Clint was busy on a mission that would probably take over a week, Natasha was swamped with paperwork that Steve was helping her with. Bruce was in the laboratory with hulk threatening to creep up his neck. Thor was on his yearly disappearance to Asgard. That left Tony to take down the threat Fury didn’t want to take care of himself.

“So you’re saying they’re sly?” He couldn’t help but laugh, amused. “I’ve dealt with many people, Fury. I can handle a game of push and pull.” Tony replied to Fury’s commission on finding you, a notorious presence.

The more Tony looked into the matter, the more he found out your elusiveness was an understatement. Every action of yours was intricately calculated, like you were five steps ahead of what SHEILD could grasp at. Even Tony, with several flagged files scattered across his desk, couldn’t deduce anything for sure on the first five days of investigation.

What Tony could deduce was they were always too late. Always too late. And you had no patterns to go by…until now.

He took a sip of his steaming coffee one morning, too tired to acknowledge the slight burn on the tip of his tongue. “What the hell am I even doing?” He wiped a hand over his face and opened another file. SHEILD had broken into a place you had stayed at to lie low, turns out you hadn’t slept in there for three months but Tony had been thorough. He had JARVIS enhance every image provided by SHEILD. “Gotcha.” Tony spoke up after finally catching a minute detail.

Tony thought he had picked up a loose recognition of something close to an MO for you. He just might be able to find out where you are headed next. When he actually go to it, Tony really just went on a wild goose chase to scavenge for even more questions than answers. You weren’t even there to begin with. He had given up for the night and found himself at a bar. The man clearly needed a drink and maybe a Tylenol for his nagging headache. Unbeknownst to him, you sat two seats down.