Hey, so this little fic was inspired by Kelly Clarkson's song People Like Us, from its music video. It didn't turn out exactly how I imagined it, but I still like it. :) I hope you guys will, too!

I do not own The Avengers or People Like Us.

Grey

He wasn't sure when, exactly, it all went grey. There wasn't even black or white - just different shades of grey. Everybody was grey; the entire world was grey. And nobody could bring him back to the rainbow. He snorted at that. Over the rainbow, like in The Wizard of Oz. Didn't Dorothy start out in a world of grey? Yeah. She did. And she found her color only to go back to grey. He would never do that. Never.

Really, he thought it began with the first loss. Surprisingly, it was Bruce, taken down by Loki when the trickster froze him in a large block of ice. He wasn't able to Hulk out, so when they finally freed Banner he was dead.

It was a hard loss, their first, but he had the others. They were able to push on, trying to win for Bruce. But how, he had wondered later, could they win if they were gone?

Clint had been next, stealing in front of Natasha at the last second to take a bullet for the Black Widow. Everyone had just... frozen, staring at the dying archer who had laid on the concrete street, bleeding from a wound on his shoulder. Clint had died in his arms as he tried to stop the bleeding, but the medics were too late.

That was probably when light color became a tinted grey color. The loss of their archer had hit everybody hard, and he would find himself yelling for Clint to back up Natasha only to realize with a jolt that he wasn't there.

The next one was like a kick in the face, because it was Natasha and he couldn't help but wonder if Clint hadn't taken her bullet would he still be here? Natasha must have guessed what he was thinking, because she had managed a 'sorry' before passing, an alien sword stuck through her abdomen.

That had caused the world to lose a lot of color, and he only saw some when he was feeling happy - though how he managed that he didn't even know.

Thor was the next one to go, taken out when Doctor Doom got ahold of the Enchantress. He had disappeared in a blast of fire, only leaving ashes behind. He'd let out a choked laugh then, remembering how the Norse Vikings would burn their dead in a pyre.

At that point the color was almost gone, only glistening on his last living teammate. And even that didn't last.

Steve had died five years after Bruce did, and when he was gone, drowned by Doom, the only surroundings Tony could see were grey. All of his color had gone. He kept on fighting, of course, doing his best to defeat anybody who came around trying to take over the world.

He didn't find his color until a few months had passed, and Tony died at the hands of the Red skull. Of course, he was sad, upset that none of the Avengers were left to defend the world, but at the same time he was home.

He had found his color in green, purple, red, silver, and blue. And he was never going back to grey.

I hope you all enjoyed this, and please don't hesitate to review!