A night passed, as nights tend to do.
Then a day followed, and another night.
And another. And another. And another.
Twelve times over you counted another day and night where you heard nothing from Loki.
Worry and guilt made you sick. You didn't eat, hardly slept and barely spoke. Dark circles appeared under your eyes. This, obviously, did not get past any of the team. Especially Tony.
A week into this new regime of no self-care, he sat you down and talked to you.
"Kid, listen to me, I know I'm not one to talk, but you can't go on like this. I won't watch you do this to yourself."
"Then don't watch." you said, a flicker of a smile appearing on your face.
Tony sighed and put a hand on your arm.
"He's gonna be alright kid. They both will."
You set your jaw and nodded with more conviction than you felt.
You would know if something was wrong. You would know if something was wrong. You would know...
The twelfth day dawned slowly. That night hadn't been a good one; what little sleep you had managed to get had been disrupted by nightmares so horrible that you'd given up trying to go to sleep all together at around two o' clock in the morning.
It was a surprisingly nice morning for November, a bright sunrise giving way to a crisp, pale blue sky. You started your morning wrapped in a blanket on the roof, watching New York drag itself to a start as the sun came up. Crystals of ice glistened in the weak morning sunlight, gradually melting into tiny puddles as it rose further and further into the sky. It was so very quiet.
You found it hard not to feel at peace, despite the constant worry which had inhabited your entire being for the last twelve days. Closing your eyes, you inhaled the cool morning air and counted yourself lucky to be alive in this exact moment.
All of a sudden, the Quinjet rumbled to life on the other side of the roof, breaking you out of your trance and causing you to look up sharply. For a moment you were confused, and then you realised: there must be a mission.
You swiftly stood and teleported downstairs, where sure enough the team were hurrying around, half asleep and in various states of being geared up.
"Mission?" you asked Steve.
"...yes, but-" he faltered, casting around for Tony, you assumed. His thoughts were loud. He didn't think you should come on the mission, having been so upset about Loki and Thor leaving. He thought it might make you reckless.
"Steve. I'm okay." you told him, reaching for his arm and maintaining eye contact. You even managed a small smile. Steve's eyes searched your face for a few moments, and then he nodded, wordlessly moving past you to the roof.
The smile vanishing from your face, you teleported to your room and got geared up in about thirty seconds, grabbing the silver bracelet Tony had given you for Christmas and jamming it on your wrist as you teleported back up to the roof.
It was another eight and a half minutes before you took off. And another three before something went horribly wrong.
Tony was debriefing you about the mission when all of a sudden the Quinjet tilted dramatically to one side, throwing Tony (who had been stood in the middle of the jet while the rest of you sat) to one side. You all grabbed on to the handles behind your heads and stared at each other in confusion. There was barely time to speak, let alone work out what had happened, before a loud crunching noise emitted from one side of the jet, and then one of the engines died.
"I'm just guessing here, but that didn't sound all that great." Clint said, his voice rather higher than usual. Your stomach dropped as the jet began to lose height, fast, your knuckles whitening as you tightened your hold on the handle behind your head.
Tony was making his way to the cockpit and yelling at JARVIS, a large cut dripping blood down the side of his face.
"Sir, it appears that you are under attack. One of the engines-"
The Quinjet groaned loudly in complaint, and then all the lights went out. Your hair rose about your head and your stomach seemed to rise to your throat as you made a fast descent towards the ground.
"JARVIS?!" Tony yelled, holding on to a handle on the roof of the cockpit with one hand and punching at some buttons with the other. When this did nothing, he turned to look at the rest of you with more wide-eyed disbelief than fear.
You closed your eyes tight and projected a shield around the interior of the jet, putting every ounce of effort you possessed into the magic which was flowing out of you.
And then you prayed.
...
Opening your eyes it came to your attention that you were under attack.
You were lying among the crumpled remains of the Quinjet, the team sprawled around in varying conditions of health, some standing, some unconscious. All alive, thanks to you.
There were four men in black who you didn't recognise, and who you immediately understood to have bad intentions when you saw that two of them were trying to kidnap Nat, another one was pointing a gun at Bruce and another one was crouched over Tony's unconscious form. You struggled angrily to your feet, swaying slightly as you did so, registering only now that Bucky was shouting and trying to move from beneath a large piece of metal to help.
"I'm on it." you muttered, before tripping over your own feet. The man with the gun swung around to look at you, and you straightened up to face him. You felt a bit out of sorts.
"Stay where you are." the man said.
"Yes sir."
You could have used your magic, but the feel of your fist connecting with his nose and the satisfying crunching noise it made was so much more rewarding. The man let go of the gun and bellowed in pain, causing the other two men who were currently trying to kidnap Nat to turn and look. They shouldn't have taken their eyes off of her.
You watched as she disarmed and knocked out the two men with at least two broken ribs and a broken ankle with pride, before realising that you should not have taken your eyes off of your attacker.
The last thing you saw before he smacked you around the head and knocked you out was Bucky's horrified face.
And the gun which lay on the floor between you.
...
You were awoken again by a bucket of freezing cold water being poured over your head.
Gasping from the shock of the dramatic decrease temperature, your eyes flew open and your brain struggled to take in your surroundings. Two of the four men who had been in the Quinjet with you were stood in front of you, and to your immense surprise it looked as though one of them had been crying. He was young, maybe only a couple of years older than you.
Even more surprising was the fact that you were on a boat. You didn't feel all that brilliant from being knocked out twice within one hour, and wondered briefly if you might be hallucinating. But no, it seemed as though you really were on a boat. What was more you were tied to a chair, your hands bound behind your back tightly. Your gear was gone, you were in only the leggings and tank top you wore beneath the suit Tony had made you. You felt desperately for your bracelet; thanking Odin when you felt it still on your wrist.
The older of the two men stepped forward and looked at you coldly. His nose was bent out of shape and covered in the same blood which covered your right fist. You were shivering violently; it was a freezing cold day outside already, even without being drenched in cold water in nothing but a tank top and leggings. They'd even taken your shoes.
"You're Y/N." the man said, as though this wasn't perfectly obvious to you that that was the case. You said nothing.
"We were going to take your friend Natasha, but you'll do perfectly well instead." he told you.
"What do you want from me?" you asked, trying to sound braver than you felt. Surely the others would find you, your bracelet had a tracker in it.
"Well, nothing. That is rather the point."
They were going to kill you.
"You killed my father."
You looked up in shock. The younger of the two men, the one who looked as though he'd been crying, was glaring at you. He was practically shaking with rage, his eyes flashing dangerously.
"I- I can assure you, I didn't." you replied, frankly startled by the sheer anger this stranger was directing at you.
"Thomas' father was at the meeting in London the day you set the bomb off." the older man explained, watching you intently. You gaped at them both, beginning to feel sick from the chill which was now setting into your bones.
"I- I didn't set any bomb o-off. We- I d-didn't even know-" you tried to explain, your teeth chattering as you shook.
"How did you survive then!? How come he died and you lived?!" Thomas shouted, approaching you angrily.
"Please, I d-don't know-"
"You don't know." he repeated scornfully.
"You and your little team of superheroes have pissed a good few people off, HYDRA or not. It's always "they saved this person" and "they stopped this from happening" and never "here's all of the people that have died because of their stupidity." So we decided to take matters into our own hands, it wasn't hard to get HYDRA in on the plan after your little showdown in London."
You were barely listening at this point, unable to comprehend just how cold you had become. Would you even be able to summon your magic if you tried?
"Really, all of you deserve to die. But we thought plucking one of you from the middle and killing you would be more poignant. I wonder how Tony Stark will feel when he finds out he couldn't save you? Possibly quite similar to how Thomas here felt when he found out that his father was dead."
As he talked he walked closer and closer to you, eventually leaning over you and resting his hand on the back of the chair you were tied to. You were shaking uncontrollably, acutely aware that your vision was staring to fade.
"We'll soon find out." the man told you, smiling softly before giving the back of the chair a tiny push. The chair rocked backwards, suspended in space for a fraction of a second before you fell. You'd been unaware that you had been so near the edge of the deck.
When you hit the surface of the Hudson river, it almost felt warm.
That was when you knew that you were going to die.
Your brain grew fuzzy as you sank, shouldn't you be floating? They'd probably attached weights to the chair to make you sink.
Down.
Down.
D
o
w
n.
The river wasn't very deep, but when you hit the riverbed you may as well have been at the bottom of the ocean. You hadn't even thought to take a breath before you fell. What a stupid way to die, you thought to yourself, lying on your back tied to a chair at the bottom of a river which wasn't even that deep.
Your lungs began to spasm as you ran out of breath, and you thought of the team. Your heart contracted painfully, was it because you hadn't been able to say goodbye or because you were drowning? Probably the latter.
Whoever said drowning was peaceful had obviously never drowned before, because this was not peaceful, far from it in fact.
Aware that you only had a few seconds of thought left, you decided that you should be thinking about something far more profound.
You watched the sunlight sparkling on the surface of the water and the rays which were barely reaching down to you at the bottom of the river, and you thought of Loki.
...
Far, far away, in an entirely different realm, a tall man with long black hair collapsed to his knees as he felt his very soul ripped out of his chest.