THE END OF ALL THINGS

It was just an arrow the man needed to calm down. “I'm good for the damages Stark.” Kate said with her trademark smirk, it was Hawkeye thing, there was a reason she had the name though the exact ones you would have She just wished he had kept his mouth shut though, the glare she gave him could have killed, it was the same look she gave Clint when he wanted her to do something stupid for her, like being the get away driver in a robbery. Yeah no. To hell with that. “Oh boo hoo you had a bad day encase you haven't noticed we all have. We're all trapped in this city with eight point three million cut off with the universe literally colliding in on yourself...but it's all okay and none of that matters because you had a bad day. ” That came out a lot more angry than she expected but she was completely and utterly furious with him right now.

How was this happening. The world was falling apart and Kate was trying to cling to what little pieces they had left to try and save this place and even those were falling apart. In all honesty she was too tired for this, she looked exhausted and all of it was showing on her face, the way she carried herself, the fact that she was throwing what almost was a massive tantrum. “Don't you dare touch those computers, I will put you down if I have to right now this tower coupled to Bishop Publishing is the only thing holding this city together! Cap and I did not spend all night doing this for you to ruin it!” That was the thing, she was ruining all their hard work. All the things they had done to try and keep this place from descending into something out of the Walking Dead.

“All the telephone lines are down, Cap and I managed to get this place onto the grid so it can handle and route the 911 calls so people can still contact emergency services but it's only just holding together.We had to take most of the tower systems off line to accommodate the call flow. The city is in chaos Stark and the vast majority of the Avengers are still missing so don't you dare touch them!” She meant it. Absolutely. She might not have picked up her bow but she could reach it and shoot him faster than he gave her credit for. That was the thing with Tony he'd never really taken the Young Avengers seriously. They were little mascots. Cap on the other hand knew exactly what they were capable of...which was why he was nervous of them. Billy was one of the most powerful beings in existence, you did not piss about with that.

Then he dealt a deciding blow.

I don't know you

Kate almost recoiled from him, she dragged her hands down her face, sighed and then sniffled. This was the worst thing that could have happened right now. A Tony Stark that wasn't their Iron Man? As much as her and Tony had never got on he was needed, they needed their Tony here because he could help fix this. He could help get the city back up and running...instead they had this. “I know its hard....and I know it must be fucking terrifying to be thrown in to another world...and we all have people we are scared for...my team is missing, Clint is missing and the last thing I know was someone had a gun to his head....but right now there is a city of people screaming for help...and we have to put them first, we have to do the right thing.” It definitely sounded like tears. “And Avengers Tower is the only thing keeping this place going.”

“Well I did it. Cap made the coffee.” Yeah that's right Captain America made coffee for the kid with the brain and she was damn proud of that. Kate would always be proud of being an Avenger. It was her life blood. She didn't know anything else any more. She was young yes, she had no where near enough training and no powers but being an Avenger was the single greatest thing that had ever happened to her. Everyone should get to try it. “Cap might be old but he isn't stupid...he knows what needs done he just...can't do it which you know....he has other talents...like punching things. He's really good at punching things.” Not everyone could be a genius could they?

Something felt off though, it just...his demeanour, everything was slightly off. More because Tony would never have cared if she was going to cry, he would have just sent her home telling her she wasn't Avengers material...and it was so unlike her but this situation was stressful for everyone involved. He almost crumpled in on himself...this wasn't the man that she knew at all. He seemed unstable which was everything they didn't need right now. They needed every Avenger they could get their hands on at their best because the longer they spent trying to get the basic stuff sorted was less time they had to concentrate on the actual problem at hand. Being distracted and put on damage control efforts was exactly what whoever did this actually wanted and Kate knew it. How to get around it.

“Tony?” Her voice was full off concern now as he sat curled up on the floor and Kate moved a little closer, not close enough that she felt as if she was encroaching on his space and she sat down. There was nothing worse than freaking out and having someone towering over you. She held up her hands, almost a universal sign that she wasn't going to smack him in the face. “Look...I'm sorry I flipped out....but I'm tired...and beyond stressed out trying to sort this omnishambles out.” Omnishambles was really the only word she could find to describe it.

Then he did the one thing she had begged him not to...the quiet mumbles she couldn't quite make out but all the lights went out and Kate felt her breath hitch in her chest, there was real fear that shot through her. About what would happen...what would this do to the city? Cap and Kate had scrambled to get this set up in the hope that no one was dying from a heart attack as someone panicked to try and call 911. Every second counted. Every. Single. Second.

The gasp of surprise was audible... “Tony?” Her voice portrayed just how exactly scared she was. It sounded worse in the silence. The background noise of the tower was gone, the subtle hum of computers and air con was gone. Dead silence. The Tower dead in the water and the two of them sat in darkness. Everything was falling apart. This tower was about as close to home as she could get at the moment. Being an Avenger was her home, this was her family and it was gone. Clint was gone. The Young Avengers were gone....Tony and Cap were meant to be the leaders and here was Tony a wreck from another world.

What was she meant to be doing right now? Kate might have lead the Young Avengers but right now this was bigger than anything she had dealt with and she was in over her head. She was never going to admit that though.

“What have you done?” Her voice shook a little...she wasn't sure she was going to like the answer.

There was real fear in her chest, she could feel her self shaking a little. What was going to happen. If they lost all of this then people were going to die. She could just imagine someone trying to ring from help and not getting though, the guy with a heart attack who had no way of getting help. It was fine. It didn't look fine. Nothing was fine right now. Kate sat there listening to him, trying to decide if he had broke everything of if he could be trusted. There was nothing left. That sounded dramatic but it was true. Her team was gone, the Young Avengers nowhere to be found and she had tried over and over again to get ahold of them. Cassie was six feet under so she was out the picture...Nate had lost his mine, ran away into the time stream and became a mass murderer, Vision was broken in pieces and Kate still kept him, had him packed away in a box like a thing even though he was never a thing he was he and locked away because it was too cruel to have him fixed up to tell him his love was dead and his creator an evil bastard. Then Eli....the one that ran away when it got hard. Downed his shield and threw away his costume because it was too hard for him to watch the omnishambles they had been in.

That didn't leave many of them left. She'd been around to Billys house over and over again. Teddy wasn't there, neither was Billy....there was no one. Then she'd found Loki. Sure it was little Loki but she didn't know what he had gone off to, didn't know if she could trust him or not. That left her. Left her alone in this Tower with Cap. That was all that was left of her home dimension. Now here was another Tony, another one to dismiss her and try to act like she wasn't decent enough to be an Avenger, or that she was some kid in over her head. Sure that might have been true but she was so far in it right now she had no idea what the hell else she could do.

Then there was Clint. Missing. She could only assume that Madam Masque had got to him before she had...that there was something very wrong....that he was in trouble and danger. It broke her heart. She wondered if he was still alive. If he was okay. If he had been hurt. Thoughts that kept her up even though she was beyond exhausted. He was the closest thing she had to a family and the prospect of loosing it all was beyond her comprehension really but she knew how that fear felt in her stomach. It didn't sit well at all.

Then there was smug Tony, which was the one she was more familiar with, “You are a giant troll do you know that?” She sounded calmer now, ran a hand through her hair before sitting back and closing her eyes. Covering her face with her hands. Then he did something...really..really weird...he complemented her. Kate sat up and looked at him confused for a moment. “Sorry what did you just say?”

There was a roll of her eyes as he kept talking. “Sure that's what Cap and I do we go out for ice cream and play best friends. Really? All I want is pizza and a nap. Like one of those nine hour naps that normal people take at night. I've forgotten the name of it.” The thing that they did. Sleep. That was it. That was the word. “My names Kate....Kate Bishop.” She wondered if it rang a bell, if her parents in his world had the company? She used to remember sitting in her father office in the tower next door looking out over on to Avengers Tower and watching Iron Man flying around. It had been the coolest thing ever. “Also known as Hawkeye. Hawkeye the second....Clint..Clint's the first Hawkeye but you know...and anyway I'm the cooler Hawkeye. I have better fashion sense, banter and without a doubt more brains than that doofus.”

I don’t want to dream anymore. Maybe it’s not my weekend but it’s gonna be my year!

Of course he would pretend like nothing happened. Kate shook her head for a moment and went back to just chilling out because right now she needed it. “Yes sleep. I haven't slept in like three days.” The hour she had grabbed under the main computer table in the server room between coffee lots was not countable. Kate yawned, she blinked, her eyes watering and stinging from the exhaustion so instead she leaned back, threw her arm across her face dramatically and let her arm laze there blocking out most of the light.

Inbetween instructions she caught the questions fired at her, just because she was tired didn't mean that she wasn't paying attention, that was one of the skills you got being an Avenger you were always on, trying to relax was difficult. “Kind of. There was no one else here. I couldn't just leave all these systems running so I've been hanging around drinking your coffee.” The least he could do was share his coffee, it was a crime not to...or it should have been and even more so considering the fact that Kate loved coffee.

“I'm good...I don't need to be put up...you see the big ass tower next door that says Bishop Publishing on it, guess who owns that. Can you do the math? I thought you were meant to be good at math Stark? I used to sit in my dads office when I was a kid and watch Iron Man and Captain America fight the bad guys in the sky...” She guessed there was no Bishop in his world. Maybe her family were normal. Maybe she had gone to a normal school? Maybe she had...Maybe she hadn't been attacked in the park that night? There was another Kate in another world that got a chance to date boys properly and wasn't screwed up and got to go to prom and all of those normal things. What did normal kids do anyway?

“I've got my own apartment...I just....I don't know it's like....this is Avengers Tower...where else do you go when there's trouble.” Kate was so used to calling it Avengers tower, it always had been to her, since the mansion was destroyed this was their HQ... “I mean we had the avengers mansion but that got...that got blown up...the memorial garden with it...” Really she was just babbling, it was the tiredness that did it. “We had statues and...and resting places for the Avengers that had died in Action but...most of it was just blown into smitherines.” She smiled, it was sad though as she sat up and looked at Tony. “I mean it's emergency protocol all the Avengers will be trying to get here...”

“...my trust fund isn't that big. I used it to pay for the Young Avengers...kinda my responsibility I was in charge and you'd be surprised how much running a team costs.” It wasn't like Tony had the money in her universe, his company was going bankrupt. “It's not like we had back up the Avengers were gone...the city was in chaos all anyone was doing was arguing about who's fault it was that Wanda lost her marbes.” Well...that was the abridged version of what had happened. Kate thought it best not to bring up the war yet or the whole invasion she didn't want to make him freak out and curl up and cry again.

He was poking, Kate knew it. Tony used to do it back in her universe but never with so much cruelty to it. She moved her arm, opened one eyes to look at him and tried not to roll both of them . “Someone had to be here, you weren't. What if one of the team showed up or worse someone on the other side showed up? Who would be here to protect it?” Kate felt like adding him not him because so far all she had really seen was an unstable ass hole who still reached for the bottle. Somethings never changed. She could have made a snide comment about it but she decided against it, she wasn't going to sit and mock someones problem that was just horrible and Kate had spent too much of her life help her mothers charity help people with substance abuse problems to know that it wasn't his fault. Wasn't anyones fault that they had an addiction really.

Kate wasn't going to give him a reaction, he was just being a dick, which was no shock. He'd always been one. That was why she shot him and he had been lucky she'd hit his suit and not his arc reactor. At least she had been kind dealing with him, it was those little mercies that Kate took comfort in.

Actually she thought she was dealing with him rather well...until he dropped a bombshell. She paused for a moment. Didn't move. She sat up, looked at him for a moment before the true weight of his words sank into her. Kate was stunned...it was so obvious that the statement had shocked her right down to the core of her soul. Yes she hadn't been very close to him but he was her father, and she remembered when she was fourteen she had died her hair pink and it had been a disaster. She'd cut her hair herself and the bleach wrecked her hair and he had screamed at her. He said that she had let him down, fucked around. He had been so mad for so long. Sure he had his problems and normally midlife crises involved motorbikes and her fathers had involved hacking off grey hair lamely and suspicious expeditions and relationships with people far younger than himself.

They had made so many broken plans and promises and he thought that Fathers day was just another way of selling hallmark greeting cards. Yet he was her father. Kate did love him. He had raised her....and they had all been happy until her mother died. She remembered travelling around europe, sitting on his office floor with toys as her father hung up her drawings on his walls. He wasn't capable of that.

But sometimes it was the person that you would take a bullet for who was the one behind the trigger.

“No....no he wouldn't do that...it was Madam Masque he's....no.” She shook her head at him, pulled herself away the confusion and fear written across her features. “You're wrong....He's my dad he wouldn't do that.”

Right now she did not want to be here. There were a million other places she would rather be. Anywhere but here. This was too much. She couldn't take it. Her head was trying to plan an escape route, she could picture the tower in her head and already she'd worked out what the fastest way out of here would be and from Tony's attitude so far he wouldn't stop her leaving. It wasn't a victory to run from your problems but right now that was the only plan that she had.

Not so long ago she had seen pictures from space of New York City at night, she could make out the tower, she thought that within that tower was the rest of her life. A family that she never really had been handed to her on a plate, sure she had friends in the hospitals and friends on the news collecting trophies for the fights they fought in the shadow of the moon. Kate had been to Mars, she had been to other worlds, she had watched stars falls and stars rise. Just when it felt like everything was starting to be okay it fell right through her hand. As if someone had fucked up a magic trick and tried to pull the table cloth out and taken everything with it. Everything.

Her entire world felt like it was closing in on her. Who would she have gone to help with this kinda thing? Bucky. Because Bucky was good at getting in and getting out again. He was good at getting information and not being seen and he would have helped her, he would have complained about it and tried to talk her out of it but in the end he would have given in...because deep down he actually cared about the Young Avengers he would have done anything for them. He was gone.

Then she would have taken that evidence to Clint for help fixing what ever mess had been created. He was gone. Then she would have turned to Tony because he had an army of lawyers and he would have helped her work out a plan to segregate as much capital off the company into her name to ensure some financial security before the shit hit the fan...and he could help her save the Foundation. Gone. No way this man was going to help her.

There was this strange feeling of panic as she stood up and moved closer to the screen...as her eyes gaed over the screen. Her face was one of someone who's entire world was shattering and regardless of which way she went she was going to get cut on the glass. Most of what he was saying was just white noise, a breath hitched in her chest....Kate felt like she was suffocating, like the shock along was going to kill her. “I..I need...I've got to go...” Kate took a step back, she almost fell backwards and tripped before she turned and she was headed straight for the nearest door.

That was the thing, Kate always had options. She knew where the nearest door was, she knew how to get away. She slept with a bag of clothes and her passport beside her bed so she could leave. Where was she going to run to though, this city was disconnected form the rest of the world, those who got too near to the barrier got hurt...there was no options and sure she could get out of the room and away from him but she would never get far enough away from this because the truth was Clint was hurt and it was her fault. This had to be her fault. Kate couldn't do this anymore.

She made it out the door before the feeling of not being able to breath stopped her, hands against the wall she steadied herself, turned and then let herself slide down it. Kate prayed Tony had stayed his ever non giving a shit self and just let her go. Her hands were shaking as she buried her face in them. Katherine Elizabeth Bishop had not lost control like this in almost seven years. Not since....no she wasn't going there right now. She was better than this. She had to be. All the mental screaming she was doing in the silence of the hallway didn't help. For a moment she was convinced this is what dying felt like.