Disclaimer: I do not own any of the films in the MCU, nor do I own any of the comics. This is simply a work of fiction and is not meant for any monetary gain or to infringe on any copyright laws

Rating: T for violence and minor language

Author's Note: Hey! This is my first Avengers fic, which was written just after CA:TWS came out and was left to the attic of my immense word documents until I rescued it and brought it to the light. Though this is mostly centered around CA:TWS, CA:TFA, and Marvel's Avengers, there is ideas and parts taken from various MCU works. The quote at the beginning here is one that has partly inspired this fic and one that represents what I hope the resolution of this story will be. I will update every Wednesday (This story should only be 15-16 chapters, albiet long chapters. The beginning part is only an introduction for those who may not be as active in the fandom or who want to review and refresh on the characters from different people's viewpoints. You may skip down to the beginning of the chapter if you like. I hope you enjoy!

Quote: "For every season there is a trial, and for every trial a hardship. Many do not pass such times, but many others do. So what is the trick? Do we take like the rocks, both suborn and strong, and fight the seasons one by one? Do we take to the wisdom of the trees who mould to every change? Or the vast expanses of the timeless rivers? All have survived the age of seasons and are masters in their own ways, but none have truly mastered the might of the seasons. With time even the largest of rocks can crumble and break. A single tongue of flame can consume entire forests. And a dry age can devour the largest of rivers. So what hope do we mere specks of dust have to fight the struggle of the ever changing age of trials?

"To survive the test of the seasons you must take to the wisdom of all the masters around you. You must unyielding, stubborn and strong like the rock. You must be wise and as adaptable as the tree. And you must flow as easy as the river. But more than this, you must adopt the greatest lesson life has to teach you, numbers. There is no I, only we. A rock that stands alone, as strong as it may be, will falter and chip away with time until it is but a grain. But together with the help of their brethren one rock can help to form a mountain, vast and immovable to stand against the test of time. Even the countless grains of sand that stand together can hold back the wrath of the thundering sea. A tree that stands alone falls alone to the harsh weather, but together they can form the greatest of forests, stretching as far as the eye can see, protecting each other in many ways. And though a single stream may thin and loose its way, when built with another a river can be forged. An alliance of power and might, standing against even the harshest of heats and strong enough to clear any obstacle that stands in its way. But it doesn't stop there. There are many masters in life that can teach us if we are willing to listen. My heart and ears are open, and my hand is held to you: my ally, my brethren, my friend."

Introduction

Earth has always been in need of heroes. From regular men and woman to super humans possessing impossible powers, our world has been saved time and time again. The most famous of these heroes have emerged in the last century; first was the Justice League, most famous for Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. When their time of saving Earth was over, they passed the destiny of us all onto the group known as The Fantastic Four. This small group was created out of a failed space mission which left them all the responsibility of special powers—fire and flight, invisibility and force fields, rubber skin, and a rock body with incredible strength. Though reluctant heroes, they kept the earth safe until they passed us into the hands of another group of brave men and woman.

With the threats on earth growing and becoming more dangerous, only the most elite group can save us. Can these six people, known as the Avengers, live up to that task? Only time can tell.

Excerpt from Kerri Manny's bestseller, Of Heroes, Humans, and Others on Earth.

The Avengers, a group of supposedly "heroes" has assembled. We saw evidence of their work in Manhattan two and a half years ago. But are they still up to the job and all it entails? Even back then there were tensions in the group, tearing each other apart. And now that the organization that brought them all together, SHIELD—Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division—has been compromised, destroyed, and scattered, will the Avengers be able to come together again?

The Avengers is a very diverse group, and that can lead to arguments and mishaps, as we've previously seen. Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, has a huge ego and does everything his way—thus not being able to follow the orders that the leader of the group, Captain America, gives. And in return, America's beloved war hero has an unusual shortened temper around the billionaire.

That isn't even going into the whole issue with the scientist, Dr. Bruce Banner, who is known to turn into a large green monster that is almost invincible. The Hulk, as it is commonly known as, emerges when Dr. Banner gets very emotional, especially the emotion of anger. Mr. Stark is known to incite anger in even the most calm and peaceful of men, so who is to say that he won't draw out the Hulk at an unnecessary and perilous time?

And what about the "god", Thor? He claims his realm watches over Earth and will protect us when need be, but did he not bring aliens here in the first place when he was banished from Asgard? And isn't it his brother, Loki, who has tried to take over the world several times? How can we trust him when it's his family he must destroy, not to mention his quick temper and amazing powers.

Then there's the two humans in the team, Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow and Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye. They are both assassins and spies, having hurt the US government as much as help. Who is to say they aren't plotting something at this moment, using the Avengers as a cover for all the damage they might bring down upon us? Just because they saved the world doesn't mean they saved it for us.

And talking about Black Widow and her network of lies, who is to say that she hasn't converted America's golden boy, Captain America, to her side? This last year we've seen them work together to uncover HYDRA plots and flush out SHIELD, but some of the footage makes it look like they're more than partners.

That's not to even say the least about the latest rumor on HYDRA. Sources and witnesses to the battles that Black Widow and Captain America fought say that another assassin, one with a metal arm and a physical resemblance to the Captain's old friend James Buchanan Barnes, also known as Bucky. Why was an old US soldier fighting America's own hero? And didn't he die? Even Captain America is a suspect now, especially since he has the most rumors about him.

So are we to trust our lives, our futures, in the hands of the Avengers? Even if it's not about us, it's about our children's lives, our children's futures. In essence, these heroes are strangers, and would you trust strangers with your kids?

I know many of you out there don't agree with me. You have waited your whole life to see such miracles, to witness such heroes, and now you don't believe that they have anything but good in their hearts. But I beg you to not forget one thing: No matter how much you hear about the Avengers, they are just as human in their nature as you. They love power and money and fame and wealth. And they will put themselves before you.

New York Times Reporter John Carrow, Superheroes? Or Super Humans?

"I believe in the Avengers just as much as I believe there is a God. This small group of extraordinary heroes has saved me from certain death. As I swung, America's enemies about to kill me, the hero known as Iron Man came in to the rescue. That is just the least of it. Before all of our time, during the time of World War II, a young, skinny, sickly boy with a huge heart signed up for a dangerous experiment that turned him into America's own hero, Captain America. He saved us from an evil terrorist group called HYDRA, putting his own life on the line for all of ours until finally it was taken, and with it many weapons that would have destroyed all the huge cities in the world. When he woke up, seventy years later, everyone he knew was dead or dying and everything had changed. And yet he jumped up and began the endless task of saving the world. Who could prove more honorable than that?

"Then the hero that saved my life, Iron Man. He was a billionaire, living life to the fullest with very little danger! Until his weapons fell into the wrong hands and he made the wise decision to stop the production and instead created a suit to escape his captors and later kill the huge terrorist threat to America. He had saved countless lives and has suffered great losses.

"The man you all know as the Hulk, Dr. Bruce Banner, is a doctor. Sure he has hurt people when the other guy comes out, but he struggles to control it, and when the need arises, he is one of America's strongest heroes! He is brave and willing to help. A doctor in foreign countries, he helps those who cannot afford medicine or care, many of those young children. And isn't our children our future? He is helping our future, and there is nothing better than that.

"As for the god Thor, he has traveled great distances to help us in our time of need. His realm watches over us even now, and without him we wouldn't have survived for this long. We are indefinitely indebted to him.

"Yes, Black Widow and Hawkeye aren't exactly what we would call the 'perfect' heroes, as their pasts are rocky and dark, but they have proven themselves changed people, and I have full trust in them to protect America. Their talents are invaluable, and we should give them all the respect due.

"If this is not enough to convince you that the Avengers have America in mind, then nothing will; but watch your children grow up to worship this elite group and then you will see that they mean well. That is my view on this matter."

President Ellis, in a White House Interview surrounding the events in Manhattan.

Chapter 1

It all happened so quickly. Flashes of fire and bursts of gunfire. Blue and red and white with a blonde head popping up every so often. Then it was just her, fighting the assailants by herself.

Where had he gone? She pushed through, firing her gun and punching out her widow's bite. It wasn't enough. She saw the drips of blood making a trail to the car. The car that speeded away even as she watched, leaving her and a few corpses as witnesses to the skirmish that had just occurred.

One of the grey-clad bodies moaned and the spy jumped over and to the man. Blood dribbled from his mouth and nose. She crouched right in front of him.

"Where did they take him?" she hissed. "And who are you?"

The man said nothing, just groaned. His hand groped around his clothes until he found a pocket and pulled a small pendant out. What once held an elaborate design that would give her attackers away was covered in blood and broken, a hole in it that was obviously caused by a bullet. She cursed and slipped the pendant into the pocket of her jeans before investigating the other bodies. None of them held any evidence, though a few faces looked oddly familiar.

"Fury, this is Romanoff," she said into her earpiece. "No sign of Rogers. They took him. I've found no clues to who the attackers are, but they must be an organization with adequate funding to have a weapon to take out a super soldier."

"Copy that. I'm sending a force out there right now. Hold your position."

"I can't do that, sir," she replied. "The only leads are fresh now and if I wait then there will be nothing to go on."

"Romanoff, you will hold your position!" Fury's voice was angry.

"You're not my employer anymore, not since SHIELD was compromised. I'm still a fugitive, and what do fugitives do? They run. Consider me in that way."

Natasha Romanoff clicked off the earpiece before Fury could respond and started following the path the car took at a run. Luckily for her, the car's oil was leaking and a trail of glistening drops showed her the way.

When Natasha had first met Steve Rogers he was sleeping in a recovery center in New York. He had been frozen in ice when he crashed a HYDRA weapons carrier into the frozen land to save millions of people in 1945. Howard Stark—Tony's father—had spent much of his life searching for the soldier. After finding him embedded in ice, they unfroze him and he slept for many years before waking in a modern day New York.

Everyone the captain had knew was dead or dying. He was all alone in this new world filled with new things he couldn't even begin to comprehend. And yet the soldier had simply picked up his shield and joined the ranks of SHIELD again, fighting away the old memories.

Natasha had joined SHIELD a few years before he woke when Agent Barton, also known as Hawkeye, was sent on an assignment to assassinate her and instead saw potential in her. He brought her back and she was reprogrammed to be on the "good" side. If there was a good side anymore. SHIELD had been slipping in its moral decisions and everyone saw it.

She had felt especially bad for Steve, who had only joined to protect people and because his old sweetheart, Agent Peggy Carter, had helped found the agency. The SHIELD that Agent Carter had helped create had been good, moral, and now it had fallen. Natasha knew more than anyone else, considering that she was the agent sent on the darkest missions. While the spy knew that what she was doing wasn't always right, it was what she had been trained to do.

Besides, someone had to do the dirty work and no one else was willing. In the end she learned it had been HYDRA who had managed to get their hands deep into SHIELD.

Sometimes Natasha wondered why Steve even stayed with SHIELD. He was the embodiment of honor and morals and courage! He was America's golden boy, the one everyone worshiped. In fact, he could leave SHIELD anytime he wanted and set off on his own. He could settle down and have a family or just go and rethink his life. He didn't; instead he did what he always had done and what he knew how to do.

Deep down the spy knew why the man stayed. She knew what it felt like to run from your past, and that was what he was doing. He was running from his past, from the people he had left behind. Peggy, who married someone else and had a family. Bucky, who he thought had died but had actually been brainwashed into trying to kill Steve. Howard Stark, who had eventually died in a car crash.

Everyone the super soldier knew—gone. And fighting was doing something, doing something that would distract him from thinking about them. All the new technology in the world and fighting was the one thing that hadn't changed drastically. Captain America knew how to fight, so fight he did. Mission after mission with little rest left little time to brood over the past.

Natasha could relate. Her soul was as black as a soul could be, but she wasn't evil. She was just bad, trained to do the dirty work. While the Black Widow had been trained to not feel, Natasha Romanoff could still feel. And even if she was cold, she still felt traces of regret deep in her bones. But Black Widow can't feel because it will get in the way of her usefulness and so she completed mission after mission with little rest too.

We are more alike than you might think, she thought. I'm bad and cruel and you're good and honorable but we're both running from painful pasts. We might always be running because we'll run until we find peace and peace might never come.

Not everyone can heal, and if there's a prime example, it was Black Widow and Captain America.

The getaway car had been dumped in an old junkyard past the town's limits. Natasha searched the car and found that it was SHIELD issue, the inside decked out with all sorts of defensive devices. The spy was baffled as to how the attackers had come into possession of the vehicle, especially since SHIELD was no more.

Beside the car on the ground were many footprints. It appeared as though something—or someone—very large and heavy had been transitioned out. Natasha knew that it had been Steve, so the assailants must have knocked him out. From the tiny shards of broken glass she could tell they had used a tranquilizer—but what was in it that was strong enough to knock a super soldier out? And how did the captors know that it would work? Or have any idea that what they threw together could possibly work?

The only way they could have invented that was if they had files on Steve. On what the super soldier's enhanced DNA was like. On how the serum changed him. Only SHIELD had those files, and they were classified.

Natasha was starting to suspect that something bigger was going on. She wasn't sure on the details, but it appeared someone had extensive knowledge on them. How else would the attackers known that Steve and Natasha would be at the little town of Coldwater in their search for Bucky? Or known how to knock Steve out? Or have a SHIELD issue car?

The pieces of the puzzle were starting to fit together-albeit slowly and mysteriously- and Natasha knew that Steve himself was one of many pieces. So she followed the footprints and continued her search for Steve.

The footprints led to a rundown boat shack near an overflowing river. Natasha searched the boat shack and discovered that the inside was clean and new. It was a perfect disguise—if they thought she was stupid enough to not check out the inside. She suspected that they had not been expecting her to be Steve. A Soviet spy with a dark path teamed up with Captain America? Two years ago she would have scoffed at the notion. Then she'd joined the Avengers and fought alongside him, and since then they'd been on several SHIELD missions together, even so far as running from SHIELD and later taking it down with the help of their friend, Sam Wilson, also known as Falcon.

The boathouse also contained moors for two motorboats. One was missing, and by the lack of dust Natasha knew it had been recently taken out. She struggled for a while to get the other boat ready and then climbed in, ready to chase after them loaded extra gas cans in the back, not knowing how far she might have to go.

The boat flew across the water of the river. Tiny streams branched out but none were big enough for a boat this size. That is, if the other boat was the same model. The spy suspected so. Natasha continued on.

The river went on until it split in a two forks. Natasha had no idea which way to go but as she considered the two branches, she saw the brushes shaking on the left side and the tell-tale grey of the attacker's clothes. So she chose the right side and speeded down it.

The river became shallower after an hour and she saw a large clearing. It had a ring of trees around it but the inside was a large area with just grass. Natasha parked the boat and concealed it with branches and long grass before setting out towards the clearing on foot.

Hiding behind a few trees in the tree line she saw it was just as she suspected; a line went straight up the middle of the clearing where no grass grew. From a distance you couldn't see it because the tall grass on the sides of it draped over, but near you could see the shadow of it. The spy knew it was the main doors of a facility's aircraft level. She'd seen the same design with SHIELD, only their doors were under the water of the Potomac river instead of in the forest.

Agent Romanoff knew that the front entrance to the facility would be nearby so she scaled a tree and watched. Hours went by in the tree before she saw a few men in grey uniforms walking before suddenly disappearing in front of a hill. She climbed down from the tree and made her way over to the small hill to see that it wasn't a small hill; it was a cave with holographic camouflage that made it appear to be a hill.

She knelt in the bushes and started another stakeout. This one lasted until late in the night. When a different group of the soldiers stood in front, she soundlessly moved in behind them. The first man did something she couldn't make out in the dark and the doors opened. The camouflage was perfect; if she hadn't seen the men do it she knew she would've been at a dead end. She followed the soldiers through the door and when it closed behind her she ducked behind a row of lockers that lined the hallway. The men continued on and she followed at a distance, ducking into doorways and behind lockers and other equipment.

Natasha knew she was in a lab of some sort. She wasn't sure who it belonged to until the men stopped at a room with brown walls and a secretary's desk. A woman in a navy blue skirt suit sat in the big chair behind the desk. But it was the emblem on the wall that shocked the spy the most.

Behind the secretary was the silver eagle sign that the spy had come to know as home; the SHIELD emblem.

Natasha flashed back into the nearest doorway and kneeled over, hands on her knees. She felt a wave a sickness pass through her. In all her years as a spy under Fury she had never expected to see the SHIELD emblem in the facility she was searching.

She had also never been so shocked before. The Black Widow was a spy who was trained to be ready for every situation. Not this one, though. For a moment she debated about continuing the mission. Then she saw Steve's face in her mind and her face set a determined look about it again. No matter what she had to do to SHIELD to save the soldier, she would do it.

Natasha also tried to convince herself that it wasn't SHIELD. Her mind went on about how it was just an old facility that AIM or HYDRA had found and taken over, and keeping the evidence pointing to SHIELD was a great cover for them. There was no way she had been played all along by the agency. Director Fury and Agent Hill wouldn't condone to this. The stakes would be too high if anyone found out about this kind of conspiracy. Besides, Fury wouldn't let SHIELD become this corrupt. It may have its dark secrets but it was no evil…

What was she talking about? SHIELD had been compromised by the HYDRA infestation a few weeks ago. She and Steve had brought it down. Why did this shock her? Of course this wasn't SHIELD. SHIELD was gone and all that was left was HYDRA.

Then she thought about Steve….All Steve had wanted to do was find Bucky and now he was caught by SHIELD-or what was pretending to be SHIELD- and Natasha was his only hope. And she wouldn't let him down.

All of his life Steve had selflessly served America, but when he finally decides to do a personal mission it blows up in his face. By the very organization that he once worked for. Natasha wasn't going to let anything happen to him until he found his old friend. It was the least that the captain deserved. And she owed it to him. A few months ago when SHIELD had first been compromised Steve had saved her life. He trusted her to save his, and she wouldn't let him down.

This is for Steve, she thought. This is for him. He deserves to find his friend and I won't let anyone get in the way of that.

After glancing into the corners of the room for security cameras and finding none the spy emerged from hiding and ran over to the surprised secretary.

"Show me which way Captain America is or I'll use these on you," she threatened, turning her widow's bites on. The weapon crackled with blue energy. The small woman's eyes grew wide and pointed down the left hall. Obviously she wasn't trained at all.

"Three lefts and one right. Passcode is eight-nine-three-six."

Natasha tazed the woman so she couldn't sound the alarm and dashed down the hall, repeating the number sequence until she memorized it.

I'm coming for you, Steve. SHIELD and HYDRA can throw its best at me but I'm coming for you.