Should We Help?
Nearly six months later Ren was practically living in the mostly finished tower. Tony was like a dog with a bone and was totally obsessed with understanding her powers. Normally she would’ve been bothered by the focus on her abilities, but Stark managed to be completely uninvasive. If he ever got too intense his ex-assistant now CEO always managed to show up at the right time. It wasn’t like Fury and his pestering though. He seemed to have almost no interest in using her as a weapon, the guy was just fascinated by what she could do.
Bruce was around at first too, but left to continue his mysterious ‘work’. She knew he hadn’t been working in India since the attack, but he was weirdly cagey about his current project.
She and Tony were taking a lunch break in the common room. It was a little odd that the place had a common room since Tony and Pepper were the only ones who lived there. Her too - technically, with how often she slept in one of the extra apartments. The news was playing in the background as the pair talked. “How do you manage to eat that much?”
Tony was eyeing the near-empty box of pizza that she was currently polishing off, and that was after eating half of his.
Ren shrugged, “Fast metabolism. Since the accident, it’s like I’m always hungry. Bruce said it has something to do with the enhanced healing and all the energy it takes to use my powers. Guess I just burn through it,”
He gave her a disappointed look for the bad pun. As much as Tony loved to joke around, she had discovered that he absolutely hated puns. Naturally, she made them as much as possible now.
“So you find out you have all these superpowers and you, what? Decide to save them for competitive hotdog eating competitions?”
She rolled her eyes, “No. I tried to ignore them and live a normal life. Not all of us live for the spotlight, Tony,”
Stark clutched his chest in mock offense, “Well that was just uncalled for, Azula. And I will have you know that the spotlight lives for Me, ”
A snort came out before she could help it. His infamous ego hadn’t been exaggerated, but she had learned to find it endearing. With the last slice gone, she chucked her empty box in the trash and walked over to the couch. They’d spent the morning testing her powers against some prototype materials for her uniform. They were finally getting close, a couple of the test fabrics made it through with minimal smoldering. The night before had been spent training with some metal dummies, and she was still tired and sore from the exertion. Her stamina and control had been growing, but it was nowhere near where she wanted it to be.
Dramatically collapsing on the plush sofa she turned to watch the TV. Her heart stopped and she sat up bolt-straight. “Stark,”
Her tone must’ve told him something was seriously wrong because he immediately rushed over. “Shit,”
Steve and Natasha were on the news. It looked like they were still in D.C. but the place was a warzone. They were being fired at by some men on the bridge. But that wasn’t what made her blood run cold. No, it was the man with the metal arm. He moved like a shark, calm and confident, completely at ease in the chaos. His hair was long and his face was obscured by a black mask. But his eyes were cold.
The pair held their breath as they watched Steve and him go hand to hand. The man with the metal arm handled the Captain's shield with ease, like he knew how to use it, and moved faster than anyone she had ever seen. Steve seemed to gain the upper hand before he was thrown over a car and against a van, the masked man opened the side of it up like a tin can. That could’ve been Steve she thought.
He managed to pull his shield from the car before going back at him. He whipped the shield under his arm and got in the face. This time he threw the mysterious assailant. She and Stark were glued to the screen as they saw his mask fall off before he turned back to Rogers.
And Rogers froze. He stood up straight and they could see him say something to the man. Saw as he did nothing when the metal-armed assassin trained his gun on him. Until another guy they had never seen flew down and knocked him over. Literally flew. The guy had wings.
He regained his footing and raised the gun again, but Natasha appeared and blasted something at him. By the time the smoke cleared he was gone. But before her sigh of relief could finish more cars converged on the trio.
She recognized these ones, they were S.H.I.E.L.D., reinforcements then. But Tony leaned over the back of the couch as the teams left their vehicles and approached with their guns drawn. All three put their hands up and got to their knees. A man - she was pretty sure he’d been at the tower to take away Loki’s scepter - held a gun to Steve’s head a little too long. Her hands were gripping the couch. They were escorted into one of the cars before the footage cut to some reporter.
Ren turned to Tony, only to find him missing. He’d grabbed his phone off the counter and was typing furiously before turning back to her. “S.H.I.E.L.D. put out an alert on Rogers and Romanov, wanted for treason,”
“That’s bullshit!”
“Yeah, I know,”
She leaped up and marched over to him, “We have to do something,”
“Like what?” He set the phone down and looked at her, “We don’t know where they’re being taken and neither of us has any pull with S.H.E.I.L.D.,”
“We can call Barton,”
He paused before picking up the phone again and dialing the archer's number.
…
Calling Clint had made no difference. He couldn’t reach anyone he knew in the agency and, as it turned out, Fury was dead. Ren was surprised to find a touch of sadness at that. Within a few hours, he flew in from wherever he had been and was anxiously pacing the tower with them. They’d been trying to figure out what to do for an age now and had gotten nowhere.
Finally, Barton heard from an agent named Sharon. According to her, their friends had escaped custody. As good as that was to hear she still felt panicked, they were still being hunted, by S.H.I.E.L.D. and the men with the metal arm. Clint had called him by a different name - The Winter Soldier. Natasha was the one who had told it to him, years ago, but he hadn’t believed that the infamous assassin was real. The guy sounded like a ghost story. With a long victim last going back half a decade. None of them knew how it was possible or who he really was, but they had a worrying idea of who he might be working for.
What were the odds an assassin was hunting Captain America and Black Widow at the same time as a shady government agency?
She wanted to go after them, but Clint advised against it, “We don’t even know where they are, and if we managed to figure it out S.H.I.E.L.D. might use us to get to them. We sit tight. Nat knows how to take care of herself, I’m sure the Captain does too. If they really need us, they’ll get in touch,”