100 Percent Fail Rate
“I thought you were getting something important,” Steve says, giving Coulson an irritated look when he returns with two bags full of Captain America stuff.
He was absolutely offended because excuse Steve, “this stuff is important,” he says and hops into the back seat. Bucky looks even more done with his shit than Steve and that’s saying something.
“You seriously took out an entire precinct of cops for some fucking comics, a shield, and a couple bobble heads?” Bucky asks, raising an eyebrow at him.
“First of all this shield is an exact replica,” he says, “and these comics are worth thousands and those savage cops, who are supposed to serve and protect, were not treating them correctly, it just wasn’t ethical to leave them behind. And they are not bobble heads, they are pop vinyls, I have explained this several times. Now someone give me a knife.”
It takes him a good twenty minutes, he doesn’t want to ruin the shield, but he manages to separate the two halves to reveal a good chunk of money he’d been squirreling away in there for some time. The comics also had money pressed in the pages and, surprisingly, it was all still there. These cops were absolutely shit at their jobs. “You know I find it weird that cops will do anything to justify shooting a black person but I, a known terrorist according to public record, and a white man manages to take out an entire precinct with only two shots fired. And one of them was me, what the hell is that?” he asks. They all knew damn well what it was, but it was dumb and it needed to be pointed out.
“Frankly I’m shocked they labeled us terrorists to begin with us being you know, white men,” Steve says, “aren’t we supposed be mentally ill lone wolves or some shit?”
“Nah,” Bucky says, “we’re now associated with a Nazi organization, plus all records the general public can find on us says that we’re immigrants so its way easier to claim we’re exceptions. Coulson’s like the all American dream though, don’t know how they’re going to spin that.”
“I am not the all American dream,” he protests, “and according to the news I have a history of mental illness, which isn’t even true,” he says. Well, he had problems, but everyone had those, and his obsessive cleaning habits certainly wouldn’t lead him to join fucking Nazis. That didn’t even make sense.
“And now we’re back to typical news tropes,” Steve says, “so Bucky and I are immigrants gone wrong and you’re absolved of all responsibility. That’s nice,” Steve mumbles.
“I’d like to remind everyone I have the money, and also I have this,” he says and holds up a USB drive, “every high profile case S.H.I.E.L.D has ever had.”
Bucky frowns, “did you pull that out of the bobble head’s ass?” he asks.
“It’s a pop vinyl,” he says through clenched teeth, these people were going to be the death of him he swore.
*
Thor wasn’t a moron despite what Loki may have thought, what a lot of people thought for some reason actually. It didn’t really matter because constantly being underestimated always seemed to work out to his benefit. He wasn’t particularly surprised at Loki’s shocked expression but he is surprised when Loki asks how he managed to find them. Usually Loki didn’t care much, content to either kick him out or let him stay until he got annoyed and then he’d kick him out, but it never really mattered to him how he got there so long as he left at some point.
“It wasn’t exactly difficult; I figured you had left the country to lie low while this HYDRA mess was sorted out. All I had to do was figure out where you went, and Russia was out for a number of different reasons, Tony wouldn’t survive in British weather considering how much he complains about rain, and you loath France. Eventually I figured that where ever you went had to have good food, enough sun that Tony wouldn’t mind, small cities, and at least one of you had to have a positive connection to the place you went. And now we’re in Italy,” he says, grinning at Loki, who did not look impressed.
“Why was good food even a requirement?” he asks, gesturing for him to follow.
“Clint wouldn’t go anywhere that didn’t have good pasta, and he’s a pizza lover, nothing is more stereotypical of Italy than their love of pasta and pizza,” Thor points out.
Loki sourly agrees and leads him through the streets, presumably to where ever he was currently hiding, “you seem to be considerably cooperative,” Thor says suspiciously. Not that he didn’t love his brother, but he recognized that Loki was not to be trusted at the best of times, he always had some plot or another turning in his head and it usually didn’t do well to find oneself on the receiving end of Loki’s plans.
“You’re of use to me,” he says in way of a real explanation and Thor figures he’d go with it at least for now. He was used to dealing with Loki’s plans and as much as Loki thought he was a diabolical genius it simply wasn’t true in any capacity. Mostly Loki was motivated and pissed off, which was as much a weakness as it was a benefit though Loki refused to admit this, yet another reason his plans had a tendency to fall through.
He had suspected a relatively nice house, one that looked inconspicuous enough on the outside but more extravagant on the inside and he hadn’t been wrong. Clearly the location, a city small enough that it was easy to monitor, but large enough that a group of people showing up or disappearing out of nowhere would go unnoticed, was chosen by Natasha. The house, he suspected, was a joint decision between Tony and Natasha because Natasha wasn’t in the business of getting caught and Tony wasn’t about to give up his life style. Plus living in a nice house seemed to be something of a luxury for anyone who wasn’t Tony or Loki, who had both grown up rich, and thus they seemed content to live in Tony’s world even if they thought it was just temporary.
He wasn’t sure if the entire group had underestimated him because he was Loki’s brother, because they were prioritizing, or maybe Natasha had deemed him safe, or some other reason. Perhaps he had been monitored and he hadn’t noticed, Wanda could manipulate minds, and JARVIS seemed to monitor everyone, including Tony, which he found interesting. He would have thought that Tony, the obvious leader of the group, would be exempt from the rules as most leaders seemed to be but that didn’t seem to be the case and it appeared to make the group more efficient. It was clear they all knew that they had strengths and weaknesses in different areas and they were content to let someone more talented take over. It was an incredibly interesting dynamic to watch even if he was an outsider looking in.
Even Loki, who didn’t seem to be a fan favorite, had a certain amount of respect within the group on principal, no one liked him but no one was outright cruel to him. There were snide comments traded between him and Tony sure, but it wasn’t as if the comments weren’t well-deserved on both ends and Natasha and Bruce both seemed content to call them on their crap. Loki leaves him the living room and runs off with barely a comment tossed his way, as usual, leaving him to his own defenses.
“So you found us. I wondered if you would, you’re much more observant than people seem to give you credit for,” Natasha says.
He turns and finds the red head leaning against the door way to some other room, “you think?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. He should have expected it of the spy but he spent most of his time with spies and none of them seemed to look past his muscle mass and optimism no matter how many times he proved himself capable of actual thoughts.
“Of course. You remind me of Clint, constantly underestimated because of how you look, how you present yourself. Both of you are far more dangerous than you let on, follow me,” she says and walks away, fully expecting him to follow.
He does indeed follow because he’s curious to see what the red head had to offer, if anything, and what else she had to say. She leads him to another room, one with files in it, and picks up a folder, “the hammer found in Mexico, the file says you found it and that you had some sort of theory but it’s pretty much denounced as a footnote. ‘Odison thinks Asguardian relic,’” she reads, “I’m curious as to what you thought,” she says.
He knew the case well, argued his point well too but he was dismissed. He thought that at least part of the reason he was denounced was because he was the only one who could lift the hammer out of those who had tried and his theory would have given him ‘special’ precedence over the other agents. He was certain they weren’t too fond of that idea because they didn’t care for the idea of him being ‘better’ than them. He wasn’t under the impression that being a good person was a zero sum, that because the hammer had deemed him worthy didn’t mean everyone else was inherently bad, just that the hammer found something about him in particular worthy. Those were two totally different things.
“I think, and this is just a theory, that the hammer is Asguardian but based in Norse mythology. Ever heard of Thor? The actual Thor, god of thunder, not me. I think Norse mythology is some bastardization of actual Asguardian people but to humans that kind of power is unheard of, unprecedented and so they thought the Asguardians were gods. Anyways the hammer, Mjolnir, belongs to actual Thor, I think, but I have no idea what it’s doing here, wait, is it actually here? In the building? If so how did you manage to get it here?” he asks, frowning. Even if they did make it through S.H.I.E.L.D, HYDRA, security only the worthy could lift the hammer, “which one of you was worthy?” he asks.
Natasha smiles, “we outsourced but I’m worthy, now what do you know about the obelisk?” she asks.
“Outsourced?” he asks.
Natasha smiles wider, “and wouldn’t you like to know exactly what I meant by that. The obelisk?” she asks sweetly.
*
“Look Tony, it’s a simple reconnaissance mission, all you have to do is walk in, get the file, and walk out. Simples,” Natasha says but when she says things in a way that was drastically underwhelming, well, the last time that happened there were a lot of exploding things.
“If it’s so simple why don’t you do it, you’re the trained spy,” he points out, suspicious of what she had in mind.
Natasha gives him looks but indulges him in an explanation, “if you get busted you can be useful, you have public sway, people like you. That makes them a lot more likely to try and capitalize on that in a way the rest of us don’t get the luxury of because we don’t technically exist,” she says, at least being honest even if it was bluntly so.
“So you chose me because people will care if I turn up dead somewhere,” he says, not bothering to sugar coat it.
“No, not exactly. If you get kidnapped we’ll all know right away if your body resurfaces and if not, well, we can infer that HYDRA is keeping you somewhere and we can get you out. It’ll be easier to predict whether you’re alive or not, so, simple reconnaissance mission, you ready?” she asks.
Tony sighs, “you sure know how to inspire confidence in a guy,” he mumbles. Simple mission his ass.
“All you have to do is walk down a hallway, get the file, and walk back out,” she reiterates, “a dog could do it, Clint’s chicken nuggets could do it. You’ll do fine, now, earpiece,” she says and hands him the device/
“What exactly am I getting?” he asks because he’d rather know what he was risking his life for, thanks.
“I found some information on the Red Room and the experiments they did there; I also have reason to believe there is information on Wanda and her brother too. That could be useful,” she says. Read: she and Wanda wanted to know what the hell HYDRA did to them and really, he couldn’t blame them really, He’d want to know too, and Nat wouldn’t send him in if she wasn’t confident he’d get out relatively unscathed. He trusted that he wasn’t going to die because Nat wanted some information about herself.
“Guess at least HYDRA seems to know that computers are a bad way of keeping information secrets secret. So filing cabinets it is, you do know how to find files right, please tell me Pepper didn’t do all of that for you,” she teases.
He snorts, “oh Pep did all the filing but that was for her sanity because I just stuff things where they fit and Pep is a stickler for alphabetical order. But I know my way around a filing cabinet; all my designs go in one after all. Computers are hackable, paper? Not so much.” His designs were far too precious, and usually dangerous, to risk someone getting their hands on them whether or not he thought his system was uncrackable.
Natasha grips his shoulder, “you’ll be fine, Tony. Clint will be a few blocks away taking out security so you won’t be alone.” If it wasn’t for his intimate knowledge of Clint’s impressive abilities he wouldn’t have been comforted by that at all, but he once watched the guy defuse a bomb by shooting an arrow into a window that was only open an inch from seven blocks away to cut the proper wire. He was in good hands, freakishly good and surprisingly human hands.
“Guess I better hurry up and not die then,” he says and takes a deep breath. He really really hoped nothing went horribly wrong.
*
HYDRA had some information they wanted, well, a lot of information they wanted and if there was anything they were all good at it was getting information. The only problem was that HYDRA was stuck in the fucking stone ages and kept all the really important records on paper. It was smart but also a pain in his ass because now he had to break into the damn facility instead of just hacking a computer or something. On the plus side he had found May, Bobbi, and Hunter and even better was that they were all willing to help. “Look Coulson,” May says, interrupting his silence via earpiece, “just get in, get the files, and get out,” she tells him. They were, hopefully, going to get all the files on the people in the sandbox and hopefully prevent a HYDRA break in, or at least cut one off if they could.
“I know how this works May, we’ve done this a million times,” he reminds her. So it was a slight exaggeration, but they had certainly been on hundreds of missions just like this before, maybe more, they all knew the drill.
The room he ends up in is large and filled wall-to-wall with filing cabinets. He sighs and gets to work, trying to find the right cabinet so he could get the hell out. Across the room the other entrance to the large filing dump opens and he draws his gun quickly, earning a squeak from the person who just walked through. Tony jumps and puts his hands up for about two seconds before he realizes who it was and snorts, “oh, you,” he says and completely dismisses him in favor of going to dig through some other filing cabinet.
“For all you know I could be HYDRA,” he says, shocked that Stark would dismiss him so fast. That was… that was just careless. And stupid. And a lot of other things he hoped Clint did not do on a regular basis.
“You took out an entire precinct of cops to get some of your Captain America shit back, if you wanted to hurt any of us you had the skills and the motivation but you didn’t bother acting on it, ergo you have no intention of hurting me,” Tony says and makes a pleased noise, pulling a file from the cabinet he was digging through.
The logic was good, but it was still reckless to completely ignore a potential threat in his opinion. But this was Tony Stark, reckless and stupid were kind of par for the course. “How’s Clint?” he asks, “is he around here somewhere? He feels closer,” he mumbles, mostly to himself rather than Tony.
This catches Tony’s attention because his head snaps up and he whirls around, “what the hell is that supposed to mean, Clint feels closer?” he asks, eyeing him with a whole new level of suspicion that wasn’t there ten seconds ago.
“I mean that… well actually I’m kind of confused, you said you had a way to dissolve the bond but you didn’t bother before you all took off? Seems a bit careless to me, none of you are what I really expected,” he says because there was no way they could operate under the radar if they were that sloppy.
“We did dissolve the fucking bond, we aren’t that stupid… oh shut up Nat, I’m not that dumb. How long has the bond been back?” he asks, eyeing him wearily.
He frowns, “back? The bond never left, was it supposed to?” Tony lets out a string of swear words and May yells at him to hurry up. “Shit, right,” he says into the ear piece he was wearing, “get ready for a large file transfer,” he tells them.
“Oh, you found a computer?” Bobbi asks excitedly.
“Ehhh,” he says and turns to Tony, “are you done, because I’m about to make a racket and you’re going to want to run,” he tells him.
Tony swears and starts rummaging through another filing cabinet, pulling a few files before noticing something else and grabbing some stuff out of that too, frowning at a folder that he recognized as one of the 084 folders. “I’d suggest you run, Stark,” he says and shifts the filing cabinet in front of him until it’s in front of a window.
“Are you sending that file or what?” Bobbi asks.
“Incoming,” he says and kicks the filing cabinet, sending it through the window to the ground. Behind him Tony swears and takes off through the door he had come in, making plenty of noise himself.
“This is not what I thought you had in mind when you said ‘large file transfer,’” Bobbi says, sighing because this was fairly par for the course with him. She missed it even if she’d never admit it, at least out loud. He goes out the window after the cabinet, though in a much less dramatic way as Bobbi and Hunter run out to collect the fallen file holder.
*
So Nat may have been right about the mission being simple, plus he found some weird file on Skye of all people so there was that. She had been hacking into various government systems trying to find out what happened to her parents, who supposedly worked for the government, and had always come up empty so she would probably be rather happy about this development. He was almost to the door when HYDRA agents decide that particular hallway was the one they were going to flood, probably going after Coulson because he thought it was a good idea to kick a filing cabinet out a window. And people said he was dramatic.
He quickly turns down a random hallway and hopes to hell Nat knew of some other exit, “where the hell are you going?” Nat snaps into his ear. Which, rude.
“The hell away from the HYDRA agents,” he hisses, “where the hell am I going?” He turns down another random hallway to miss a few more straggling agents and this mission suddenly got a whole lot less simple. Fucking Coulson. “And while you’re at it ask Clint why the fuck he didn’t mention the bond was still there.”
Natasha lets out a long sigh and tells him to turn left, “I did ask. Turns out he thought that it was a craving for tacos,” she says. Tony squints at the nearest object, which happened to be an abandoned vacuum, and shakes his head. Only Clint could find it possible mistake a connection to another person’s thoughts and feelings for a craving for tacos. Clint Barton everyone. Nat gives him instructions to take the next right when something in that particular hallway blows up. He spins around and starts going in the opposite direction because nope, he was not going to die today.
“Where the fuck are you going?” Natasha snaps again.
“The hell away from whatever just blew up,” he says and casts a somewhat panicky look behind him, “I told you I should have just flown in with the suit, if I had we wouldn’t be having this problem,” he hisses at her. Point one for him, zero for Nat.
“The goal was to be inconspicuous, and need I remind you that you would have been fine if it wasn’t for Coulson,” she says, “go left,” she tells him. He gets to the hallway and finds it flooded with HYDRA agents and keeps going, earning a swear from Natasha.
“It isn’t my fault they’re suddenly everywhere, are there some vents I could go through or something?” he asks.
Natasha makes an irritated noise and then sighs, “fine, that might be a better option at this point anyways, third hallway to the left,” she tells him. He follows her instructions and doesn’t run into to many more HYDRA agents, thankfully, and he manages to make it into a vent.
Unfortunately that lasts like five seconds before something else blows up and nearly rattles him out, which would have been fine if he had been able to crawl away undetected but no, he crawls straight into one Bucky, who looks rather surprised to see him there.
“Ugh,” they say in sync before Bucky decides to take over, “follow me,” he tells Tony and starts crawling away.
Tony snorts and starts crawling in the other direction, the way Nat had told him to go, but this plan is quickly blown up, literally, and ne narrowly avoids having his newly grown face hair singed off his face. At this rate he was going to end up with more hearing damage than Clint, though in Clint’s defense he was born hard of hearing. He quickly crawls backwards, ignoring Nat squawking in his ear, or at least that’s what it sounded like but maybe his hears were still ringing from being so close to the explosion. He manages to turn himself around to go with the only vent option he had left and finds Bucky waiting for him for some reason so he sighs and follows the irritated alpha through the vents.
“Where the hell are you going now?” Nat snaps and there we go, his hearing was on its way back, great.
“I’m following Bucky,” he tells her.
“Why the fuck would you do that?” she asks, irritated with his bad life choices. That made two of them.
“Well considering I almost got blown up again two minutes ago it was better than the alternative,” he says and follows Bucky around a corner.
“You have no idea where he’s leading you,” she says.
“I didn’t know where you were leading me either,” Tony points out, stupidly not thinking that statement through.
“I have your best interest in mind, thanks,” she snaps, “who the hell knows what he has in mind.”
So she was kind of right, but he hadn’t run into any explosions or HYDRA agents following Bucky. He knew that was nothing more than coincidence but still, he wasn’t fond of the idea of dying and Bucky was doing a good job of promoting his life so far. Of course as soon as he thought that something explodes behind them, fucking with the vents and sending him and Bucky sliding out and onto the floor in a heap. “For fucks sakes,” he mumbles and shoves Bucky off of him.
“There, this way!” someone down the hallway yells and Tony can hear footsteps coming closer. Well shit.
He picks himself up and runs off, Bucky following behind him and Nat suspiciously silent in his ear. There seemed to be a juncture of hallways up ahead which would be great if he knew where the fuck he was going, “got any bright ideas?” he yells behind him at Bucky.
“Go left up ahead,” Bucky says. Nat still remains silent even though she undoubtedly heard that, probably punishing him for being a moron and doubting her over Bucky. He didn’t really blame her.
They get to the end of the hallway just as the dust from the explosion starts to settle and Tony, mercifully, spies a janitor’s closet. He quickly opens the door as Bucky skids to a halt, looking at him like he’s stupid, “you can’t possibly be that short of cleaning supplies,” he says, deadpan.
Tony rolls his eyes and starts mixing products quickly in the nearest container before sending it down the hallway the HYDRA agents were currently making quick work of. “I’m not short of cleaning supplies, I’m short on time, I just made a bunch of chlorine gas,” he snaps and starts running, Bucky behind him.
“Go left, now Tony!” Nat yells at him and he skids into the hallway, barely managing to not hit a wall before Nat’s telling him to take the next right. He thinks the purpose was to lose Bucky as much as it was to get him out and this is why she should have just gone herself, he didn’t do well with the whole espionage thing. He was more the ‘show up and fuck HYDRA up’ type, not ‘be all sneaky and get out without anyone ever knowing you were there’ type. Plus he had no suit, he didn’t know how to fight, he was essentially powerless and Bucky would have made a great ‘sacrifice him to HYDRA and run’ target but no, now he was on his own.
“What the hell was that, Tony?” Natasha yells at him.
“That was me being really bad at this just like I told you I would be!” he yells back, following Nat’s instruction to go down the next hallway. “Besides, it wasn’t like I had an array of options Nat, the way you told me to go was a wee bit fried and Bucky was going down the only other vent there, how’s that my fault?” he points out.
“That isn’t the point,” she snaps, “you were more willing to trust some random alpha than me, why?” she asks, sounding hurt.
“No offense Nat, but at that point your instructions had a one hundred percent fail rate, you’re the one who keeps telling me I need to use the resources around me rather than relying on my suit and now you’re complaining about it,” he says.
“That isn’t relying on the resources around you, that’s just stupidity!” she snaps, “use your head, Stark, you’re a genius, act like one!”
“Well it was either that or fall out of the hole blown in the vent Nat, given my limited options I think I did pretty well,” he snaps, growing irritated with this. They all knew he wasn’t good at this and he had no idea why everyone kept trying to make him good at it. Clint should have gone, he would have done fine and he could have had a make out session with Coulson.
Natasha tells him there is a door up ahead and he runs towards it, nearly colliding with some random HYDRA agent with a gun. “Oh fuck you,” he snarls, grabbing the gun and pointing away from him, moving to the side and twisting the fire arm and the owner’s wrist, causing him to loosen the grip on the gun and drop it. He promptly punches the guy in the face and runs off.
“Yes, exactly, this is what you should have been doing the whole time, that was fantastic!” Natasha tells him, “I knew you had it in you!”
“The only reason I managed that is because I’m so fucking pissed off and frustrated I had no room to panic over maybe getting shot, thanks, I do not have any sort of spy potential,” he snaps at her, managing to get to the door and pull it open. “Thank fucking god,” he mumbles, taking a deep breath before preparing to run off to find Clint.
Of course that’s when some asshole manages to hit him over the head with something.