Love's New Hope

What Can We Do?

Avengers Tower
Steve yawned as he poured himself a cup of coffee. He'd spent another late night over at Buck and Tasha's apartment. He didn't know why, but he always slept better knowing that his two best friends were in the same place as him.

"Morning," Bruce Banner greeted Steve cheerfully.

"Bruce," Steve gave him a quick nod.

"Late night with a girlfriend?" Bruce teased, knowing full well  that Steve would never do that.

"Nah, spent the night playing cards with a couple buddies." Which was true, though Natasha had been the clear winner despite the fact that Bucky was very obviously cheating.

"Gotcha." Bruce said, turning to the pancakes that he was currently making.

"Your girlfriend around here somewhere?" After Bruce had come back from Sakaar, he had ended up getting together with the Valkyrie from Asgard, Tessa.

Bruce grinned. "I think she's in the training room right now. She says that it's fascinating that 'such a primitive tribe would be able to create such realistic effects'." They both chuckled. Suddenly a roar emitted from the direction of Tony's room (though the Avengers each had their own floor they often preferred to all sleep on the same floor as it kept the nightmares away better).

"WHERE IS SHE?!" Tony screamed as he ran out of his room.

"Who?" Steve asked, concerned. Thor poked his head out of his door and Loki, who was being kept here on probation to make sure that his change of heart was permanent, walked out of the bathroom, drying his hair. Clint, who was here for a couple of days, fell off the top of the refrigerator, where he'd been sleeping in the hopes of scaring someone. Wanda and Vision walked out of the room that had been designated as theirs after their recent marriage (though Loki protested that it was like marrying a microwave, but even he was smart enough to not express this in front of Wanda, Tony, or Vision).

"What's going on?" Wanda asked, gently running a hand through her hair.

"WHERE IS SHE?!" Tony repeated, ignoring the questions. "Where is Pepper?!"

"Pepper?" Loki asked, frowning. Out of everyone, Loki undoubtedly like Pepper the best after Thor. As he said she was "nice, determined, and smelled really nice".

"Yes Pepper!" Tony cried, turning on Loki.

"Stark, calm down for a moment." Thor told him, subtly putting himself between Tony and Loki, just in case Tony started throwing punches. "Tell us what's going on, slowly and calmly."

Tony took a deep breath. "Last night when Pep and I went to bed, everything was normal. But this morning when I woke up, Pepper was gone and the only thing I found was this note."

Steve took the note from Tony's hand and read it aloud.
"Stark, I hope this finds you in terrible spirits..." Steve raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Keep reading!" Wanda snapped.

"Yeah, ok, umm... Stark, I hope this finds you in terrible spirits. The only reason I write this is to taunt you with the fact that you will never see Miss Potts again. Have a horrible day.
-JM."

"Well!" Loki said, clearly offended. "That sounded like it was written by a two year old! And JM? Really? Who does this guy think he is? Jim Moriarty?" Loki has recently gotten hooked on the BBC Sherlock series, frequently commenting on the remarkable likeness between Benedict Cumberbatch and Doctor Strange.

Steve frowned. "That's just it. They want to distract us with the terrible writing and the initials to distract us from the real culprit."

"Who is?" Tony demanded, annoyed that Loki had made the JM connection before himself.

"HYDRA." Steve told them, handing the note around. "It's got a faint watermark on the top right corner. It's hard to see, but it's there."

"Looks more like spilled coffee to me." Bruce remarked, but Loki shook his head.

"No, it's definitely a watermark." Loki told them. "The shape might be faint, but the placement of the mark along with the fact of the matter that it looks way too much like an angry octopus skull thing makes it fairly certain that it is HYDRA."

They all gave him strange looks except for Thor, who looked immensely proud of his brother for being useful.

"So what do we do?" Clint asked, pouring himself a dark cup of coffee.

"Do what we would do for any mission." Steve said quietly. "Recons, find the base, exploit weaknesses and get Pepper back."

"But by the time we do that she could be dead!" Tony protested.

Arguments broke out among them, discussing the pros and cons of everything (Steve even heard Clint protest about the price of cheese; Clint really needed more sleep before discussing anything), but Steve noticed that Loki had his eyes closed, frowning deeply and leaning against the wall.

"Loki?" Steve asked, breaking through the conversations. "What's going on?"

Loki didn't respond for a few moments, ten slowly opened his eyes and smiled. "Pepper is fine." He told them.

"How can you be sure?" Tony asked, getting up in Loki's face.

"Because I asked her." Loki said simply.

"How?" Tony repeated.

Loki rolled his eyes and tapped his own forehead. "Telepathy. Simple really once you know the trick and memorize a few simple spells."

"So you can talk to Pepper?" Clint asked slowly, still half asleep despite the coffee.

"Yes I can." Loki said, not a bit sarcastically, which caused more proud looks from Thor.

"Then we can make sure that she's fine while we go about rescuing her the right way." Steve told Tony. Tony opened his mouth to protest but Steve cut him off. "Tony, we need to do this the right way. Not the quick way. Do you know why? Because if we rush this, we run the risk that something will happen to Pepper. We'll do this quickly, but efficiently. Got it?"

Tony nodded. "I'm just worried."

"I know." Steve said, clapping a comforting hand on his friend's shoulder.

"But we're going to need some help." Clint said slowly.

"I'll call Rhodes." Tony said immediately.

"Sam will be on board." Steve added.

"Yeah, but I'm thinking we might need a little more help. Like maybe the world's two greatest assassins?" Clint prompted.

Everyone knew immediately who he was talking about. Though no one knew yet about Bucky and Natasha's marriage, there were no better assassins in the world.

"Tony?" Steve asked, looking at his friend carefully. "Your girlfriend, your call."

Tony took a deep breath and met Steve's gaze determinedly. "Call Barnes. We'll need all the help we can get."

Steve grinned and pulled out his phone. "Buck? How do you feel about a job?"