Damsel in Distress
The last thing Tony had expected out of his life was to become some sort of leader to a rogue group of omegas. Okay, so maybe not rouge so much as done with society’s shit and grouped together in a small but powerful group. The downside? At least one of them managed to get captured by some government group every week and this week Hawkeye went down. Nat was pissed because he was supposed to bring back tacos and Wanda was being more angsty than usual. Despite only being a few years older than her Clint was practically her dad, or maybe like her older brother if, you know, her other older brother hadn’t gotten killed. “So it looks like an organization called S.H.E.I.L.D nabbed him, does anyone aside from me and Loki know anything about these people?” Loki looked like a kid in a candy store, which likely meant that he was about to run into his brother, Thor. For hating his guts with everything he had Loki cared about his brother quite a bit. No one told him that though, Tony did it once and Loki dumped his ass after dating for two years. Not that Tony had cared, it was a bit too serious for his liking anyways, plus the look on Loki’s face when Tony went back to his old sexual habits was extremely satisfying.
Everyone else looked confused so he sighed and moved on, “looks like their hiring scientists, Fitzsimmons, I suggest you two show up on their doorstep gift wrapped, the two of you are better than what they’re looking for and they look for the best.” Jemma grins and Fitz looks dismayed, probably because the two sucked at undercover work. “Keep it about the science,” Tony advises, “if you keep it about what you know it’ll be way easier to not blow your cover. Besides, if all goes well it’ll take a week, max.” It wasn’t like they didn’t do this on a regular basis and with organizations that were a lot scarier than S.H.E.I.L.D, Wanda was a HYDRA experiment. Actually most of them were experiments from various government organizations, Nat for example was an experiment from Russia, Bruce was dumb enough to experiment on himself, Clint was a circus experiment much to Tony’s delight. Hell, even Tony was something of an experiment with the arc reactor and all, even if it was sort of self-inflicted, much to Wanda’s delight.
“Hey, Wanda, you wanna be the one to prison break Clint?” She whirls around from her pacing and snarls at him.
“Go fuck yourself,” she growls in a thick Slovakian accent and stalks off before Tony can get her real answer.
“I’m gunna take that as a yes, Nat I’ve sent some blueprints your way but be aware that they are limited, S.H.E.I.L.D has some very good tech and it’s good at keeping people out,” he turns to Loki, “I’m assuming Thor knows something about S.H.E.I.L.D if you’re stupid grin is anything to go by,” he doesn’t quite manage to not sound sour while addressing Loki. Damn, he was going to need to work on that, he didn’t like Loki knowing what he was thinking; he was quite gifted in exploiting weakness.
“Yes, last I checked Thor worked for them,” Loki says, losing the smile at Tony’s mention of it.
“Great, I’m assuming you can figure out a way to get information from Thor and fuck the poor guy over, again, it’s what your good at.” Damn, hiding things so wasn’t his thing. Pep always told him he was as subtle as a whale in a swimming pool, maybe she was right.
“Oh Tony, still sore I dumped you,” Loki says in a pseudo sweet voice.
Tony grits his teeth, “no, I’m sore that your head is buried so far up your own ass that you can’t handle basic facts about your near incestuous relationship with your brother,” he snaps back. Loki recoils as if he was slapped and Tony feels viciously victorious, Loki was a tough nut to crack and so far only Tony and his father proved vicious enough to do the job. Good, he deserved it anyways.
Loki stomps off and Nat sighs, stepping onto the podium Tony built not because he felt like he needed to be above everyone, he just happened to be the leader of this group and it was easier for people to see what he was pointing at if he was elevated, fuck Loki very much. “You two need to get over yourselves. In house fighting does nothing for us. Also do you think sending Fitzsimmons in is best? Remember last time?” She says, looking somewhat pained.
“Yeah, they got shoved out of a plane by that asshole. They escaped though and I think that’s what we should take away from that encounter. I mean they were dropped into the fucking ocean to die and they managed to escape, lying may not be their thing but they sure as hell know how to get themselves out of a sticky situation. Besides, sending in you or Wanda is the alternative and the last time that happened was a freaking disaster.” Nat sighs because she knows that’s true, at least when Fitzsimmons went wrong they were quite about it, Nat and Wanda ended up in international news for decimating an entire city. Thankfully neither of their faces were caught on camera and rampant sexism labelled them small men instead of average sized women. Tony never thought he’d be thankful for societal double standards that marginalized various groups of people but in this business that was easy to exploit. Cheating the system, it was what he was good at, what they were all good at.
“Come on, there were like 100 injuries and no casualties, and I’m the best at undercover work, if I leave Wanda behind I probably won’t bring down a city,” she says in a sorry attempt at reasoning.
“No, I am not taking chances on you bringing a damn city down. Again. Wanda or no Wanda, you go in if Fitzsimmons looks like they might die, which, considering their track record, is entirely possible. In the meantime shadow Loki, remember the last time he was in the field?” A fucking alien invasion, that’s what. Aliens, literal extra-terrestrials, he didn’t even care if it technically wasn’t Loki’s fault, god damn aliens came out of the fucking sky and he wasn’t having that happen twice. That was where he had gleaned some intel on S.H.E.I.L.D so there was that at least. He also managed to snatch some alien stuff up on the black market and Bruce had had a fucking field day, Tony even got kisses for that one. Loki was pissed off for a month after that, which was Tony’s favourite part of that adventure.
“Maybe you should try your hand at field work,” Nat says, raising an eyebrow.
“Ah, no. First of all I’m extremely recognizable, second of all I have done enough damage for like, ten thousand lifetimes, ask Wanda. I only go in if it’s desperately needed and only in the suit, things are safer that way. Besides, without me or Fitzsimmons who the hell is supposed to deal with the tech?” Logically speaking there were very few people who understood his systems, he made it that way on purpose in case anyone ever found their lair. Okay, so it wasn’t a lair but still, very valuable information was kept here and it wouldn’t do to have it fall into the wrong hands.
“Excuses you, what am I? Chopped liver?” Skye asks, appearing behind Nat, “I like to think I’m competent enough to tell JARVIS what to do,” she folds her arms and taps her foot.
“Fine, so Skye can run things, but that doesn’t change the fact that everyone and their dog knows who I am.” He was curious to see her solution to that, it wasn’t like he could wear a new face.
“Tony you’ve been missing for two years; no one knows who you are anymore. They’ve moved on to the next tragedy of the moment, like aliens invading New York.” She made a point he supposed, at least if he was dealing with the masses.
“But we’re talking about a super-secret government agency, while the public probably no longer cares they sure as hell would. People don’t go missing without a trace, especially when they left one hell of a blown up terrorist cell behind them, they know I got out they just don’t know where I went.” He doubted that any government agency would give up on him quite that easily, he did make weapons after all. It wasn’t like they knew that he had falsified documents leaving Stark Industries to Pepper in his absence after Nat and Clint found him. It wasn’t like they knew that Pepper’s announcement to end weapons sales was actually his decision. Poor Pepper, the backlash she’d gotten from that was awful and mostly centred around the fact that she was a woman. He was curious to see if the backlash from him saying that would be the same. He didn’t think so but people weren’t much nicer to omegas, at least Pep had the fact that she was alpha on her side no matter how little that seemed to do for the first few weeks. Then he sent her some prototypes and arc reactor technology, everyone seemed to like her after that.
“Fine, show up as you and say you got kidnapped by aliens looking to probe you, it isn’t like you’d sound crazy for suggesting that now,” Nat rolls her eyes. She hadn’t taken the alien invasion very well.
“Or shave your goatee; no one will recognize you without it. You look like a baby,” Skye snickers. Tony looks at her in horror, he couldn’t just shave his goatee, he loved it, it was like… his thing.
“Oh my god, your face, we are shaving you down and sending you in,” Nat looks far too pleased with this.
“No, I will stay here with my facial hair and my tech and you can’t stop me!” He turns and hugs the nearest piece of tech, which unfortunately turns out to be a phone that Skye immediately pulls out of his grip. Nat drags him off literally kicking and screaming, taking way too much pleasure in his suffering.
*
Clint had managed to escape twice but Coulson’s team was good. It also helped that the fucker laid a claim bite on his ass, sorry, it was an accident, and now knew what he was going to do within seconds of Clint figuring it out himself. Accident, who the hell bites someone by accident? He actually half believed it, Coulson did look genuinely ashamed of himself, and Clint made sure to exploit that. Especially since whomever Coulson’s boss was stuck him on permanent guard duty after Clint’s second escape. “Why were you in a HYDRA base,” the guy, Ward he thought his name was, asked for like the tenth time.
“I was there for the tech, which Coulson will tell you is true, I’d like to point out this is the tenth time I’ve told you this,” he says through gritted teeth. He was getting annoyed of this shit and he had limited access to information. Thankfully the stupid bond that allowed Coulson to act as a human lie detector and action guesser worked both ways and Clint happened to catch wind of Fitzsimmons getting hired on at S.H.E.I.L.D. It was amusing because apparently the two had gotten into some heated debate about what piece on Tony’s tech was better and ended up choosing something they made themselves. He figured their argument sold well if they got hired.
Coulson sighs, “he’s telling the truth,” he says, sounding exhausted. Clint got the idea he was just as done with this interrogation was Clint was.
“Why did you want HYDRA’s tech,” Ward asks, also for the tenth damn time.
“I told you, it wasn’t theirs, I was taking it back,” he doesn’t bother to hide his annoyance.
Ward opens his stupid mouth to ask another useless question but Coulson waves him off, “you’re asking the wrong questions. If the tech wasn’t HYDRA’s, whose was it?” Clint grinned, finally someone who knows what they are doing.
“It belongs to the guy I work for, kind of, I don’t actually get a salary,” he says.
“Slavery?” Ward asks, looking shockingly concerned for someone who didn’t care.
Coulson frowns, “no, he’s happy wherever he is. If you don’t get paid why be there?” he asks. So the guy seemed to know when to divert from the subject at hand.
“Because I’m valued there, unlike here. Besides, when I’m there I don’t have to deal with this shit,” He flaps his arm around at his surroundings, he was laying in the middle of a bulletproof glass cage with air holes like a giant mouse or some shit. “And no one bites, accident or otherwise.” technically that wasn’t true, there was that one time Nat tried to teach Tony how to fight but he doesn’t count that.
“How is it possible that you’ve gleaned more information in two minutes that I have in two hours?” Ward asks, looking annoyed.
“All I’ve learned is that his boss, whoever they are, treats him better than we have,” Coulson looks at Ward like he’s an idiot. Score one for Coulson for realizing that so far his info was useless.
“I don’t think we’ve treated him all that badly considering he’s probably HYDRA,” Ward says, giving Clint suspicious looks.
Coulson shakes his head, “Ward our first reaction was to beat the hell out of him, bite him, and throw him in a cage. We sure as hell haven’t treated him well, sorry about that,” Coulson says to him, “and as for HYDRA… I don’t think so. When we got to that base all the security was already taken out, with arrows no less, and when we found Clint here he had archery equipment. Why take out his own guys? And besides, HYRDA isn’t exactly known for treating anyone well, but especially not omegas.” Coulson had a point, Clint thought, but Ward’s face said all it needed to about the situation. He didn’t believe Clint was capable of taking down a HYDRA base himself. Funny thing was that it was Ward who came in with a team, Clint hadn’t needed the backup. Capture notwithstanding he did what he was supposed to.
“You think he took out the guards?” Ward’s voice was practically drenched in disbelief. Irritation rose quickly before it was tamped down and under control. Clint was rather surprised to find that irritation wasn’t his own.
“He took out five HYDRA agents trying to escape from us, he took out three S.H.E.I.L.D agents after that, and let’s not forget he’s escaped twice, making it out of the facility both times. It is not wise to underestimate him based on archaic beliefs that being an omega somehow makes you useless,” Coulson’s voice rose higher at the end of that rant, almost yelling but not quite. His irritation rose too, but fell quickly after that. Apparently Coulson had poor control over his emotions in regards to this subject.
“Funny that you don’t ascribe to archaic beliefs about alphas and omegas yet you bit me,” Clint says, feeling a bit of pride when he felt shame rise in Coulson’s mind.
“Oh would you shut up about that?” Ward snaps.
Clint snorts, “That guy is a loose cannon,” he says to Coulson, “You seem to be awful worried about me being HYDRA, have you wondered about him?” Clint asks, raising an eyebrow. He had good intel that suggested that Ward was, indeed, HYDRA but it was Ward’s reaction that cemented his opinions.
Ward punches the glass, “that is such bullshit!” he yells. It was an overreaction by far, and the slight panicky undertone in his voice indicated that at some point he was under suspicion from the people around him, namely Coulson, or at least that’s what Clint guessed.
Clint grins and gets up, wandering closer to the glass, “I’m fucking right, your HYDRA! Nice, point for me, I’ve got this shit,” he laughs and dances around a little. Ward looks at Coulson, a little panicky, probably worried about his cover being blown.
Coulson sighs, “Sorry,” neither Clint nor Ward even noticed the gun in Coulson’s hand until it goes off, shooting blue liquid into Ward’s face. Ward’s eyes roll back and he falls backwards to the ground.
“Oh come on, you had that and you decided to bite my ass? What kind of bullshit it this,” Clint laments, throwing his hands up and wandering back over to his cot to throw himself on it. If he’s learned anything from Tony its dramatics, especially after him and Loki split. Sometimes he and Bruce told them they were talking shit about each other just to watch what happened. Nat told them they were no longer allowed to experiment on Loki and Tony after the disaster that happened the last time they did that.
“He’s been here for almost two years working on my team and he didn’t slip up once until six months ago, since then he’s only slipped up a handful of times yet you managed to determine he was HYDRA in hours. How?” To Coulson’s credit he looked genuinely impressed with Clint. Clint couldn’t get a good read on what he was actually feeling.
“Lucky guess,” he says.
Coulson shakes his head, “I don’t believe in luck” he says and turns to walk away, “and Clint? I am genuinely sorry I bit you, I have people working to try and reverse the effects.” He’s almost at the door when Clint decides to talk.
“Go to Fitzsimmons,” he says. They developed a way to break that bond years ago; it was a bit necessary in his line of work. They got bit as often as they got captured. Thank god they all had some serious willpower or they’d never have survived being subjected to the Alpha’s Command on a regular basis.
Coulson swears under his breath, “so the bond goes both ways, gunna have to report that.” The door closes behind him and Clint goes back to staring at the ceiling. A few minutes later a group of people come in to collect Ward off the floor, they sneer at Clint and he flips them off with a smile on his face. That seems to piss them off and that brings Clint joy.
*
Tony was pissed, “are you kidding me! You shave me down, kicking and screaming, you tell me it’s necessary, and now you’re telling me that I don’t, in fact, have to go play S.H.E.I.L.D agent to free Clint? Ohhhh, Romanov you’re going to pay for this,” he says, only half kidding. Her head was getting shaved though, maybe only half to make her look like more of an idiot.
Bruce looks up from his work station, “I don’t think it’s wise to threaten Natasha,” he says. Nat looks pleased with herself and Tony glares harder. He’d find a way around Bruce, and Nat… he’d drug her or something, he was certain he wouldn’t be able to complete his head shaving without dying otherwise. Bruce probably wouldn’t eat him for that, it was hair and that grew back, it was Nat he’d have to worry about there.
“I’ll get you,” he whispers and stalks off.
“Did you see his face,” he hears Nat all but yell at Bruce, “he looks like a fucking baby!” She bursts into laughter, Bruce laughing quietly as well. They were going down for this.
He’s on his way back to the podium so he can keep an eye on Fitzsimmons when he runs into Loki, just his fucking luck. Loki looks shocked, “what the hell happened to your face?” he asks, laughing, “You look awful without your goatee,” he throws his head back and starts laughing harder.
“Well the plus side is that I can grow my facial hair back and look just fucking dazzling, it isn’t as if you can grow a personality that doesn’t make everyone hate you,” Tony shrugs and walks off feeling validated when Loki’s laughter sputters to a stop.
“People only like you because you’re pretty and you have money,” Loki snarls at him.
“And people only liked you because I’m the leader of this group, at least people like me for things I actually have, not my significant other. Now what have you got Loki? An estranged brother who trusts a loaf of bread more than you, and a pissed off ex-lover who was the only reason people were willing to be within a hundred feet of you. The way I see it if the worst thing I’ve lost is my facial hair I’m doing pretty fucking good,” Tony spreads his arms wide and raises and eyebrow while walking backwards, “sorry buddy, but you lose, you lose hard.” He turns around and walks back to the podium.
He’s pressing buttons at his computer when Nat appears a few minutes later, “that was cruel, Tony.” She seriously has the gull to give him a judgmental glare.
“Oh please, Loki is just as cruel; you know that, everyone knows that. Maybe it’s time someone treats him the same way he treats everyone else.” He probably should feel guilty for being cruel to Loki, Nat wasn’t wrong, but he’d always been one to hold a grudge against people who wronged him. Especially if he trusted them first, his father, Obi, Loki, they all treated him badly for things he couldn’t help and he would never forgive any of them. It was unhealthily, he knew, but he trusted very few people and when they wronged him… well, to be honest he was usually angrier with himself than the other person. He was the one dumb enough to trust them after all but that didn’t mean they didn’t deserve to suffer.
“The only reason you can be as cruel as you can to him is because he trusted you enough to give you the information your now using as a weapon against him!” she yells, her Russian accent leaking back into her speech.
“Oh don’t act like he has the moral high ground here Natasha, you say that I’m using his trust against him but it isn’t like he hasn’t done the same. One time, Nat, one time in the two years we were together I decide to be as honest with him as I am with everyone else and tell him he loves his brother far more than he’ll ever admit. One time Natasha, and his response? He dumps my ass for telling him the damn truth, and not even a very harsh one at that, I could have told him he pushes everyone away as some sort absurd form of self-harm because he hates himself. No, I tell him he cares about someone and he loses his shit, dumps me, and then of all the things he could do he goes to the one person whose life I feel personally responsible for ruining and he sleeps with her just to rub my nose in it! If you think I’m going to let that go any time soon you are sorely mistaken, Wanda I get, hell I deserve way worse than that. But Loki? All I ever did to him was tell the truth.” He and Nat stare each other down for a few minutes before she looks away. Tony isn’t dumb enough to assume he’s won.
“He slept with Wanda? And here I thought she had standards,” she smiles slightly and he barks out a humourless laugh. “I get your anger Tony, I do, but you being pissed off at him for pushing people away the second he starts to care is extremely ironic when you do the same thing. Hell, the two of you even do it for the same reason, neither one of you think you deserve happiness so you fight against it with everything you have. You’re practically the same damn person. It’s funny because Loki is so aware of people’s psychology and he uses it to destroy them, and you’re so painfully blind to everyone’s psychology but your own, and Loki’s. When are you going to get it Tony, Loki has no idea how to make you suffer because that means he had to confront some pretty uncomfortable things about himself. And you? You aren’t punishing Loki, you’re punishing yourself and my god, you are so good at it, far better than I would have ever guessed,” she shakes her head at him and walks away.
“Well that was extremely uncomfortable,” he says lightly to himself. He starts going through the feed Fitzsimmons is sending back, making maps of the hallways and flagging any discussions that could be important.
“You can’t hide behind your humour forever,” a voice with a thick Slovakian accent says from behind him. He sighs and wilts a little, the last thing he needed was Wanda’s shit but he stood there without saying anything anyways. He killed her family, frankly putting up with a little verbal abuse was the least he could do.
“You confused me when we first met, you felt guilty for what you’d done, I didn’t expect that. It pissed me off, you weren’t supposed to feel anything, you’re a monster. But I was wrong, you’re a pompous ass but you’re no monster, just a deluded man who convinced himself what he was doing was right. Everything you do is an attempt to atone for the wrongs you’ve committed, just like Natasha though she’d never admit it. That pissed me off even more, I don’t like grey areas,” she steps onto the podium and leans against his desk.
“For months I loathed you because you confused me, then your dreams started to leak into mine. I grew to pity you more than I hated you, now I find you extremely annoying. My point, I suppose, is that my confusion around you hasn’t faded. Your worst fear is that the whole world will end and it’ll be all your fault. At first I thought that you must be so incredibly narcissistic to believe that you had that kind of power but the more of your fears I saw the clearer things became. You aren’t self-absorbed, not the way I thought you were at least; you simply hate yourself so much that you believe that you and you alone hold the power to fuck things up so badly that the world will never recover. It’s pathetic. Loki is the same way, the two of you so wrapped up in your own self-loathing that you think the entire world will feel its effects. Neither one of you will ever be that important. I don’t know what gave you the impression I would ever go anywhere near Loki, or what he said to you, but when he came to me it was to remove every memory he had of you from his head, not sex. I do indeed have standards,” she finishes her long rant and oddly she doesn’t go anywhere.
He isn’t sure what the hell to make of Wanda’s words, mostly because it sounded like she still hated his guts. He figured that was fair though and started going through Fitzsimmons’ feed to gather intel. He’s skimming the feed at best when Fitz starts laughing hard enough to lean against the wall. Out of curiosity he rewinds the feed to what he figures is the start of the incident. The two of them are walking down a hallway filled with what he assumed were field agents, annoying ones at that. He’d heard all the annoying “hey little omega” comments before so he fasts forwards a bit. Jemma looked flustered, probably unused to the attention, probably was even before she got here and was sure to have gotten that kind of attention all the time. Some obnoxious person asked where she was going and it seemed Jemma had had enough and whirled around, “I’m going to die!” she shouts and Fitz starts laughing.
Jemma looks horrified and drags Fitz away from the confused field agents, “what the hell Jemma,” he asks between giggles.
Jemma still looks alarmed, “I was going to tell them I was on my way to the lab, but I was thinking I was going to die of shame and it came out I’m going to die, and now I am actually going to die of shame!” Tony and Wanda look at each other and start laughing, which was probably the only positive interaction they’ve ever had.
“Well that’s a relief, I was genuinely worried,” they whirl to find a large blonde agent behind them. For his part he did look like he was genuinely concerned though Tony was suspicious, though to be fair that was probably because everyone who spoke to him usually had hidden agendas.
Fitzsimmons exchanged a look, “nope, just a little flustered and on the way to the lab, not my death. Unless I die in the lab but that’s only about a twelve percent chance and that’s only if we use the equipment wrong, which we won’t and-”Fitz dragged her off before Jemma could finish that rant.
“Thanks for your concern,” Fitz yells over his shoulder and they duck into another room.
“Good god Jemma, get your shit together,” he tells her. Jemma looks so comically offended Tony and Wanda start laughing again