The Avenger’s Soul

Lexi's POV

When I came back to my senses I realized that my body was operating on its own, clearly still under Loki's control as I was following him into Stark Tower.

I watched as Tony walked in and then headed straight for the bar. I rolled my eyes.

"Please tell me you're going to appeal to my humanity," Loki said.

"Uh- actually, I'm planning to threaten you," Tony replied with a shrug as he poured himself a drink.

"You should have left your armor on for that," Loki told him as I focused on trying to break whatever spell he had on me.

"Yeah, it's seen a bit of mileage. You've got the uh- blue stick of destiny. Would you like a drink?"

"Stalling me won't change anything," Loki warned.

"No, no, no- threatening. No drink? You sure? I'm having one," said Tony.

"The Chitauri are coming, nothing will change that. What have I to fear?"

I inwardly groaned at this, remembering the battle of Los Angeles when the world had first met the Chitauri. It was also where Coulson had died...I had a really bad feeling this wasn't going to end well...

"The Avengers. It's what we call ourselves, sort of like a team. 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes' type of thing," Tony said, glancing over at me with worry filled eyes.

"Yes, I've met them," Loki replied. I closed my eyes and focused on tearing his spell apart, not really knowing what I was doing but it seemed to be working as I was suddenly able to move of my own free will again. I noticed Tony watching me and he subtly pointed towards the couch for me to hide behind, since I didn't know what else to do, I followed his advice and crouched down out of site.

"Yeah, takes us a while to get any traction, I'll give you that one. But, let's do a head count here. Your brother, the Demi-God;" Tony started to count as Loki turned away and I watched as he slipped on a pair of bracelets. "A super soldier, a living legend who kind of lives up to the legend; a man with breath-taking anger management issues; a couple of master assassins, a sexy as sin agent and you, big fella, you've managed to piss off every single one of them," Tony said, sending me a wink as he mentioned me. I rolled my eyes but felt my face reddening at his compliment.

"That was the plan," Loki replied as Tony walked to the center of the penthouse where
Loki was standing.

"Not a great plan. When they come, and they will, they'll come for you."

I looked around from my spot behind the couch, looking for anything that I could use as a weapon, not wanting to just sit by on the sidelines. But nothing stood out other than a lamp. Not really a great weapon...though I guess I could always use it to smash over his head? I reached over slowly and grabbed the lamp, unplugging it from the wall. I could also use the cord to try and choke him...

"I have an army," Loki boasted.

"We have a Hulk," Tony quipped back.

"Oh, I thought the beast had wandered off," Loki pointed out. I frowned, not knowing what had happened to the rest of the team as I had been unconscious. I hoped everyone was alright!

"Yeah- you're missing the point. There's no throne, there is no version of this, where you come out on top. Maybe your army comes and
maybe it's too much for us, but it's all on you. 'Cause if we can't protect the earth, you can be
damned well sure we'll avenge it," Tony said. I rolled my eyes again at his attempt at word play.

Loki walks over to Tony, pointing his scepter. My eyes widened in fear as I remembered what had happened to Clint last time. Granted it hadn't worked on me so here's hoping it didn't work on Tony either. I smacked myself on the forehead as I realized maybe I could do something about it myself. I had been able to block everyone from feeling my pain and I had my telepathy so maybe I could use that to create some sort of mental shield to protect Tony from Loki's powers? I glanced down at my hands as I saw them starting to glow with a golden light and grinned as I lifted my hands towards Tony. There was a faint golden glow now surrounding him but thankfully neither of the men seemed to notice.

"How will your friends have time for me, when they're so busy fighting you?" Loki said as he walked up to Tony, and placed the tip of the scepter over his heart. It clinked against the arc reactor but had zero effect on him. I sighed in relief.

"This usually works," Loki said confused, though I saw him finally glance over towards the couch and winced as I realized he must have figured out I was there and had a part in why he was unable to control Tony.

"Well, performance issues. You know?" Tony replied as he looked down and seemed to register the faint golden glow surrounding him and sent me a look of gratitude.

Before I could do anything, Loki grabbed Tony by the throat and threw him across the room.

"JARVIS, anytime now," I heard Tony say as I held onto the lamp and started to inch my way out from behind the couch as Loki grabbed Tony again.

"You will all fall before me!" Loki declared as I snuck up behind him and smashed the lamp over his head, for all the good it did me.

"JARVIS. Deploy!" Tony shouted as Loki sent him crashing through the window, and plummeting toward the ground. I looked at Loki in horror, knowing that Tony didn't have his suit on him at the moment. Without a second thought I jumped out of the window after Tony and managed to catch up to him and wrapped my arms around him and was just about to unfurl my wings when I realized that pieces of his suit had followed us out of the window and we're attaching themselves to him.

"Oh that is so cool!" I said as I grinned at him as he readjusted our grip, me now in his arms rather than the other way around. He winked at me before the face plate came down. He managed to stop our fall inches from the ground and then we were soaring back up to meet Loki by the window.

I was set down gently next to him before Iron Man fired a repulsor blast at Loki knocking him down. I stepped back in surprise as suddenly a stream of blue energy shot at the sky, which opened into a portal where the Chitauri army was waiting. We are so screwed I thought to myself as I watched the hoards of aliens begin to fly through.

"Hey, don't worry about me, focus on the aliens!" I told Tony as I saw him looking at me. He nodded and shot off towards the aliens and I paused a moment before unfurling my wings and joining him. I had been hoping I wouldn't need to use them, especially not in such a public setting, but I didn't see any way around it what with the sky quickly filling up with aliens.

The first alien I encountered I simply punched with as much force as I could, sending him falling to the ground unconscious but I realized quickly that having a weapon would be nice and stole a sword off of the next alien to try to attack me.

I sliced and diced through what felt like hundreds of chitauri - noticing in the back of my mind as the other members of Team Avengers joined in on the fight. But my focus was primarily on rescuing civilians and killing as many chitauri as I could.

Unfortunately for me - I found myself getting knocked backwards by a blast of energy that had my whole body shaking and temporarily caused me to lose control of my wings and I couldn't help but scream as I tumbled towards the ground. I closed my eyes, bracing for the impact but it never came. Before my body could hit the ground I found myself being swept back up into the sky and into someone's arms. I blinked in confusion as my savior landed on a rooftop, still holding me in his arms.

"Why do you have a spider on your chest?" I asked as I stared at the red outfit the man was wearing. I looked up and blushed as I found myself staring at my rescuer. He looked to be only a few years older than me (maybe 25 or 26). He was staring at me as if I was the most important person in the world. It was kind of unnerving. I quickly tugged myself out of his arms and stood on my own two feet.

"Wow! You're even more beautiful than I imagined!" He said as he continued to stare. I blushed red.

"Um, thanks! You're not bad on the eyes yourself," I said as I tucked some of my hair behind my ears.

"Hey! Stop flirting you two! We've got aliens to defeat!" Tony shouted out as he flew by causing the both of us to duck our heads in embarrassment.

"Thanks for saving me back there!" I told him before I launched off of the rooftop and began fighting the aliens again, wondering who the hell the guy in the red spider outfit was.

I looked off to my left as I heard a large roar and grinned as I noticed the Hulk join in the fray. I had been worried when I heard Loki mention he had gone missing. I sent the chitauri soldier in front of me flying backwards with a kick to the chest and was about to stab another one when I noticed one of the aliens aiming their blaster at Clint and Natasha who hadn't noticed yet that they were in his line of site, too busy fighting off their own sets of aliens. I flew as fast as my super speed would allow me and landed in front of them, spreading my wings out to cover them and hissed in pain as I felt the blaster tear several holes into my wings.

I did my best not to cry out in pain as I sunk to my knees, my wings sagging down as blood stained my once white feathers. I glanced up to see Clint and Natasha gaping at me with wide eyes.

"Thanks for that!" Clint said as he helped me to my feet. I nodded my head as I retracted my wings, seeing as I wouldn't be able to use them for a while, at least until they healed. I turned to speak with Natasha but widened my eyes in fear as I saw an alien charging at her. I shoved her out of the way before feeling a body slam into me and suddenly I found myself tumbling through the air for the third time. I kicked out and sent the chitauri flying off of me and tried to unfurl my wings but it was too painful and I closed my eyes again as I saw the ground drawing nearer.

I frowned seconds later when I realized that once again, I hadn't ended up crashing into the ground. I blinked up and stared wide eyed into those baby blue eyes that I doubted I would ever get enough of.

"That's the third time someone has caught me today," I whispered breathlessly as I stared at Steve in all his Captain America glory.

"And here I was, hoping to be the first one to sweep you off your feet," he said winking at me as he steadied me on the ground. I stared at him in shock but got distracted as I spotted Clint and Natasha getting surrounded by more aliens. The two of us dashed off towards them, hitting Chitauri out the way. Then Thor dropped down from the tower and helped out by killing Chitauri with his bolts of lightening.

"What's the story upstairs?" Steve asked him when there was a pause in the fight.

"The power surrounding the cube is impenetrable," Thor replied.

"Thor is right, we gotta deal with these guys," Tony said, my super-hearing managed to pick up him speaking through their com units.

"How do we do this?" Natasha asked looking around at us.

"As a team," Steve declared.

"I have unfinished business with Loki," Thor said.

"Oh yeah! Get in line!" I argued back at him, crossing my arms as I stood in front of him. I wanted my revenge for the fact that Loki had taken control of my body. I hadn't felt that useless since my days with hydra.

"Save it. Loki's gonna keep this fight focused on us and that's what we need. Without him these things could run wild. We got Stark up top, he's gonna need us to-" Steve stopped as he noticed that the Hulk had joined us, though he had gone back into his normal human form, pulling up to our group on his motorbike.

"So, this all seems horrible," Bruce commented as he dismounted and surveyed the damage.

"I've seen worse," Natasha commented.

"I'm bringing the party to you," I heard Tony shout through Captain America's earpiece. We all stared up at the sky to see him flying around a corner towards us, closely followed by the Leviathan.

"I don't see how that's a party," Natasha stuttered as Iron Man drew the creature low and it skimmed the road.

Bruce turned and began to walk away, towards the Leviathan.

"Doctor Banner, now might be a really good time for you to get angry," Steve told him.

"That's my secret, Cap. I'm always angry," Bruce said, transforming back into the Hulk and punching the Leviathan, smashing it into the ground.

"Hold On!" Tony shouted, blasting a missile at the creature causing it to explode. I used my speed to make sure my team members all got away from the blast radius and then we stood in a circle. The Hulk roared, Hawkeye nocked an arrow, Thor readied Mjolnir, Black Widow
loaded her gun, Captain America stood ready Iron Man hovered above us landing next to the Hulk, as I tested my wings again, only to find them still too torn up to be of any use at the moment, so instead I lifted up the Chitauri sword I had stolen.

"Send the rest," we heard Loki say as he looked down on us.

We glanced up, watching as more Leviathans and hundreds of warriors fly through the portal.

"Guys?" Natasha said worriedly.