Title: Capes

Author: Lucky Gun

Summary: Set during the schwarma scene. True heroes don't have to wear a cape, throw a shield, fire ray guns, or leap across buildings. They can live at a distance or enjoy ballet. They don't have to be superheroes. They can be human.

A/N: This story came to me rather suddenly after seeing the Avengers again. The special effects reminded me of 9/11, and then, Memorial Day (which is when I wrote this). This is a creative writer's thank you to all the world's heroes, whether they wear capes or fatigues. Partially inspired by the song Superman (It's Not Easy), by Five for Fighting. Here are the lyrics. Give them a read before you continue with the story.

I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
I'm just out to find
The better part of me

I'm more than a bird, I'm more than a plane
More than some pretty face beside a train
It's not easy to be me

Wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
About a home I'll never see

It may sound absurd, but don't be naive
Even Heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed, but won't you concede
Even Heroes have the right to dream
It's not easy to be me

Up, up and away, away from me
It's all right. You can all sleep sound tonight
I'm not crazy, or anything:

I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
Men weren't meant to ride
With clouds between their knees

I'm only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me

It's not easy to be me.

The schwarma was good. Too good. His belly full, Steve was falling asleep in his chair, Thor was on his third plate, Tony was practically making out with his sandwich, and Bruce was munching contentedly. They were all quiet, silent, and reflective.

In fact, it was too quiet. Abruptly, guiltily, Bruce dropped his sandwich and his eyes darted around quickly.

"Um, where are Clint and Natasha?"

Thor raised his head from his shoveling of food and his elbow grazed Steve's burned ribs as he twisted to take in the half-demolished restaurant. Hissing loudly, Steve jerked upright as Tony frowned at the two empty chairs in front of him.

"Well, they're not here," he offered blandly, and Steve frowned, catching onto the conversation.

He looked over the team and asked, "You let them go? Where?"

Thor ignored the flash of unfamiliar embarrassment that colored his cheeks and defended, "They are the sleekest and noblest of your world's forces."

Steve blinked through the grogginess in his mind and the corner of his eye twitched a bit.

"We didn't see them leave. They're pretty damn good spies," Bruce supplied softly, and Steve groaned, rubbing a hand over his face, a bit of nausea tweaking his stomach.

"Stark, can you...?"

But the genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist was already on it and they all stood gingerly while Tony spoke to the comm in his ear.

"Yeah, no problem. Jarvis, you up?" he asked, rather unnecessarily, as the group trekked over small debris towards the doors; he left a few hundred dollar bills on the table as they left.

"For you, sir, always," the dry voice returned, and Tony grinned a bit at the old joke. "Yeah, got a favor. Find Legolas and the contortionist for me, will you? They pulled a Houdini on us."

There was an inaudible hum as Jarvis processed the request and the group pushed their way out of the restaurant into the late afternoon sunlight. Tony frowned as he fingered his suit's tracking bracelets, feeling slightly uncomfortable without his suit. He silently decided no one could blame him; after all, he was walking past pile upon pile of dead aliens, and his mind ghosted over the factors that led to their death with the destruction of their mother ship.

"Sir, I'm afraid I cannot locate Agents Barton or Romanov. Many sensors are still down around the Stark Tower, street cameras are inoperable, and their communication devices are neither transmitting nor receiving any data. Global positioning satellites are also unable to pinpoint their location," Jarvis informed, the AI seeming a little put out by its inability to find the wayward operatives.

Jarvis echoed in everyone's earpiece, and Thor and Steve stood a little straighter at the news; Bruce winced, knowing the Captain's burn and the demigod's stab wound were both hurting for the motion.

But he still asked, "Should we be worried? I mean, maybe Fury recalled them."

Steve shook his head, the bit of rest apparently doing him a world of good, because he didn't seem in too much discomfort. Bruce amended his future medical evaluations of the man to include the apparent rapid regeneration of injuries. Even Thor was moving easier, and Bruce figured he must be imagining the fact that the blood was disappearing from his clothes; there was no way his armor was built to shed bloodstains.

Tony glanced at the radiation specialist and shook his head, something dancing in his gaze that couldn't be placed.

"They're the only ones out of all of us that don't have something superhuman to fall back on. Recalled or not, we need to make sure they're all right," he half-stated, half-begged Steve, and the other man nodded immediately.

"All right, then. Should we split up?" Tony asked as Steve pulled his hood up and over his head.

Thor twirled his massive hammer and prepared to fly off as Tony deployed his slightly-repaired suit from the Stark Tower with a flick of his wrist. Bruce opted to remain less green for the moment.

"Sounds like a plan. Stay in touch on the comms. We'll each take a direction. Stark, take the north. Bruce, the east. Thor, the south. I'll take the west. We'll start at the tower and spiral out. Maintain radio contact, checking in every fifteen minutes. Stark, any chance of contacting Fury yet?" he asked, and his heart sank a bit as Jarvis immediately answered a negative.

"My apologies, Captain. Communications with the helicarrier are still compromised. I will continue to monitor the frequencies for all parties and inform you of my findings, if and when I have them."

Tony couldn't resist a small grin as his suit cruised down the street, stopping nearby and hovering, the joints open and waiting.

"Jarvis is like a dog with a bone; he doesn't like losing," he said, climbing into his suit.

Bruce hopped onto the motorbike he'd originally ridden to the city (he'd been amazed to find it in one piece after the fight) and started it up as he nodded his approval of the plan. Steve rolled his shoulders and nodded back, and Iron Man tipped a small salute to both of them.

"You kids stay in touch and be back before midnight," he ordered lightly, and blasted off into the sky.

Three hours later, Steve was past worried. He was jogging through the darkening streets, frustrated and sick to his stomach; a phone call from Director Fury an hour before had confirmed what they'd all feared: the Hawk and the Spider hadn't been recalled. The rest of the team hadn't had any luck, either.

"Tony, any luck?" he asked into his communicator, nimbly jumping over a half-crushed car as he moved steadily down the vacant road. The National Guard had moved quickly to evacuate the majority of the population from the three square miles of solid devastation around the portal's opening, and he had only run into a few living souls, all of them military.

There were a few moments of silence before the other man's voice echoed perfectly over the earpiece.

"Maybe. I ran into a few troops that may have seen them. About to head that way now. It's a bit northeast of my position. You guys want to start moseying up this way?" he asked, and Steve shifted his direction without much thought.

"I will follow your cloud trail, metal man," Thor's wind-strewn voice came over the airwaves, and Bruce answered a positive immediately.

As the first slices of hope started sliding through his distant solider filters, Steve examined the emotion with some shock. He had barely known Clint beyond the man's possession by Loki, and while he'd been known to Natasha longer, he still felt as distant from her as a planet orbiting a star. So why did he care so much? How could he? How could he not?

In the course of one horribly, painfully, decisively rapid battle, the ragtag group of people had become a team. An actual, wonderfully, thrillingly cohesive team. Tony had been right – it did take them awhile to get traction – but this is what they had to show for it. They were a team. They barely knew each other, but they had fought together, defended each other, avenged friends and broken futures together. They had been one. They still were.

If only they could find the other two damned agents.

When the group surprisingly came together at the exact same time in the exact same place, they were all equally shocked. For one quick moment, Tony entertained the idea of saying some version of 'jinx', but he would have to explain it to Thor, and then to Steve, and then Bruce would probably just shake his head, and a joke that had to be explained wasn't worth the breath.

Instead, he decided to be annoying.

"We've really got to stop meeting like this," he quipped as they all fell in line next to each other, steps carrying them further northeast.

Bruce and Steve smiled a bit, and Thor immediately looked confused, which Tony just sighed at and waved his hand. "Never mind, Goldie. They ought to be this way, if those Marines were right. I asked if they'd seen a slightly hilarious but totally deadly male Katniss Everdeen run by with a horribly dangerous woman on his tail, they said yes, and here we are."

By the time the words were out of his mouth, the group had cleared around a partially destroyed school bus, its crossing arm still deployed, and their feet stopped and they ceased thinking as one.

There were Marines there, standing in a wide circle around a burnt-out intersection, their backs to the street, their bodies, and their guns, facing out. They stood straight and quiet, something dangerous and mournful sharing equal space in their eyes. None of them twitched when the bedraggled team shuffled around the bus, and Tony distantly realized that they had probably been warned of their approach by the other troops they'd encountered.

But what really caught their attention and held it, what really shut them up, hitched their breath, and stopped their hearts, was the scene in the middle of the intersection.

Visible in the dim dusk light, there were their missing teammates, pillars of life in a sea of sixty or so lifeless children.

Natasha knelt nearby, her watchful gaze tracking over the street, apparently guarding the situation. And then there was Clint. They all watched as he limped his way over to a second destroyed bus and gingerly, carefully, gently pulled another child from the smoking wreckage. He staggered to his feet from his kneeling position, something that could have been agony crossing his face as he straightened.

Then the Black Widow was there, not offering to take the burden, as though she knew it was his alone, but instead giving him a gentle nudge towards equilibrium before he managed to move forward again. He reached where he had laid out the rest of the victims, all lined up on a clean set of parachutes, apparently procured from the Marines, and set the small, twisted body down. He slipped when his knees hit the ground, just barely catching himself on his elbows, the unrecognizable child still cradled in his arms. He was still for a moment, his harsh breathing carrying over the stunningly silent street, and he finally laid the body down, calloused fingers on assassin's hands placing the child's palms over the unbeating heart within.

Something that could have been a prayer echoed almost soundlessly and he ducked his head, his own breath stilling for a moment. Then he twisted and stood, collapsing to his knees twice before he gave up and crawled over the busted concrete, jagged metal, and broken glass back to the bus. Natasha watched him the whole way, a background presence in his mind. He slipped into the wreckage again, reappearing with another body moments later, and the long, painful trial continued.

Thor blinked and was about to start forward before three hands belonging to three separate men stopped him. He cast accusing glares at his friends, his team, and Tony shook his head gently.

"This isn't for us, buddy. This is for him alone. Penance, of a sort," he said softly, and Steve nodded tightly, not trusting his voice for a moment. Bruce said nothing; he knew enough to guilt. But Thor bit the inside of his cheek, unconvinced, as he looked back over the street, the frail and broken bodies reminding him of his archer friend.

Clint placed a third body, the same prayer slipping from his lips, and he didn't even try to stand this time. He just dragged himself over the ground towards the bus, a trail of red following him, gasps and groans tearing through his throat. He made it halfway before he collapsed, something that was almost a scream highlighting his pain, his guilt, his agony, his tortured memories. The Marines twitched but staying facing forward.

And the Avengers moved as one.

When the group reached Clint, Natasha was already there. She had rolled him over and clutched him to her, his back against her chest, one hand holding his and the other running gently through his hair. She was murmuring softly to him, her words becoming clear as they got closer.

"You did good, Clint. You did enough. You can stop, it's okay. Just rest, Hawkeye," she whispered, and Steve was surprised to see unshed tears in her eyes and very visible tear tracks in the grime down Clint's face.

But he weakly shook his head, struggling uselessly to get away from her, his eyes darting around rapidly, glossy, and Bruce recognized all the signs of blood loss, shock, and some sharp manifestations of PTSD. Tony and Steve both grimaced slightly as they were painfully reminded of their own war memories.

"Not enough, Tasha. Not enough. Can't ever be enough. Please, don't," he begged, the sunken shadows around his eyes even more vivid against his pale and clammy skin. But his partner just shifted her grip and pressed her cheek against his sweat-slicked hair, mindless of the grunge and blood that was coating both of them.

"It is, Clint. Stop looking for guilt. It's nowhere even you can see," she breathed in his ear, one hand coming up to cover his still-darting eyes. He made a low keening sound, so much like that of an injured hawk, and the first of her tears fell. She looked up at the team assembled around her, any anger at the intrusion into Clint's personal breakdown vanishing at what she saw in their eyes.

Concern, worry, understanding.

No pity.

She gave the group an open, desperate look, her own trust in them obvious in that simple gesture, and they straightened immediately. They glanced at each other, the communication unspoken, and slipped into their roles easily. They had realized almost immediately that they were in front of a school complex, surrounded by the melted husks of half a dozen school buses that had been in the process of loading kids when the portal had opened. Clint had cleared three of the buses in his silent, self-damning march for forgiveness. It was up to his team to finish.

Tony and Steve moved to one of the buses, Tony immediately moving to prop up half of the wreck while Steve maneuvered inside, reappearing steadily with the children, placing them on the clean white parachutes as Clint had done.

Bruce knelt at each child as Steve laid them down and performed the same simple ceremony that Clint had; he straightened their legs, crossed their arms over their chests, smoothed down any hair that wasn't burnt or gored off, and covered any nudity as best he could.

And Natasha just held Clint, rocking him side to side, one hand still covering his eyes, her own gaze taking in the scene with quiet sorrow. He spoke under his breath incessantly, pleading and cursing and rambling in his disorientation. She held him tighter when he struggled weakly, his efforts reopening wounds that had barely begun to close, and whispered reassurances to him, mindless, wordless reassurances.

Briefly, she wondered if the Hawk would ever fly again.

There were good days and bad days.

On bad days, he didn't speak, didn't sleep, didn't eat, and kept his bow on him at all times. He would alternate between staring at himself in any reflective surface, blue eyes searching despairingly for bluer eyes, and avoiding any reminder he existed at all. He was a ghost on bad days.

There were worse days, too. Those days, he'd find the highest nest he could and scream incessantly for hours, his voice eventually giving way to hoarse gasps. He'd show up at random times with inexplicable wounds on his arms, and the others would look away while Natasha silently cleaned and stitched him up.

The worst day, the bottom of the pit, they all realized that he couldn't get through it alone. They caught him at the top of the Stark Tower in the middle of a thunderstorm, toes over the edge, bow drawn and arrow ready to fly into the wind to return to him, his chest, his heart. They'd talked him into giving up the bow only to watch as he stepped off the edge with his arms open and his face skyward, the rain doing nothing to disguise his tears. Natasha had gone after him first, catching his hand just as it disappeared from view. He looked up at her, rain in his eyes, her hair wild around her face, and she shook her head. He frowned, wondering why, and her words were rough as they fought past the lump in her throat.

"You die, I die. Come back to me, Clint."

And he'd accepted her words, her faith, and climbed back up. At the roof, he'd passed out, slept a solid thirty six hours in her arms, and awoke as a fledge, wings just ready for flight, and started a slow circling ascent.

On the good days, they sparred, trained, and continued to develop the Avengers Initiative and protect the world.

On better days, they laughed, pranked each other and their teammates, and continued to erase the red from each others' ledgers.

Every once in awhile, there would be a reminder of that terrible time. He would shut down if there was a school bus in sight. Certain shades of blue made him uncomfortable, while one shade in particular made him physically ill. His fingers trembled once while firing a shot from the back of a quinjet, the first time he'd missed a target for almost two decades. He avoided basements and subways with an exceptional degree of fervent desire for a reason no one could understand.

But the bad days grew to be memories, and the good days became the norm over the course of time. Hawkeye came back from where Loki had taken him, and he never missed another shot.

Almost seven months to the day after the portal had opened, Tony found himself watching Clint and Natasha in the middle of a fight, their backs to each other, their moves flawless, and he frowned inside his suit.

"I was wrong, guys," he said, his voice carrying to the earpieces of only a select group of the team. Steve, a very green Bruce, and Thor gave him questioning glances in between Hydra's attacks.

"Clint and Natasha. I said before that they didn't have anything superhuman to fall back on."

He glanced at them again, smiling in appreciation as an arrow made a bullseye of an enemy tank's weakness. Beside him, a bad guy fell to the ground, three bullets in his skull. He shrugged a bit and switched the comm to include the whole team.

"Hey, Artemis, Cirque du Soleil – you guys are officially superheroes."

There was a slight smirk on Natasha's face, and Clint wore a matching one as he said lightly, "We don't have capes, Stark."

The Iron Man shook his head and responded, "Superheroes don't always wear capes."

There you go! Had to throw this together today. Thanks to all the men and women of the country that keep us all safe: armed forces, fire fighters, police – you are ALL heroes! God bless and keep safe! :)