn't give in to this. Jan started towards the older man, the one who looked like he might be having a heart attack.
Then she stopped, hesitating, as she heard a child somewhere start to wail.
It was a little girl, no more than three or four. She was standing in the middle of the floor sobbing, people rushing past her obliviously. "Mommy! Mommy!"
Someone was going to trample her, or worse.
Jan shoved her way through the crowd, ducking under a chair that one of the stock brokers threw at her. It crashed into the window, creating a spiderweb of cracks in the glass.
She picked the little girl up. Thankfully, instead of panicking further, the child clung to her, burying her face in Jan's neck, snuffling quietly. Her face was hot, and damp with tears.
Jan carried her back to the table she'd shoved Byrne under, absently murmuring to her as she did so. "It's okay, it's okay. You're safe now."
"Take her," she told Byrne, as she knelt by the table, trying to disentangle the girl's arms from around her neck. "Make sure nobody hurts her."
"No!" the child screamed. "I want to stay with you!"
"You can't go back out there." Byrne grabbed Jan's wrist, interfering in her attempts to get the little girl to let go. "It's not safe out there!"
"Stay with the nice man," Jan said through clenched teeth, shaking off Byrne's grip. The little girl hiccuped once, then let go, still crying, and latched onto Byrne.
He shuffled backwards, farther under the table, and jerked the table cloth down, hiding them from view.
The screams from the corner suddenly stopped, and Jan looked over just in time to see her begin to run towards the broken window.
Tony was in the middle of the stock brokers, trying to separate them. Two of them had ahold of his arms, and a third was battering at him with another chair, while the fourth attempted to detach one of the others away from Tony in order to continue their fight.
Jan took off after the woman, catching up with her just as she reached the window and grabbing her by the elbow.
There was a sudden flash of pain in her arm as the woman rounded on her and sank the salad fork she was still clutching into her forearm. Then she was free, and running for the window again, shattering the already cracked glass with one shoulder and falling through it.
Jan stood in front of the open window, air from outside blowing in onto her face, frozen with horror.
And then War Machine's bulky grey armor appeared in front of her. "Don't worry," he said. "Falcon's got her. And the cavalry's here."
At first glance, Wall Street looked perfectly normal, right down to the dozens of pedestrians clogging the sidewalk, everything from business-suited lawyers, to Japanese tourists, to teenagers in those ugly jeans that came pre-worn and paint-stained. Then the glass on the top floor window of one the buildings shattered outward, and a woman burst through it to fall screaming towards the street.
Sam banked left, then folded his wings and went into a steep dive, leaving Redwing to circle above the street alone. He'd only have once chance to grab her; the air was dead calm, with no lift to speak of, so once he'd lost altitude, he wouldn't be able to climb back up for another try, and if he missed, she was as good as dead.
He caught the woman around the waist, snapping his wings back out to halt their descent. She screamed even more loudly, and stabbed him in the shoulder with a fork.
There were days when Sam hated this job.
"It's okay," he shouted, trying not to drop her as she kicked at him. "I've got you! You're safe!" Whatever had happened to this woman, she clearly wasn't hearing him; she just kept on screaming and struggling.
Sam released her once they were within a few feet of the ground. As soon as her feet hit the pavement, she was off and running.
She made it about ten feet before she ran straight into Hawkeye. He grabbed her by the shoulders and the two of them promptly began struggling over the fork. "Look, lady, I'm not gonna hurt you, okay? Ouch, shit, will you stop that?"
Redwing swooped down to settle on Sam's shoulder, making a soft, chirring noise of protest at being left behind. Then Steve appeared at Sam's side, grabbing him by the elbow. "Can you get back up?' he asked, tone abrupt, no preamble at all. "War Machine's gone into the dining room, so if anyone else jumps, there's only Carol to catch them."
"No," Sam said shortly, responding in kind. "There's no lift here; I'd need to climb something and jump to get airborne."
"So we're down to two flyers. You're with me. We need to start evacuating the building." Steve was in crisis mode, all stiff shoulders and barked orders. "Hawkeye-" he snapped, turning and stabbing a finger at Clint, "take her to the paramedics. Then get back here and join us."
Clint gave him a deliberately sloppy salute. "Right away, oh fearless leader."
"There's an airborne toxin in there, Clint. Just shut up and do it."
They had no idea what the substance the people in the building had been exposed to, or how widespread the contamination was -- all they had was Jan's alarmingly vague description. If they were lucky, whatever it was had only been released on the top floor. If they were unlucky, the building had one those ventilation systems that recycled air from room to room, and the toxin had been vented into every part of the building by now.
The first thing Sam had done when he'd gotten the alert was to tell Hank to call whomever was in charge of the building the Meridian was located in and get him to have a copy of the building plans ready. The guy was supposed to be waiting for them in the lobby with the plans, ready to start the evacuation as soon as they got the go ahead from War Machine that it wasn't some kind of bioweapon.
The first cops and emergency personnel were just starting to arrive, with more sirens approaching in the distance, when Sam and Steve reached the building's tall, glass doors.
"Armor's filters say it's a chemical compound of some kind," War Machine's voice crackled over the commlink. "No live DNA or bio-organisms. Tell the emergency people standard gas masks ought to work."
Right. There was one piece of luck. Sam donned his own gas mask, then dislodged a disgruntled Redwing talon-by-talon from his shoulder. "Sorry, buddy. We don't have any masks in your size." Redwing informed him that if something jumped Sam while he wasn't there to watch his back, it would Sam's fault, and that he was going to go back up to the roofline to watch the humans' pathetic attempts at flight some more.
Sam extended one arm, letting Redwing walk down his shoulder to his wrist, and then flung him up into the air. Then he nodded to Steve and pushed open the door, hoping like hell that the building manager wasn't going to be hiding under his desk or screaming incoherently. The last thing they needed right now was to be stabbed with a Mont Blanc pen.
Once inside, their luck held. The lobby was filled with people, most wearing business suits, all of them lined up loosely along the walls by the door. The building manager, a tall, middle-aged man whose dark hair was receding in front, was waiting at the front desk with a sheaf of architectural plans.
"Here," he said, thrusting the plans at Sam. "This is everything we could find. Somebody hacked our computer mainframe and shut off our air system, not to mention all of the security cameras on the top floor, so none of this stuff's being circulated out, but we've also got no damn idea what's going on up there."
"That was a good move," Steve said softly, more to himself than to Sam or the building manager, and Sam was sure from the look in his eyes that he had assumed that their hacker was Tony.
Sam spread the plans out across the tall receptionist's desk, shoving a bowl of wrapped candies, a pen on the end of a silver chain, and a potted African violet out of the way. The building was old, only nine stories, and the stairwells were located at the east and west corners. Elevators were in the center, but they could count those out; anybody who could put a gas in the ventilation system could probably be counted on to tamper with the elevators.
"Sir, we need you to go outside and tell the police and firemen that they can start coming in," Steve told the building manager. "We've determined that the attack is chemical rather than biological, but they're still going to need breathing gear."
"I'll do that," the building manager said hurriedly. He was obviously desperate for an excuse to get out of the building, but Sam couldn't really blame him under the circumstances. "It's such a relief to have you people back."
"Go get the firemen," Steve repeated, already turning away to look at the plans. "If you see a man wearing purple leather, tell him to get in here."
The man raised his eyebrows slightly at that, but nodded and hurried to the head of the evacuation line. He pushed open the door and started ushering people out, looking oddly like Sam's old high school principal as he instructed people to stay single file, and no pushing, please. After the first six or so men and women had gone out, he followed them, and a red-uniformed hotel staffer took over the door-holding position.
"We'll take the stairs to the top floor," Steve said, one finger tracing the line of the stairwell on the map.
Sam borrowed Redwing's eyes for a moment, using the falcon's vision to look through the top floor windows. There was always a moment of disorientation when he did that, as the world came into sudden, startling clarity. He'd occasionally wondered if this was what it was like for nearsighted people when they put on glasses.
Jagged shards of glass still lined the windowsill of the window the woman had jumped from. Beyond it was chaos, people running, crying, hitting each other, throwing things. He couldn't see Jan, but War Machine and Iron Man both stood out clearly, each surrounded by people who were either attacking them or clinging to them.
"Looks like that's the main problem area," Sam agreed. He blinked, pulling his vision away from Redwing's and looking through his own eyes again. Steve was blurred for a moment, and then everything readjusted and was normal again. "Everyone down here looks pretty normal. But if we start bringing screaming, hysterical people down from the restaurant, that's gonna change pretty quickly." The two of them started towards the stairwell, keeping their pace to a quick walk. If the people crowded into the lobby saw them running, it wouldn't help in keeping the calm.
"We can keep everyone up there contained until Clint and the emergency personnel have cleared the lower floors," Steve said, pulling open the stairwell's heavy fire door.
Sam nodded. "If there are any medical emergencies, Ms. Marvel, War Machine, and I can fly them down."
"War Machine, Ms. Marvel," Steve said into his commlink, "The Falcon and I are coming up. Keep everyone contained on the top floor until we get there. If there's anyone who needs immediate medical attention, one of you can take them down to the paramedics by air."
"Copy that, Cap," Carol said. "I'm taking out the rest of the windows now; we need to get some fresh air in here. There's this white vapor shit everywhere, almost too thick to see through."
"Go ahead," War Machine's voice this time, "but get ready to catch more jumpers when you do."
They swept each floor as they went up, a quick walk-through to ensure that people were actually evacuating and that nobody was being overlooked. The first and second floors were nearly empty, the third floor entirely so, and as they climbed the flights of stairs between floors, they passed a good two dozen people going down. Some of them looked relieved upon seeing Sam and Steve. More of them went wide-eyed and started to hurry down the steps faster.
Sam wasn't sure it had as much to do with the recent Registration mess as it did the fact that superheroes showing up in the middle of a building evacuation had never been taken as a positive sign by most New Yorkers.
One woman broke into a near-run, grabbing a teenage boy's wrist and forcibly pulling him along behind her. "Mom," he whined, "it's Captain America and the Falcon! I want to see them kick ass!"
"Cap." War Machine's voice again. "I think we might have a problem up here. What ever this stuff is, it's got people totally freaked out; I think half of them are having full on hallucinations, and trust me when I say that I've seen what happens when superhumans are exposed to that sort of thing. It's not good. Tony and the Wasp seem like they're handling it, but Carol's got her hands full at the windows, and I don't want to be the only person up here if the Wasp flips out and grows to twenty feet. Not to mention that if Tony's been exposed, we've got to get him out of the armor before he panics and blows somebody's head off."
Sam and Steve exchanged glances. "Forget the building sweep," Sam said. "The firemen can handle it."
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven
no subject
I have got nothing else to say, just so awesome. I can't wait for the next part!
no subject
Steve singing and dancing when he thinks no one can see him, I can so imagine him doing that. XD
Also Pepper laying down the law like a protective older sister was terribly cute, Steve almost seemed scared of her for a minute. I'd been wondering when she would make an appearance in your fics, Pepper is such a solid friend in Tony's life.
Fear poison? Ohboy. I can't wait to see how Tony handles it, assuming it got in his system.
no subject
no subject
his hair was neat, mainly because Jan had whacked his hand down whenever he'd tried to reach up and mess with it
lovely mental image
Some show tune." Tony's smile got, if possible, even wider. "I think he was dancing."
Steve only did that when he was happy. "Singin' in the Rain or New York, New York?
awesome^^
Clint gave him a deliberately sloppy salute. "Right away, oh fearless leader."
have I told you how much I adore Clint here?
This is some ...fear - gas, right?
(DC´s scarecrow has a similar weaponry).
Tony (issues, lots of issues)+ fear gas = not good, so not good...
can´t wait for the next chapter
You and Rhodey are the most oblivious men on the planet. I mean, for God's sake, Happy figured it out.
^____^
He was still smiling, not the soft expression he usually wore when talking about Steve, but an openly amused one.
awwwwww
Pepper looked up from her hands, catching and holding Steve's eyes. "Hurt him," she said, "and I'll make you pay."
Steve should better watch out, this lady means business.
(odd, I had the almost the same line for a fic, only it was Rhodey saying it...and it was a genderswap so nevermind^^)
She screamed even more loudly, and stabbed him in the shoulder with a fork.
There were days when Sam hated this job.
yes , Sam, that´s what you get for rescuing people...
no subject
Oh, and the plot. That. *is hanging off cliff* A little help here?
Pepper = ♥ and awesome. She totally will hurt Steve if she has to. She has ways.
*waits none-too-patiently for more*
no subject
Pepper was excellent
Also fear gas stuff making everyone freak and my mind kept going *Ironman's snap is totally going to be to give woobie huggles to cap*
no subject
no subject
*waits impatiently*
no subject
Steve sulking and taking it out on the others is just too cute. It's also just like Tony to not be willing to understand that Steve's doing this when he's gone. I also love overprotective Pepper.
Yay action again! I adore Redwing in this. I just love to read about the group fighting together. I'm really looking forward to the next part!
no subject
no subject
no subject
And, oh, fear gas! Do I see this leading to deliciously angsty places in the near future?
no subject
Tony's eyebrows went up. "Did something happen?"
"Yes," Jan said, resisting the impulse to roll her eyes. "You went to DC."
::big huge grin on face that won't go away::
And singing steve :D DANCING STEVE!!! :O :D:D:D:D ::purrs::
"You must be thrilled." Byrne smiled again, adding, "It couldn't have worked out better for you all if you'd planned it in advance."
--- must.destroy.byrne.kill.kill.kill. >__<
"Hurt him," she said, "and I'll make you pay." -- Oh so much love for Pepper!
Also it was interesting to bring up the fact that Tony is the first man Steve has been with. It brings up some interesting insecurities Tony might have. ::waits impatiently for more::
Jan stood in front of the open window, air from outside blowing in onto her face, frozen with horror.
And then War Machine's bulky grey armor appeared in front of her. "Don't worry," he said. "Falcon's got her. And the cavalry's here."-- wow that was really nice pacing and awesome writing! the tension and resolution was amazing! :D
lol at the teenager wanting to stay!
::goes to read part 3::
no subject
There is too much wonderfulness in this part for me to isolate individual bits of it! But I will try. I adore the mental image of Steve sulking terribly because Tony has gone away. It makes me sad that Tony still doesn't think he's that important to Steve, but I have a feeling it's going to take him awhile to absorb that. He's had too many years of feeling (and being told) that he's worthless. Even more than that, though, I adored the mental image of Steve attempting to sing and dance and flubbing it. :-D :-D So cute!
I wanted to throttle the reporter, but you just know a lot of people are wondering those same things, even if most are too polite to say it. :-(
I get the feeling Steve doesn't really want to unpack until he can do so in the rebuilt Avengers mansion. He wants his home back.
Also, I love Pepper to bits for saying "I'm glad he's finally found someone who deserves him" because I think it's really unusual for someone to think of Tony as someone you have to be worthy of. *hugs her*
The fear toxin scene was really well done, but I confess my favorite line was "If you see a man wearing purple leather, tell him to get in here." just because it made me giggle. *g* Sometimes we forget how these people look from the outside, so to speak.
re: Hostages 2/7
In cases like these, would it be better or worse to knock everyone out? Whatever is used to knock them out will hurt them even more, but then they wouldn't be able to stab each other.