Fight to the Surface (Sea Prince Trilogy #2)

Chapter Three

Thor sat in the room with a group of tense Avengers. The last they'd seen of the god was when he'd stormed out of the meeting room, not long before this whole disaster happened.

"Where've you been, Thor?" Tony asked.

The Norse god hesitated with his response. This was a conversation he wanted to avoid, but no longer could.

"Loki is on Midgard." Thor said quietly. He had yet to tell them how or why, but figured those questions would be among their replies.

"What!? Why!? How!? That bastard!" They were all things that became voice aloud.

"Please do not hate him for being here," Thor fidgeted, "for I brought him here."

There was stunned silence.

"You what?" Clint finally shattered it. His voice was level and if Thor had to guess, beyond pissed.

Thor knew there would be a time when he had to face his actions and accept what he had done. There was no point running from the facts for they would always be there until finally, something changed. But that something might never be confirmed. "I broke Loki out of Asgard and brought him to Midgard to defend Perseus and his kind."

"Thor, you broke him out!?" Steve exclaimed. Thor nodded slowly.

"Wait a minute, what does Loki have to do with the prince?" When the group of Avengers had awoken Prince Perseus was gone, along with their assailants. They'd been left with the dead body of that boy, Shay.

"To understand, you would have to know Percy's past." Thor said. He was about to continue when Tony butted in.

"That's good and all, but you can tell us this later. So long as Loki's plan isn't sudden world domination again we can kick his butt back to Asgard later. Do you know where Perseus is? Can we see him?" The guilt had been weighing heavily on his mind.

The girl, she'd approached Perseus, his teammate, a comrade whom in his eyes was too young to die.

But she hadn't just walked up to him.

She'd gone with a knife.

She stabbed him.

The knife had to be laced with something, for no other reason could Percy have reacted in such pain. Tony hadn't even been aiming for her neck, just something far less vital, enough to capture her.

Perseus' reaction had been the bigger part of Tony's guilt. The two were clearly very close, enough to send Perseus into a rage. Wherever he'd disappeared to, he most likely wasn't stable enough to be left alone. But he wasn't at the cabin, Tony would know- he'd checked.

"What did you do, Tony? Because clearly unlike you, the rest of us were unconscious and missed everything." Natasha asked. There was regret and shame in her voice. They were supposed to be the defenders. They were supposed to protect. It was their job.

"I shot someone with my repulser. A girl. I don't know who she was but- Nat, she stabbed him!" Tony began rambling, trying to explain what he'd done and that he wasn't the bad guy. It wasn't intentional. He wasn't the one at fault here.

But it was still murder.

They say their are five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Tony was in denial.