A Day in the Life, an avengers fanfic

A/N: This story is a companion piece and midquel for my WIP fic, Lokiday. If you are reading this and you have not read Lokiday, you will not understand any of what happens in this story. If you are following Lokiday, make sure you read this, as there is important information to be found here.

Also, this story takes place directly after Chapter 11 of Lokiday, though the events of this chapter could be happening on any day Loki doesn't go through with the attack. It is specifically Day 72 here, and you'll see what I mean soon enough.

Thank you, and enjoy the story!

Tony Stark flies low over the bursting, bustling city of Manhattan. It's early in the morning, a time for businessmen and women alike to be stumbling out of bed, rushing around on the morning commute, clogging up their local Starbucks for an espresso, so they don't wind up nodding off in the middle of an important presentation and sleep-talk all about how they've been sleeping with the CFO's wife for six months.

Oh, wait. That wasn't Manhattan. That was the last Stark Industries board meeting Tony attended before handing the reins over to Pepper (he keeps forgetting to ask her what happened at the next one).

It's hard to think clearly about these things with the wind whistling in your ears and a battle for the good of mankind on the horizon. It's high time for him to shape up. The guy they're dealing with is a crafty motherfucker. He was able to pull off a plan that had him captured on a giant flying death trap and may have even involved revealing to Romanov exactly how he was planning to incapacitate them. He says 'maybe,' because it's possible Romanov really did pull a wall over his eyes like she says she did. For Tony, the two are as likely as each other, and there's no point in worrying about it. Right now, there's a smug asshole of a 'god' waiting for him on his tower who is in dire need of an ass-whooping. That's why Tony is happy to take on being the first wave of attack. He wants the chance to beat Loki's head down into his neck for all that he's done. He just can't shake this feeling in the pit of his stomach that something isn't right.

He scans the perimeter, has JARVIS do a onceover of his own when nothing turns up. The energy readings coming off the tower are normal. The few times they spike, it's in response to his re-entry. Nothing he hasn't seen a hundred times before.

He goes around the roof a few times, just to confirm that nothing and no one is around, and there isn't.

There is no tesseract.

There is no crazy supervillain device for the tesseract to power.

There are no mind controlled servants running around doing Loki's bidding and destroying anyone who gets in his way of psycho world conquest.

Most of all, there is no Loki.

Tony brings his legs together, making for an easy landing on the gravel coated roof. He went through it once during construction by accident, and boy, had Pepper been pissed.

"What do you have for me, JARVIS?" Tony asks while glancing around, just in case a sneak attack is on Loki's agenda.

"Everything appears normal, sir," says the A.I. "I can find no evidence of a breach or system interference."

"You sure about that? Check everything. Every nook and cranny in the system. This bastard is not getting one over on me."

There is a long pause as JARVIS's drives whir and spin. A progress bar keeps blinking in and out of existence, a source of pride for Tony, that his A.I. is too quick for a puny progress bar to handle.

"If you wish me to check everything, sir, then you should know you haven't cleaned out your spam mail in six months, and have since accumulated 68,765 emails, roughly a third of which hold viruses. I recommend immediate action."

"Take care of it, JARVIS. I'm heading back in."

Tony bends his knees and takes off into the air.

It's unnecessary to go around again, except to give those on the streets a neat little show. He still has to do it, can't leave a single stone unturned and all that. People gasp, pictures are taken, videos are shot. He's going to find this on Youtube later, getting three million views before the night is out.

By the time he's ready to call it in, a helicopter baring SHIELD's logo is on the scene. Tony changes course, rushing to meet them halfway. Inside, Barton and Romanov are surveying the scene and the distinct lack of chaotic disarray. The greatest disruption to the lives of New Yorkers today appears to be them. A small crowd is gathering around them, yelling over the wind something about the street not being a helicopter pad and calling their congressman about this. When they touch down, it's Capsicle who steps out first, helmet securely fastened and shield at the ready.

Without an actual battle going on, he looks completely ridiculous. The crowd knows this. Laughter and pointing coincides with more phones being taken out and pointed in Cap's bemused face.

"It's… quiet," he says.

Tony nods. "Too quiet."

They're treated to honking horns and roaring truck engines and the loud complaints of the crowd as Barton and Romanov work their SHIELD agent magic to get rid of them. But that's not really noise, that's just New York.

Bruce is the last to arrive, after they've met up with Thor in front of the tower, and they're just standing around waiting for something to happen. It makes Tony glad that nothing has happened yet. A dinky motorbike going ten miles an hour is simply not an acceptable entrance for the Incredible Hulk. Bruce deserves something much more badass than that, whether he agrees or not.

"So," Bruce says as he kicks up some loose dirt and looks around and the undamaged buildings and citizens going about their average lives. "This is… not as bad as I thought it'd be."

"Join the club," Romanov mutters.

They have another moment of group-wide contemplation before Tony starts to get bored. Or maybe not bored, just passively frustrated and antsy. And thirsty.

He clears his throat. "Is anyone else up for a drink?"

Tony pours three glasses of wine- the normal, everyday stuff, not the sexy, romantic stuff reserved for Pepper. Bruce doesn't want any ("Drinking's not a good idea for me, there could be trouble"), and Thor and Steve can't get buzzed off anyway.

After handing Barton and Romanov their glasses, Tony drops down on the plushy couch cushions, propping his bare feet up on the coffee table over the glass and leaving smudges behind. Who cares? It's his tower.

Tony finds there is something oddly cozy about this whole set-up. Barton and Romanov take the couch across from him; Bruce is in the easy chair next to Tony's work desk; Cap is circling the area, unable to relax for longer than a few second at a time; Thor is at the window looking out. He reminds Tony of an evil dictator, watching the world like it belongs to him. It's an insensitive comparison to make, all things considered, but that's what's coming to him. Nothing he can do about it.

"How long has it been?" Cap wonders aloud.

"JARVIS! Time!" Tony shouts.

"It is 1:30 in the afternoon, sir. The temperature is currently 64 degrees Fahrenheit. High 71 degrees, low-"

"That's good enough, JARVIS, thanks."

"Anytime, sir."

Tony takes a moment to enjoy Cap and Thor's bafflement at his tower being 'alive' before going back to his wine. He'll have to explain and introduce them to JARVIS properly later on. Maybe.

"Over an hour," Cap mutters, shaking his head. "This isn't right. Something should have happened by now."

"How do we know?" asks Romanov as she stares blankly at the carpet. "For all we know, this is just another one of Loki's games."

"Doesn't seem like his MO," says Barton. "From what I recall he was a little more ostentatious than that."

His shudders are not missed, least of all by Romanov. The hand she keeps on his knee could easily be mistaken for friendly, or even just detachedly comforting, a tiny gesture of goodwill for a comrade in need. Tony knows better than that. He's done too much research into the lives of the 'Avengers' not to. The mystery of Romanov's bout with 'mono' five years ago was of no great concern to Tony until his continued hacking into SHIELD's database turned up a series of encrypted (and supposedly deleted) emails exchanged between Romanov and Coulson during her 'quarantine.' He stopped looking there, and he never told them what he knew. If they asked, he'd be happy test out JARVIS's upgraded GPS and tracking system to pinpoint Junior's exact location for them to go and visit, but he doubts it'll ever come up, and that is probably best.

"Yeah, but don't forget, he's supposed to be a trickster," Bruce points out. "We've been fooled by him before."

"He's got a point there," says Tony, removing himself from his thoughts to get back to the topic at hand. "For all we know, he's watching us right now. Through the walls or something."

Only Cap and Bruce start looking over their shoulders, which is a disappointment. He'd been hoping to freak out everyone with that.

Thor comes away from the window, stopping first at the bar to grab the wine bottle. The big lug doesn't even bother with a glass. He brings it to the couch and takes the seat next to Tony. The couch strains beneath him, but stays strong for now. Tony wonders if it's as rude to ask an Asgardian his weight as it is an earth woman. While he kicks that around, Thor stares at the bottle, never drinking from it.

Two identical ringtones have Barton and Romanov fishing through their pockets. Romanov is faster.

"This is Agent Romanov," she says into the tiny phone. "Mm-hm… we're all here… no, nothing yet… no, sir… yes, sir… thank you, sir."

She hangs up.

"Loki hasn't been spotted anywhere," she announces. Barton leans back and closes his eyes. "They've spent the last hour and a half scouring every camera feed in this continent. There's nothing."

"He must be hiding," says Cap.

"Or he's screwing around in Europe again. They're still checking on that," says Romanov, no less frustrated than Cap is, if more subtle about it. "So far, the only criminal activity we've picked up on is a grocery store robbery that went down twenty blocks from here."

Tony gulps down his wine. "Maybe Rockstar needed some eggs and milk."

Barton opens his eyes to glare at him.

"So basically, we all have to stay on guard until Loki tries something," says Bruce.

"We didn't need Fury to tell us that," grumbles Barton.

"Someone didn't drink his coffee this morning," Tony says, and it's even more the wrong thing to say than he thought it would be.

"You know, Stark," Barton says, stalking over to him. He smashes his hands on the bar top. "I'd like to see you get your mind fucked with like that, to lose all sense of who you are, to have to watch yourself attack and kill people you work with, and then go and make jokes about it. I'd pay to see that."

"Forgive me for trying to lighten the mood a little," Tony shoots back. "And I'll thank you not to rub your dirty hands all over my bar. This thing cost more money than you'll make in fifty years."

"You have no idea what I make," says Clint, as he swipes out his hands and 'accidentally' knocks over an uncorked bottle of red wine. The liquid gushes out onto the bar top.

Tony clicks his tongue. "You are truly the pinnacle of self-control and maturity. That stain had better come out."

"Send me a bill."

Barton starts to walk away, but Tony's not done talking yet.

"I'm taking this more seriously than you will ever know," he shouts. "Coulson was my friend too, and I sure as hell don't want to hand the world over to his killer. And if we're going to prevent that, we're going to be a lot better off if we're not worn out and pissed off."

"Well if you had half a brain that wasn't drugged out and alcohol addled-"

"Hey!" Cap points a finger at them, becoming that middle school teacher who breaks up the playground fights at recess and ruins everyone else's good time. "Stop it. Both of you. I don't want to hear another word from either of you, especially you, Stark."

"You sure about that? I've been told I'm a hell of a comedian when I get going," Tony says, grinning in spite of himself. "Maybe I could make Loki laugh himself into submission and beat him that way."

He thinks Thor might've reacted to that, but it's hard to tell if he did or didn't, or if he finds the thought amusing or incensing or if he's just trying decide whether to drink or not.

"Look, I'll separate you two if I have to," says Cap, but they all know he's losing steam. He doesn't want to do anything to promote more infighting, not when danger is looming over them like a dark shadow. The three of them come to a silent compromise, with Barton returning to his place at Romanov's side and Tony taking back his space across from them; they're on the same side of the room, but well out of reach. No risk for a fistfight. Problem solved.

Not that this is good enough for good ole' Captain America. Nothing's going to be good enough for him expect Loki, chained up and defeated, at his feet. Tony can relate.

"We have to stay on target," Cap says. "Any minute now, something could happen. We know what Loki's capable of, some of us better than others," he casts meaningful glances at Thor and Barton. "Right now, he could be anywhere, anywhere at all, and we'd have no way of knowing."

"He's right." Thor's deep, throaty growl catches them all off-guard; none more than Tony, who had begun to assume that Thor was either dead or catatonic. He stood, addressing them with all the power and presence Cap sorely lacked. "What you have seen already is a mere taste Loki's true power. There is no telling what kind of horrors he plans to unleash upon us at this very moment."

Loki sinks deeper into the bed, magically stretched out to accommodate an extra occupant. The covers are down to his stomach, but up over Jane's head as she tries and fails to fall sleep. She eventually gives up and lies on her back, her hair a sweaty, knotted mess that tickles his arms.

"Want to get some dinner?" she asks.

He shrugs. "Maybe later."

A long pause follows. The clock is ticking. The room is cooling. Jane is playing with a hangnail on her left index finger.

"Want to go again?" she asks.

He shrugs. "I suppose so."

"Try and think, Agent Romanov. The day you interrogated Loki, how was his demeanor? Did he seem nervous at all? Unsure?"

Romanov's fingers curl together, her plump lips puckering. Though she doesn't answer at first, Tony doesn't dare believe she'd shy before Cap's questioning.

"He seemed… very in control," she says. "Very calm and collected. He spoke to me like he was equal to, if not more than, me. Even when he was threatening me, I didn't detect a hint of regret. He was completely assured of what he was doing."

Thor looks downright miserable hearing that, and it's not hard to feel bad for him. Granted, Tony's never had a brother (and he's pretty glad about that now), but if it had been Rhodey out there destroying things and killing people, he'd feel the same way for sure. To show his sympathy, Tony offers him a shot of vodka. It's stronger and a thousand times more satisfying than the wine. Thor refuses.

"There is nothing you can think of that he said or did that could explain this?" Cap asks Romanov.

She lowers her eyes. "I've gone over in my head every minute of our encounter, but there's nothing. I don't know what could have caused him to fall back like this."

"Yeah, because he hasn't," says Barton, who has just gone through his third glass of wine and is grabbing for a straight beer. "Just look around you. Isn't it obvious what's happening here? We're just sitting around, getting drunk, and arguing about nothing. Meanwhile, he's waiting for us to be so out of it, that whenever he does decide to show up, we won't to be able to fight him. He's probably laughing at us right now, wherever he is."

On a park bench in Brooklyn, Jane munches on an egg salad sandwich cooked to lukewarm perfection. It's better than cafeteria food, and it gets her some fresh air, so she can't complain.

Loki, in the black suit jacket he seems to favor above all else, has a bright orange wrapper in his hand and chocolate residue caked on the side of his mouth. Jane finds herself staring at it more intently than a candy stain warrants. Loki reaches into his pocket for a second package, meeting her eye as he's about to open it.

"You'll get fat if you eat too many of those," she says.

They stare at each other.

Loki lowers the candy bar.

Suddenly, he starts to laugh.

After a while, Jane laughs with him.

Together, they scare off everyone else in the park with their hysterics. Parents usher small children away and a homeless man picks up his newspaper blanket and goes to sleep on a different bench. They laugh until they can't anymore, and then they share the Reese's.

Tony half-listens to Romanov question Bruce on the mechanics of the device Loki would need to power the tesseract. She tried it with him at first, but Tony kept answering all her questions with other questions until she gave up and turned to Bruce. He seems much less than confident talking to Romanov, stammering his answers and rarely meeting her eye. Tony hopes the poor boy hasn't developed a crush. No way that could end well.

His phone vibrates. Back in Black fills the room with its awesome, yet not exactly appropriate, opening riff. Tony blocks out all the staring with the smiling face of Pepper on the screen. He smiles back at it.

"If you'll excuse me, gentlemen and lady, I have to take this."

He leaves the room without hearing a complaint, which is odd. He'd expected at least Cap to try enforcing some BS rule about staying with the group because strength in numbers and blah blah blah boy scout stuff.

He goes to the next room over, the less well furnished and bar free secondary lounge that Tony still considers a work in progress, and will continue to until Pepper agrees to paint the walls hot rod red and install that life sized gold plated Ironman statue a fan so graciously made for him. Grabbing an easy chair that overlooks the city, Tony picks up the call.

"Pepper!" he says cheerfully. "Hey there, babe! How's it going? Business treating you well?"

"Tony, is everything alright?"

Tony moves the phone away and sighs.

Ah, Pepper. As big a worrywart as ever.

"What, are you kidding?" he asks. "I'm great. Better than great. I've got a big sleepover going on here at the tower. Sorry you can't be here for it."

"A sleepover?"

"Oh yeah, we're having pillow fights and painting each other's toenails and playing truth or dare. Romanov's a dirty liar, by the way, because she keeps picking truth, but you know-"

"Tony, please no jokes right now. I want to know what's happening."

Tony rolls his eyes. Nobody appreciates his sense of humor, not even Pepper. Is there no one left in this world that he can trust?

"Everything's fine, Pep," he says, with complete sincerity. "I mean, nothing's happened. Nothing beyond Fury needing a new helicarrier and…"

He trails of, though his mouth hangs open. What comes out is air too light to reach Pepper's ears, and she is stuck listening to dead air.

"And what? What happened?"

But Tony can't tell her. Coulson was always a better friend to Pepper than he was to him (though how that happened, he'll never know), and she doesn't handle losing friends well. She'd had a dog for the first few years she was working for him. She'd loved that old mutt with all her heart, and the day he ran into the street and got hit by a truck was the first time Tony ever saw the infallible Pepper Potts cry. And boy, had she cried.

If he was going to tell her, it would have to be in person, so that he could hold her in his arms while she grieved, remind her that he was still here and that he would never leave her alone when she needed him. That was something he couldn't do over the phone. It's always been easier for him to show things like this rather than say them.

"What happened is… what happened," he finishes dully, like that's ever going to appease her. "What I mean is, I'm happy to hear from you. I could use a little distraction right now. I bet you could too. That's why you called, isn't it?"

"Mostly, I just wanted to make sure you weren't dead."

"Ah, I see. You wanted to know if the house and my money were all yours yet."

"And the beach house in Maui."

"Right, the beach house in Maui," Tony agrees. "Except I think Hogan might already have a bid on that one. You'll have to take it up with him."

"Well, if you died, I'd just marry him. So either way, it would belong to me."

"Poootts," Tony whines in that childish way that he knows she secretly loves. "That makes me think you want me dead. Haven't I been good to you?"

"When we're having one hundred percent of a moment, you are."

"Really?" Tony asks, sitting up. "Because I think if we turn the lights down low and do a little steamy chat, we could get all the way up to eighty percent."

She laughs. "Steamy chat? Really? Did you just make that up?"

"Well, it sounds classier than phone sex," he says. "And you're a classy lady, aren't you?"

There's a pause. Something like a pillow presses into the phone, so that all sounds on her end are muffled. He hears shuffling, and Pepper calling to someone that she'll just be a few minutes. Then there is movement, and a door clicks shut.

"I guess if you have the time…" she says.

"I always do," he answers.

"And you're alone…"

"Completely."

"And there's nothing dangerous happening…"

"So far, so good."

She hums, and for the next hour, they put her 'classiness' and Tony's 'steamy chat' to the test. It's the best sixty minutes he's had in two days.

Why did he ever let Fury talk him into this Avenger Initiative crap?

No wait, better question: why did Thor's whackjob of a brother have to choose earth of all places to throw a temper tantrum? Weren't there, like, seven other worlds on that 'Iggy' tree of theirs? Why couldn't he have picked one of those?

He could be inducting Pepper into the mile high club right now. This sucks.

At the end of the hour, Pepper's chauffeur has arrived to take her to her meeting. It's with a heavy heart that Tony lets her go, promising to call her in the morning once she's had breakfast. All quips aside, he has no idea if he'll be alive to make that call. There's a good chance Barton is right about what Loki is doing, and that everything will go to hell a day later than they thought it would. If it's true, the last thing Tony wants is to wake up to Loki's stupid face hovering over him, but if that's what is to be, there's not a whole lot he can do about it. He could have JARVIS put the tower into safe mode; bar all the windows and doors and crap. A fat load of help it'll be against the tesseract.

His new colleagues are sitting around the bar when he returns. Barton's head is resting on the bar top and he's snoring. Natasha nurses a beer and wraps her hand around his. Cap and Thor are as sober as they'll ever be, while Bruce stares longingly at the rows of liquor, like he'd give anything to have just one drink of it.

"Okay," Tony says, clapping his hands together. "It's gonna get dark soon, so if you guys want to shack up here for the night, the guest bedrooms are right down the hall. Pick whichever ones you like, just don't try to steal the bath towels, because if you do, we will catch you."

He expects Romanov to carry Barton out, and is a bit disappointed when Cap offers to do it himself. With them gone, it's not long before Bruce mumbles a good night and goes to find his own room. Thor hasn't moved from one spot since Tony last saw him. Sleep seems like a foreign concept to him right now, so Tony leaves him be, with an open invitation to whatever he wants out of the kitchen.

It turns out Tony is less able to get any sleep than he thought he would be. One minute under the covers, and he's throwing them off, thinking he should go and check the system one more time for potential breaches. Then maybe he could check his email and delete all that spam JARVIS was talking about. Then he could call Pepper for a phone sex booty call, or an all-night Chinese place to deliver him some dim sum. After that, he could tinker with the mark seven a little more and think about installing those new cannons he'd been drawing up prints for. It should only take him twelve or thirteen hours to build them.

Tony gets out of bed and runs a hand over his face. He's in dire need of a shave. He leaves the room a mess of sheets and blankets thrown all around. He'll have to give the maids a little extra this month, assuming there is still a room to clean tomorrow.

He thinks the lounge is empty at first, counts on it, in a sense. Lately, he's found it easier for him to drink his sorrows away when no one is watching. It reminds him too much of his birthday party, and what a pathetic disaster it had been. Forget about Rhodey and Pepper, he's going to kick himself in the ass for that boneheaded move for the rest of his life.

He's halfway to the bar when he realizes that shadow on the wall is not from an enormous lamp fixture like he thought. Thor makes for an imposing silhouette against the brilliant New York backdrop. He looks down at the city and its people. They'll still be wandering around like that at three in the morning, so if Thor is waiting up for them, he's going to be up all night.

Tony hesitates, then goes and pours himself something that will give him just the slightest of buzzes. He'd need about ten of them to really be satisfied.

"Bit of a night owl, aren't you?"

Thor says nothing. That hammer juts out from his belt. It actually looks kind of fake from so far away. Must be the shape of it.

Tony taps the rim of his glass, and then abandons it half full on the counter. He's not that thirsty anymore.

"Hey, seriously, you should at least sit down," he says.

"You needn't worry about me, Tony Stark," says Thor. "I have weathered worse than this."

Tony raises an eyebrow. "Worse than getting no sleep or worse than… you know, the brother thing…"

Thor turns his head. All traces of rage and the proud warrior guy spirit that Tony has come to associate with him are gone. In their place is somberness, an emotion much more characteristic of Bruce. Thor might actually pull it off better than he does, believe it or not.

"Tell me, my friend," he says heavily, "have you a brother?"

Tony blinks. "Ah- no. No, I don't. I'm an only child."

Thor nods, but Tony gets feeling that he's somehow made it worse for him. It'd be kind of silly if he had, Thor's not the only guy in the world who has a bad egg in his family.

Maybe not this bad, but…

"It feels unreal to me," Thor says, though Tony can honestly say he's not sure it's him being addressed. "When Father told me the truth of Loki's origins, I was horrified. Not because I thought Loki repulsive, but because I couldn't imagine how he must have felt, learning the truth after so many years of not knowing. I could almost understand all that he'd done in his anger, wrong as it was."

Tony gets the feeling Thor is being intentionally vague. He wants to ask what's so horrifying about being adopted that it could drive Loki to this, mainly because he has a hard time believing someone like that wasn't just crazy from the start.

"We thought Loki dead," Thor goes on. "I was devastated. I never had the chance to tell him how much I loved him, and how sorry I was for having ever made him think I didn't."

Thor's feet start to move. He walks away from the window without a destination, like he just can't stay still anymore.

"We were always close as children. We fought together, played together, won countless battles… all we had to do was work as one, and we could not be beat."

'And it'll never be that way again,' Tony thinks.

He's starting to think he should have stayed in bed, or gone to work on those cannons like he wanted. He's no good at this, this 'shoulder-to-lean-on-I'm-there-for-you' type thing. That's more Pepper's thing, and he can do it for her, yeah, but that's different. He knows Pepper. He loves her more than anything else in the world. He'd give up being Ironman for her if it came to it. Last week, Thor had been nothing to him but some made up character from a dead religion. Now he was a living, breathing individual tracking dirt all over his carpets and wrecking his couch with all that armor.

And he really needs a hug right now.

Or a drink.

Most likely, a drink.

"Look, uh…" Tony rakes his fingers through his hair, feeling stupid standing so far away from Thor when talking like this. "I know that it's not the same, and that you've got the whole immortality thing going on, which means you'll probably forget us a hundred years from now when we're all gray and dying, but you know, we're a team right now, I guess. So…"

Soft footfalls alert to them that they are no longer alone. Tony turns, and while he isn't surprised to see Bruce there in his same old borrowed clothes, looking only a little less lost than when they first met, he doesn't expect everyone else to file in after him, least of all a lethargic Barton holding an icepack to his head.

"Hungover already, Birdbrain?" Tony asks with a grin.

Barton's answering rude gesture does little to faze him. Together with Romanov, he takes up an entire couch, pulling his legs up over the arm rest. His head falls into Romanov's lap as she absently plays with his hair. They're not even trying to hide it anymore, are they?

"So what's got you all up?" Tony asks.

Cap frowns. "You know what."

Tony shrugs. "Still had to ask."

"Well, what are you doing out of bed, Stark?" asks Romanov, who's not even looking at him as she speaks.

Silence would be answer enough, so Tony leaves it at that and heads for the tiny white mini-fridge on the far left of the bar's underside- the only one that stores non-alcoholic drinks. He pulls out six water bottles, five of which he puts out in a row. They can take it or leave it.

Only Thor leaves it, and it's occurring to Tony that he hasn't seen the big guy so much as eat today, let alone drink anything. This whole thing with Loki really is getting to him, as if Tony needed another hint.

"If anyone's up for Chinese, I might order later on," he says to no one in particular, just feeling like he should. "Until then, who's up for a movie?"

On cue, JARVIS lowers the jumbo computer screen that covers the entire eastern wall over the windows. Tented curtains take care of the rest, dimming down the glaring streetlights and leaving the lounge in an earthy glow. He'll have to thank Pepper for suggesting the 'homey' look over the 'discotech' thing he was going for. It really works for them tonight.

"Tony, is this really the time?" asks Bruce.

"No time like the present, buddy," Tony says, clapping his shoulder. "Not to sound like a buzzkill, but there's a good chance we're going to die tomorrow. Best to have a little fun while we can. So how about… Independence Day? It's relevant and it has that whole 'America saves the day' theme for Cap to enjoy."

Tony winks at the man, who says nothing in return and seems to be trying to work out how a movie about America's freedom could have anything to do with fighting aliens.

He hears no objections, and Bruce eventually throws his hands up and takes a seat. That's about as good as he's going to get from these guys (party poopers…), so he calls for JARVIS to get everything up and running and to select the movie from his library.

"You guys mind if I check my email first?"

A smattering of mutters tells him no, they don't.

Using a virtual keypad, Tony clicks onto his inbox. First, he notes the time: five minutes to, and far too late for any sane individual to be up (so naturally, he's always up at this time of night). Reading up and down the line of useless junk mail, with a few notes from Pepper and Rhodey mixed in, he goes back to the most recent email. He reads and re-reads the sender's name, eyebrows knitting together.

"Mali? Who the heck is Mali?"

"What's the problem, Stark?" Barton shouts at him.

"Nothing, Angel," Tony responds innocently. "Just some junk mail that slipped through the cracks." He moves past the name, which seems to lack a concrete email address behind it, and read the subject line. "'Number 72.' Huh… that's kinda weird."

"Maybe you shouldn't open it, Tony," says Bruce. "It could be dangerous."

Tony purses his lips, considering it long enough for JARVIS to finish the standard security scan along with all the more extensive ones. Not that this says much about Bruce's persuasive abilities, since all of this takes JARVIS about thirty seconds to complete, but hey, Tony might have charged on ahead and opened it first Bruce hadn't said anything.

"Sir, I have found no trace of a virus, spyware, or a hacking device of any kind attached to this email. The return address is untraceable, but the mail itself is nothing more than plain text."

That's good enough for Tony. The day he can no longer trust his own A.I. is the day he throws all his money out the window and goes to live as a hermit by the sea. He clicks on the link, opening up a page and a half of text, all assembled together in neat, grammatically correct paragraphs, that he imagines would be in fancy, Victorian style font if handwritten. The letter opens with 'To the Avengers.'

Tony reads the email in full, his eyes widening and his stomach falling little by little with every line he reads. He's not alone. Everyone has dropped what they are doing to read it, to take in the impossible contents and feel the weight of what it implies baring down on them.

"What the fuck is this?" Barton gasps. His hangover is completely forgotten.

"Stark, who sent this email?" Romanov demands. "Tell me!"

She's sweating, and might be the worst of it. Natasha Romanov as he knows her is not supposed to be afraid.

He shakes his head. Words have failed him for the first time in thirty years. He can't even look at Cap or Thor, the latter of whom has fallen to his knees and let out a sound that could have come from a wounded animal, waiting to die.

The air constricts, stopping his heart. It's as if 'Mali' is in the room with them, speaking to them in an ethereal, haunting voice that turns the world upside down beneath their feet, distorts everything they know about what they are facing. The clock on the wall strikes the hour, heartless beats drilling into heads that ache so terribly and-

Oh, wait. That wasn't Manhattan. That was the last Stark Industries board meeting Tony attended before handing the reins over to Pepper (he keeps forgetting to ask her what happened at the next one).

"Mali? Who the heck is Mali?"

"What's the problem, Stark?" Barton shouts at him.

"Nothing, Angel," Tony responds innocently. "Just some junk mail that slipped through the cracks." He moves past the name, which seems to lack a concrete email address attached to it, and read the subject line. "'Number 73.' Huh… that's kinda weird."

A/N: Chapter twelve of Lokiday is already underway. Look for it soon, and have a good night, everybody! :)