You're telling me...
Her directions were spot on, four blocks south not one more or less and Tony was standing in the middle of a park. It wasn’t a very big park, it had a few trees, a smallish pond, grass that didn’t get enough water to be the kind of green it was supposed to be and a small playground which was empty at the moment. He sat down on the most northern bench he could find, as instructed, and hoped that him sitting town would put her at ease enough to have her sit and listen for at least a few minutes.
“I’ll admit to being mildly surprised, I didn’t think you’d actually come alone.”
“You made the options very clear.” He didn’t look back, despite wanting to do nothing more. She came around the bench and sat down gingerly, it was the way you sat when you weren’t quite certain you wanted to sit or wanted to be that close to someone.
“Your earpiece.” He took it out without further prompting, it was disconnected anyway.
“Any other listening devices I should be worried about?” She looked into his eyes as she asked, he knew, don’t ask him why, that she could tell if he lied.
“Not unless one of the team learned to hack my phone in the past twenty minutes.” There was a moment of quiet before she nodded, looking into the park instead of at him.
“I don’t think I have to tell you but I will, just in case, I placed wards around this place, if any of your friends from earlier come close..”
“They’re dead?”
“They’re not the ones within my reach Mr. Stark. You should be more worried about your own life.” It was like a punch to his chest, he’d always said he wouldn’t be like his own father, wouldn’t be distant enough for any child of his to call him anything other than Dad and here he was. Sitting with his daughter who was a complete stranger and calling him, not even bij his first name, but Mr. Stark.
“I’ll make the wild assumption that you are the friend Bucky was talking about? What do you want with me?” Over a month he’d been trying to get to this point, trying to find her so that he could tell her the truth and hopefully form a bond with her. God knew it would be difficult in normal circumstances, if his daughter had been any other twenty year old who went to college and work and had nothing much to worry about, no, his daughter had to be a world saving witch war veteran with a lifetime of paranoia and trust issues under her belt.
“I… nothing, I want nothing from you. I just.. I got a letter.” She gave a blank look, what could she do with that information?
“It was from Lily.. Potter.” He added the last name because there were possibly a couple thousand other ‘Lily’s’ in the world and it didn’t have to mean her mother. This was possibly the first time since he was a teenager that he truly felt stupid. He should have prepared for this moment, should know what to say and do and how to act. God he wasn’t ready for this, he was probably already screwing up.
“Then someone played a sick prank on you, Lily died twenty years ago.” Her words were harsh, her expression neutral cold and her eyes like ice.
“I know… I don’t know why the letter was delayed like it was but… it was hers. It was about you.”
“I’ve yet to hear anything that sounds believable Mr. Stark, I suggest you talk quicker and give more information because you are running out of time.”
“I knew your mother, when we were both twenty or so, we were together for a while when she was in the states. She left back to England, I didn’t know about the war or I would have kept here in the US or helped her somehow. I would have, if i’d known I would have dropped whatever and I’d have gone I swear…” He was rambling, nerves intensified due to her cold persona and the apparent ticking clock he didn’t know he had at first.
“This is, when she went back to England she was already pregnant, James still married her of course. He loved her and she obviously loved him as well but she was already pregnant by that time so she wrote me this letter after you were born to tell me that I had a daughter only something happened with it and I only got it just over a month ago and then I learned about the gas explosion that killed Lily and James and a little later I heard about magic and witches and wizarding world and what happened and we tried to find you. I did everything I could to find you but you’ve been moving over the globe like space isn’t even a factor which is probably magic as well but I don’t know enough about that to actually grasp the principle of it. Frankly seeing the fire and the teleportation thing in the alley earlier was the first time I saw any acts of magic happening and it’s the depth of my knowledge at this point. Fury said something about wizarding royalty when we were talking about Barnes attacking you and…"
“Stop!” It was a command, from someone who was very used to giving those and it finally put a stopper into the long and nervous ramble he’d been spiraling in. His eyes tentatively moved over her face, both taking in the image of his daughter, committing every little freckle or mark on her skin and fleck of color in her eye to memory, but also trying to gauge her reaction to the shitload of information he’d just accidentally dumped on her. She was staring, just wide eyes, no words, god honest staring. There wasn’t a movement in her body, her spine was riget, her mind probably going ten miles a minute trying to process, he couldn’t exactly blame her.
“You’re telling me..” She started, disbelief clear in her voice even as she turned to him more. That had been the crucial fault. Before anything else, a dart suddenly seemed to pop into existence in her neck, her hand shot over to it but that was the last thing she managed before those eyes started to droop and she started to fall. Like ants, people came from everywhere, side streets, buildings, behind trees or bushes even from the castle thing on the playground. Tony summoned his suit but he was knocked out long before it got to the park, long before they took his daughter and left him behind.
“You have a concussion Tony, you need to take it easy.”
“They have my daughter! I’ll take it easy once I have her back!” Even as he said this he was struggling out of Steve’s hold who was attempting to keep him seated without much success. Let it never be said that a worried father was any less dangerous or strong than a worried super soldier.
“We haven’t been able to track her yet, they went underground somewhere in the city.”
“Then map out the damn sours for all I care just find Her!”
“We’re doing our best Tony. Yelling isn’t going to help. Jarvis is scanning in the city, we’re going through the limited security feeds and the others are all out on the streets right now to look manually. We will find her, but it won’t do her any good if you’ve collapsed by the time we do.” He had to, regretfully, agree with that.
“What about magic?”
“What about magic?”
“Can’t Loki find her magic?” The god perked up from here. He's been sitting behind one of the monitors watching security footage. He adopted a thoughtful expression.
“I might… If I can pick up traces of her magic back in the alley way or even around the park.. I might be able to trace her magical signature to the sourse.”
“Then go do it!!” Stark all but screamed at the god who disappeared in a crazy flurry of movement and color accompanied by the sound of fingers snapping together.
“Tasha… come see this.” Clint spoke softly so that he wasn’t overheard by Tony who was on the other side shifting through the limited amount of security footage they had access to. He’d finally found footage of the park itself, and to his utter surprise, Tony wasn’t knocked out, wasn’t hit over the head, he was shot, or at least they’d tried to. The tape was glitchy right at the moment when the gun went off but there was virtually no way it could have missed, it was like two feet away from Tony’s head and had a laser pointer on top of that. Hariana must have done something, she looked passed out on the tape but.. she must not have been as far gone as she appeared.
“Put it on a drive and erase it.” She said softly, having watched it repeat for a few times as they tried to figure out what exactly must have happened.
“Are we telling him?”
“Later. Not now. He has enough to stress at the moment.” And wasn’t that the truth. Loki, in the meantime, had ended up in the alley way from earlier, he figures her show of magic which was hastily done was more likely to have left behind a trace than any protection spells she had the time to place around the park. However as he stood and let his magic search out any traces left of her.. he felt nothing he could use to trace her. Whatever magic residu she’d left behind was scrambled and scrubbed out to un anusable mess. She’d covered her tracks better than he’d expected of a woman so young, he hated that he had to respect her for it. Especially since he knew she hadn’t returned to the alley afterwards and so must have done it when they were all there, he hadn’t noticed even though he’d been looking right at her. So she was a capable witch… he just hoped she wasn’t quite smart enough to cover her tracks entirely. He circled the park, trying to find protection, charms and wards she might have put up just in case, Stark spoke of magic that would have warned her if they had approached so they would be at a considerable distance to the park itself. Yet there was nothing, his respect grew despite his reluctance. Last ditch effort then, perhaps her magic had flared as a last ditch effort to escape, it was a small chance, barely even really a chance actually, but it was there. The magic that satiated around the park bench shocked him, it was strong but unfocused, probably due to whatever drug she’d been shot with. It was clearly protective, a shield or ward or something of the like, but what had she been protecting? It was more logical for her magic to attempt to bring her away, teleport her elsewhere or make her invisible even… this was strange. He’d have to ask her or.. perhaps just ask the spy’s for the security footage if they had any. In any case, despite the oddity of the feel of the magic, it was enough to trace back to the source. He had a way to find her.
“500 feet.” Tony repeated, his eyes darting to the screen that held Jarvis’ finished city map. There were some underground structures.
“Yes, I have a general direction now, we sweep the streets and once I get within 500 feet I will be able to lead you straight to her no matter if that’s underground or above it.”
“We can fly low over the houses, might save us time.”
“Likely places first, which way Loki?”
“West.” Tony waited with barely suppressed nerves and bated breath, they seemed to only be flying in circles, which, he knew was kind of the point but it still frustrated him to no end. Every time Loki managed to shave a few feet of the circle but still he wasn’t able to tell them an exact location. The god was concentrated, the furrow in his brow the way his jaw was set told them as much.. it took far too much time..
“Stop.” Natasha didn’t hesitate to follow the command, coming to hover dead still above a building not a second after Loki had spoken.
“She’s underground. 2… no, 150 feet, a little to the north of here. Something is wrong.. the magic feels weak, it’s probably why she’s been so hard to locate.”
“We can set down west of here, circle around.”
“That building over there is the entrance.” Loki pointed at one of the few multiple story buildings around.
“You’re sure? No other way’s out?” The god’s eyes flickered back and forth for a moment, the screens flickered off and on.
“I’m sure.”
“Alright, Clint, Loki and Sam go through the windows on the upper floor, clear it out and meet us on ground level. Bruce, you stay on the ship, call in if anything else comes our way. Bucky, Tony and Natasha go through the back, Rhody, Thor, we take the front.” Steve called the shots. And like the well oiled machine they had become over the years, they didn’t question and set to work.
“Everybody in position?” Steve asked, perhaps ten minutes after landing as he got to his designated spot with Thor and Rhody.
“We’re on the roof.”
“We’re ready at the back door.”
“Then let’s go and get her.” Steve nodded to Rhody and Thor, the god had by now managed to get some resemblance of strategy in his head and knew this was the signal to kick in the door. Steve’s shield was in the way of the first bullets, Rhody being protected by it while he shot over the rim to the small army that appeared to be hiding in the building. It wasn’t seconds after that the back door was blown off its hinges, Tony’s suit taking the bullet’s there. They couldn’t hear the crack of the windows or the landing of their people upstairs but they could hear the gunfire and the screams that seemed to echo those that were made by the people here.
“First level clear, we’re moving down, join up when the upper levels are secure.” They were already headed for the staircases when Bruce sounded over the coms.
“Wait, you have say thirty men coming in from the west, heavily armed.”
“Loki, if you get to Hariana can you do that teleporting thing with her?”
“If I know where I’m going.” The god replied, gunfire from above was also slowing to a stop.
“Alright, you go to the lower levels with Natasha, Bucky and Tony, we stay here to take care of those guys. Once you have her to bring her to the ship, no detours, no further danger to her, we don’t know what kind of state we’ll find her in.” By then they’d gathered near the staircases and Tony and Steve shared a look, one filled with gratefulness on the billionaires side. Tony knew he wasn’t the best choice to be sent down, he knew he was too emotionally involved, he wasn’t the best close combat fighter and his suit’s blast were destruction based which meant that he could very well level the place if something went wrong. Yet he would have gone despite the assigned role, he would have gone because that was his daughter down there and he needed to go and find her. He was just glad Steve trusted him enough and knew him well enough to send him there himself. Six sets of stairs, seventeen men with guns and a door that actually required all of five minutes of Tony’s full attention before it allowed them entrance so that more people could shoot at them. It was some kind of lab but it also functioned as a work space and there were only two doors which meant that the second door was the way to his daughter. Bullets were flying, Loki was happily using magic to knock whole groups of people against walls or sent desks flying against them but the god’s attention was pulled from the fight when he found himself beside a cooling unit. It had blood, six vials of it.
“They took her blood.”
“That important?” Natasha asked even as she finished electrocuting the last man with her widowbites.
“Blood forcibly taken from the world's most powerful witch? It can be used for all numbers of things and none of them are good. We need to make sure that none of her blood remains here, not a drop.”
“We’ll scrub the entire place if we have to, just get her out first.” He shot her a look, feeling like she wasn’t taking him seriously but still, she needed out. He took the vials first though, they burned into nothingness in his palm before he even made it to the other room. This one was bare aside from the hospital-like bed Hariana lay on, she was completely gone. Probably had something to do with the morphine drip at her side but what was much more worrying to him was the machine to her left which was taking blood, and the machine behind her which appeared to be putting something else in her veins instead.
“Take a vial of that with you, we’ll need to know what it is.” Natasha was already pulling out the various IV’s and pulling away the sensors, Hariana didn’t once shift, they noted even in the relative darkness of the room that her skin was very pale, bags under her eyes that before had been no cause for worry yet were pronounced now. Once she was free of everything Loki picked her up, being as carefully as he possibly could with her.
“Burn the blood, all of it. She can be seriously harmed if you don’t.”
“Get her out of here.” He did, appearing on the ship moments later and laying her down for Bruce to look her over.