Part 2 - Chp 1
Part 2
“Cap, coming in on your left,” Sam says over the comms, and there’s a touch of smug to his voice that Tony tucks away to look at later. Probably some dumb inside joke from the amusement in Steve’s reply.
They don’t need him, though; Tony keeps his attention on dismantling bomb two of three. Somewhere, Natasha and Bucky are dealing with the other two. He hears, distantly, a boom of thunder and the clatter of metal hitting the ground--Thor, most likely taking down another slew of the Doombots.
Tony hates Doombots only slightly more than he hates the bomb in front of him. Richards seriously needs to get his shit together and put Doom down for good--Tony’s tired of cleaning up their messes.
“Got mine,” Tony says over comms after a moment of nothing exploding in his face. A few seconds later, Bucky and Natasha are both doing the same.
Steve rattles off where he needs the three of them--mostly separate directions--and after that it’s all cleanup.
***
The initial group that exposed the Hydra issue managed to stick together somehow, though Tony is never quite sure how. The Avengers--name courtesy Janet or the Wasp, depending on which press person is asking--handle the issues that arise from a team of superheroes suddenly appearing on the world stage. Tony throws money at the group, gives them a tower and base, and pitches in from time to time when he’s needed.
In reality, the Avengers is a side project for him. A time consuming one with people he generally views as friends, but a side project nevertheless. When the group got started, he mostly viewed it as a way to test out new suits and tech on the field.
Tony, after all, needs the absolute best if he’s going to chase after Loki.
***
“Jane, how’s it going?” Tony asks, removing his helmet after he touches down in New Mexico.
“Tony!” Jane looks harried and excited all in one, pushing her hair back from her face with one hand. “Did you get my message?”
“There was a fight, sum it up for me.”
Jane Foster was, when Tony went looking, the best qualified of the people looking into advanced interstellar travel. She still is, really, and while some of her theories and hypotheses sound a bit out there to Tony, well, quantum mechanics are utterly insane to the point of unbelievability anyway.
“I picked up that energy signature that you gave me.” Jane shoves some papers aside, pulling out a star chart and pointing at a set of coordinates. “Here, around about 1.5 light years away.” Her eyes are bright. “I think it’s getting closer, but I need more readings before I can be sure.”
“That…” Tony frowns. “That doesn’t sound good.”
Jane blinks.
“Why not? I thought you said—”
“If it was Loki, he’d just show up.” Tony rubs his chin, staring at the coordinates, turning it over. “Unless he’s hanging out on a comet or something, or he’s with a group.”
“You think he sold it off to someone, and that’s who’s getting closer?”
Tony shrugs.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily Loki.” It doesn’t feel right, and maybe it’s unscientific, but he’s had enough things twinge his intuition before blowing up in his face that he’ll buy it. “But it is the Tesseract.”
They both stare at the star chart for a moment.
“Ring up Thor,” Jane says. “We’ll need another blood sample. I want to try the other search over the block of space that the Tesseract pinged.”
***
Tony debates mentioning Jane finding the Tesseract’s location the entire way back to the Tower. It’s very possibly nothing, but he can’t help but feel if Loki’s let the Tesseract go, either it was taken from him by force or he gave it away. Considering the uses he’s seen humans put the damn thing to, he’s not exactly hopeful whoever has it now would be coming in peace.
“Cap, got a minute?”
Better to alert someone who knows what he does outside the group than not anyone, just in case something happens or he’s not around later.
“Sure,” Steve says, excusing himself from where the rest of the team are exhausted and watching a movie to destress from earlier. “What is it?”
Tony leads him to the kitchen--mostly private, easy for him to see anyone approaching, and not likely to raise eyebrows like if they did go to somewhere private.
“Jane found the Tesseract’s energy signal.”
“Really? That’s great!”
Steve, of course, was there at the start; he knows about Loki, that Tony’s been looking for him, has been--perhaps--the most sympathetic to Tony’s search of all of them if Thor’s not allowed in the running. He would be, after the loss and then sudden reuniting with one of his soulmates, and the other rapidly fading from dementia and old age. As little as they can usually relate on, Steve gets why Tony’s refused to just Loki go in a way none of the others--particularly Barton--grasp.
“It might not be all sunshine,” Tony says, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms. “Jane thinks it’s getting closer, though she’ll let me know on that, and we didn’t pick Loki up anywhere near it. She’s going to do some more checking, of course….”
“Of course,” Steve says, quickly catching on and frowning. His eyes search the air as they search over possibilities.
“You think whoever has it might be hostile.”
“You were around when it was first uncovered again. What do you think?”
Steve nods.
“I don’t want to raise any alarms yet--it’s a solid light year and half out still. I do, however, want someone with pull to know in case it does become an issue.” Tony sighs, tapping a finger against his arc reactor for a moment before noticing and stopping. “I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I. Keep me posted.” A pause, then Steve adds, “Thanks, Tony.”
It’s not what he was going to say, Tony can tell, but he doesn’t try to get what Steve wanted to say out of him. Steve likely changed it because he knew Tony wouldn’t want whatever overly sympathetic thing he was going to say--which just goes to show even an old dog learns new tricks.
“No problem,” Tony says, and heads off to his workshop to see if he can parse through the readings Jane copied over for him to look over.