Disarm • Stark

Fear was all Mazzy Stark could feel as she sprinted through the halls of the Shield hovercraft. Every turn she took, she was terrified that, on the other side, there would be the green monster, and he would tear her to pieces. Could she survive that? Would her skin, bones, and organs all pile themselves back together until she was whole again, or would the green monster be the thing that could kill her?

And where was her dad?!

Mazzy desperately wanted to call for him, like a kitten trapped in a room with an angry dog, but she was too afraid of attracting the monster instead, so she just kept slipping through doorways and crevices, peeking around every corner she passed by. She could hear it. Or maybe him, if Dr. Banner was still in there. She doubted he was, though.

Although Mazzy had only known Bruce for less than 24 hours, she could tell a lot about him. He was quiet, smart, and gentle. The green monster, though, was none of those things. The green monster was loud, rageful, and violent. So Mazzy was sure that Bruce couldn't be in there. He just couldn't.

Or maybe she was just too trusting. Loki said not to trust everyone, but everyone included Loki. So who on Earth was she supposed to trust?

There was no one there to tell her how to act, considering her dad wasn't anywhere near her. He was busy trying to save the ship from crashing into land below them. Of course, his heart was racing and his head was foggy worrying about Mazzy, but she had only a slim chance of getting out of this ok if that hovercraft went down. He didn't know how it worked- how she worked. Would whatever serum that was pumping through her veins save her or would it fail?

Not to mention the amount of guilt he'd feel when he finally found her again after all this. He was sure she was looking for him, and he wanted so badly to go pick her up and fly her away from this place. But he could save everyone on that hovercraft if he could fix the engine, and he was sure he could. So Mazzy would just have to be scared for a little bit. Still, he asked Natasha over comms to find her.

Natasha was already tasked with keeping Hulk away from everyone on the ship. But she was Natasha Romanoff. She could do both.

Tucking her lips between her teeth, Mazzy found herself in a dark room full of all sorts of machines and wires that she didn't understand. She quickly tiptoed through the room, searching for the exit. She just needed to find someone. It didn't even have to be her dad. Just someone.

Lucky for her, Natasha was creeping around the exact same room.

Suddenly, Mazzy was grabbed from behind and pulled backward. She let out a gasp, but before she could scream, a hand covered her mouth, keeping her silent. She was spun around by the shoulders to see Natasha herself, crouching next to her with a finger pressed up against her lips.

Be quiet.

Natasha and Mazzy hid behind large, cylindrical machines, sweat beading down their faces from all the running. They could hear heavy footsteps thudding on the metal floors, and they both knew what that was. Mazzy locked eyes with Natasha, adrenaline coursing through their veins. The footsteps were slow. Careful. He was looking for them.

Pulling out her gun, Natasha stood up and signaled for Mazzy to follow her. They walked through the room, Mazzy glued to Natasha's side, until a loud roar came from beside them. Mazzy let out a scream while Natasha shot at the pipes, releasing a cloud of air down onto the monster.

"Run," Natasha said quickly, pushing Mazzy ahead of her.

If it weren't for what Hydra had done to the little girl, she'd be way in the dust, but instead, Mazzy was just as fast as Natasha was, even a tad bit faster. Through a glass hall, Mazzy and Natasha sprinted as fast as they possibly could. Hulk chased after them, smashing through every single thing in his way and leaving behind a trail of all-out damage. When they got to the end of the hallway, Natasha shoved Mazzy to the right, out of the way, and Hulk threw Natasha across the room, making her smack against the opposite wall.

Hulk stepped closer to Natasha. He raised his arm back, ready to hit her so hard she would crumble beneath his strength.

"Stop it!" Mazzy screamed, launching a piece of debris right at Hulk's back.

The monster turned around, his head twitching to the side as he spotted Mazzy. Frozen in her spot, Mazzy pressed her back against the wall behind her. Hulk let out a roar, and just as he was about to charge at her, Thor crashed through the wall, sending Hulk flying into the next room over.

Mazzy shot up to her feet, her heart racing. Natasha was lying on the ground, groaning in pain. Mazzy swallowed back the lump in her throat and hesitantly began walking across the room, stopping right in front of Natasha. "Are you okay?" she asked, her voice all high-pitched and trembling.

"Don't you ever do that again," Natasha said sternly as she sat and caught her breath.

"I'm sorry," Mazzy murmured, rubbing her fist in circles around her heart. She felt like curling up in a ball on the floor and crying right there with Thor and Hulk fighting in the next room over. She wanted her dad. "Where's my daddy?" Mazzy asked, anxiously tugging on the end of her shirt and watching the fight through the new hole in the wall.

"He's fixing something. He's ok," Natasha assured her as she brought herself back up to her feet.

"But I need him," Mazzy whined, pressing her teeth against the tip of her thumb.

"It's ok. Just stay with me, ok?" Natasha said. Mazzy didn't say anything, slightly shaking her head. She wanted her dad more than anything, and the noise coming from the room over wasn't helping. Her hands were shaky and she felt like crying. "It's ok, Mazzy. Nothing's gonna get to you. Come on." Again, Mazzy shook her head, her face crumpling. "Come here. You're ok, Mazzy," Natasha said, pulling the girl against her side.

And that was when the ship began to lean. Mazzy shrieked, squeezing Natasha tighter.

"It's Barton. He took out our systems. He's headed for the detention level," Fury said through the comms. "Does anybody copy?" Mazzy couldn't at all hear what he was saying, but Natasha could. 

Natasha reached up to her ear, pressing down on the piece of technology in her ear. "This is Agent Romanoff. I copy," she responded.

"What?" Mazzy asked, her eyebrows pinching together.

"The fight isn't done," Natasha told her, standing up off of the ground. "But you can't come with me."

"What?" Mazzy asked for a second time, panic encasing her all over again. She was just gonna leave her there?! She couldn't do that!

"Don't worry. I'll take you to Maria and Fury," Natasha assured her.

"I don't know who Maria is!"

"You'll love her," Natasha said, dismissing her concerns. She grabbed Mazzy's hand and began pulling her through the hovercraft.

Mazzy could've fought back, but she was scared that if she did, Natasha would just leave her alone. Even if she didn't know who Maria was, being with her was better than being alone. Mazzy was extraordinarily strong for a seven-year-old, of course, but she couldn't utilize that unless there was someone there, telling her what to do. She needed orders. And by herself, she was just as clueless about what to do in a situation like this as any other little girl.

Above all, Mazzy was just scared. And, from what she could tell, Natasha was, too. She was shaking, ever so slightly. But she kept going anyway because she was brave. So Mazzy had to be brave, too.

"Ok, look," Natasha said, stopping Mazzy in her tracks. They stood in the hall, Natasha's hands on Mazzy's shoulders to keep her focused. "This is how I get up to Barton, but-"

"Barton?"

"My friend. Loki's controlling him and I need to get him back. But you have to go to Maria. She's just down the hall in the control room. Can I trust you to get to her?" Natasha asked. She had a very serious and stern look on her face, and Mazzy knew to listen.

"Yes," she said, nodding her head.

"Ok. You get to her, and she'll keep you safe until your dad comes to find you. Now go," Natasha said, ushering Mazzy down the hall.

Mazzy started her trek down the hall in a run, which she stumbled in helplessly due to the current state of the hovercraft, as Natasha made her way up to where Barton was. She didn't have to run much further to get to Maria, but it was scary all the same. But Mazzy was brave like Natasha, so she kept going until she was in the control room with everyone else. When she got inside, she stopped to catch her breath and pressed her hands against her eyes to try and calm her nerves.

The entire ship was still leaning on its side and everyone in the control room was panicking. All of the stress around her didn't make it any easier to calm down. After taking a few deep breaths, Mazzy uncovered her face and went further into the room, away from the entrance. She could see Nick Fury in the room, but she wasn't sure who Maria was just yet.

Nick Fury was in the center of the room, standing in front of a control panel with a rapidly dropping number on the screen. Mazzy walked up behind him, watching the number fall and fall and fall. She knew what that number was. The lower the number on that screen, the closer they all were to dying.

"Are we gonna crash?" Mazzy asked Fury, her eyes wide with worry.

Fury looked at her and slightly narrowed his eye. "No," he said firmly, like he really, truly meant it.

"Are you sure?" Mazzy asked. She didn't feel like he could possibly be sure.

"Yes, I'm sure," Fury insisted, turning back to the screen in front of him. "Your dad is fixing it right now."

"How do you know?"

"Because I told him to."

A lightbulb went off in Mazzy's head and her eyes lit up. "You can talk to him?!" she asked, bouncing on her toes. If Fury could talk to him, that meant she could, too, if he would just share. "Can I please, please, please?" Mazzy begged.

"Miss Stark, if I were blind, would I ask you for a kaleidoscope?" Fury asked her.

Mazzy frowned, furrowing her eyebrows. "Can't you put him on speakerphone or something?!"

"This is an earpiece. It doesn't have speakerphone."

"Can I just talk to him? Please, can I? I don't even have to hear him," Mazzy pleaded. After a sigh, Fury gave in, handing her the earpiece. She grabbed it from him hastily and pressed down on the talk button. "Dad, I'm not dead. The Hulk almost got me, but I was too fast! It was really scary, but I'm still scared because we're gonna crash. So you have to fix it faster! Hurry!" she said to him.

Tony wished so badly that she could hear him, but she couldn't. So he just did as he was told. He hurried up.

Not ten seconds later, the hovercraft began to steady itself again and everything began to calm down. The Hulk was gone and the hovercraft was stable, and Mazzy could finally breathe properly.

But Loki was gone, a life had been lost, and the team was now at their lowest.

•

Mazzy now sat in her dad's lap, her head resting on his chest. They were around that same glass table as before, but now it was only Steve and Tony. Fury stood in front of them and the woman whom Mazzy learned was Maria stood in the corner. The air was so tense that Mazzy wasn't even sure if she wanted to be there, but she was so shaken up that she didn't want to leave her dad's side ever again. She had made her mistake and she would learn from it.

The Avengers had made their mistake, too. They let petty disagreements with each other tear their attention away from the real problem, which was Loki. They let it distract them so much that Loki was able to kill Agent Coulson.

Although Mazzy didn't know Agent Coulson well at all, it was still weird and sad to think about the fact that he was now dead. She had just seen him a few days ago. And now he was cold and lifeless. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to think about things like dying and killing.

"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket," Fury said. Mazzy couldn't see what was in his hands and she wasn't sure if she even wanted to. "I guess he never did get you to sign 'em," Fury said to Steve. He tossed Captain America collectors' cards on the table. They were stained with bright red blood. "We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, the location of the Cube, Banner, Thor... I got nothing for you."

Dr. Banner went missing after an agent lured him away from the hovercraft on a jet in order to stop him from hurting others. Thor went missing at about the same time Agent Coulson died. It was all Loki's doing, and Mazzy knew it. She wished she had never spoken to him in the first place. She never should have trusted a single word out of his mouth. He was probably lying about everything he said. Probably.

"I lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming."

Tony ran his hand through Mazzy's hair. He felt guilty. Guilty for a thousand things. Guilty for letting this all happen. Guilty for not keeping a better eye on his daughter, allowing her to go and talk to Loki without his knowledge, which Natasha had informed him of earlier that day. Guilty for not being with Mazzy when the ship was going down and the Hulk was on the loose. She was scared and he wasn't there for her. He just kept failing to protect her. He promised himself that he would never allow anything bad to happen to her again after what her mother did. And he just couldn't keep that promise.

He couldn't keep that promise and be Iron Man at the same time. But he couldn't turn back now. How would that look to the public? Iron Man selfishly retiring from saving people. Imagine that in the headlines.

And Fury had promised Tony that Mazzy wouldn't be involved in anything he had to do with Shield. That promise was broken by Tony's own doing. He brought her there. He put her in danger. He was a screw-up and a bad father; he was sure of it.

Part of him wished that Mazzy would stop clinging to him like he was the Sun in her universe. It made that guilt swell up around his heart and squeeze so hard it might as well have killed him.

"Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number, though, because I was playing something even riskier," Fury explained. He began to walk around the table while both Steve and Tony avoided any and all eye contact with him. "There was an idea- Stark knows this- called the Avengers Initiative."

The Avengers Initiative. What Tony dismissed as a super-secret boy band. Mazzy thought the idea was cool until she saw it in person.

"The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, to see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could."

Tony was already tired of this spiel. He wanted to take Mazzy home and serve her up a bowl of way too much ice cream.

"Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea."

Stop it.

"In heroes."

Mazzy jumped when Tony suddenly stood up, picking her up with him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, hiding her face in his shoulder as he walked out of the room. She didn't know which thing he was angry about or who exactly he was angry with, but she hated that he was angry. She thought that, maybe, he was angry with her for talking to Loki.

She kept her eyes pressed against his shoulder. "I'm sorry I didn't listen," she murmured quietly.

Maybe if she had just gone straight to Natasha, she wouldn't have been put in danger. That was why he was mad, she thought. Because she didn't listen and that put her in danger.

"It's not your fault, Maz," Tony responded monotonously. But he still sounded angry.

Mazzy pulled her head up, looking over at his face. He wouldn't meet her eyes. "Yes, it is. I was supposed to go to Natasha like you said, but I didn't."

Tony sighed as they entered a new room. He placed Mazzy down on her feet and knelt down in front of her. "You're seven years old, Mazzy. You're gonna make mistakes because that's what kids do. I forget that sometimes and I trust you with too much because I know you're smart, but-"

"You can trust me, Daddy. I swear. It was just one time I didn't listen," Mazzy tried to convince him.

"No, Maz, that's not what I'm saying. I do trust you. But you're a kid and you're not supposed to have to be trusted with all that stuff. Just, listen," Tony stopped and sighed, rubbing his eyes. It had been a hard day and he felt like he was just making it worse. "Everything bad that happened to you today? That's my fault. I focus more on my work than I do my own kid." He chuckled to himself humorlessly and shook his head at himself. "Hell, I'm just the same as my own dad. Probably even worse."

"Don't say that," Mazzy said, furrowing her eyebrows.

"Look, what I'm trying to say here, kid, is that I know I'm bad at this and I'm gonna do better. So, I need you to know that none of what happened today was your fault. Ok?" Tony said, raising his eyebrows at her as he finally met her eyes.

"Ok," Mazzy murmured uncomfortably. She wasn't sure if she liked her dad being so caring like this. He usually just made a joke out of everything. This was sort of making her anxious.

"Good," Tony said. He patted her shoulder and stood back up to his normal height. Now that that was out of the way, all he had to worry about was Nick Fury and the Avengers Initiative.

Mazzy, however, had other worrying to do. "Dad?" she said, grabbing his attention once again. He looked down at her, giving a questioning look. "I can trust you, too, right?" she asked.

Now, that was a strange question for her to be asking her own father.

"What? Yeah. Why?" Tony responded, slightly concerned.

"Well, Loki said not to believe everything anyone says," Mazzy told him, shrugging her shoulders and linking her hands together behind her back to fidget with them.

Damnit.

That wound just never healed, did it? It could scab over and start the healing process as many times as it wanted, but there would always be someone or something to pick at it again. And this time that someone was Loki and his awful mindgames.

"And you're gonna trust the space magician over your dear, old dad?" Tony asked light-heartedly. He didn't have the energy for another emotional, serious conversation. He just wanted those ideas out of her head as soon as possible.

Mazzy let out a small giggle, tugging at her shirt. "No," she said, shaking her head.

"Good. 'Cause that fella is full of what I like to call B.S. Know what that is?"

"Bolonga sandwiches?"

Tony cracked a smile. "Yeah," he said, placing his hand on Mazzy's head and ruffling her hair. "Bologna sandwiches."