Steel Meets Iron

Chapter 24

That was why he went home and searched her room. He told no one his hunch but he expected someone would follow his trail eventually. It hurt to go into her room, it smelled like her and it remained him exactly how Raven had left it. Toys were out. Paper piled in the trash can. Eraser dust and pencil shavings could be found everywhere. It pinched but he swallowed the pain and thought. He thought hard. If I were a kid keeping a secret where would I hide it? And if I was smart where would I put it?

"Tony?" Pepper came in. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm missing something Pep," he madly mumbled. "Something isn't adding up. Something isn't clicking."

"Tony," Bruce came in followed by the other Avengers. "What isn't clicking?"

Tony felt relief that everyone had followed him sans their fighting apparel, they still had some faith in him and he felt gratitude for it although he said nothing about it. If they believed in him then maybe just maybe this wouldn't end as badly as his dreams predicted. He hadn't lost his edge and he could fix this.

"Raven has a temper, a nasty one" he admitted. "She'll kick and scream when she's upset. She has a survival instinct. Loki couldn't have just picked her up."

"She would have fought him?" Thor asked carefully. He knew that he was on thin ice being Loki's brother.

Tony saw their faces, they all were trying to envision little skinny Raven trying to fight Loki. Little Raven with a newly transplanted heart wrangling wits the god of mischief and lies. Outsized and outmatched.

"I don't doubt it for a second. She doesn't care how big you are, you mess with her she'll level the playing field." His gut knotted. Horrible blurred premonitions flickered. "She'll go down fighting."

Natasha folded her arms, "Perhaps he sneaked in and incapacitated her."

"But he would have to still deal with her," he argued. "And that would make her more desperate! She can smell danger but..." His eyes widened.

"What?" Asked Steve.

"He tricked her," Tony realized. "We have never told her anything about Loki. Sure, she knows we fought aliens and saved Manhattan but she has no idea who was behind it." He became enraged. "She has no idea who he is! And he just waltzes in and turns up his charm, like Peter Pan from Rock of Ages, and convince her that he knows us well enough that she could trust him! Son of a bitch!" He spat. "I don't even like Fury and she knows that she can trust him. Remotely anyways." He tugged at his hair. "He had to have convinced her to go with him! She's easier to handle if she likes you!"

"Are you sure?" Clint ventured. "Maybe he did what he did to me?"

He shook his head, "Why?" He explained with a flutter in his voice. "She'd be mindless and has no skill or knowledge to compromise S.H.I.E.L.D." He circled. "No. There's something I'm missing, and it's in here. I won't know until I find it."

"So we're going to search her room for what exactly?" Bruce tightly asked. The theories had put him on edge.

"Something that she shouldn't have," he explained going through her drawings. "A clue that Loki was here."

The Avengers searched the small room, even Pepper who had moved to the closet but stopped.

"Wait. Wait. I got it," she moved to the night table. "She hates it when you go in here." She opened the cupboard and pulled out the a folder and a metal box.

Tony opened the box and emptied it on the bed, a piece of blue china, a shot glass, a lighter and a tin mint box. Nothing but the trail was hot.

He opened the folder and papers spilled out. She never hid drawings before. He fanned out the papers and already a bad sign came up. He lifted a picture and cringed. Raven in a yellow dress with a skinny man with wild long black hair in a suit with tiny blue eyes.