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“Tony,” Bruce said warningly, “Tony.”
“Yup, yup,” Tony answered, staring just as hard at the floating diagrams above their heads. “I’m getting bad vibes too.”
Bruce squeezed his eyes shut and then reopened them. “It feels like two lonely and mentally unstable scientists about to create something they’ll regret because of their own hubris.”
“Bad vibes,” Tony agreed. “And we’re not lonely, we have friends.”
“Are things really so bad we need to play with fire like this?”
Tony stroked his goatee. “Nope. We’re gonna shelve it. Instead, you can look at the plans I’m working on for these repulsors that use flame—JARVIS, shelve the project.”
“What shall I call the shelved project?” JARVIS asked gently.
Tony didn’t look up from his blueprints. “Uh, I don’t know. Call it Ultron Trashed.”
“Copy that. Shelving Ultron Trashed.”
“Great. Bruce, this calls for dinner, I’m gonna order dinner. You want noodles? Noodles and flame repulsors, we’ve got our hands full.”
** Natasha
By the time they arrived in the Sokovian Alps, the scepter’s reading was already gone. Standing at the facility’s gate, Natasha idly looked around while the others muttered amongst themselves. The snow was all encompassing, drenching every available surface with indistinct white. It was freezing, and Natasha was Russian.
“The goddamn signals keep crossing,” Tony grumped, dressed like a fool in a bright red parka. He jabbed at his tablet and cursed. “We’re so close every time, and then it disappears again.”
“Maybe this is a signal to rest a minute,” Natasha tried. “Maybe it’s not meant to be found yet.”
“No!” the boys all shouted as one.
Natasha sighed.
Thor stomped his feet, looking as out of place as someone could get with his bare arms poking out of his armor. Next to him, Steve looked sunken and small, hands on his hips, brow furrowed. Besides him was Clint, bow hand clenching and unclenching down by his side where no one but Natasha would notice.
They were hurting, they were angry, they wanted blood. The scepter represented unfinished revenge, so they chased it across the globe. Madrid, Shanghai, Durban, Sokovia, Natasha had lost count of how many attempts there had been.
She would’ve complained, except the pain in Clint’s eyes eased when they were talking battle plans. And Tony slept more on the quinjet than he did back in Manhattan. And Steve was already so haunted, he didn’t need any more ghosts dragging him down.
And Natasha was a softie, apparently.
“We should just go on,” Steve said tiredly, adjusting his fingerless gloves and turning up toward the battlements. “Make sure it’s not here.”
“We could get the Hulk,” Thor offered.
Natasha shivered and the others vetoed it. They trudged up the stairs.
Bruce was back at the jet, waiting. Every fiber in Natasha’s body prayed they wouldn’t need him this time around. It’d gotten so her fight or flight reaction couldn’t always tell the difference between the shy doctor and the unstoppable Hulk. Every time she relaxed too much, she could feel steel crumpling around her and the bone in her ankle snap.
Natasha couldn’t stand an opponent she couldn’t outmaneuver or outsmart. The Hulk was both.
They’d invented a lullaby for him—a song that made him feel safe, coupled with handholding, the kind he’d never experienced in a fight. It worked alright, most of the time. It worked when Thor or Tony tried it. Natasha had nearly gotten stepped on during her turn. She wasn’t looking forward to an encore.
“Nice of them to have such welcoming steps,” Clint said, plodding behind her. “Such wide and accessible steps. Such ambush-able steps.”
“There isn’t anyone too close,” Steve said so certainly that Natasha eyed him. When he noticed, he clarified, “No heartbeats.”
“You can hear heartbeats?” Clint asked in surprise. “Ooh, can you hear mine?”
Steve didn’t even look up. “If I listen hard.”
They reached the top, complete with a view of the city and valley below. The battlements were empty, the ramparts deadly quiet. Natasha pulled a gun and stuck herself in front of Tony, who still wouldn’t use one of his suits.
Thor pushed open a door and froze. They ran over to him.
Inside was a research room of some kind, filled with monitors and cases, and every single tech and guard was strewn around the floor, each with a single knife in their throat. A large and empty display marked the end of another failed treasure hunt.
“Is that a—” Tony said, and retched.
“A Chitauri carcass,” Steve said grimly, sounding just as disgusted. Tony took one more look up above their heads and turned, pushing his way out the door again.
Thor was still staring at the dead bodies littered around. Natasha sidled up and placed her gun back in its holster. If Steve said no heartbeats, he was probably right. “Everything okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” Thor said, but he didn’t sound totally sure. “It’s…”
Natasha waited but he didn’t elaborate. “Well, boys, it’s another dead end. Let’s move out.”
The others filed out, leaving Thor still gazing at the bodies. Natasha knew what he was thinking, but he had to keep moving. People died. People died all the time, and they had to keep moving in order to save some of them. The ground would be too frozen to dig graves anyway.
“Thor?”
Thor stayed staring a beat longer and then turned away. “Never mind. It can’t be. Let’s go.”
At the door, Natasha glanced over her shoulder one last time. Something caught her eye—two glass rooms, tucked into the corner like an afterthought. Two cells. Each sported a cramped pallet and a few toys. Natasha looked at the others and bit her lip. She didn’t need to burden them further. Whoever had been in those cells was long gone.
Not for the first time, Natasha cursed the men who’d made Steve’s super serum. If only Steve had been the only ever enhanced being. Natasha stepped out into the weak sunlight, finding him immediately, his broad shoulders curved in discouragement, his head drooping slightly. Maybe not the only one, Natasha allowed briefly.
“Let’s move out,” Steve said, jerking himself from his reverie, and Clint and Tony were quick to follow.
At the top of the stairs, Thor paused and looked back another time. Something was bothering him, something he wasn’t sharing with the class. Natasha thought about talking to him, but then decided she wasn’t a hypocrite. She shook her head and followed Clint, all but catching him by the quiver strap when his boot slipped on an icy patch.
** Tony
“Mr. Stark, I have a question.”
Tony lifted his head blearily and searched for the clock on the lab wall. It read twelve noon. A little too early for ending today’s session, and it had only been thirty minutes since their lunch break. He looked around for something, anything to do.
“Juice break,” he said, and led the way out and up the stairs.
“What I’ve been wondering,” Harley murmured, following behind without a peep because he was a wonderful child who knew genius when he saw it, unlike some people, cough, Rhodey, cough. “Is why you’re still not sleeping well. You blew up all your suits, didn’t ya?”
Tony slammed the common room fridge open and yay, they’d restocked the juice box collection since the previous night.
“You even blew up the one I fixed,” Harley added under his breath. “Shouldn’t that be the end of it?”
“Kid—” Tony ripped the straw off the back and punched it through its plastic wrapper. “PTSD doesn’t work like that, and you know it.”
Harley just sipped on his own juice, eyes wide. He was fifteen now, hadn’t really done much in the growing department since Tony had first met him, was still a huge pain in the ass, so huge that Tony had hired him on minimum wage.
“If your dad just came back, it wouldn’t fix you magically, right?” Tony was an asshole, and he was talking to a fifteen-year-old about their mutual daddy issues.
Harley took the straw out of his mouth. “We’re playing dirty, Mr. Stark? Okay, so if blowing up your suits didn’t help when you were traumatized and sad about New York before, why are you still living 3000 feet beneath the alien wormhole that damaged you in the first place?”
Tony didn’t realize he’d dropped his drink until there was a cranberry-apple puddle across his shoes and he was half collapsed against the island countertop, breathing like he’d tried to climb Mount Everest with a pogo stick.
“Sorry,” Harley said belatedly. “I guess you’re still pretty traumatized and sad, huh?”
“Fuck you,” Tony gasped out, clutching on to Mount Everest as hard as he could and wondering why his heart was suddenly three sizes too big for his chest. “Man, fuck you, Harley Keener.”
Harley just sipped worriedly.
“I was getting better,” Tony said. Breathing a little less hard now. He let gravity do its thing and slumped to the kitchen floor. “I was better. I blew the suits, I blew the Mandarin, or rather Pepper did, I got the shrapnel out…I hired a moron lab assistant…it was going so well.”
“But what,” Harley said. Smart kid.
Tony let his head rest against the cabinet behind him. “I close my eyes now and—it’s all I see. I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep until I put it to rest, until I end it somehow. Rebuild the Tower. Find the scepter.”
It was maybe a lot for a fifteen-year-old. A better person would talk to a therapist, not some random kid they picked up off the street a year or two back. Tony wasn’t a better person, and Harley was all he had. Bruce was not that kind of a doctor apparently.
“So, you rebuilt the tower. And nothing’s been fixed. Why are you so sure finding the scepter’s gonna do anything?”
Tony stared into space. “I don’t know. But that’s what I do. I try to fix things. I try and try until I can.”
“You’re the mechanic,” Harley agreed.
Tony had the sneaking suspicion that he wasn’t the only mechanic, at least not anymore. Harley was here, wasn’t he? He helped clean the lab, sure, but he also worked on projects, both Tony’s and his own. There were scribbled notes he hunched over every time anyone came near, and now look at him; trying to fix the grand mess that was Tony Stark. No, Tony wasn’t the only mechanic with a death wish.
That was bad, wasn’t it? Tony hadn’t been around many children before, but he knew he was not what most people would call a good influence. And unlike Tony, who had no one else, Harley most certainly had a mother and a sister. He could go back to Buttfuck Nowhere and build potato guns. He could grow up and go to Stanford for engineering, and be very successful and mentally stable.
“And if the scepter doesn’t do anything?” Harley asked, making obnoxious slurping noises as his straw reached the end of the raspberry lemonade reservoir. “What are you gonna do then?”
“I have to keep moving,” Tony muttered. “If I don’t, it’s like something bad’s gonna happen, you know? The moment I relax, something’s gonna come for me. For Pepper.” For you.
Harley sighed, a big deep sigh much too big for a fifteen-year-old. “Do I get paid extra for being your drinking buddy?”
“We’re drinking children’s juice boxes. Also no, don’t be an idiot.”
“Worth a shot, wasn’t it?” Harley made a face. “It was what you would’ve done.”
Tony stood. “That’s the problem, kid. That’s the problem.”
** Natasha
Natasha was in the middle of a phone call when Manhattan started exploding again. Sam was on the other end of the line, tartly asking if she might pencil him in on her dance card, since it’d been nearly three weeks since she’d answered his calls, and would likely be three more before this miracle would occur again.
“Cool it, Wilson,” Natasha said, glad it wasn’t a video call so she could grin into her collar. “I might have some availability next May, and I would of course, save it for you.”
“Very funny.”
Natasha sank back on to her couch and stared out at the skyline. Rainclouds were forming over the top of the Chrysler Building, just like that time two years ago when Thor had blasted aliens to kingdom come. “What news do you have?”
“Wow, I’m doing great, thank you, it has been a while. Thanks for asking.”
“Wow,” Natasha commented offhandedly. “I can hear that sarcasm all the way from…where are you again?”
Sam made a scoffing noise. “Warsaw, thank you. I won’t lie, Natasha, I’m gettin’ awfully tired chasing this missing persons lead with no persons in sight.”
Natasha’s smile faded for good. She couldn’t say she was surprised. “I told you both. If Barnes doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be.”
“What about an unstoppable force meeting a—whatever?”
“So, what. Steve’s the unstoppable force and Barnes is the unmovable object?” Natasha snorted. “You know just as well as I how that goes, Wilson.”
Sam sounded grumpy. “Well, maybe Steve should do the hunting if he’s so unstoppable, that’s all.”
“You know if he goes, he’ll burn the world down.”
“Yeah, well maybe it’s time for that kinda thing.”
Natasha clutched her phone tighter. “You know how Steve is. We need him here. As soon as we give him permission to be selfish, he’s going to go raring off on some twisted heroic road trip. The Avengers need a leader, the world needs a face, and Barnes needs time. Steve’s place is here.”
“Does he know you’re making that decision for him?”
Natasha didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.
Sam exhaled. “Look, I’m not saying I’m done helping my friends. But I’m doing shit-all out here. Maybe he’d be able to make some more progress.”
“What, by blowing things up?” Natasha said scornfully, and that was when something at the base of the Chrysler Building became a plume of smoke and fragmented flaming metal. She stood and ran over to the window. “I’m going to have to call you back, Sam.”
The speaker system above her head crackled on and Tony’s voice filled the room. “Avengers, assemble!”
Outside, the carnage was limited to roughly three city blocks. The Avengers exchanged looks, Clint dead-eyed and uncaring, Thor bewildered, and Steve still grumpy he’d had to change out of his pajama pants. Fires burned around them, cars piled up on either side of the road. Most of the pedestrians had fled the three block radius, and the street was strangely still.
“Um, what’s going on?” Tony asked in Natasha’s ear, back a few blocks with screens set up. “Barton’s visuals are showing me no fighting, no bad guys, no nothing.”
“That’s because that’s what I’m seeing, you moron,” Clint said. “Nothing’s happening.”
Thor ran across the street and knelt at a corpse’s side. Natasha spared him one look and kept moving. “Tony, tell Bruce to stay where he is until it’s clear this is an ambush. Everyone else, let’s split up and keep looking.”
“No,” Thor said thoughtfully. “That’s what he’d want us to do.”
Natasha turned. “What who would want us to do?”
Thor looked shifty. “Whoever this might be. I say we draw him out by not looking. He’ll want a show anyway, he’ll be here any minute.”
“Does anyone else hear that metallic ringing noise?” Steve began, back a few feet, and that’s when the god of mischief blinked into existence right across the street.
“Yes,” Thor said joyfully, and charged.
Loki spread his arms wide, looking like the cat that had just murdered the canary in cold blood and wanted seconds. He’d changed his appearance since the last time they’d seen him. The gold bling and hair gel had given way for darker green and black leather, and he was wearing a yellow pin near his collar.
“Stay back,” he said, raising the scepter as Thor got close. “You’ll notice I’ve kept the damage to a minimum this time—so tedious to have the exact same spectacle twice in a row—and you can thank me later.”
“You died!” Thor bellowed, his angry words somehow at odds with the happy tears streaming into his beard. “You died in my arms and now you have the nerve to show up here and start destroying this planet again? I should kill you myself!”
Loki grinned. “You’ll have to catch me first then, brother.” He did something with the staff and flew upwards. Thor growled and spun his hammer into a blur, taking off after him.
Natasha stared at the spot they’d just been. “Tony? I don’t suppose you have a suit handy?”
“Do I look like the kind of guy who’d cross Pepper Potts?”
Natasha sighed defeat and looked at Steve. She was going to have to call Sam, there was no way around it.
** Bruce
Thor came back with Loki a few hours later. Bruce hadn’t been there when they’d gone out to survey the damage in the city. He’d been drinking tea in his lovely apartment, browsing his bookshelf for a nice distraction. Bruce was always looking for distractions.
The problem had begun the day Thor wandered into Bruce’s apartment, curled up on the couch, and never left again. Bruce could see that now, but hindsight was always tempermental, and he hadn’t known he was going to be taking on a roommate who knew more about space and physics than he’d have guessed, or whose maniac brother wasn’t dead and was going to show up and need a pillow and toothbrush.
Thor was a fine roommate. He left Bruce alone mostly, ate everything put in front of him, never complained, cleaned his boots off before coming inside, although that last hadn’t happened until Bruce yelled at him about carpet stains.
Bruce liked putting as much spice into his curries as he wanted and never hearing a peep about it. Bruce liked the sound of Thor’s feet padding around in the evening. Bruce liked seeing Mjolnir go flying past when Thor was calling it from somewhere. The hammer always took a second longer to go through doorways and windows instead of creating new ones, which Bruce appreciated.
Bruce didn’t like Loki.
“Now, Banner,” Thor said, which was never a good sign, and certainly not when a murderous brother was standing slightly to the right with his hands behind his back and eyes innocently averted upwards. “We need to talk.”
He all but shoved Bruce into the kitchen and pulled the small whiteboard off the fridge. They used it to write down grocery lists or draw funny pictures while waiting for the microwave. Thor ripped the Velcro off with his alarming strength, and bent over the counter to scribble. Bruce put some leftovers in to reheat them—they had to eat.
In his blocky thick handwriting, Thor wrote My brother has good hearing but he can’t read minds. I don’t think.
Bruce sighed. “Great,” he said dully.
“Shush,” Thor mouthed, and erased with a piece of his scarlet cloak. If you want us to go, we will, right away. I would not infringe on your hospitality anymore.
“No, I,” Bruce said, taking his glasses off to rub his eyes. Thor shushed him and handed over the marker.
Bruce bit his lip and deliberated, watching the microwave hum. Normal people didn’t have conversations next to the microwave because they feared the radiation. Bruce and Thor weren’t normal people.
And it was nice, being asked so respectfully, because on a technical note, this was Bruce’s house, and having the god of mischief over was a bit of an inconvenience. It was nice, even though Bruce already knew his answer, and he suspected Thor did too.
“As long as he’s polite,” Bruce said, and the microwave beeped.
The Avengers had a meeting not an hour later. Nobody wanted to be there, it was a recipe for disaster. Bruce, Thor, and Loki were early in the common living room, audience to the remainder of the team’s more than unique entrances. Clint Barton walked in, saw Loki, and promptly passed out. Natasha caught him, sent a glare their way, and disappeared back through the door.
Loki chuckled quietly until Thor hit him.
Bruce ignored the urge to hide behind Thor. Natasha made him nervous on a good day. On a bad, she made him feel somewhere between minorly homicidal and extremely suicidal. Ever since she’d appeared in his life three years ago, she had lied and manipulated and slit throats in front of him with a callousness that terrified Bruce.
She couldn’t hurt him, he knew—he hoped—but god help him, Bruce was so sick of being tricked and deceived.
Natasha wasn’t exactly Bruce’s most trustworthy teammate. It was fine.
Steve arrived and shot Loki a very disappointed stink eye and took a seat on the same couch. Bruce wondered idly if Steve was choosing to sit so close as a pointed fuck you to Loki. Bruce decided to stay out of it.
Tony walked through the door, caught sight of Loki and closed his eyes. “Tony,” Bruce said sharply, and like a marionette, Tony sat.
Finally, the two assassins were back, and Clint marched right up to a reading chair and said, “Can we kill him?”
“Barton,” Steve said warningly.
“I’ll bribe you with pizza,” Clint pleaded. “I’ll buy you pizza for twenty years if you let me put three arrows in his skull. Four arrows.”
“Is this a common theme?” the god of mischief asked good naturedly, seemingly uncaring about the discussion of arrows in his skull. “War council in the kitchen? Or the living room, perhaps?”
“Why, you hungry?” Steve countered with a smirk of his own. He was taking charge of this whole ill-fated social hour, the way he took charge of everything around there when nobody else had the stomach for it. Bruce felt slightly bad about that, but who wanted to listen to him?
Loki chuckled. “I’m not sure anything on this planet would truly sate me.”
“How ‘bout a big plate of revenge?”
“Now you’re talking, Captain.”
“So, what do you want?” Steve asked.
Loki lifted one shoulder. “The help of the world’s mightiest heroes. And I have something you want too. I’m prepared to make you a deal.”
“The scepter. What’s your plan?”
Loki spread his hands and started preaching like he was perched on a pulpit and they were a congregation lining up for truth. Bruce tried not to be too obvious about inching behind Thor. Had he really let the god of mischief into his home? Invited him? And here he was now, loudly discussing flushing out Hydra by letting them recover the scepter and then rushing in to murder them all.
Steve held up a hand. Behind him, Natasha looked somewhat proud, as though she’d trained him personally in the fine art of manipulation and strategy. Maybe she had.
“Wait a minute. Why are you after Hydra?”
“Isn’t their terrible mission enough for you?” Loki answered slyly.
Steve’s stare didn’t budge an inch. “No.”
“It’s not like you have a great track record yourself,” Clint spoke up, cracking his knuckles.
Loki sighed. “Such power gifted to a god should never be used for such dirty researching. Their experimentation is an abomination.”
“Oh, boo hoo,” Tony interrupted, seemingly having decided it was either vomit or offer scathing commentary.
“I want the Baron Strucker dead,” Loki said. “And anything perverse he created while you let the scepter rot in his hands. Then, it’s yours.”
Bruce spoke up before anyone else could. “Why giving it up so easy?”
Loki turned on him and he immediately wished he hadn’t made any noise. “My magic can stand on its own two feet; I don’t need more. The scepter is…a painful reminder.”
“You sure about that,” Steve asked warily.
“Unless I planned on waging war on this planet again, I don’t need it,” Loki swore. “Which I don’t plan on doing,” he added as Thor lifted his hammer threateningly. “Besides. There’s no elegance or brainpower to blowing in the front door. Much better to come in through the window. Which I don’t plan on doing either,” he said chastely, and after a brief pause, Thor stepped back.
Loki likely wasn’t telling them everything. Bruce knew it, Thor knew it, and he could only hope that Steve did too. But there was nothing else for it.
“And if you don’t uphold your end of the bargain?” Steve challenged.
Loki shrugged. “I guess you’ll kill me. You can all take it in turns.” He grinned.
Steve glanced at Natasha. She tilted her head back at him. Yes, they knew it was a terrible plan, likely to go wrong, likely to end in betrayal and pants shitting improvisation, but a plan was best when it wasn’t all laid out in stone. And it was the best lead they had. It was all they had, frankly. Bruce had been privy to Tony’s late night prowling, Clint’s panic attacks. They needed this.
“The first step is letting them pick up the scepter,” Loki said. “I can lead their operatives on a small wild falcon chase, let them have it.”
“Wild goose,” Tony muttered, unhappy about it but not piping up with anything more helpful. “Wild goose chase, Greased Lighting.”
“Thor, you’ll go with him, keep an eye on things,” Steve ordered. “After that, we track them back to their hideout and blow it sky high.”
Looking at him, Bruce could almost picture him crouched in the woods giving orders to soldiers during the war. Bruce’s spine nearly straightened without his permission, but he gave it a stern talking to. He was too old for his spine to be getting ideas.
“You don’t trust me?” Loki teased.
Tony rolled his eyes heavenward. “Pal, in this band of merry fuckups, you still take the mental illness cake.”
** Steve
It took Hydra three days to make enough noise to pop up on Tony’s radars. Steve knew, because each one of them was agonizingly painful. Steve had lived through pneumonia and scarlet fever and bullet wounds that hurt less.
Day one, he stumbled across Thor crying in the gym—Steve rushed to help him despite being extremely unexperienced in the art of comforting—only to find the tears were from happiness, and then he’d had an armful of weeping god to contend with.
“He’s alive,” Thor said, laughing and crying into Steve’s shirt. “He’s alive and he left his shoes on my bed this morning and he missed me.”
“There there,” Steve said, because hadn’t someone said that to someone else in a film sometime? He suddenly couldn’t remember a single thing his mother had comforted him with even though she’d done it more days than not.
Then he’d gone to sit in his own room for five hours and deal with the angry black thing living in his ribcage. He’s alive. And he missed me. It was either sit in silence or throw the furniture into the wall.
Why not me too? It’s not fair. Steve was, unfortunately well versed in what was fair in the world, which was exactly not a damn thing. He was rather good at gritting his teeth and moving on, so he did.
And then day two, Sam called and said he was coming home. Steve loved Sam and was glad he was coming home and knew that with Tony grounded they needed all the air support they could get, but then if Sam was coming home, then Steve should’ve been the one to go hunting but he was stuck, he was fucking stuck until they tied off the loose ends or whatever, and recovered the scepter.
It was like Italy all over again, the deadened feeling inside him as Colonel Phillips said you’re not going anywhere, young man.
When Sam used to ask what Steve wanted, what he really wanted, he hadn’t known how to answer. Now, he did. Hydra burned to the ground. Revenge.
Revenge is a poor motivator, Sam would say, and Steve couldn’t even disagree. The last time he’d been motivated by that much vengeance he’d ended up buried in the arctic.
Day three dawned with a concrete target, which was nice, since Steve was out of fingernails to chew. The jet dropped him off first, clad in all black. While his shield and stealth suit were very nice, it was better this way. Despite everyone’s misperceptions of him, Steve had no qualms about sneaking. He just wasn’t very good at it usually.
Maybe his drive helped him out though, since he made it safely through the woods of Middle-of-Nowhere-Kentucky and up to the long silver fence surrounding what was a large warehouse under renovations on paper. Steve found a good spot to climb and landed on the other side light as a cat.
Staying behind trees, Steve moved in closer and closer. In the distance, a red light pulsed.
He could make out the crackle of communications, but not what was being said. It got on his nerves covertly, like a mosquito buzzing by the ear, unnoticed until the inevitable slap. Steve shook his head to clear it as best he could.
Ahead, men with weapons stood in a ring behind yet another fence. The source of the red became visible, a young woman with her arms raised overhead, visibly shaking in the low light. The guards looked less like they were looking for intruders and more as though they were trying to keep her contained.
Alarmed, Steve ran forward. That wasn’t exactly what he’d come looking for, but he’d found it just the same. His fist made contact with the first of the guards. He was able to take out two more and jump the fence before he was spotted, and then the red light stopped abruptly. Steve looked around in time to see the young woman being roughly escorted away.
Hurriedly, he lashed out at a guard and felt, more than heard, the snap of his neck.
Kicking himself, and also three more guards, Steve slowly but surely made his way through the pile of them before finding himself face to face with a bunker door. More aptly, the door found itself face to face with him.
After making short work of the door, Steve found himself in a large open space, huge boxes of shelving that stretched up into a five story maze. Forklifts were stalled along the walls, blinking lights told of cameras every few feet. Steve didn’t wave, but he might have stuck out his tongue once or twice.
There were guards then, too many of them—they poured out of every available entrance, and then places that Steve hadn’t known were entrances.
He tried to pretend getting caught and captured was the plan.
The others were giving him six hours to try and accomplish the first part. After that, they’d rain in with guns blazing. Steve had to at least try to make sure there were no human experiments held anywhere before they blew the place up.
In the end, getting captured wasn’t the worst thing he could’ve done. The cellblock Steve was dumped in was already occupied by a quiet guy a few years younger than Steve, with sleek silver hair and similar black tac gear. He hadn’t shaved in a while, and curled up in a corner as the guards dumped Steve next door, but as the hours ticked on and the guards didn’t return, he got a lot friendlier.
“How’d they get you,” he said conversationally around what Steve guessed to be 4am. His English was heavily accented.
“I broke in,” Steve replied, leaning against the far bars. “You?”
The guy shrugged. “Oh, you know. I wasn’t minding my own business enough. They got my friend too, but I’m going to break us both out.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Steve said, closing his eyes.
“You don’t want in?” the guy almost sounded insulted. “It’s a good plan, I assure you.”
Steve cracked open an eye. “I don’t suppose your friend glow bright red at times?”
The guy stilled. Steve nodded slowly, adding more pieces to the puzzle. So, the red girl had a companion and he’d been locked away while they used her for something.
“Experiments,” he said slowly.
“This is Hydra,” his companion agreed. “Did you see my—my friend?”
Steve sighed. “Yeah. They dragged her away before I could bust her out.”
“You tried to rescue her?” the guy sounded genuinely surprised. And pleased. “Alright, big fellow, you can be a part of our escape plan. I’m Pietro.”
“I’m Steve.”
Pietro’s plan was risky, a little awful, and mostly centered around a big diversion that he hadn’t quite thought up yet. Steve was learning about Pietro—the plan was sort of a metaphor for the man behind it. Steve could hear his mother in his head, muttering about young people and their catastrophically good incompetence. Steve had always argued the opposite point, mostly because he was a young people and his mother was not and someone had to stick up for the other side anyway. It ended usually with his mother laughing and very obviously and falsely agreeing that he was right in every way.
Steve felt very old and weary, wondering if maybe his mother had been right all along. In every way, probably.
“Where are you going to find dynamite?”
“Don’t ask so loud, Steve, what kind of spy are you, anyway?”
That was when the alarms went off. Saved by the…bell.
“Great,” Pietro cursed, stumbling back against the wall of their cell and blurring slightly. There was no other word for it. One minute he was sitting there and the next he’d fuzzed out and was leaning on the wall. “Now they’re going to be on high alert, dammit.”
Steve stood too. “What’s going on, what does the alarm mean?”
“This one can mean two things,” Pietro said grimly. “Either someone’s breaking out…or someone’s breaking in.”
The six hours must have been up. Steve debated enacting his plan, which involved him bending the bars of the cell back and he and Pietro making a break for it. Maybe the alarm going off was a gift. He shot a glance down the hall and then set to work yanking a space between the bars big enough for him to slip through. It was times like this he really missed his old frame.
“Whoa,” Pietro said. “You could’ve done that this whole time?”
Once they were out, Steve led the way back where he’d come from. The hallways were mostly deserted, and he tried to orient himself and move outward. It was impossible to tell—there were no windows and the same bright lighting illuminated everything.
“I can go first,” Pietro tried, pushing alongside Steve, keeping up rather well. “I can check if corners are clear, that sort of thing.”
“You gonna tell me just what you can do?” Steve asked, not looking at him.
He heard Pietro grin. “I’d really rather show you.”
There was a flash of silver, and he was gone. Steve sighed.
A door opened halfway down the hall and about ten men poured through, holding guns and looking worried. They spotted Steve and turned all the weapons on him, backing into a defense mode. “One of them already got in,” a man cried from behind his visor. “How?”
Steve charged and then fell to the floor when the guns went off. His tac gear was armored but there was only so much you could do against a hail of bullets. Something was on him then, moving him, and he blinked and was suddenly around the corner, Pietro leaning against the wall breathing heavily. “Damn,” he said, pausing to suck in more air. “You weigh a lot, dude.”
“Thanks,” Steve said, and he meant for the other thing.
The ceiling fell in behind them. Steve had Pietro’s arm and was running before he could even wonder what was happening.
“The base is under attack,” Steve gasped out, yanking Pietro around another corner into an identical whitewashed hallway. “We’ve got to get out of here before we’re caught in the crossfire.”
Pietro frowned. “Who’s attacking?”
“Some friends of mine,” Steve said as more ceiling collapsed around them.
He was proved totally wrong when the next door they burst through opened into an observation walkway around what was clearly the heart of the operations; monitors, machines, huge blinking equipment, and in the center, a thick ugly chair. The Winter Solider was standing on the chair, shooting out machines all around him.
“Whoa,” Pietro breathed. “Who is that?”
“Bucky,” Steve called before he could catch himself. “Bucky!”
Bucky turned and saw them. His mouth twisted up into a scowl and he aimed his gun right at Steve’s face. Pietro said, “Um—”
“Jesus H. Roosevelt,” Steve groaned, throwing his weight at Pietro to get him down. Bucky’s gun went off and a guard behind them went flying back, blood spraying across the white tile wall. “Oh.” Steve sat up, hope blooming like a persistent weed in his heart. “Never mind. It’s fine, come on.”
“You want to go towards the strongest, most violent thing in here?” Pietro asked, pushing himself to his feet. “You want to go towards the biggest threat?”
Steve felt himself grinning. Steve felt deliriously alive, like static electricity was coursing through him, igniting every inch. Finally. Finally. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do.”
** Bruce
“It’s nice, isn’t it,” Thor said cheerily, locking his bracers on in the quinjet. “These games coming to a close. All of us battling together one last time.”
Bruce was pulling on his slick jacket with the manner normally saved for leaning on windows long enough to fog them; slow and absentminded, the gears of the brain disengaged. It took a few minutes for the words to slip past his cloudy not-thoughts.
“Uh, that’s kind,” he said, giving Thor a distracted smile. There was a possibility that this mission would be a code green, and he had to be prepared. Had to be ready to let go, to give in, to…expose himself, the way he’d explained to Tony almost two years ago. Exposed like a nerve, raw and volatile, and angry.
He was terrified, if he examined his psyche, so he didn’t.
“But of course you’re a fighter,” Thor said, somehow knowing just what Bruce would’ve argued. “One of the best. Just because the fight is less thrilling and often overlooked doesn’t mean the struggle is any less strenuous. Natasha!”
Bruce jumped and looked around. Natasha was adjusting those scary electric bracelets she always wore, standing wide in front of where Clint was fiddling with his arrows. “What,” she said, sounding bored.
“Would you not say our Banner here is one of our mightiest warriors?”
Natasha shot Bruce an unreadable glance. “Warrior’s one word for it.”
Thor laughed, like that answer made any sense. He clapped Bruce on the shoulder and then tugged him in. Bruce went unwillingly, stopping himself from a face full of armor by throwing out his hands in time. Those reflexes surprised him slightly; he was more used to Thor than he’d known.
“We’re going to have so much fun,” Thor confided, leaning low to rumble in Bruce’s ear. “I’m so excited. Mjolnir and I haven’t had a real good fight since—since—”
“Manhattan two days ago?”
Thor laughed again. “Why yes!”
“We’re getting ready to land,” Tony said, voice amplified over the speakers. “Cap isn’t here, so I’m in charge. Bruce and Thor stay in the quinjet until a signal. Widow and Hawkeye, you’re on infiltration with our slimy friend. When they call, Thor, that’s your cue to be a distraction, should they need one. Everyone got it?”
Natasha rolled her eyes at Thor. “Stay back, big guy. I know you’re itching for it, but if everything goes well, this will just be a quick in and out with the prize.”
Predictably, everything did not go well. Good for Thor, Bruce supposed.
He and Tony stayed in the cockpit, watching to the best of their abilities on several different screens and maps. Tony kept up a constant chatter that if Bruce ignored just right, calmed him at the edges, soothed away part of the strain.
People always seemed confused that Tony and Bruce could get along in the lab let alone outside of it, but that was the truth. Tony liked a sounding board and Bruce liked white noise. Really, they were made for each other.
At one point Natasha’s comm came online with the sounds of a scuffle. “Bit more crowded than we expected, even with Thor on the upper levels—it’s good Steve’s already clearing the place out—there’s definitely more going on here than we expected.”
Then it was quiet. Bruce closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to watch Tony’s right knee do a jig under the console. He thought about eating a burrito—salsa and guacamole and rice and warm spices—
“Bruce!” Natasha shouted, making Bruce jump so high he nearly hit his head on the roof.
“What?” he responded, shooting Tony a panicked look. Tony shrugged. “Natasha?”
No answer. Tony just shrugged at him again.
Sighing, Bruce stood and walked down the ramp. The forest floor felt gravelly beneath his sneakers, and through the darkness, Bruce could make out shouts and scuffling happening, but not much else. “Is this code green?” he tried, but there was no answer. “What do I do?” he called over his shoulder, but not really listening for Tony’s answer. There was only one thing to do.
There was only ever one thing to do.
Bruce thought of Natasha, of the way she’d told him he’d get out of a hard situation, promised on her life. He’d scorned that, furious at her for her worthless bargains. Sick of her games.
He’d been almost glad, when the Hulk took over and whatever happened with Natasha was out of his control. The thought made him feel guilty now.
Then there’d been Thor. Bruce remembered flashes—Thor around his neck, yelling, Thor flying through stacks of shipping containers. Thor’s face when Bruce had shown up in New York, a little late and a little sorry. If Natasha scared him, then Thor was the only thing that didn’t.
Thor could go flying into shipping containers and get thrown into buildings and come out of it fierce and fighting. Bruce could—Bruce could step on him, could beat him to a pulp, and Thor would only smack him back.
Then there was Steve, also strong and weathered, struggling on with his face in the wind. Unwilling leader, youth and opinion stripped from him and exchanged for his shield.
Bruce recalled blankets pressed around his shoulders, tea into his hands, his headphones with his favorite playlists packed carefully into the quinjet. The lullaby they’d figured out, the gesture of kindness and friendship extended to remind him who he was, really.
Bruce recalled watching the tesseract disappear with Thor safely, watching Loki stopped and New York salvaged and saved. Tony complaining about his PTSD like Bruce was a real doctor, blowing up his suits and getting stuck somewhere in between the metal and the man.
Bruce thought of them all, and of Natasha and Clint who were vulnerable and breakable and counting on him.
“I think I’m going in,” he said aloud, and Tony hummed far behind him, still flipping dials and screens.
That’s when the trees in front of Bruce were ripped aside and held aloft like huge swords raised in battle. Red light swathed the clearing, and in the place of the trees, Bruce caught a glimpse of a figure wreathed in crimson, hovering high above the facility, arms outstretched. As if doing its bidding, the trees rose a little higher. Bruce didn’t want to be anywhere near where they landed.
He inhaled and thought of his teammates, of the shaky foundations that lay underneath the Avengers.
And then the Hulk shifted inside him.
** Steve
Steve thought about time travel sometimes. The way it felt to be left behind, the way the traveler was left while also doing the leaving. Steve thought time travel was funny, because it was playing with immortality. In a not funny way, of course. In a way so unfunny that you could scream from it.
He’d asked Thor once. What’s it like watching centuries go by? How do you remember to care? It might have been the closest he’d come to admitting his own weakness.
Thor had thought about the answer for a long time. It’s like…finding old keepsakes and trinkets you tucked away as a child, he’d said finally. Gripping a tiny figurine and remembering everything from that moment and carrying it for a while longer until you forget again and have to go find more.
Steve had left behind all he’d ever known in exchange for more time. Steve loved his home and Steve was growing to love his new one too, and it scared him a little bit now, the million dollar question; if you could go back and change things, would you?
A while ago, the answer had been crystal clear, as clear as the mason jars his mother used on the window sill to hold flour and sugar. Now, he wasn’t so sure.
Steve had just remembered to care again. That was all.
The control room shuddered, bringing him back to the present. All around them, people screamed and dust drifted down from the ceiling in a slow mesmerizing fall. “What was that?” Steve called, ducking.
Pietro shrugged from the row of monitors he was taking cover behind. “We have to get out of here, to higher ground!”
Steve jerked his head to the exit on the far wall. Pietro bolted for it, dissolving and reappearing in the blink of an eye. Bucky was still in the middle of the room, whirling around, firing rapidly, like a dark and vengeful hurricane.
There was a loud groaning sound, so harsh in Steve’s ears that he put a hand up to see if they were bleeding. Across the room, Bucky winced and looked around. Steve followed his gaze up and up. The place where the walls met the ceiling were cracking, lines spreading outwards, wear and tear making the very stone shift.
“What the hell?” a soldier squeaked, and then made a terrible squelching noise as Bucky shot him.
“Come on, Steve!” Pietro yelled, holding the exit door open.
Steve dragged his gaze away from Bucky and the ceiling collapsed and then it was very dark indeed.
Steve had been buried before—that was old hat. What wasn’t old hat was the gripping sense of terror that engulfed him right along with the rock. I’m losing time again, again, it’s all happening again and I’m going to wake up and have to start all over again—
He tried to move. He didn’t have the shield, so all he’d managed to do to protect himself was to curl into the smallest ball possible with his arms tucked around his head. His arms were very much stuck there now. And they were going to be bruised as hell.
Steve couldn’t move, he couldn’t move. He was boxed in a coffin again, but damn if he wasn’t going to fight it. Shaking, he pushed all his strength upwards and felt the biggest piece of rock shift slightly. Come on, Rogers. What’s the point of all that muscle if you can’t even do anything with it?
He pushed harder. It felt like his brain was going to pop out through his eyes any minute, and Steve kinda didn’t want that to happen. He gasped out, about to lower the rock and give it up, when it got a little lighter. Taking advantage of whatever the hell was going on, Steve strained and wiggled and managed to maneuver his head out.
Lifting a corner of the biggest piece of rubble was a very familiar gleaming hand. Steve made a noise, some terrible bloody and wet noise, and then Pietro was on him, pulling, panting, and the rubble shifted the slightest bit more, and then Steve was free.
It hurt to stand, it hurt to lean against Pietro, it hurt a little to breathe. The armor of his tac gear had been blasted to the moon and back and done its best, but Steve’s body still felt like it had gone through a cheese grater.
“Ow,” he said intelligently, swaying.
“That’s incredible,” Pietro stammered. “You’re alive and conscious after being crushed under an entire wall. You shouldn’t—”
He broke off, staring in horror out the new skylight right next to them. Steve willed his head to turn, and caught a glimpse of more red light and the tiny pinpricks that meant heavy fire. A moment later, a figure soared past. Thor.
“Clear out,” Bucky said, not looking up from his gun. His voice was rusty but sharp. “Use the distraction while you can.”
Steve’s teammates were out there being the distraction. Steve had done next to nothing in clearing the lower levels. Pietro moved and ran up the pile of rubble and out into the clearing, leaving Steve swaying on his feet fighting a losing battle to stay upright. He tilted towards the ground but then stopped, Bucky’s hand twisted in his jacket.
“You try to follow you’ll fall flat on your face,” Bucky warned, voice free of inflection.
Steve turned and finally got a look at him. His hair was still long, but cleaner, trimmed. There was dried blood flaking across his lovely straight nose, and his wild gray eyes were dark and narrowed. He was wearing the same kind of gear that Pietro and Steve were—gone was the leather vest and the displayed metal arm.
Steve gaped at him. “Where the hell have you been?”
Bucky flinched. “Who’s askin’?”
That little Brooklyn lilt only made Steve madder. This was Bucky, he was sure of it. All those months of wondering, of worrying, until he thought he’d go insane with it. Would it still be Bucky, would Bucky still remember him? Was Bucky safe and alright? Clearly, he’d been doing just fine, and without Steve, and clearly, he’d left all his manners in an icy trench somewhere in Europe.
“Me?” Steve said, sarcastic incredulity dripping off him. “I dunno, maybe the guy who’s been chasing you all over the planet for the last year?”
“That wasn’t you.”
Steve drew in a deep breath to scold some more, and then the air all went the wrong way and he couldn’t breathe and his whole body felt beaten up and then he was bent nearly double, hacking and dry heaving, and Bucky was bent with him, still holding him up. His right hand was moving, tracing invisible patterns on Steve’s shoulder, like it remembered.
“Sorry,” Steve managed, when the shivering subsided. “I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be kicked in the stomach repeatedly.” Then Bucky’s last words hit him. “What do you mean, that wasn’t me? I was looking for months—”
“You were right in New York,” Bucky interrupted. “Your new best friend Sam doesn’t count. And he gave up too, eventually.”
Steve straightened up angrily and then tried not to vomit again. “Sam was—I couldn’t—Tony—”
“Save it,” Bucky said. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”
“No,” Steve began unsure where he was going but hopping on the train anyway. “No, Buck, damn you. I had to call Sam back because we needed air support and Iron Man isn’t flying right now. And then I was finally free to come myself, to come find you. And dammit, I did.” He couldn’t help but be a little proud about it. “Sam spent months, and the first day I go lookin’, here you are.”
“Beginner’s luck,” Bucky dismissed, but the corner of his mouth twitched. “You weren’t giving up?”
“You might not remember me much,” Steve said bravely, “But I don’t give up.”
What did you know, Steve’s legs had decided to work again. That was good. He tried to move one, to walk, and it stubbornly took a whole minute to pass the message along to his foot.
“Steve—”
“What?”
Bucky looked down and adjusted the glove he was wearing on his flesh hand. “You don’t understand what’s at play here, okay? There’s more happening—”
“Are there any more captives held down here?” Steve asked. “I was supposed to—are there any more?”
Bucky shook his head. “No. Except the girl, there’s no one.” In the dim light from the moon and the sparking bulbs on the far wall, his eyes were large and hesitant. “I’ve got to go finish this. I’ve got to go after her.” He didn’t say anymore but his meaning was loud and clear.
Steve’s legs wobbled so he sat down hard before he could fall. “Fuck you,” he said sourly, and looked away so he wouldn’t have to watch Bucky walk away again. He heard it, though.
Steve sat in the ruins and thought about time travel and the way it felt to be left behind. And the way it felt to be chased—to be wanted. He’d done all the chasing, and he was sick of being the only one. He’d chased Bucky to war, to this goddamn future Bucky had wanted so bad, and even now he was still running. Always a little too slow.
He’d like to think he could stop, just swear he was done and let it all go. He knew himself too well though, so he pushed himself on to hands and knees, and slowly but surely, stood up again.
** Natasha
During the first part of the fight, Clint had gone one way, and Natasha and Loki the other. Content to let her do most of the dirty work, the god hung back while Natasha took out hallway after hallway. It suited her fine; better the control of her own strength than an Asgardian on a killing spree.
She wasn’t sure he knew how to hit gently enough not to cause a brain hemorrhage.
“I’ll be honest, it’s nice to see you again,” Loki said, striding down the brightly lit hallway, leather robes flapping. He moved like her; purpose and power keeping him steady.
Natasha, putting a lot of energy into pumping her legs fast enough to keep up with him, only grunted.
“No, really,” Loki said. “Much nicer than that whole time I was stuck in the fishbowl, and also the part where I nearly knocked you out of the sky, and then there was the time you stood by and did nothing as I was led away in chains—”
“You mean the time they locked you up for the crimes you committed?” Natasha offered gamely before launching up to wrap her legs around another guard, twisting and knocking him to the floor, hard. She fell back into step next to Loki. “Or the time Clint did knock you out of the sky? And then you were locked up again for your crimes? I don’t know, all those times were pretty swell as far as I can remember.”
Loki chuckled darkly. “I always did find your sense of humor amusing.”
Natasha was quiet. She wasn’t very bothered to learn that they had the same sense of humor, or that they moved similarly, or even that they were alike. She was more bothered by the fact that she wasn’t bothered. And Clint. She was bothered about Clint.
That was what loyalty did to you, she figured ruefully, sneaking around another corner and up a flight of stairs. Long ago, Natasha would’ve been her own, all on her own, and beholden to nothing and no one, secretly pleased to have a ruthless and charming friend. Watching her own back and nothing more.
“It’s impressive, really,” Loki said as several men came flying around the corner and opened fire. He let Natasha step behind him for cover while he threw several knives that squelched as they found their marks. “The only female fighting alongside such heroes. I can’t help but respect you.”
“You don’t respect anyone,” Natasha dismissed, stepping over the bodies and grabbing the next two men.
Loki waited patiently for her to flip them into the wall. “No, but as much as I ever would. On Asgard, we have an elite army made up of entirely women—the Valkyrie. You’d do well amongst them, I think.”
He almost sounded excited, and when she darted a glance toward him, he was smiling off into the distance. “The Valkyrie are the most revered warriors. There’s no battle they don’t face, and when they die, they feast forever in the halls of Valhalla.”
“What are you, envious?” Natasha kicked open the next doors and tased the guard waiting for them.
“My mother was the best warrior I knew,” Loki went on. He clearly loved the sound of his own voice. “She wasn’t a Valkyrie, but she taught me everything I know.”
Natasha side eyed him and then kicked open another door. The room was full of men tapping on fancy screens and moving vials of glowing blue around.
“Aha,” Loki said, almost apologetically, and then threw five knives all at once into the nearest shelves of blue vials, sending shards of glass in every direction.
“Don’t destroy everything till I can gather a little information,” Natasha instructed, and then vaulted on to a countertop.
Loki listened, mostly, while she did her work. Within a few minutes she had every single tech trussed up and the files on the computers backed on to a small hard drive. The scepter was sitting on a stand and Loki grabbed it before Natasha could make it over.
“Ah,” he said, smiling at her. “It’s yours, as soon as the Baron Strucker is dead.”
Holding his gaze, Natasha nodded. They needed information out of Strucker, information for Steve, and for the rest of them. After that, well, Natasha wasn’t picky.
They were circling back through the facility when a huge crashing noise shook the foundations. Stumbling, Natasha covered her head instinctively, and when she straightened up, Loki followed her back the way they’d come without complaint.
“Clint?” she asked, tapping on her comm. “Status?”
“Strucker was here,” he answered immediately. “Wasn’t the cause of the blast though. We lost him and we’re heading out. Something big is coming.”
He was right. There was a huge hole in the roof, and the walls were shuddering—the structural integrity of the whole place threatened. Natasha was slightly worried the ceiling was going to start falling in.
“Let’s get to the surface,” she said under her breath, leading the way. “You might survive a knock to the head, but I sure won’t.”
Loki laughed. He was being awfully charitable. Natasha almost wanted him to double cross her or stab her in the back. At least then she’d know where they stood.
Outside, it was chaos. A girl wreathed in red light was hovering above the woods, throwing trees at Thor, who wove in between the tossed debris trying to get close enough to trade blows. Half the building was caved in and Clint was standing on the rubble, shooting arrow after arrow into the regular guards swarming him.
Natasha shot Loki a look and ran for Clint. He turned toward her and took a blow to the head, falling to his knees and losing both his comm and his hearing aid.
Reporting back to anyone listening that he was alright, Natasha fired off two shots and gave him a hand up. “We have the scepter,” she said. “Which way did Strucker go?”
He pointed and started shooting again. Natasha turned but Loki was already on her heel, waiting. “Let’s go get him,” he breathed, smiling like a shark.
Strucker was further in the woods, appearing to be directing the girl flying above him. Natasha fired twice and rolled, taking out two of the four guards posted with him. Strucker turned to run, but Loki held up the scepter threateningly.
“Witch!” Strucker yelled, and fingers of red light came swooping down from the sky to grab them. Loki went one way and Natasha the other. She shot again, hitting one of the remaining guards, but missing the last. He was on her in a heartbeat, and Natasha abandoned firearms to slam her foot into his head.
He swiped for her and fell back choking, small knife sticking out of his throat.
“Thanks,” Natasha said without looking, leaping up and diving at Strucker. She grabbed him by the collar and shook him. His eyes narrowed behind his monocle. “What did you do with the scepter?”
Strucker laughed, low and dark. “Scepter…you people are so vain, so focused on the irrelevant. I went deep than anyone ever before, I made discoveries no one else even dreamed of. And I’ve only scratched the surface.”
“The girl,” Natasha bit out, not glancing up at the glow of red even though she wanted to. “What did you do to her?”
Strucker opened his mouth and Natasha swung the used knife off the ground and slammed it outwards, catching the blade of the scepter just before it could slice open Strucker. She turned, and Loki gave her a sheepish look.
“Stopping me with one of my own knives, Widow?”
“Hold your horses,” Natasha murmured. “I want information, and I’m going to get it.”
Strucker chuckled again. “You’re all the same, you fools.” He held Natasha’s eyes and then yelled, “Now!”
Red light came arcing downward, snatching Natasha up and over, slamming her against a tree. She jerked, the color filling her vision, blocking out anything else. She saw…images flickering past, like an old movie reel.
Natasha, age nine, tying her point shoes for the first time. Natasha, age twelve, killing Katya because they’d said she had to. Natasha, on a dark rooftop, an archer dressed all in black holding out his hand.
“Do you trust me?” Clint said, solidifying across from her, face barely visible in the gloom of the airduct. Below him were the sounds of many footsteps, loud announcements, late commuters talking into their phones.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
Clint shook his head. There was dried blood crusted on his hairline, and butterfly bandages on his chin. His fingers tapped out a nervous rhythm on his knee. They’d been cooped up in the vents for a whole day already, and the signs were beginning to show.
“Do you trust me enough to let me keep watch? Do you trust me enough to turn your back?”
Natasha was only mildly surprised to find the answer so quickly. “Yes.”
“Sometimes I think I’ll never trust anyone else,” Clint said. “Myself I’m sure of. No one else.”
Natasha couldn’t begrudge him that. If you had asked her, she would’ve said the same thing too, throughout their whole relationship. She still thought sometimes of the weeks and weeks of the archer in all black with the outstretched hand, of her laughing rudely at him and him laughing with her—“Another time, then,” was his continuing reply, never deterred, always offering again. One day she’d decided to take his hand, just to see what would happen, no strings attached.
Clint Barton was persistent and he’d wormed his way past her defenses stubbornly, and so far, that was where he stayed.
“I don’t need you to be sure of me,” Natasha said. “Not yet, anyways.” Instead of disquieting her, his admonition was nearly reassuring. His darkness was somewhat of a comfort to her as she battled her own.
Now, Natasha blinked in time to see Strucker turn tail and take off across the clearing. She closed her eyes and opened them again. Fool.
“Oh, don’t do that, imbecile,” Loki said, releasing two small throwing stars. Strucker was dead before he hit the ground.
“Damn you,” Natasha ground out, cutting her losses and hopping to her feet. Her ears were tingling, and she stretched her jaw to crack it. “Well, thanks for killing our best lead. Give me the scepter.”
Bowing his head, Loki held it out. Half suspecting a trick, Natasha took it from him. It was heavier than she’d expected, all the weight angled toward the head. Loki was watching her, and only lifted his brows when she looked at him.
The red girl was still floating above the trees, and as Natasha drew closer, Thor went careening by, having been slapped to the side. “We need to contain her,” Natasha yelled. “Get Bruce—”
A huge piece of wood went flying over her and she rolled. Loki was beside her, hands over his head, but watching the girl with a dark look Natasha didn’t like. I want the Baron Strucker dead. And anything perverse he created while you let that scepter rot in his hands.
Her prayers were answered a minute later when the Hulk crashed through the clearing. Natasha had been expecting him, and swallowed as the nausea hit—better to meet the visitor than deny it. But she was distracted, and she couldn’t afford to be.
“Loki, we have the scepter and Strucker is dead,” she reminded, chasing him back towards the others. “That’s all we’re here to do.”
Loki snarled. “That thing is still loose, I say we bring it down.”
“Fine.” Natasha adjusted her shockers and then held him with her gaze. “Down. No kills, is that clear?”
He frowned but nodded jerkily. Of course, from him, that didn’t mean much.
The Hulk went flying past them, roaring angrily, taking out half the battalion of soldiers. A silver blur materialized in front of Clint and Sam, and held its arms up.
“Wanda,” it called, loud enough to be heard over the crackle of branches and wind. “Stop this now.”
The red light flickered. “Hold your fire,” Thor said over his shoulder. The Hulk roared again, and a small figure dressed in black limped out of the ruins to his side. Natasha cocked her head. Steve?
“Wanda,” called the silver blur, which was also a boy with white blond hair. “Please.”
The light went out like a switch plunging them all into darkness. Natasha turned in time to see Loki line up a shot. Next to the silver-haired boy was the source of all the chaos. A young girl, dark hair down her back and hands to her mouth. Loki held the knife ready and aimed.
Natasha grabbed him around the waist and knocked him over right as he released it. It was like running into a rhino—Natasha grunted as the fall knocked the wind out of her. Loki twisted angrily, both of them getting a glimpse of the knife going wide and then the couple was gone, evaporated in silver mist.
“You’ll pay for that,” Loki breathed, throwing her to the side and standing up.
Natasha rolled to her feet and sized him up. “You let me see you aim. You let me stop you.”
He scoffed at her and strode away.
“Good job, everyone,” Tony said in their ears. “Thor, go get the Hulk. Did anyone see Steve? Not that I’m not an excellent boss, it’s just a really tiring job and I’d hate to have to take over full time.”
“He’s right here,” Natasha said, staring as Steve limped over, covered in a healthy amount of chalky dust. His eyebrows were white.
“Hey,” Steve said, wincing like a building had fallen on him or something. “The lower levels are empty. You can blow it.”
Clint caught Natasha’s eye and sped off to lay the charges. The rest of them began the trudge back to the jet except Thor, who was indeed singing to Hulk as he moved closer. The Hulk just sighed, a loud gust that send a breeze rolling through the rubble, lifting the hair at the back of Natasha’s neck.
“Did we get it?” Tony asked, waiting at the ramp. Natasha held the scepter aloft. “Aw, yes!” Tony cried, pumping his fist in the air. “I’ll go call the nearest authorities to come get all the knocked out nazis here.”
They only had more questions than they’d had before, but they had the scepter. Finally. Natasha wasn’t sure she was imagining it or not, but on the flight back with the base a crater behind them and the scepter in the hold, Tony’s energy seemed more grounded, Clint’s tired smile more genuine. Steve was alert and responsive, and Thor jubilant.
They deserved a celebration before the next hunt began.
** Tony
Tony ducked out of party preparations to go lock the scepter in the lab vault. The sooner that thing was safely tucked away, the better for everyone. Sue Tony, but he didn’t exactly trust the mischief god in their midst, no matter how many pretty words he promised.
The lab was lit up when he arrived, but quiet. It took Tony a few seconds to spot Harley, bent over a work table, no doubt having completely forgotten the time. Smiling, Tony moved over towards him, and then back peddled so hard he went crashing into the wall.
“Is that a suit?”
Harley whipped around and flung his arms wide in front of the…thing lying prone on the counter behind him. “No!”
“It is,” Tony said, pointing a shaking hand. “Look at it, it’s got a face and arms and—are those the designs for my flame repulsors?”
“No,” Harley wailed, still trying to block with his body. “No, you’re not letting me explain, I can, I swear it!”
Tony sank on to a stool and threw the scepter on to a different counter. “Well hurry it up then, Einstein.”
God, this was so not what he needed right now. They’d finally gotten the damn scepter, there was going to be drinking and revelry upstairs, and Tony was in the basement looking at the result of his own stupidity.
“Oh, you got the scepter,” Harley said, distracted. Tony glared. “Right! Um. Well, that scepter was your idea, and this…” he finally stepped to the side and made a gesture like he was unveiling a new work of art, “Was mine.”
Tony waited, eyebrows raised, arms crossed.
“You thought getting the scepter back would finally put your nightmares away,” Harley explained, big eyes wide. “I thought this might help too.”
“You thought secretly building weapons of war behind my back in my own lab would help me.”
Harley sighed. “No. I was going to show you as soon as you got back, but you surprised me! I was making sure my ideas even worked, before you knew. No point in making you mad over something that never worked.”
That was another thing. “How’d you get the blueprints? JARVIS?”
“I didn’t,” Harley swore before the AI could respond. “I didn’t. You have ‘em locked up anyways. I just…looked at the few broken pieces you have lying around and went off them. I swear it, Mr. Stark.”
He looked awfully good and forlorn. Tony was more so distracted by the admission that no, Harley hadn’t stolen blueprints, he’d fucking made his own based on a few pieces left lying around. Tony didn’t know what to do with all this information. Tony wanted to scream and yell and maybe have a panic attack, and also, he wanted to kiss Harley until the kid squealed and throw him a party, get him a MIT scholarship immediately.
He was a good parent, or whatever it was that he was, so he showed none of that. Hopefully. “You have been very bad, sneaking around behind my back. You may keep explaining.”
“Okay.” Harley pressed a few buttons and one of the empty—empty!—pedestals in the wall revolved around, revealing a second, just as impressive suit. Further inspection proved it to be all silver alloy, and slightly smaller than the Iron Man next to Harley.
“Don’t be mad,” Harley began.
Tony cut him off. “Is that…you?”
Harley squished his face up uncertainly. “Yes?”
“Well, at least you didn’t paint it yet. Didn’t steal my look and all.” What was Tony doing? Tony was compartmentalizing, saying whatever came to mind so he didn’t have to look underneath it. This was all happening so fast, he’d just come home and…this was what they said about teenagers, the way they wore you out. Harley was going to be bringing home women at this rate.
Wait a minute.
“There’s no one else here, is there?”
Harley’s brow furrowed up. “Ms. Potts checked on me earlier, but she didn’t see anything, if that’s what you mean?”
“Any other women? Or men, actually, it’s not a guy/girl thing, is anyone else here?”
Harley looked concerned, like he thought Tony had bonked his head out on the mission. “Are you alright, Mr. Stark?”
Tony most certainly was, since they obviously weren’t at the hookup phase yet. Phew. Back to the problems at hand. “What do you want, huh, kid? You and me to suit up together and go out and blow things up as a little bonding exercise? Me to teach you how to fight, to groom you as the next generation of superheroes?”
Even the words made him want to vomit.
“That’s not what I want—” Harley began, but Tony couldn’t listen, he stumbled off his stool and grasped at the counter.
He couldn’t, he couldn’t put that suit on and go out and start blowing things up again, he just couldn’t. Even if it was what the public wanted, what the Avengers wanted, what Harley wanted. The sound of the titanium clicking as it slid over him, the blasts that ricocheted off, the shaky flight. He wanted to claw his face off.
“I’m a mechanic,” he was muttering, over and over again, too fast to really be heard. “I’m a mechanic, I’m a mechanic—”
“I know,” Harley said. Harley was touching him, just one small hand on Tony’s shuddering shoulder, and it was that tiny hand that helped yank Tony back. That tiny, smart, brave, wonderful hand. The reason behind all of this—the reason any of them fought at all. “I know, Mr. Stark, and I’m not asking you to be anything you don’t want to.”
Tony couldn’t breathe—why was he always doing this? Letting some dumb kid in, letting him chip away at his defenses, just so it ended up with Tony sucking in ragged breaths on the floor while a fifteen-year-old sat with him, probably traumatizing himself.
“It was my idea,” Harley whispered. “Maybe the scepter wasn’t what was keeping you awake. Maybe it was the loss of your suits, and the freedom you had. Maybe it was guilt.”
Tony leaned back and lay down on the floor, sucking in ragged breaths. “Guilt.”
Harley was next to him; Harley always was next to him. Knees curled up to his chest, tousled head bent. “Because you’d blown them up because it was what Ms. Potts needed. It was what you needed. But the world, the world still needs Iron Man.”
Tony choked and sternly forced his throat open. He was not going to freak out every time he thought about it, he was not going to do that, thank you.
“So, I thought,” Harley continued, leaning over until his knee was pressed into Tony’s, “That I could help. Maybe, if there was a backup, a backup suit, you could rest a little easier. The suit stays in storage,” he promised, looking up seriously. “Until it’s absolutely necessary. And if it’s necessary, it’ll be there.”
“And your suit?” Tony asked, voice cracking the slightest bit.
Harley scrunched his face up into a grin. “I was thinking red and silver. Is that too close?”
“You bet your goddamn butt it is. How ‘bout pink?”
“There aren’t any pink superheroes,” Harley laughed, rocking back.
Tony focused on that laugh. “Pink sequins, I think.”
“Mr. Stark, they’d fly off and litter some place. That’s terrible design.”
Tony inhaled. “I’m proud of you, you know that? There aren’t many people who could build an entire suit out of three pieces and their memory.”
“Well, I did live with one of your suits, for like, three days,” Harley said, reddening. “And I haven’t tested them out yet.”
“Oh, I’m sure there’ll be kinks to work out,” Tony groaned, getting to his feet. “And colors to pick—does your suit have a name, or is it just going to be Iron Man 3?”
Harley leaped up after him. “Who’s number 2?”
“Rhodey, of course.”
“That’s crazy, War Machine isn’t an Iron Man, he’s his own man.”
“Iron Patriot.”
Harley snorted, going back over to tightening whichever bolts he’d been tightening before Tony had broken in and had a heart attack. “Stupid name. War Machine is his own man, and I’m Iron Man number 2. Iron Man Supreme!”
“You need your own name, kid.” Tony went over to the wall to open up the safe to put the scepter into. He still didn’t know how he felt about this whole thing, but right now, he mostly felt pride. Pride was a good feeling, and he was going to focus on that.
“Uh, if people see me flying all over New York, they’re not gonna care what name I am, they’re gonna call me you.”
Touched, Tony winked at him. “Not if you were covered in sequins and pink, they wouldn’t.”
“Pretty sure they would, Mr. Stark.”
They would have to test out the suits, make sure they were actually battle ready. They would have to paint Harley’s and write down a list of rules. It would be worse than teaching the kid to drive, and by a lot. The flame repulsors, the ones Bruce had looked at once and ignored, would have to be diligently tried out. And then they could lock everything up and away for…a good long while.
There would be time for that. Right now, Tony was tired and hungry, and there were Avengers upstairs taking showers who needed to be fed. There was a party to plan.
“Kid, you wanna eat dinner here tonight?”
Harley frowned. “With the others?”
“If you want. It’s kinda a party but they’ll be pretty boring since they just got off a mission and are horribly tired. Some will just go right to sleep.”
Harley grinned. “I’ll have to call my mom…”
“I can do it. JARVIS—”
“I’ll make the call, sir,” JARVIS replied. “If Mr. Keener wishes.”
“I wish!” Harley said jubilantly, tossing his pliers up and catching them one handed. “And then we talk paint colors Mr. Stark. Yellow and red?”
Tony followed him out of the lab, flicking off the lights as he went, locking the door behind him. He should change the password, what with the two suits just sitting there. And text Pepper immediately, so she found him before she found the new suits that she would think he’d made.
“You wanna look like burger condiments, kid, you be my guest.”
The lab went dark and still, and Harley’s giggles echoed up the stairwell.
** Bruce
Halfway through Steve and Sam’s second game of pool, Bruce realized he was very sleepy and if he didn’t go distract himself immediately, he was going to duck out of the party. While he was very experienced at ducking out, he felt a little bad about being the first. After all, Steve had been steamrollered by a whole roof or something and he was still winning at pool.
Bruce didn’t like to drink that much, but he wanted something to clutch the next time so-and-so that Pepper had invited tried to talk to him, so he made his way to the bar.
There was rummaging noises from beneath the counter, as though the bartender was fetching more ice. Bruce leaned against the bar and thought frantically for something both witty and remarkably cavalier to say.
What he ended up saying was, “What’s a guy gotta do to get a drink around here?”
“Be kind to the poor girl working the joint,” Natasha Romanoff in a strapless dress said, straightening up and then meeting Bruce with a look of total shock, an expression that was most likely mirrored on Bruce’s face. He certainly felt like a truck had run over him.
You can’t run away like a child, he thought, and then said, “What’s a nice girl like you doing working in a dump like this?”
She didn’t seem to notice him cringing at the crap coming out of his mouth. “Working off a debt. A fella done me wrong.”
Bruce followed her gaze to where Clint was wearing an overly large gray sweatshirt that Natasha had definitely been wearing at the start of the evening, and holding a pool cue over his head.
“He’s makin’ you mix drinks now?”
Natasha’s hands made quick work of the tumbler she was shaking. “Aw, he’s not so bad. Besides. That’s what I get for trying to be comfortable tonight instead of elegant.” She pushed a glass across the bar and stuck a cherry atop the drink. “Enjoy.”
She scooped up a small tray of drinks already made and sauntered out and back towards the pool players. Bruce pulled the cherry out of his glass and chewed it thoughtfully, wondering just what her brain looked like on the inside, if it was brain matter and muscle and blood like everyone else’s, or something else entirely.
“You and Romanoff, huh?” said a deep voice and Bruce looked up to see Steve watching him from down the bar. He’d removed his leather jacket and was wearing a nice blue shirt about two sizes too small.
Bruce knew Steve saw more than anyone gave him credit for, and winced, wondering just how much of his discomfort Steve had picked up on. “Oh, she and I—that wasn’t, it wasn’t—”
“It’s all right,” Steve said, smiling. “I know she’s not the easiest person to get along with. It’s good to see you two warming up to each other a little bit. Joking around.”
Had that been what that was? “Natasha, she’s—” she was what? Horrifying? Manipulative? That kind of creeping sensation when you got out of the shower and the floor was wet and cold? “—she just likes to flirt.”
Bruce wanted to facepalm. Flirt? Really? If only he could play it off as flirting.
Steve shook his head and reached a criminally long arm over the countertop for a beer that Tony had stocked there back when he’d first called for a scepter-snatching-celebration. “I’ve seen her flirt. Up close. This ain’t that.”
Steve had been an up close subject to Natasha’s advances? While most men might be insanely jealous, Bruce’s first thought was to worry for Steve. What did they say about black widow spiders and their mates? “Oh, um,” he managed. “Well, we’re a team right? We’ve all gotta try to trust one another.” Bruce, you filthy hypocrite.
“Yeah,” Steve said, his eyes sad.
Thor arrived, clapping a hand on Steve’s back. “I see the Agent Hill has your jacket, Steve. Did she win it off you?”
“Win it off you?” Bruce asked, bewildered. “What, were you playing strip pool?”
Steve winked. Winked.
“Come now,” Thor said, tugging gently, which meant Steve looked like a hurricane was pulling him sideways. “Have some of my Asgardian mead—you’ll like it, I think. You too, Banner, if you want.”
Inhaling, Bruce shook his head, a smile somehow on his lips again. “I don’t think I’ll push my death wish today, pal.”
“But you are mighty!”
“Not inside,” Bruce said, following and taking his martini along. “But I’ll come watch you guys.”
The next morning, Bruce came out of the shower to find Thor suiting up, attaching his gauntlets and cape. This wasn’t out of the ordinary, and Bruce made it into the kitchen before his brain even registered the fact. He poured himself a bowl of cereal and flipped open his laptop to check his emails.
“Where are you going?”
Thor shrugged, a fluid moment that involved shoulders rolling and joints cracking. “Some loser is out in the place called the Bronx, making dire threats about ransom and hostages. Thought I’d check it out.”
“Is it an Avengers thing?” Whether or not Bruce had been informed wasn’t indicative of much of anything.
“No, I saw it on your magic screen,” Thor said cheerily, now braiding back a few of the front pieces of his hair. “I bet it’s Loki anyways, no need to bother anyone else.”
Bruce stared.
He’d learned not to poke, where it came to Thor’s strange logic. “And this happens often, does it?” he said, envisioning corners of Asgard-Of-His-Imagination on fire, blown up, kidnapped. Maybe on Asgard, it was a normal occurrence. Don’t go down that street today, the second prince is setting things on fire! Oh, thanks for letting me know, man, I’ll get my groceries elsewhere.
Thor shrugged again, ready now. “All a day in the life of being an older sibling. Messes to clean up and all. I’ll be back for dinner, if you’ll be around…?”
Bruce had no idea if being an older sibling involved flying to the Bronx to deal with hostages possibly kept by a younger sibling. Hell, he’d heard worse things in his time living in the Tower. “Sure. Any preferences for dinner?”
Thor beamed, his sunlight smile, the one that came from growing up a prince, Bruce theorized. “I know I’ll like whatever you make, Banner. Like always.”
Bruce waved and watched as Thor carefully let himself out the balcony doors and lifted off out over the city.
The afternoon was uneventful—now that the scepter was in their hands, Tony had finally gotten off his mouse wheel and was back to poking around with things in the lab. Recently he was trying to work on prosthetics and had called Bruce in on neural hookups, something that interested Bruce immensely. The work didn’t go very far—there was very little in the way of existing knowledge, but the more they talked out the problems, the closer the finish line would get.
“If we only had some way to test all this theory,” Tony would say over and over again until Bruce would sarcastically ask if Tony would like to chop off his own leg to be a test subject and they’d start all over again.
Thor came home to find Bruce making dinner—carrots, zucchini, eggplant, potato, and chicken all in one big pot. Bruce had a Thai green curry recipe he hadn’t used in a while, and was deep in the cupboard looking for cans of coconut milk when the balcony doors banged open in the wind.
“Good day at work?”
There was the clattering of buckles—armor coming off. “Yes, thank you! Something smells terrific.”
Bruce wouldn’t ask, he wouldn’t ask. “Will Loki be joining us for dinner?”
“If you don’t mind? I don’t know the last time he’s had a homecooked meal.”
Far from Thor’s misplaced worry, Bruce couldn’t help but think that through. He knew the brothers had recently lost their mother, and had both been away from home. He didn’t like to feel bad for Loki, it sat in his stomach like lead. But he did have plenty of curry.
“When was the last time you had a homecooked meal?” Bruce asked softly.
Thor just smiled at him. “Last night, of course.”
Bruce rolled his eyes. “Very funny. Set the table.”
Loki came back via the door, dripping wet and seething. Bruce watched alarmingly from the stovetop, stirring getting a little frantic as his nerves spiked. He didn’t realize it until Thor passed behind him, letting his hand gently pat Bruce’s shoulders on the way. Bruce put down the spoon.
“Don’t drip on the floor,” Thor ordered. “Banner doesn’t like it.”
“There are towels in the bathroom,” Bruce said carefully, purposely not paying Loki any attention. “You can use whatever you like in there. Dinner’s almost done.”
He felt Loki’s surprise. The god reared back, one foot in the air, still slowly soaking the front mat. “Fine,” he said eventually, stalking across the living room and into the bathroom. He slammed the door behind him.
Thor sighed. “I’ll talk to him about leaving muddy boots by the door, I promise.”
Bruce looked up. He hadn’t noticed—hadn’t thought about it, but Thor had, likely because the memory of Bruce yelling at him still lingered, even after the disgusting footprints had been scrubbed away months ago. “Thanks,” Bruce said. “Hand me that potholder, will you?”
Thor had taken to wearing civilian clothes during his down time. Bruce wasn’t sure how he did it, since whenever he wanted to, he just waved his hammer and his clothes melted away to reveal armor. It wasn’t clear whether the armor shrunk and stayed waiting or the clothes turned into the armor, or it was a third confusing solution. It made Bruce’s head hurt in the best way, but whichever one it was, it meant Thor didn’t have to worry he’d ever be caught in his underwear during an attack.
Loki came to dinner in a swirl of dark green and black leather, knives gleaming on both legs.
He sat gracefully in a chair and unfolded a napkin to spread it across his lap, and then looked up. “What’s that smell?”
“Uh,” Bruce said, handing over a bowl he’d dished out. “Thai curry on rice. I hope you’re not a vegetarian?”
Loki took the bowl appreciatively but frowned at Bruce’s words. “I beg your pardon?”
“Here on Midgard,” Thor said, voice heavy with humor, noisily pulling out a chair and sitting down beside his brother, “Some people choose not to eat meat. Isn’t that funny?”
Loki made a disgusted face that Bruce hoped wasn’t directed toward his curry. “Well then, the first thing I would’ve done as their king was to rid them of that misguided ritual.”
Bruce slurped his curry loudly. Loki made a noise like he’d been kicked under the table.
“How was your day, Banner?” Thor asked, making pleased noises as he tucked in.
“Oh. Uh, okay, thanks.” Bruce trailed off and looked up, catching Loki’s pleasantly vacant look and Thor’s interested one. “Tony had lots to work on in the lab. What about you, Thor?”
Thor speared a carrot slice. “Good, thank you! Just another day for another dollar. That’s what you all say, isn’t it?”
Bruce smiled.
“Isn’t anyone going to ask me?” Loki said.
Thor sighed and bobbed his head. “How was your day, brother dear.” He sounded like he already knew the answer, and Loki’s glare said so as well. Bruce gulped a glass of water hurriedly.
Loki slammed a hand down on the table; Bruce jumped. “Some moron called the law on me while I was tying up hostages, and then they showed up in their stupid blinking chariots and started talking into these cones that made terrible noise, and I could’ve killed them all in seconds flat, but wasn’t actually going to, when this absolute troll-faced fiend comes barreling out of the sky to knock me flat on my back.”
Thor grinned into his glass. “Yes, I saw the whole thing. It wasn’t a good look for you, brother.”
“You’re damn right it wasn’t,” Loki pouted, crossing his arms. “It was just a bit of fun, anyway.”
“I’m sure he knew that,” Thor replied sagely, now drinking water with the most cat-like pleased expression on his face. “When he so gently threw you across the street.”
Loki made an outrageously over the top confused face. “Oh really? Then why the hell didn’t he leave me be?”
Thor shrugged. “Everyone goes to work, Loki. Supervillains and superheroes alike. We all need each other to balance out, you know?”
Ignoring that poignant philosophy, Loki just grumbled under his breath, “I’m not a supervillain, I’m a god.”
“And?”
Loki’s stare could’ve killed. “I’ll get him back tomorrow.”
“I think I’ll go to work tomorrow too,” Thor told Bruce excitedly. “You’re welcome to come along, Banner.”
“No, he is not,” Loki bit out, jabbing with his fork. Bruce shot him an unamused look and he instantly put the fork back in his bowl. “If he goes to work tomorrow then I shan’t.”
“No?” Thor was enjoying this far too much—Bruce could feel his blood pressure creeping upward. “And what a disaster that would be.”
Loki took a huge bite out of spite and started coughing.
Bruce finished his bowl and stood. “Anyone want seconds?”
Thor and Loki both held their bowls up in complete unison.
** Tony
“Pepper, where are you, are you alright?”
Through the screen, even with every hair perfectly in place, she looked almost as frantic as he felt. “I’m fine, what’s going on, are you alright?”
“Fine,” Tony gasped, trying not to look at the tv where his team was visible across the river while the reporter guessed at what was going on. Stupid reporter, didn’t she know that to get good news she had to get closer? “I’m not out at the fighting.”
“But you wish you were.”
Tony ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I don’t know what good I’d be to them—”
“You’re worth plenty without the suit,” Pepper said, and she acted like she just knew those things.
Tony hadn’t touched the earpiece left out for him. He hadn’t known what the point would be. He opened his mouth to tell Pepper so, when the lab door flew open.
“Mr. Stark,” Harley cried, and he looked remarkably on top of himself. “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” Tony joked. “It’s Brooklyn they’re blowing up this time. That’s like—another country, basically.”
Harley rolled his eyes fondly. “It’s time, Mr. Stark.”
Pepper looked back and forth, trying to see what Harley was doing despite her bad angle. “What? What is he talking about, time for what?”
Tony couldn’t help it; he darted a look toward the sleek wall that housed the new suits. “Why?” he got out.
“They need our help,” Harley said simply. “They need my help. And I need yours.”
“Pepper,” Tony said, voice shaky but still there, “I’m gonna need to call you back.”
“Whatever you do, Tony, remember I love you.”
He looked at her, really, looked, heart bursting with gladness that she was away and safe. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, with the exception being a full sheet of brand-new titanium alloy, and he loved her to death.
“Ahem,” Harley said, the little shit, so Tony smiled back and ended the call.
“Okay, what’s your plan, you little demon?”
Harley shrugged out of his backpack and stood straight. He was definitely getting taller. “They need help. I’ve got a suit, I’m going to go to them. You’ve got the thing, you know, the thing—” here he gestured like he was swatting bees around his face, “—and you can talk to me, watch the news and the skies and give me advice. I promise to at least think about taking it.”
At his crooked grin, Tony suddenly felt very young. “And my suit—”
“You don’t need it yet,” Harley said casually, like anything about it was casual. “This isn’t aliens, this is just plain old humans. I’m sure I can handle it.”
“I’m sure you can’t,” Tony said. “But since you’ll be with Captain America and the Hulk, I guess this is a good time for a test run as any. You got a name yet?”
Harley squinted. “Ironic Man?”
Tony shoved him in the direction of the wall. “Absolutely not and I will take away lab privileges.”
Harley laughed out loud and swiped at the keypad. “Okay, okay, copy that.”
Watching the pieces of suit fly out and encase Harley was…hard. Tony knew the kid was smart, knew the machine worked, knew everything was happening as it should, but still, seeing him disappear behind silver interlocking armor—it took all of Tony’s little reserve of willpower not to start beating him free with a mallet.
To cover for his shaking hands, Tony flipped open his case and put on the special JARVIS glasses. Immediately, he had coverage of both suits, including the view of Harley’s face behind his mask. He didn’t know Tony could see him yet, which was probably why he was breathing slowly with his eyes closed, whispering to himself, “I’m okay, I’m gonna do this.”
Tony opened his mouth to ask if Harley needed a minute, when the kid’s eyes flew open and he looked around, moving his arms and legs to get a feel for it, a smile breaking across his face.
“I’m ready, Mr. Stark,” he said excitedly. The faceplate turned and Tony saw both Harley’s grin and also the stoic and inquisitive face he’d built and forsaken. “Am I ready?”
Was he ready? That was a laugh. Was anyone ever?
“You look damn good,” Tony managed, because he wasn’t about to make promises he couldn’t keep. He’d made those a lot, but he wouldn’t now, not to the kid. “Even if you really need a paint job.”
“We don’t have time for that. JARVIS?”
The AI’s familiar voice calmed Tony. “I’ll be with you both the whole time, Mr. Keener, Mr. Stark.”
Tony clapped his hands together. “Okay. Harley, you fly out the bay doors, I’ll go up to the common room balcony for the best view and work you through.”
Harley saluted, and Tony’s chest constricted.
“Hey,” he said, before he could think better of it. “You, uh. You’re gonna be careful out there, right? I’d hate to have to call your mother to tell her you’re in the hospital.”
The faceplate flipped up. “Mr. Stark,” Harley said softly. “I know this guy,” here he tapped his fingers together, creating a small clinking noise, “And I know what we can do together. I’m not gonna do any more than the machine can take.”
“Heroism changes that outlook pretty fast,” Tony croaked.
Harley shrugged. “Well, when that happens, I’ll let you know.”
Tony left then, so he didn’t have to watch Harley go. The elevator worked beautifully, spitting him out into the brightly lit common floor right in time to see a silver flash fly across the balcony. Running outside and over, Tony waved frantically, almost forgetting himself at the sight of his beautiful suit in motion.
Sure, he’d seen himself on television—like every day, those newscasters had good taste—but it was something else knowing it wasn’t him in there. Look, he thought. I made that. Harley made that. And now he’s going to save the world.
Brooklyn first though. Tapping the glasses into place, Tony pulled up comm links, any news that mentioned what was happening in the neighboring borough or the Avengers, and a big map of the city.
“Okay, kid,” he said, throwing his arms wide, looking like a total fool as nothing happened in the real world. The map in his vision expanded, a pulsing red light for where Harley was, an angry black star for the others. “Let’s fly.”
** Bruce
Bruce hid behind Sam Wilson as they crept through the scrubby trees at the edge of Prospect Park, Steve up ahead with the shield on his arm.
Bruce didn’t even want to be here, but he’d been there when the news had started up, interrupting breakfast, and he’d jumped aboard the jet in a strange fury of bravery that normally didn’t infect him, and here he was, hiding behind Sam and wishing it was Thor he was hiding behind instead.
It wasn’t that Sam wasn’t a great guy, at least Bruce presumed since he barely knew him, but Steve had good intuition and Steve loved him, so—it wasn’t that, it was just that Thor was bigger and bulkier and could knock Bruce to Long Island should that be necessary.
Across the field, the Winter Soldier held up a hand as though he knew they were approaching even with his back to them, and like clockwork, the Avengers halted, waiting. Facing the Winter Soldier were those two kids from before, eyes blank.
“This isn’t what you want,” The Winter Soldier said. “Come on, kids. I can help you, I used to be just like you. They don’t get to tell you who you are.”
The boy blinked and shook his head as though to clear it.
“Pietro,” Steve called, impulsively, if the rigid line of the Winter Soldier’s shoulders was any inclination. “We’re going to save her, remember? Together?”
Bruce didn’t really understand what he was looking at, but it didn’t take a Tony Stark to put the pieces together. Somehow, Hydra had expanded their brainwashing regime. Bruce felt the beginnings of it stir inside him; green tendrils of fear and horror. No, no, stay calm, stay calm until they need you, he thought furiously. You are in the middle of the city. You cannot lose control.
The boy called Pietro tossed his head like a dog might. “Steve?” he called, and his voice sounded small.
“That’s right,” Steve replied eagerly. Behind him, Natasha sucked in a breath. “And this is Bucky. He’s going to help you, I promise. Remember, he already saved our lives?”
“I don’t,” Pietro said, confused, and Bruce’s heart just about broke. “I don’t—I don’t remember—”
The Winter Soldier inched closer; the girl’s hands flexed and the light built. “You will,” he swore. “It’ll come back, all of it, every messy minute.”
Pietro let his hands drop and bowed his head. “She’s my sister and she doesn’t remember me,” he said, just loud enough that Bruce’s ears could pick it up.
“She will,” The Winter Soldier said, and he turned and looked right at Steve. The immediate electricity between the two of them felt like something Bruce shouldn’t be witnessing, at least not without sunglasses.
Behind the two kids amassed a small army, all of them armed to the teeth. Seemingly tired of waiting for Pietro’s sister to do anything, they moved into position, drawing closer. Steve lifted the shield, and behind him, the other Avengers raised their weapons.
“Pietro, you try to contain your sister,” Steve ordered. “Leave the rest of the fight to us.”
Pietro turned slowly, got a glimpse of the approaching army, and squeezed his eyes shut. He nodded, looking pale and ill. The first soldier raised their gun and fired. The bullet came zipping toward Pietro, and before anyone could cry out, he blurred and dodged, and Bruce watched as if stuck in molasses, as it flew past and knocked Barton flat on his back.
All hell broke loose.
With a deafening whoosh, Sam took to the air and Bruce had a clear view of Natasha holding a gun in each hand, firing unrelentingly into the wall of soldiers swarming the park.
“Clint, talk to me,” she spat out of the corner of her mouth, her voice shaking just a little.
Bruce was…Bruce was clutching the tree he was taking cover behind, trying not to look at Natasha, but she was a force of nature he couldn’t tear his eyes away from. He thought she might’ve forgotten he was there.
He moved, kneeling down besides Clint, and rolled him on to his back.
“Don’t touch him,” Natasha spat, firing two more shots and coming over to shove Bruce away. Clint’s hand stopped her. She gasped and pressed on his wound and checked his pulse, as though she’d forgotten about Bruce in the span of a second.
“I’m okay, Tasha,” Clint grunted. When she didn’t hear him, he turned and squinted at Bruce. “Help me out here.”
“He’s going to be okay, Natasha,” Bruce said, and Natasha’s gaze locked on him.
“Help me up,” Clint said, and Bruce took one arm while Natasha took the other. “Those kids need our help. Come on.”
Bruce stared as he started moving, leaning heavily on his partner but moving nonetheless. Hanging back behind the trees seemed like a cruel thing to do, but Bruce knew it was better than losing himself.
Overhead, Sam shot down hell, dropping enemy soldiers like flies. At the thick of the battle, Steve and his friend were a tornado of black and blue, the shield only partially visible as it shot between them, back and forth. The silver kid they’d talked down created dust storms, punched a string of soldiers in the blink of an eye, all the while yelling at the top of his lungs at the girl in red. As they got near, Barton and Natasha moved around each other like perfect pieces, anticipating each other’s weak spots, firing repeatedly.
The girl in red was Bruce’s opponent, and he watched her the most. Right then, she was hesitant, hovering above the fuss and sending fingers of light down to knock them up a bit. Steve and the Winter Solider ducked behind the shield, rolled away, twisted midair to avoid the light. Bruce wondered what it would do to them.
Bruce wondered what it would do to him.
He hadn’t found out yet. He really didn’t want to find out ever, but he knew he would if he had to. If they needed him.
Bruce watched the events unfolding with a sinking feeling in his chest. There were too many soldiers.
Right as he was thinking seriously about the Hulk, a silver gleam appeared in the sky, the sunlight glaring off it in a familiar way—Bruce shielded his eyes and thought impossible. Impossible?
“Tony,” he said before he could stop himself.
Tony’s voice crackled over the comm. “Yes, but no. It’s complicated. Anyways, here to help, like always.”
“Always taking credit, you mean,” came a second familiar sound—Harley’s voice. Bruce rolled his eyes as it hit him what was going on. Harley fired three shots in rapid succession and then dropped into the crowd of soldiers.
“Can it, Iron Lad,” Tony said, and then, “Cap, got a squadron of police cars coming down Flatbush Avenue.”
Steve grunted and dodged another red blast. “Sam!”
“On it,” Sam said, wheeling away.
In the thick of it, Harley had taken to the air again, weaving in a dizzying spiral that had Bruce thinking about throwing up. “Iron Lad? That sucks, that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard! You know what? I think I’m Iron Man. Maybe you’re the sidekick, Mr. Stark.”
“Keep the comms clear,” Natasha bit out, still sounding ragged at the edges. Bruce couldn’t even see her.
“Sidekick?” Tony sputtered, and Bruce put his head in his hands. “Sidekick, that’s rich, kid. Nobody would ever think that.”
Pietro took a bad fall and popped back up again. The red light flickered. Bruce frowned. Hang on a minute— “Do that again,” he called, before realizing nobody knew what he was talking about or heard him, since Tony and Harley were at it again.
“Yet, you’re the one sitting in a chair back home like a chicken,” Harley said cheerfully, flying low and knocking out a whole battalion. He moved just like Tony—was that a function of the suit? Or was he doing it on purpose?
Tony huffed and made indignant noises and Bruce coughed meaningfully. “When Pietro fell over, the red light flickered. Did anyone else see that?”
No one answered him; they were barely holding their own. Right before his eyes, The Winter Solider took a hit to the chest and went down, hard. Steve turned, ducked low behind the shield, as if he’d felt the bullet himself. Natasha appeared in the place he’d left, swiftly taking out the men who’d surged forward. Barton was beside her, doing remarkably well for someone still sporting a severe gunshot wound.
Bruce clung to his tree.
The red light expanded, growing into a grotesque many-legged beast all unfurling and snatching up Bruce’s teammates. Some were limp in its grasp, other twisted and kicked.
Bruce was Bruce and then suddenly he wasn’t anymore.
He came back to himself in pulses, the thin green line of the heart monitor a metronome to his shifting vision. Thor came into view, hand up, still rattling on about the sun. He smiled when Bruce was fully back, offered his hand more firmly.
“What happened?” Bruce whispered, scared.
Thor shook his head, smile calm and reassuring. “You did good, Banner. I heard you roaring from across the city, and I came. You’re right about the brother.”
“Did I hurt anyone?”
Thor put a hand on his chest. “No. But you need to stay back—we’re fighting in close quarters, you can’t shift again.”
“Okay,” Bruce breathed. Out on the field, Natasha shot a soldier in the knee and then grabbed Pietro in a headlock, gun to his head. The field lit up red.
Before Bruce could inhale again, the girl pointed at Steve and sent a bolt of red energy that hit him in the head and knocked him over. The Winter Soldier rushed toward him and Natasha yelled, “Come down right now or I’ll shoot!”
The girl pointed at Barton, and a silver blur smashed into her. Harley. They grappled in midair, twisting and trading hits. Bruce didn’t realize he was growling under his breath until Thor pushed him to the ground and yanked his attention back.
“Don’t watch,” Thor ordered. “Stay with me.”
Bruce nodded shakily, struggling to follow Thor’s breaths. He was okay, Harley was okay, the others had a plan, all Bruce needed to do was stay calm. It was working, he was fine, he was fine.
“Harley, no!” someone screamed over the comms, and the sky behind Thor lit up in orange flame.
** Natasha
When the smoke cleared, they could all see the suit drifting downwards, the hand repulsors sluggishly keeping it from crashing to the ground all at once. Clint took out the lone soldier responsible for the rocket launcher, and the rest of them tore across the park towards the suit’s decent.
It landed in the middle of Flatbush Avenue, and the helmet retracted. Pietro let out a sob and ran towards his sister. Natasha stared at the Winter Soldier in horror.
“Harley,” he said roughly, gesturing towards her ear. It took Natasha a beat too long to understand, but she flicked on her earpiece, repeating the boy’s name.
“Here,” came the answer, faint as it was. The Winter Soldier tracked it upwards and blanched. High above their heads, Harley was hanging from the roof, swaying in the wind.
Natasha looked around frantically for something, anything. “Sam!” she called into her earpiece. “Thor, somebody—”
A stronger breeze blew past them and Natasha could only watch as the draft caught in Harley’s clothes and his grip slipped. “I’m not gonna—” Sam grunted in her ear, straining somewhere in the distance.
Natasha knew what it was like to fall from such a height, the way the air in your lungs didn’t always get the memo, the way it stayed behind and the wind rushed up around you to compensate. The way the landing would jar every bone in his body, ever single vertebra in his spine.
Pietro, still clutching his sister, averted his gaze. The pavement rushed up towards Harley. Pieces of gold and crimson appeared from nowhere and enveloped him, the plates shifting like snakeskin, becoming a suit around him and powering on right before he could hit the ground.
“Kid,” Tony’s voice said in their ears, and it sounded wrecked, “Don’t ever fucking do that again.”
“Sorry,” Harley said, breathless but laughing. “I think the heroism got to me, Mr. Stark.”
“Iron Man!” Shouted a pedestrian who’d been cowering under an awning. The cry rose, all the hesitant people on the street waving and cheering. Harley made the peace sign awkwardly.
Tony sighed loudly. “Yeah, yeah, the suit looks good, I know. Everything cleaned up, people?”
Natasha sucked in a breath, all the air rushing back into her lungs. Clint came up behind her and grinned tiredly, one hand to the bullet in his side. Steve was still down and unresponsive, and Sam landed next to Pietro and his sister who was also unconscious. And Natasha? She needed a hot bath and a glass of vodka. Or a drink of water and a bath of vodka. She wasn’t particular.
Of course, she didn’t get either.
“How’s the hole in your abdomen?” She asked Clint lightly as they disembarked atop Avengers Tower again, some of Tony’s medical staff rushing out to meet them with stretchers.
“I won’t lie, it doesn’t hurt as bad as my little finger, which I jammed on my bow string,” Clint said sadly.
Natasha focused on him, the creases next to his eyes, the scratch across the bridge of his nose. He was okay. He tensed up briefly as they passed Loki waiting right inside, the god of mischief following Thor and Bruce, who looked a little nauseous.
“Harley you little shit get over here right now!” Tony yelled, barreling through a door and rushing over. The Iron Man armor creaked and released a sheepish-looking Harley who was instantly enveloped in a hug. “Don’t make me watch that again,” Tony said, making no move to let him go. “Like, turn off my visuals or something.”
Harley laughed, the sound muffled by Tony’s jacket.
They were forced to break apart as the medics came through with the gurneys, the Maximoff siblings both pale and wan atop them.
“Wait,” Clint said to the first medic. “We’ve got to keep an eye on them—help them.”
“That’s the plan, Mr. Barton.”
“No medical floor,” Clint pleaded. “Can they—can you take them to my floor? So they can wake up somewhere more comfortable.”
The medic sighed and looked at Tony, who nodded. “Alright,” she said, eyeing Clint. “Only if you promise to march yourself into medical right now so we can remove that bullet you’re trying to hide.”
“The kids,” Clint said weakly, gesturing as another gurney with Steve on it went by, the Winter Soldier a dark shadow following.
Natasha made a mental note to follow up on that, and said, “I’ll go down to your floor with them.”
The tension leeched out of Clint. “Okay,” he said and let the lead medic take his arm. “Okay.”
Natasha didn’t have to do much before he returned to his floor. After the medical examinations were finished, she had them help her lift the girl on to the couch. Pietro woke up not long after that and joined her in a silent vigil at Clint’s kitchen table.
As far as Natasha knew, Clint spent most of his time on her floor. She had nearly forgotten this place existed, but here it was, brightly lit, the kind of clean only a place with no Clint Barton could be.
When Clint arrived, fresh bandage around his side, Natasha was checking on Pietro’s sister, brushing her dark sallow hair away from her face. Her fingers were ice cold, so Natasha took a blanket off the back of the armchair that had definitely never been unfolded before and spread it out over her.
“Hey,” Clint said tiredly to Pietro. “You hungry? The fridge is stocked, and you can make requests for them to bring you something special the next morning. Or there’s a shower down there if you want…”
The girl stirred and opened her eyes. They were large and brown, and scared.
“Hello,” Natasha said quickly, holding both her hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you. Your brother is here too—”
He was there in a flash. “Wanda, Wanda,” he chanted, hands hovering like they wanted to touch but weren’t sure how. He asked her a question in Sokovian.
Wanda frowned and answered him slowly, stiltedly. “How do I know how to speak this?” she said in English, her accent as strong as her brother’s. “где я?”
Natasha softened her shoulders. “You’re in New York, you’re safe. This is Clint, I’m Natasha. We’re going to help you and Pietro, and you two can stay here as long as you need.”
“Wanda,” Pietro said softly. “We’re from Sokovia, remember?”
She just looked at him blankly.
“Hey,” Clint said, hand resting on Pietro’s shoulder. “Let’s get cleaned up, man. Come on.”
Natasha sat in a chair; Wanda stared meekly at the ceiling, hands carefully crossed on her chest. Damn every single bastard that did this, Natasha thought. And then, I’m gonna get you through this. Clint and I are gonna get you through this, I swear on my life.
And lastly, she thought, Shit, we’re gonna need help.
** Steve
The dance hall was unfamiliar, so why did Steve feel near certain he’d been there before? There, a woman laughing and kicking with her skirt swirling up. There, a photographer with a flash bulb. There, a group of soldiers drunkenly swaying together.
There, Steve standing on the edge gloomily, arms crossed, wanting nothing more than to slip out into the cool night air.
“Steve,” said Peggy, and God, there she was, looking like a million bucks in her blue dress, hair pulled up away from her neck. Away from her neck? Steve blinked and it was down, curling around her shoulders in the way he remembered.
“Hi,” he replied, hoping he didn’t look as dumb as he felt. If he forgot he’d go small and normal again, and he didn’t want to—couldn’t.
She smiled, lipstick blazing. “I confess I thought you’d be late.”
“I still might step on your feet,” he said unthinkingly, trying not to trip right then and there when she took his hand.
Out on the dance floor, she stepped right into his arms and they automatically came around her. They swayed slowly amongst the more exuberant dancers—Steve was just glad Peggy didn’t expect some real lindy hopping from him. She smelled like peppermint and that tacky lipstick scent. Steve wasn’t sure if that was a smell everyone experienced, or just someone with a juiced-up nose.
Behind him, someone popped a cork and it sounded like a gunshot. He was halfway to knocking Peggy to the floor before she stopped him with a hand on his cheek.
“The war’s over,” she said, and her smile widened, like she knew the cork wasn’t a bullet and it was wonderful. “We can go home.”
“Can you?” came a different voice, and Steve turned like a magnet introduced to its companion.
He only caught a glimpse before Bucky’s tilted sergeant’s hat disappeared, leaving way for his gelled hair. Steve had watched him slick it back every morning in their canvas tent, watched the way Bucky started out with fluffy hair and shaking hands, and the act calmed both his curls and tremors. Last was always the blue coat, like armor.
The coat flickered, briefly exchanged for black leather, straps like a straitjacket. No.
Steve forced back his nausea.
“Can you go home?” Bucky asked, smile cold and empty. “That’s nice. White picket fence for the two of you then, maybe a dog. Name one of the kids after me, won’t you?”
Steve inhaled. It was like trying to breath smoke—it stuck to his lungs, burned going down, heavy with the acrid taste of guilt. “Bucky—”
“The war’s over, is it?” Bucky asked pleasantly, and the pleasant almost drove Steve mad. Spiteful, jealous, vengeful Bucky, he could deal with. Blank and pleasant Bucky, that was the problem. That was his fault.
“Yes…” Peggy answered, sounding uncertain, and that was when Steve knew he was dreaming.
He wanted to wake up—he staggered away, hands on his head not quite blocking out the thumping drums from the band or the squeal of a girl thrown up and caught in the arms of a sailor.
“You’re scaring him,” Peggy said harshly, somehow more than audible.
“You’re scaring him,” Bucky replied, quiet and calm. “The war isn’t over, not for all of us, Carter.”
Steve spun and it was Bucky again, Bucky with his collar undone at the end of the day, suspenders trying their darndest to hang on a little while longer. His hair was curling over his forehead, his hands had remainders of grease smeared into the creases. He caught Steve looking at him and cocked his head. “We can go home?” he said, voice pitched up at the end, like a question.
Steve ran for him, dodging another dancing couple, and threw his arms around him, buried his face in the soft cotton of his button down. He forgot—he realized it as his head fit comfortably under Bucky’s chin, as his arms weren’t strong enough to cling like he wanted to. He forgot he wasn’t small anymore.
Bucky’s arms came around him easy as anything.
“Let’s go home,” Steve cried, muffled. He meant it, meant it hard, the faded brick that warmed in the late afternoon sunshine, the struggles and the three pennies they had and the crappy lumpy bed that was barely big enough for one person let alone two. The smell off the river that Bucky brought home with him, the stupid cabbage soup that Steve made for dinner because it was the only thing he knew how to cook. The smears of charcoal he left on everything—the chair, his shirts, and sometimes, the best times, on Bucky’s hands.
Steve would look at those small gray smudges on Bucky’s thumb, his knuckles, the fine bones of his wrist, and wonder to himself if maybe art wasn’t something contained on paper.
“Home?” Bucky said, and he sounded awful again, but Steve didn’t let go. Steve stayed small and locked his arms into place, holding tight, like he could keep Bucky safe besides his heart along with all those faded memories, along with the idea of home.
Around them, the dancehall disintegrated, tables and bottles and distorted laughter dissolving. Steve held on, squeezing his face into Bucky’s chest, fighting the tug of the impending vortex.
“Wake up,” Peggy said, and then she too was gone.
“I don’t want to,” Steve gasped, because at least the dream held hope. Maybe he could talk Bucky down enough they could walk out hand and hand like two kids and find their way back to Brooklyn together, maybe the pieces of the mosaic could be taken apart and put back together properly, a jigsaw puzzle sliding into place.
When Steve cracked open his eyes, his arms were empty and resting by his side. White tape wrapped around two of his fingers. There were bruises faded on his elbows. An IV was resting nearby, but not touching him. The monitor was making a slight beeping noise, text flashing across the screen.
He turned to the side and froze.
“Hey,” he said, and was slightly surprised to hear the rasp of his own voice. Maybe he’d been crying out in his sleep again.
The circles under Bucky’s eyes said yes, he had.
“Where—” Steve croaked, trying to sit up. In a flash, Bucky was pushing him down again.
“You’re back at the tower, resting. You’ve been out of it for almost six hours. Everyone else is fine.”
Steve lay back and looked at him. He looked pretty bad, actually. Hair messy, eyes sunken. His fingers were making pastries out of Steve’s blanket—pulling and twisting anxiously.
“What happened to me?” Steve ground out.
Bucky looked regretful and then angry, and then regretful again. “It’s the kid. Pietro’s sister, Wanda. She can do that…visions and mind splitting shit. Did you see something?”
Steve opened his mouth and then closed it again. Did he ever. He didn’t really want to share it though.
Bucky saw and sat back in his chair. “She got me once—just the tiniest bit hit me, and I lost a full five minutes. I barely got out of there. You know what I saw?”
“What?”
“You,” Bucky said, still holding Steve’s gaze. “Bleeding and dying underneath me.”
Steve winced. “Sorry—”
“But it was different than the way it really happened,” Bucky barreled on resolutely, the words tripping over themselves in a hurry to get out. “You died. I could tell—I could feel it when you…when you died. Everything—” he closed his eyes and breathed in and out shakily. “Everything just stopped. All of you…just gone.”
Steve’s fingers itched to touch. Maybe it was a good thing he was bedridden—Bucky was looking more and more like a trapped animal.
“You can bet that stayed with me a while,” he concluded, trying to brush it off with a smile, but Steve could see it cost him to speak it, to remember it again.
“I saw you too,” Steve said. His voice wavered on the words but didn’t crack. “Every version of you.”
Bucky didn’t understand, but Steve didn’t want to explain himself. He didn’t want to discuss Peggy and the dancehall and dream Bucky’s angry words about the war still raging for them. Bucky didn’t push, just tapped out a rhythm on Steve’s leg.
“You gotta know I don’t blame you about it. Before,” Steve said, a hand coming up to rest under his eye.
Bucky just looked at him, something greenish to the tinge of his face. It reminded Steve of that one time when Bucky had been about sixteen—he’d gone quiet one day, so quiet everyone around him was deathly worried, and then the next day he’d been sick, terribly sick. He’d been lucid the whole time, Steve remembered, but so quiet.
Not long afterwards, he’d sat up in bed, thrown up violently, and been well the next morning.
Steve figured this was similar—Bucky needed to expel the dregs of whatever he was carrying, and then he’d be alright again.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
That got the cogs turning. “It wasn’t my fault,” Bucky said scornfully. “Well, yippee, Priest Rogers who hands out second chances like birdseed says it wasn’t my fault, praise the lord I am absolved.”
Steve tried to sit up further and failed. Bucky did absolutely nothing to help him, the asshole. “As soon as you knew what was going on—”
“Oh, I knew what was going on,” Bucky said, voice full of danger warning noises, but Steve had never been particularly good at paying attention to them, “And I shot three bullets into your gut and left you for dead with a shattered orbital bone.”
“Well, that was rude of you,” Steve acknowledged. “And the part where you took it on the lam for months and months and months—”
“I don’t owe you nothin’,” Bucky interrupted firmly, standing and pacing the small part of the room not taken up by Steve’s bed.
Steve stared. “Like hell you don’t.”
Bucky whirled. “I don’t owe you anything,” he hissed, each word precisely slow. “The person you knew, the guy you’re looking for—he’s gone. I’m someone else now.”
“Is the guy you are now a total fucking jerk?” Steve all but yelled, spitting mad. Oh, if he could get out of that dumb bed Bucky’d be sorry. “Well, the guy I am now is a bigger one. So there.”
Bucky marched up and grabbed a handful of Steve’s hospital shirt. “Listen up, ace,” he muttered, fire flickering in his stony eyes. “I am a killing machine. I am decades of violence and assassinations and I will not—”
“Bucky, you pulled me out of the river and the first thing you did with your own freedom was to run to save two kids,” Steve whispered.
Startled, Bucky lost his train of thought and blinked bewilderedly back at him. Steve was nearly going to chance speaking again when the door clicked open and Bucky let go of him like he’d been burned.
If Natasha thought anything of Bucky halfway strangling Steve, she didn’t let it show. “Barnes,” she said, and Steve clutched his blankets close and tried to breathe properly. “We need your help.”
** Bruce
Bruce came out of the shower to find Loki on his couch wearing fleece pants decorated with crocodiles and eating cereal while watching the news.
“Loki,” Bruce said, surprising himself. “No milk on the couch.”
Loki shot him a sideways look and then rolled his eyes. With a sigh so heavy it had to be painful, he slumped up and over to the table, clicking off the tv as he went. He was strangely proficient with the remote.
Bruce ignored him and unlocked his phone. “JARVIS?”
“Yes, Dr. Banner?”
“Is…everyone else stable? I mean—”
“Both Maximoffs are sleeping, vitals normal,” the AI replied. “I believe Agent Barton is keeping watch. Captain Rogers is still in medical, Mr. Stark is walking Mr. Keener to the lobby door.”
Bruce hummed. All seemed quiet then. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep anyways. He felt some distant longing for something unnamable—a run long enough to tire him deeply in his bones. He was keyed up, antsy. One word from anybody that the Maximoff girl was having trouble and Bruce was ready. Or rather, the other guy inside Bruce was ready. Itching for it, if Bruce was truthful with himself, and he tried to be even when it was uncomfortable.
Loki was right there when Bruce turned around, and right before his eyes, conjured a blade from nowhere and thrust it directly into Bruce’s stomach.
Bruce blinked and came back and found Loki swatted half across the living room and the knife on the floor at his feet. There wasn’t even any blood on the blade.
“Damn it to hell,” Loki said dazedly. His t-shirt was in the act of flopping down over his face. His legs were over his head, but they slid to the side and fell over.
“Not tonight,” Bruce warned, feeling a little like Thor must when the lightning flickered between his eyes. “I will smash you into the ceiling.”
Loki closed his eyes and righted himself. “Noted.”
The next few days were a special kind of torture. The Maximoff kids dominated much of everyone’s brainpower—Tony stayed down in the lab, putting Harley to work on brain scans, begging Bruce for everything he knew about brain trauma and healing. Bruce did what he could, added in knowledge where he knew something.
The truth of it was the brain was complex and much like Tony’s wild plans for prosthetics, they were nearly writing the textbooks themselves.
Barnes wasn’t much help, in either department.
“I dunno,” became his constant refrain, frustration bleeding out of every dark line of him until he thought up something that might have the slightest hope of being helpful. “I went through a withdrawal,” he said haltingly, metal hand unclenching and clenching again, Steve nearby just in case. “All the sh—stuff they drugged me on to keep me docile. The kid might go through that too.”
“I didn’t,” Pietro pointed out, crossing his arms.
Tony made a humming noise. “You’re lucky that you weren’t experimented on as long as Wanda or Barnes, then. I think you’ve avoided most of the torture and limb sawing, dontcha think, Speedo?”
“It comes back in bits and pieces,” Barnes said haltingly, a few hours later, Steve gone after he’d punched a hole in the lab wall. “Pietro knows. Older memories are stronger than recent. She’s going to remember her childhood, her family, before she can tell us anything that happened later.”
Bruce retreated to his floor and busied himself making soups. Soups were nice because you could make one out of about just anything lying around. Bruce indulged himself by picking a few out and purposely going shopping though, because he felt like throwing things, and it was best to take those urges out on onions. He made pho one night, and minestrone the next.
One perk to Asgardian guests was they never complained about trying new foods, and even seemed to like them all.
Loki had taken to scribbling frantically in a notebook—the notebook was sparkly pink and said Girl Power on it—and when Bruce had haltingly asked him about it, Loki haughtily informed him that he’d gotten it for free at work and he liked powerful girls just fine so it was perfect for him.
“You stole it, didn’t you,” Bruce said, dropping matzo balls into broth.
Loki glared. “The shop was already vandalized, I doubt anyone cared about one more cheap item.”
“You blew up the shop?”
“No,” Loki spat. He crossed his legs and sulked, as if the very idea was insulting. Today he was wearing a green sweatshirt with the hood up over his hair. “I would never be so vulgar. Thor smashed it up while ridding them of the vandals. I was simply helping tidy things afterwards.”
Thor blew in like a thunderstorm. “What smells so good?” he asked, tying back his hair and plopping down at the table.
“Matzo ball soup,” Bruce informed him, turning back to the stove. “With dill. I think you’ll like it, and I also made spaghetti because the soup isn’t going to be filling enough for you guys.”
“Spaghetti,” Loki said with interest. “With the tomatoes, like last time?”
Bruce nodded, and Loki made a pleased noise, and then crossed something off in his notebook.
Bruce put their bowls down and went back for water glasses, and when he came back to the table, Thor was slurping his appreciatively, but Loki was waiting, watching him with narrowed eyes.
“What?” Bruce asked, handing him a cup. “I didn’t poison it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I know you didn’t,” Loki said with a sudden grin.
Bruce was too tired to puzzle that one out.
“How was work today?” Thor asked gently, and Loki grunted like he’d been kicked. “I saw Stark and he looked ready to sleep for thirty years.”
Bruce rubbed his eyes. “We’re not getting anywhere, and while Wanda’s doing okay, she only has half the memories she should. She knows Pietro now, and remembers who she is, but beyond that…” Bruce trailed off. It was just so frustrating to not know how to fix something. “Barnes is helping out, and that’s great. He seems to be mostly healed—we scanned his brain and you can actually see the tissue replenishing and developing.”
That had been amazing, actually, and Bruce summoned a tired smile just thinking about it. “But Wanda doesn’t have the same advanced healing factor, so…we don’t know. Just a matter of time, I guess.”
“Sounds rough,” Thor said kindly, knocking his fluffy socks against Bruce’s feet under the table. If Thor suddenly lost the ability to speak, Bruce bet he could converse solely in kicks.
Bruce hummed in a tell me about it kind of way. Absently, he ate a big spoonful of soup and sighed. Loki was still watching him.
The soup was good so he ate another bite. Loki inhaled and Thor stared at him. “What’s your problem?”
The phrase was decidedly earth and it sounded strange coming out of his mouth. Loki made a shrugging motion and went back to his bowl. Bruce felt a little weird. He sniffed the next spoonful.
“What did you put in his soup?” Thor asked exasperatedly.
Loki slumped in his chair and stuck out his chin. “Cyanide. The Google said it killed humans. Stupid Google.”
Bruce put down his spoon.
“You moron,” Thor said, shooting Bruce an apologetic look. “As if Banner is a plain old human. You should know better.”
“Do you think venom from the Jotunheim beasts would do it?” Loki asked eagerly. “I have an in there, I can get some in two days time—”
Thor slammed his hand down on the table; the water glasses rattled. “Give me the book.”
“No!”
“Give me the book.”
Loki glared and pulled a knife. Bruce exhaled warningly and Loki’s hand wavered.
“No more poisoning,” Thor ordered. “Don’t you know anything about Midgard hospitality? I’m ashamed of you, Brother.”
Loki shot Bruce a look out of the corner of his eye and pocketed the knife. If Bruce were less tired, he might have thought up a no-weapons-at-the-table-rule, maybe even a no-weapons-on-Bruce’s-floor-rule, but he was thinking of bed a little longingly. Besides. What were the weapons going to do, kill someone? Bruce would have to send all the human people in the tower a note, that was all. Beware the weapons if you visit Bruce’s floor.
Bruce got up and dumped his bowl down the sink. “Was it just my bowl or is it the whole pot?” His beautiful matzo balls. He felt the beginnings of anger stir in his lower intestines.
“Just your bowl,” Loki said hurriedly. “The—the floury balls are good. Banner. Thank you.”
Grateful, Bruce dished himself another bowl and sat down again. “How was your day, Loki?” he asked.
The next day Bruce woke up, got himself some yogurt and fruit, and sleepily went looking for his laptop. “Excuse me, Dr. Banner,” JARVIS interrupted, sounding truly sorry. “But I’ve been asked to inform you not to leave your floor at the moment.”
“What’s wrong?” Bruce said immediately. “Where are the Maximoffs?”
“Ms. Maximoff is having an…episode,” The AI said delicately. “She’s contained on the forty eighth floor at the moment. Sergeant Barnes and Loki are with her, and the others are watching from nearby.”
Bruce sighed. Well, he could stay back until they needed him. “Wait a minute—Loki?”
“His abilities with illusion seem to be helping a great deal,” JARVIS replied. His cool tone somehow conveyed he felt similar to Bruce in his incredulousness.
Bruce shrugged and found his laptop, with Thor’s hammer sitting atop. There went his plans to check his emails. “Okay, keep me posted.”
Something moved behind him. “Morning,” Bruce said, figuring Thor was only just rolling out of bed, unaware of the excitement happening below them.
There was a piercing pain in his skull and Bruce felt control yanked out from beneath him like a rug. He lost time and then Thor was wrapped around him, muttering nonsense into his ears. Upon realizing his arms now fit around Bruce, Thor let go. “Ah, you’re back. Good job, Banner.”
Bruce looked behind him where Loki stood with another knife. “Not even a direct hit to the head,” Loki said irritably. “I’ll have to write it down.”
“Loki,” Thor said warningly, and his hands flickered. Outside, clouds rolled in, dark and threatening. Loki took the hint and tiptoed off to his room.
“I thought he was downstairs with Wanda,” Bruce said, shaking his—totally fine and normal—head a little.
Thor glared. “You can never trust Loki is someplace, Banner, he deals in trickery like you do in soup. If you’re not sure, throw something at him; his visions aren’t solid.”
“Okay,” Bruce said, wondering when information like that had become commonplace for him, and went back to his yogurt.
** Tony
Tony had never seen such a disgusting display of domesticity as he saw that morning on Clint Barton’s floor. And Tony was privy to the two supersoldiers living a floor up, sharing fucking clothing. Seriously. Captain America simply didn’t understand that t-shirts weren’t a one size fits all scenario. Barnes sure as hell wasn’t telling him, so it looked like Tony would have to at some point, if he valued his eyeballs.
When Tony went to check up on Clint Barton—who was healing well from his bullet wound—good old Captain America was there in the muscly flesh, looking slightly better himself, if a little woozy still. At least his large blue sweatshirt was, well, large.
Tony walked in the door, clocked Steve on the couch and Clint sitting on the living room floor, and was promptly shot at.
“Really?” Tony said as an arrow flew through an orange thrown by Pietro Maximoff and impaled itself on an original O’Keefe behind him. “My painting? You had to aim for my painting?”
“Ten points,” Natasha said drolly from the kitchen where she was seasoning something in a pan.
“No,” said Tony, “Zero points, actually, in fact, minus ten points, Barton, because that painting costs about three of you, and you just put a big hole right in the middle.”
Barton grunted. “Boo hoo. Your weird uterus painting is ruined.”
“That is an iris’ insides,” Tony pointed out, irritated. “It’s called the flower of life.”
“I’ll say,” Barton replied, and Pietro fell over the back of the couch laughing. Even goody two shoes Steve was amused by that, Tony could tell from his eyebrows.
Well, now that the painting was ruined, Tony could concur that if you didn’t know it was a flower of life, it did look a lot like someone’s insides. Actually, Tony remembered putting it on Barton’s floor because he hadn’t wanted to look at it any more.
“It’s lunchtime, if anyone’s hungry,” Natasha called. Barton shot an apple into the ceiling.
“Lunch?” Tony asked.
Steve heaved himself off the couch. He was wearing socks with little snowmen on them, oh this was too good. “It’s scrambled eggs or borsht. Those are the only things she’s good at cooking.”
“No shame in that,” Tony said. “That’s two more things than I can cook.”
“What are you doing here?” Barton asked.
Tony rubbed the back of his head. “Just checking on everything,” he said grandly, the grandness of the words hopefully covering the amateurish head rubbing. “It’s my job, you know, as tower owner. How’s everything treating you? The towels plush enough? The furniture? The staff stocks the pantry but do you have any requests? Etcetera.”
There was movement behind him and he whirled. The Maximoff girl was standing there, plate in hand, swimming in one of Barton’s purple sweatshirts, her hair carefully braided away from her face. She looked…a little better than she had the day before when she’d freaked out and started throwing things. But not much.
“You okay, kid?” Barton asked immediately, half rising from the floor.
“I made toast,” she offered, setting the plate down on the table next to Steve. Her brother promptly launched himself up and over to join them.
Now that his playmate was gone, Barton stood and started yanking arrows out of the plaster. Tony would’ve liked to think it was in the spirit of cleaning up, but more likely it was so he could reuse the weapons.
“How’s it going in the lab?”
Tony threw his hands up. “Fine, you caught me. It’s going horrible. We’re still working as fast as we can,” he told Wanda Maximoff quickly, “But I’m close to ripping my hair out. Harley and Bruce are doing something down there right now—shifting DNA over to something or other with caterpillar sized tweezers, and I was going to crawl out of my skin. I’m a mechanic,” he finished lamely. “I don’t deal with this fussy stuff.”
Pietro handed him a cup of tea, and even though Tony normally hated tea, he took it for something to hold. Natasha handed him a plate of eggs, and he took that too. Then it seemed dumb not to take a seat and have lunch with them all and their family VonTrapp shtick.
“Don’t you deal in tiny tweezers all the time?” Barton asked, unscrewing the head of one of his arrows.
“Because I want to,” Tony said. “Not because I have to.”
“Toast?” Steve asked, pushing the butter across the table. “I’m sure you’ll have a breakthrough soon, Tony.”
“Thanks,” Tony muttered, gulping some tea. It burned a little, but that woke him up. He was visiting his companions, okay, he was being friendly not going stir crazy. It was times like this where he used to trot down to the lab and blow off some steam by…yeah. Now, instead of flying out to see the world, he just had anxiety. Growing old sucked.
The thought passed by without a panic attack though. The little victories, yada yada.
“I can’t believe this,” he said aloud to distract himself. “Has this been going on long? This breakfast together thing? And no one invited me?”
“Not long, no,” Barton said, finally shelving his arrows and sitting down in the chair closest to the kitchen. Natasha bent over, red hair falling into her face as she dragged a plate of eggs over for him to eat. “Only since the Maximoffs arrived.”
“And I got out of the dumb medical wing,” Steve added, scooping up his eggs with impressive speed.
“Steve forgets to eat even with a brain that remembers everything,” Natasha said smoothly. “So, if I’m going to make myself some lunch, I might as well feed everyone else too.” She ruffled Steve’s hair, which he half-heartedly dodged.
“I can’t believe people say I’m the one who picks up strays,” Barton muttered.
Natasha came around behind him and draped a hand over his shoulder. “You picked me up.”
Tony made to vomit into his eggs, but privately, he thought the whole thing rather wonderful and he gave himself three mental pats on the back for orchestrating it so. That was what being a benefactor was. That was why he’d rebuilt this damn tower, wasn’t it? He was so proud.
“Okay, question,” he said at one point, putting down his tea. “Has anyone else noticed how Loki has just moved in with Bruce and neither of them is dead yet? Or is that just me.”
Around the table, beginning with Steve, everyone but Pietro raised their hands. Pietro was spreading butter on toast with a vehemence usually reserved for punching terrorists.
“Hmm,” Tony said, brain whirring. What could it mean? Who was keeping who under wraps with blackmail? How long could it last?
“Well, it’s gotta be Thor, doesn’t it?” Steve said into the silence.
“Huh?” Pietro asked, voicing Tony’s thought too.
Steve set down his fork. “Their common friend. Thor hangs out with Bruce all the time and Loki follows Thor around and so naturally—”
Tony pointed. “Look at this logic here. Rogers, you want a job, you let me know.”
“He already has one,” Natasha intervened drolly.
“You hear me?” Tony finished. “I could use some brains like you. What is it?”
Steve shook his head like a dog. “Nothing, it’s—sorry. For a moment there—your dad said nearly the exact same thing to Bucky, once.”
“Well, my dad was a royal idiot and is further proved so by not trying to hire you too,” Tony said, eating more to avoid thinking too closely about said dad. “So, the real question is, how is Thor keeping the peace up there?”
He waited, and Steve didn’t disappoint. “We’ll have to gather intelligence.”
“Spy,” Barton agreed enthusiastically. “Which happens to be something Natasha and I are good at. And as of now, we’re officially looking for work.”
“I thought I employed you,” Tony said, confused. “I mean, like to be an Avenger. Like Steve.”
Natasha laughed quietly.
“I want another job,” Clint said, brow furrowed and stubborn. “I want to be employed to spy on Bruce.”
Tony raised an eyebrow. “I feel like I’m promoting the wrong thing here. Spying on teammates? Not generally smiled upon, right? Right.” Around the table, he got a lot of indulgent smiles. Except Pietro, who was putting butter on more toast and accidentally on the end of his sister’s braid. “Right. I can’t put it in the books that I’m endorsing that, Clint Barton.”
“Even though you are.”
“Even though I am,” Tony agreed. “It will have to be off the record, cash under the table, very sneaky business.”
“Or,” Natasha said, “You could pay him in food or equipment and everyone just continues on as they were.”
Clint held out a hand. “Or that,” he concluded. “That works too.”
Tony shook. “Oh boy, a whole new era of knowledge!” he sang. “If anyone wants to place bets as to how Thor is keeping the peace, now is the time before my special personal spy figures out all for me.”
“Pietro, that’s my hair!” Wanda wailed.
** Natasha
“Hey, you fucker,” Clint said into the gloom, the light from under the common room’s kitchen cabinets highlighting his features in green.
Natasha, watching from the doorways secretly, nearly jumped out of her skin when Loki leaned into view, holding, of all things, a mug with a Snoopy image on it.
“Surely you have a better address for a prince of Asgard.” The god was dressed more casually than Natasha had ever seen, in a plain shirt with untied laces hanging from the neckline, and black pants. He was barefoot.
“I feel like you and I know each other,” Clint said, still easy, although there was tension building in his shoulders. “No need to stand on occasion.”
Loki nodded at him and clicked the electric kettle on.
They’d been camping out on Clint’s floor with the twins, everyone in at least a light sleep when Natasha had been awakened by footsteps passing by her door. She didn’t usually make a habit of following him around at night, but something in her had felt like it, and she’d only survived so long by listening to her instincts.
She had to admit, a 3am chitchat with Loki hadn’t been top on her list of guessing how this would play out.
“Nightmares?”
“Well, you’d know,” Clint answered. “I gotta say, I didn’t really picture you as the type.”
Loki shrugged. “I wanted tea, and Thor left Mjolnir in front of the cabinet on Banner’s floor.”
Clint grunted.
“I must say, you’re taking my presence here remarkably well,” Loki said into the quiet. “I lost a bet with myself. I thought you’d turn to mush. Still dealing with the trust issues?”
Clint was holding his bow with a speed that had Natasha’s breath stilling in her throat. “You’ve been in my mind?” he demanded, hands steady.
Loki slowly moved his hands up, one still clutching the Snoopy mug. “No. Not since. I swear it on my mother’s grave.”
Clint didn’t put the bow down. “Make sure it stays that way, or I’ll have Natasha set Bruce on you.”
Loki grinned at him, and Clint must have seen something in that crazed look, because he retracted his bow and walked over to the freezer, effectively turning his back on Loki for a moment. He turned around, ice cream container in hand, and Loki handed him a spoon from the drawer without being asked.
It was the strangest gathering Natasha had ever spied on, and that was saying a lot.
She remembered those first few days after the Battle of New York, better even than Clint, probably. Riding out the high from the fight, he’d been erratic, unstable. It had taken everything she had, favors pulled, all her physical strength to haul him away.
There’d been a cabin in the middle of the woods. Natasha had made a big show of shedding every single weapon at the door, and then waiting expectantly while Clint did the same. They’d spent five miserable weeks out there, shaking apart in the middle of the night, and slowly stitching themselves back together.
She didn’t plan on repeating it.
Unsheathing a knife, Natasha crept closer. Clint turned and the bow was up again. “Prove it,” he said, voice steady. He tilted his head towards Loki. “Humor me.”
Loki chuckled quietly and held up his hands again.
“How am I supposed to prove I’m somebody when I’m barely sure myself?” Natasha asked.
Clint inhaled. “That’s something Nat would say.” He swung the bow away and left it lying out on the countertop. It was, Natasha thought, a signal of some kind.
“You lot are so philosophical,” Loki said interestedly, tea steeping beside him while he propped his chin on his hands and stared avidly. “Isn’t it enough to exist? Odin ripped me from my homeland as an infant, where he slaughtered nearly all my people, and raised me as a prince of his own world. Am I frost giant or god? Am I both?”
“What’s the answer?” Clint asked.
Loki laughed. “Oh no. It’s taken me centuries upon centuries to figure that one. I’m not spelling it out for you, do the work yourself.”
Clint rolled his eyes at Natasha. “Come on,” he began, and there was a crashing noise.
All three of them turned, and found Wanda standing in the darkened doorway, eyes too large and luminous. She raised her hands and they were glowing red. Without a word, Clint and Natasha split, ready to corral her until they could reach her safely, when the room flickered and disappeared.
They were standing in a small apartment, a wooden table at one end of the room, a couch at the other. Through two doorways a kitchen and a bedroom were visible.
Wanda had turned into a ten-year-old girl, skinny and awkward, and slightly less frightened looking.
“Your home?” Loki said, and Natasha locked eyes with Clint, both of them moving again together while Loki spun the illusion.
Wanda seemed transfixed by the scene around her. “Is it dinnertime?”
“Nearly,” Loki said, gentle and interested. “And then what, Wanda?”
“Then—dinner,” she told him, looking up in that way children do, not scared, merely watchful. “With my mama and papa.”
The scene flickered; Natasha faltered.
The cramped apartment gave way to a lustrous hall with huge wooden tables and gold on the walls. Laughing people filled the seats, their clothes bedecked with armor and jewels. A whole pig laid on a silver platter.
There was a man with white hair and an eyepatch and a woman in blue robes, and something in the way she was standing, the clasp of her hands and the set of her shoulders, was familiar. She placed her hand on the man in the eyepatch’s shoulder and laughed.
“Dinner with mother and father, yes,” Loki said, still calm, studying Wanda, who had grown. “And perhaps a brother?”
He flicked his gaze to Natasha once, and she moved, grabbing one of Wanda’s arms while Clint grabbed the other. The vision disappeared and Wanda sank to the floor of the dark kitchen.
“There we go,” Loki said, leaning against the counter. He seemed paler than before, but maybe that was just the lighting.
“You’re okay,” Clint said to Wanda, standing and going for a glass of water. Natasha ran a hand up and down Wanda’s arm experimentally. She wasn’t ready for Wanda to slump over and rest her head against Natasha’s neck. Wanda’s hair tickled but Natasha didn’t move an inch.
“I’m so scared,” Wanda said, words rushed. “Every time I close my eyes, I see horrible things. Visions, things they put in my head, things they want me to do. I see my brother, dead at my feet. I see cities leveled, armies flattened. I can do those things,” she confided, her voice shaking. “I know I can do them all, if I had to.”
Natasha rubbed her. “We all have the ability to do great things, Wanda. Some more than others. What matters is the choices you make.”
“How can I be sure what’s real and what isn’t?”
“I might be able to help you with that,” Natasha said slowly, remembering some of her own conditioning. It was awfully late, but she was wide awake, who was she to tell Wanda to go back to bed?
“You know who should help with that,” Loki spoke up, strangely quiet. “Banner.”
Natasha flinched. They didn’t need Bruce, they would be just fine—
“I should think you’d be all over Banner,” Loki said archly. “Since he could throw me across the river, keep me in check.”
“And who keeps him in check?” Natasha asked. Clint handed Wanda the water.
Loki blinked. “Thor, of course.”
Natasha squinted, trying to see any kind of mocking or trickery on his face. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. She was an expert in the thrust and parry of mind games, but it was the middle of the night and she was tired.
“Fine,” she said, standing and pulling Wanda with her. “Come on, both of you.”
Before she could talk herself out of that lunacy, she led the way into the elevator, followed by a nervous twenty-year-old, a god in pajamas, and Clint Barton. For some strange reason, Tony wasn’t in the lab. If Bruce seemed surprised by the nighttime parade coming through the doors, it was only discernable from the slight twitch in one of his eyes.
“Wanda and I have some exercises to try out. We thought you might have a spare brain scanner we could employ.”
Bruce flicked a glance at Loki, who shrugged. Natasha tried not to be offended that Bruce trusted the god of mischief more than her. Whatever. She didn’t trust him either.
If the Hulk arrived, could Loki take him down? Natasha wasn’t sure, but she was slightly cheered by the thought of him buying the rest of them enough time to run. Then she realized who she was counting on again, and felt like hurling up the remainders of her digested dinner.
“Yeah, sure,” Bruce said quietly, flicking away his work and clearing a chair for Wanda. They could do this, work around each other for her sake and keep the chatting to a minimum. It was an uneasy truce, but the best one they’d ever had.
Wanda sat, and her knuckles were white around the armrests.
“Relax,” Natasha said, sitting on the floor at her feet. “All we’re gonna do is ask each other questions. You don’t even have to answer if you don’t want to.”
Bruce pushed buttons, then waved a hand, and a big blue diagram filled the air besides Wanda’s head. Her brain was there, pulsing slightly, green flashing every now and then. Fear. Natasha took Wanda’s hand. The green flashed less frequently, growing sluggish.
“There you go,” Natasha said, making her voice loud enough that Bruce faded into the background for both of them. “I’ll go first. Am I an assassin?”
Wanda’s brow furrowed.
“I’m asking you,” Natasha encouraged.
“Yes,” Wanda answered slowly.
Natasha smiled. “Your turn.”
“Did I destroy a city?”
Natasha blinked. “No,” she answered. “Didn’t actually happen.”
Wanda frowned and studied the floating image of her brain.
They traded questions back and forth into the hours of the night. Wanda was the younger twin. Wanda liked pineapple on pizza—trust Clint to have priorities about exposing her to that—Wanda’s favorite color was scarlet. Wanda remembered playing dreidel with her parents.
Natasha didn’t remember her parents. Natasha’s favorite color was teal. It was tiresome, holding some secrets close and giving away others; she didn’t want to be entirely truthful with Wanda and scare the poor kid. While Loki left after some time and Clint slumped against the wall behind her, she was hyper aware of Bruce watching her during the questions, and it niggled at the base of her spine.
At the first sight of dawn, Natasha sent Wanda back upstairs with Clint. She hesitated awkwardly, unsure of how to thank Bruce.
“Is it hard for you?” he asked her. “Sharing about yourself?”
Natasha paused. “No one in this tower has an A+ in the trust department, Bruce, you of all people should know that.”
He opened his mouth and closed it again. Took out his glasses and cleaned them. “I’m not—I don’t have trust issues.”
“Well, now we’re really telling lies.”
“Just because I don’t trust you—”
Natasha walked up and poked him in the chest; he jumped. “You don’t trust me because you’re smart, Banner. Because you learned from your past mistakes. You don’t trust anyone else because you’re scared. It’s as simple as that.”
He blinked at her. “And you?”
“I only trust a few people in the world,” Natasha said honestly.
“Barton?”
“With my life.”
Bruce smiled sardonically. “But nothing else, right?”
Instead of puzzling that one out, Natasha leveled her gaze at him, thanked him quietly, and left before she could take the easy way out and murder him. Goodness knows it would’ve been simpler.
** Steve
“Oh, boo,” Tony said when the elevators spat him into the gym around 3pm.
“It’s lovely to see you too,” Steve said wryly, not looking up from the treadmill. He’d been running for about an hour now and planned to maybe cram one more in before calling it a day. Tony was a small distraction—he’d grow bored and leave soon enough.
“It’s just that I was looking for your boyfriend,” Tony said, leaning against the neighboring treadmill and crossing his arms.
Steve ran a little faster than necessary. “We’re not joined at the hip, Tony.”
“It’s not that you’re not cool, it’s just that you don’t have a metal arm.”
Steve rolled his eyes good naturedly. As far as he knew, Bucky had tolerated Tony’s questions and prodding as best as he could, but hadn’t permitted him to scan it. Knowledge was knowledge, and as soon as the specs for his arm were in one set of hands, they could be transferred to another.
Tony had good intentions, but that didn’t mean much.
“Are you going to stop running or not?”
Sighing, Steve hit the button on the treadmill and slowed to a halt. “What?”
“Are you running from your problems?” Tony asked wisely. “Cause, kid, that ain’t gonna fly.”
Steve stared at him. “Don’t call me that. And what are you talking about?”
“Did you and Barnesy Poo have a fight or something? Are you not talking?”
“What—”
Tony held up his hands and shook his head like Steve was being really dumb and Tony held all the answers to the universe. “You know, a couple months ago, I watched Pepper fall to her death.”
Steve froze warily.
“It was—it sucked shit,” Tony continued, stare frank despite the fact that Steve’s face probably looked like it had been hit by a nuke. “You know—the only person who knows you in the world, who really knows you and still doesn’t run away screaming, within arm’s reach and you still can’t catch them. You just hang there and watch them fall. And they take your heart with you.”
“I think it’s a little different,” Steve said halfheartedly.
“Is it?”
Steve closed his eyes. If he thought about it, he could remember that day in vivid technicolor. The feel of the vicious wind against his face, the freezing metal beneath his gloves. The determination in Bucky’s face, and how close their fingers had been before it all went to hell in a handbasket.
Tony lifted his hands. “So, we both got lucky. I blew up my suits, told Pepper she should marry me…what have you done?”
“You should know,” Steve said, the words being yanked from somewhere deep inside him. “Last spring…Hydra alluded to Bucky—to making Bucky kill a lot of people. Maybe…maybe—”
“You’re saying Barnes might have killed my parents.”
Steve lifted his eyes wearily, poised to run. “That’s what I’m saying.”
Tony nodded, looking a little haggard. “It’s hard to be immaterial when the blows land close to home, that’s for sure.”
“Story of my life,” Steve grumbled.
“I need to process this,” Tony said abruptly, spinning around and making for the elevator again. “I’ll probably go beg Bruce to be my therapist and when that doesn’t work, I’ll tell Pepper.”
Steve watched him go.
He stopped and looked over his shoulder at the elevator. “I want you to know it doesn’t change a thing. Not really. I’ll get over it, okay?”
“If you want us to go—”
“Nope,” Tony said, and if he was talking a little faster than normal, well, Steve could overlook it. “Nope, nope, I don’t want that. I just need a few minutes, days, whatever. Then it’ll be back to team bonding movie nights and whatever.”
Steve breathed out. “We don’t have movie nights.”
“Well maybe we should.” The elevator arrived and Tony stepped in without saying goodbye.
Steve gave up on the gym and headed upstairs himself. The apartment was quiet when he got there, so he went straight for the shower. He didn’t know if he’d done the right thing, telling Tony. Maybe it never would’ve come up. Maybe it would’ve been better if Tony had heard it from someone else. Goodness knew they didn’t have the best track record at getting along.
But maybe it would be all right. Steve dared to let himself think it and then promptly turned off the hot water and ran a towel vigorously over his head. That kind of hopefulness was dangerous. He would live each day and wait for a sign and be ready to go if he ever needed to.
When he came out, freshly dressed in sweats and a large long sleeved shirt, the place was still quiet and dim. Steve went padding around, into the kitchen, Bucky’s bedroom. He finally found Bucky outside on the balcony, staring down into the city, the breadth of his shoulders curled inwards.
Steve slowly slid the glass door open and stepped out and around him. Smoke curled from Bucky’s cupped hands and drifted up and away. Steve studied him for a minute, decided nothing too big was amiss, and reached out and stole the cigarette.
The smoke was hot in his throat and truly awful, but it tasted of nostalgia and childhood summers.
“Hey,” Bucky said, the first words they’d spoken to each other in at least twelve hours of peaceful co-existing, grabbing it back. “Those things’ll kill you, remember?”
“Not now,” Steve said, ducking his head.
Bucky extinguished the cigarette on the railing and looked up, eyes bright. “Well maybe I still don’t like seeing you with one.”
“But it’s okay if you smoke?”
“I ain’t the one with asthma,” Bucky said lazily, reaching out and tugging Steve close under his arm. “Don’t worry about little old me.”
Bucky had told Steve that he never really forgot things. Only sometimes, like when you couldn’t be sure the event you were thinking of actually happened or came from a particularly vivid dream. Steve understood just what he meant, of course. Steve was the one who waited for Bucky to fetch things from high shelves, and still expected to fit under Bucky’s chin when they hugged.
Around his new friends, his teammates, he knew who he was; what kind of space he took up. With Bucky nearby, it was harder.
“I been worryin’ about you for half a century,” Steve told him, resting his head on his shoulder. “I think I’m pretty good at it now.”
“Half a century?” Bucky laughed, the vibrations shaking them both. “I think I got you beat, pal.”
They stayed that way for a long time, staring out at the familiar skyline. The air cooled around them, the wind growing wild so high up. They stayed until Steve shivered and even Bucky’s sweatshirt wasn’t enough to keep away the chill anymore.
And then they went inside and Bucky pulled out a frying pan and told Steve he was going to cook dinner. Steve sat and watched Bucky’s hands work and wondered what the hell he was going to do with himself if things changed. When things changed.
“You gonna say it to my face or what?” Bucky said around 8pm, sitting across from him.
Steve didn’t look at him, because Steve had grown up strategizing the best way to keep Bucky from smelling fear. Steve just ate his dinner and grunted in the right places and smiled in the others.
Of course, the strategy only worked until Bucky got fed up and sliced right through Steve’s bullshit.
“I remember this,” Bucky said, waving his hand in Steve’s general direction. “What, are you waiting for them to start shelling us in our sleep?”
“I told Tony that Zola told me you might have killed Howard,” Steve said in a rush, because no matter what, that wasn’t something he was ever going to keep a secret.
Bucky pushed back in his chair until he was balancing on two legs. Steve remembered this. Bucky casually rocking on his chair until he’d get distracted and fall, either forward with a thump or backwards with a clatter and shout. And then Steve’s mother would jump and chew him out for hours about that kind of behavior.
The ghost of his mother in the room helped him to breathe easier, when Bucky said blankly, “And what did he say?”
“Needed some time. Said—said it didn’t change how he felt about us livin’ here.”
“Okay,” Bucky said slowly. “Okay. So why are you still actin’ like we’re about to be run outta town?”
Because Steve couldn’t hope. He couldn’t hope that Tony would be fine and everything would continue on as it had been, that Bucky would stay, that Bucky would stay. After all, the Maximoffs were going to be alright, Bucky had done what he’d set out to do. What was there left for him here?
“I’m fine,” Steve said reflexively.
Bucky’s face didn’t change.
“Thought Barton was the deaf one,” Steve said.
Bucky brightened. “Oh, you’re talking, are you, Steve! Sorry, I’m deaf where it comes to flat out lies.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Steve asked, pushing back from the table, rattling the dirty dishes. “Leave me alone.”
The words were habit—he wanted to yank them back in as soon as they were out. Don’t leave me alone. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave. From Bucky’s raised eyebrow, he could tell it sounded as ludicrous as it felt.
Bucky sighed. “Steve,” he said, drawing out the first E.
Steve kicked at his own chair. It went ricocheting off the table and into the wall, where one of its legs came flying clean off.
“Great!” Steve said, staring at it, his voice strange and high pitched. “Now I’ll have to learn how to fix that.”
“You don’t gotta learn,” Bucky said. He still hadn’t moved; hadn’t even flinched when Steve did the stupid kicking. “I know how; I can fix it later, pal.”
Steve was going to kill him. Steve was going to take his dumb fork and ram it down his windpipe and then they’d find the body and accuse Steve of murder and Steve would yell from the top of the Empire State that he’d done the world a favor.
Bucky lowered his chair to the floor. “Calm down, Steve.”
“I will not,” Steve retorted, and he was yelling. He was yelling and pissed as all hell, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this angry over absolutely nothing. “I don’t have to listen to you, I don’t have to care what you think, you know. I don’t have to care about what anyone thinks.”
Bucky just watched him. He looked very stern, and that meant he was trying not to smile. It made Steve madder.
“I wish I didn’t care about what you think,” Steve said loudly. “I wish I didn’t—” he couldn’t say that. He couldn’t. He didn’t mean it, not really.
“Say it,” Bucky said. “Say it, Steve.”
“I wish I didn’t care about you!” Steve cried. The words clawed out of him, ugly and many-legged. The silence left over afterwards was a canyon.
“I wish I didn’t care about you either,” Bucky replied finally. “There.”
Selfishly, hearing those words thrown back at him, Steve recoiled. They were terrible coming from him, but they were worse poison being heard. It was an awful thing, to wish love away. But it was either that or be drowned in it.
Bucky spread his hands. “But you do care. And, so do I. So, what’re we gonna do about it, Stevie?”
“Don’t call me that,” Steve said automatically. Bucky waited, and Steve started pacing, running his hands through his hair.
“So, tell me what you want, then.”
“I want you to stay,” Steve said, all in a rush. His hands were balled up, knuckles taut. “Please stay.”
“Fine,” Bucky said at once.
“I want you to stay always,” Steve hastened to add. “Even if the Maximoffs are okay, even if we finally burn Hydra to the ground. I want you to stay for…for good.”
Bucky smiled. “I’ll follow you anywhere, you gotta know that by now. You want it, you ask for it, I’ll give it to you. Can’t you see?”
“What do you want?” Steve said. “What do you want, Bucky?”
Bucky stepped close and took Steve’s hand in his. It was cool and smooth to the touch, already warming as soon as Steve’s fingers brushed across. “I want to stay with you.”
“If you’re really staying, you have to do the laundry,” Steve warned, testing him.
“At the rate you go through socks?” Bucky’s grip was steady. “We’re sharing, pal, and that’s final.”
“Okay,” Steve said. He felt, at the moment, like he would’ve agreed to anything to keep Bucky looking at him like that.
The light from the kitchen cast shadows on Bucky’s cheekbones. His hair was falling gently around his face. Steve watched the bravado slip away from him, sweet uncertainty taking its place. Bucky was watching him, looking for something, but Steve didn’t know what. They were still holding hands.
“Aw hell,” Bucky muttered, before leaning in.
“Language,” Steve mock reprimanded.
Bucky kissed him.
** Bruce
“The thing about watching centuries go by,” Thor said musingly, hands crossed on his stomach, “Is that so much can grow so dull so quickly.”
Bruce didn’t say anything to that; how could he. Instead, he pulled the blanket tighter under his chin and watched the late afternoon sunlight track patterns across the rug.
“If there’s nothing special to keep you fighting…” Thor trailed off, lost in some other thought. “The point is,” he said, steering them back on track, “Is Loki.”
Bruce inhaled and thought about nice things. Daisies ruffling in the breeze. Lamb curry on flatbread. Tony at his most excitably funny. Thor, lying on the couch opposite and speaking absently, hair curling like a rainstorm was about to hit.
“Loki is dull and boring if our relationship never changes.”
“So, can you change it?”
Thor grinned, sudden and charged. “Exactly! You can only fight with someone for so many eons. At some point, the…the mutual respect and shared life experiences—how did we become friends, Banner?”
Bruce liked the sound of that. Friends, said in that honest and frank way of Thor’s. Friends, with a history. Without his permission, the right side of his mouth quirked up. “Um—”
“Mutual respect and shared experiences,” Thor said wisely. “You and I…we’re not so easy to kill. That’s a burden in on itself. You and I…we know the power of backing down, of not fighting. You and I appreciate a good conversation and good food.”
Bruce raised his eyebrows. “And this has to do with Loki how?”
“Loki is my brother,” Thor explained, playing with one of the braids that framed his face. “I love him deeply, and I fear nothing will change that, at least not for millennia. And I can’t…I don’t want to go on butting heads and bickering over stupid little things. I want to grow, to move past all that. Don’t you see?”
“Your little bickering nearly leveled New York,” Bruce pointed out. “I don’t think—”
Thor interrupted. “Of course, you haven’t known Loki as long as I. You’ll see, he grows dull and irritating after a while. Right now, you’re fearful, scared. But in a bit—”
“Oh, I’m not scared,” Bruce said. “Far from it. Like you said, I don’t die easily, and I know how to hold a grudge.”
Thor smiled, huge and amused. “I suspect, dear Banner, that you and he are more alike than you know.”
Bruce flipped him off.
Thor laughed, huge and loud, and Loki chose that moment to pop up from behind the couch and stab Bruce in the chest.
Bruce barely lost any time nowadays. According to Thor, he turned huge and green and angry, and then all Thor had to do was tap him on the leg and the Hulk would vanish, sated. Bruce didn’t want to put too much thought into that, remembering the early days of the lullaby’s trials. Thor the most successful, Natasha nearly dying.
So, the lullaby had transformed from a specific string of sentences to Thor’s presence. Thor was trustworthy enough to pierce through even the Hulk’s thick skull.
You don’t trust me because you’re smart, Banner. Because you learned from your past mistakes. You don’t trust anyone else because you’re scared. It’s as simple as that. Natasha’s words from that strange night a while ago stayed with him, which likely meant he was bothered by them, which likely meant some part of them was true.
But Bruce trusted Thor. And in some twisted way, he was growing to trust Loki as well. If there was one thing unpredictability was, it was predictable.
Bruce felt weird about the whole thing, and mostly how weird it was that he barely noticed anymore. Loki appeared, Bruce looked up in time to see the knife, and then Thor was there, smiling at him and Loki grumbled and went off to scribble in his little book again. Another day, another dollar.
The Hulk had even stopped batting Loki across the room. According to Thor, he just glared and turned back.
“Loki, I’m fed up,” Thor informed his brother flatly, another pair of Bruce’s glasses shattered over a dinnertime stabbing. Loki, mopping up water with a blue sponge, ignored him. Bruce continued eating his lentil stew.
“Careful,” he said, gently grabbing Thor’s wrist. Lightning flickered across his fingertips, and Bruce didn’t want anything set on fire at the moment. He was enjoying the stew.
Thor looked down and the lightning vanished. “Can’t you be more interesting?” he complained. “Can’t you do anything new, Brother?”
Loki threw the sponge into the sink. “What are you talking about?”
“Take up a new hobby,” Thor said, throwing his hands up. “You’re not going to kill him! Get over it. And besides, you live in his house, eat his food—you’d be breaking the ancient rules of hospitality. You’d have to give him a warrior’s burial and then banish yourself.”
Loki stuck his tongue out. “You never know. Maybe there’s a weak spot and I haven’t found it yet.”
“Sit down and eat your food, Loki,” Bruce said. Loki sat.
“Bruce doesn’t mind, does he?”
Bruce looked up. “I gotta admit the thrill of it’s gone, pal,” he said, a little shocked at that pal showing up out of nowhere. “And I don’t want to keep having to replace my dishware.”
“Take up a new hobby,” Thor threatened, hand tight around his spoon.
“Or what?” Loki said, challenge slipping over him like a new leather coat.
Bruce put his head in his hands.
“Or…” Thor’s eyes darted around the room, trying to think up a good motivator. “Or I’ll…”
Loki settled back in his chair, eyebrows satisfied.
“Or I’ll kiss Banner,” Thor said triumphantly.
Loki made a nauseated face. “What?”
Bruce stopped with his spoon inches from his mouth.
“I will, you know I will,” Thor said, grinning wide now. “Don’t you like Banner? Do you dare me to kiss him?”
Loki looked even more murderous than usual. “You do, you kiss him—you even look at him, Brother—and I’ll slit his throat.”
Thor propped his elbows on the table. “I thought we’d already established that won’t work. I’d like to see you try, anyways; I’d bet against you.”
They stared at each other, neither willing to back down. Bruce ate some lentil stew. Really, he’d learned not to wait around for them to sort things out—people who spent millennia the way others spent hours took forever to get around to anything.
Nothing new popped up as the weeks went by, and Loki did seem to be backing off the surprise attacks. Of course, that could mean he was planning something big and dastardly.
Wanda’s memory improved, slowly and steadily. Barnes already had all of his back, a feat that still excited Bruce every time he thought about it—his healing factor was incredible.
Loki started knitting. “It’s because the needles double as weapons,” Thor said darkly, when they first found the god of mischief perched on the couch clacking away, something purple and fuzzy taking shape in his lap.
“At least he’s making nice things,” Thor said grudgingly a week later, wearing a huge rainbow sweater clearly sized for him exactly.
“Should I be concerned about Loki buying all the olive green yarn on the island of Manhattan?” Tony said offhandedly in the lab.
The olive green resurfaced a few days later, in the shape of a giant knitted stuffed crocodile. “What?” Loki said defensively when Bruce stopped in his tracks, the crocodile clearly visible through his open bedroom door. “He’s my cuddle buddy. I saw that on the magic screen.”
One day while Thor was out with some of the other Avengers, Bruce came out to the kitchen table to find Mjolnir sitting right in the center, atop the pile of books Bruce had been reading. Loki, sitting at the table with a glass of orange juice, rolled his eyes up at Bruce.
“There’s no point, I already tried,” he said. “You’ll have to wait until he…calls it.”
“I don’t mind,” Bruce said, sitting down heavily. The night hadn’t been a good one for him, unfortunately. Nightmares slowly floated away, their long fingers melting in the sunlight. “I actually kinda like it. It’s funny.”
Loki sent him a flat stare. “Just wait until he leaves in front of the hairdryer drawer.”
“The Hulk can’t pick up the hammer,” Bruce said. The apartment suddenly felt very silent indeed. “I mean—it’s nice. It’s security, you know?”
“It can always take you down,” Loki said, in a strange and commiserating way. “Even if nothing else can.”
Bruce stared.
Loki sipped his orange juice. “Classic older sibling move. Always had to be better and stronger at everything.”
“I don’t have any siblings,” Bruce said honestly. He stared at Mjolnir. The lovely Norse markings wrapped around one side and appeared again around the bottom. The small leather strap on the handle quivered just the slightest bit, like a leaf experiencing the first threat of rain.
Loki slouched into his seat so his long legs resembled those of a grasshopper. He was wearing knitted socks.
“Do you think,” Bruce said, and then stopped. “Do you think—it’s too much for him?”
Loki barely moved.
“For Thor,” Bruce clarified. “You know.”
Loki obviously didn’t, and it showed in his face, derisive jerk of his head, and squint of his thin brows. “Contrary to popular belief, I’m not all powerful and nor can I read minds, Banner.”
“Mjolnir,” Bruce said. “He’s the only one that can carry it, so he has to. Carry it, I mean. I can’t do it. You can’t do it. There’s no one else to share the burden, so he shoulders it alone.”
Loki’s gaze moved past Mjolnir up to Bruce. “We’re not talking about the hammer, are we,” he asked.
Bruce blinked.
“We’re talking about you and I,” Loki guessed. “There’s no one else strong enough to put us down. No one else brave enough to try.”
Bruce sighed gustily and looked out the window. “I was in Calcutta, you know, before they came after me to chase you when you stole the tesseract. I was a doctor, I kept a low profile, I did my best. And still, I couldn’t breathe.”
Loki listened with his head cocked.
“Thor makes it easier. Because I know I can’t hurt him, even if I tried. Even if things get bad. But that’s a lot to put on one person, isn’t it? He’s led for so long, he’s carried that hammer for so long. Maybe he needs to go.”
“Forgive me,” Loki said slowly, “But maybe you shouldn’t be so rude and unkind and think that only Thor is strong enough not to be hurt? He’s not the only Asgardian in New York State, you know.”
Bruce’s mouth dropped open, just a little bit. Of all the responses he’d anticipated…that was definitely not one of them.
“And Thor’s not the only one who can stop me,” Loki said with a shrug. “Which is why I watch my back extra carefully now.”
Bruce knew he was staring like a maniac, but Loki didn’t seem bothered. He finished his orange juice, stood, and carefully rinsed the glass before putting it into the dish drain.
There was also a card game—pokemon, Bruce found out—and once Thor did, he barely saw the two Asgardians during the afternoon. Pokemon, it seemed, was more entertaining than going to work. Every time Bruce walked by, he could hear them shouting things and then afterwards congratulating each other on a battle well fought, no matter the outcome.
“That stuff’s cool,” Harley said while attaching new prototype flame repulsors to his suit. “I was obsessed a few years ago. And they can have battles that don’t level a city now.”
“I’m weirdly flattered,” Barnes said upon receiving a gift sweater from Loki knitted with one arm all in gray yarn.
“I’m not,” Steve said blankly. His gift was a thick white and blue hat with red devil horns hanging off the top. Barnes just laughed at the look on his face.
The Avengers slowly being buried in knitwear wasn’t the worst outcome, Bruce had to admit. Around his apartment, the number of blankets steadily increased, and Thor’s civilian clothes started getting even fuzzier and more vivid.
“You look like the bifrost,” Loki noticed, and then doubled over laughing. He looked a lot nicer in genuine hysteria. Bruce felt the corner of his mouth threaten upwards.
Thor just grinned, wearing a t-shirt with Tony’s face on it, a multicolored rainbow scarf, a striped sweater, blue sweatpants, and polka dotted socks.
“Look at all this!” he said later, lying on the rug and gesturing grandly. Bruce wasn’t sure if he meant the knitted blankets and box of pokemon cards on the coffee table, or this in general. “Look at Loki now! It’s amazing. I like him so much better.”
Bruce had to agree. “Until he gets tired of these hobbies, though.”
Thor shrugged dismissively. “We’ll get him new ones. He’ll listen to you.”
“Yeah, cause the Hulk scares him.”
Thor sat up, brows clouding. “Banner, maybe that was why at first,” he reasoned, “But you surely see he’s wary of you now. He doesn’t want to lose all the soup you make, or your kind regard. He likes it here, and doesn’t want to be banished. He even likes trying to murder you,” Thor added, looking guilty. “None of that has anything to do with the other guy, and hasn’t in a long while. I’m sorry to be the one to say it, but he considers you an ally. A mighty one.”
Bruce inhaled shakily. It was stupid, it was beyond stupid to befriend the god of mischief. And yet…that was what Bruce had gone and done.
“And I keep threatening to kiss you if he steps out of line,” Thor concluded, winking. He looked like a candy shop in a hurricane. Or a thrift store caterpillar. “Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s two o’clock and Loki and I are taking up what the magic screen calls teatime.”
Bruce smiled and nodded. On his way to teatime, Loki stopped in the living room and handed Bruce a thick maroon sweater with a large smooth black button stitched on to the collar. Bruce put it on immediately, and pretended not to notice Loki’s surprised and proud grin.
Loki in turn didn’t comment on the slightly misty glint to Bruce’s eyes. Bruce appreciated it.
** Natasha
“Okay, report,” Tony said. Natasha, on the couch with a magazine, rolled her eyes to herself and stood to go get a snack from the kitchen.
At the table, Clint stretched like a cat. “As you’ve guessed from the outrageous amounts of knitwear—”
“Illustrated,” Tony said, gesturing to himself. He was wearing a black and gold sweater.
“Loki has started taking up hobbies,” Clint said, hands first making quotation marks and then signing alongside his words. “Knitting, card games, afternoon tea.”
“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Tony interrupted. “Come again?”
“Tea,” Clint said flatly. “He’s peacefully coexisting alongside both Thor and Bruce.”
Tony nodded thoughtfully, stroking his goatee. Natasha located a box of Cheez-its and headed back to the couch.
On the window sill, sunlight streamed in through the leafy outlines of a row of potted plants Wanda had found somewhere and collected. Natasha didn’t mind the touch of green herself, she had to admit. Although she hoped Wanda had plans for keeping an eye on them, since neither she nor Clint had a great track record with plants. It was enough work to keep each other alive.
“And you? He’s peacefully coexisting with you?”
Clint sighed. “I did my time in the batshit insane padded house, Stark. I’m done with that.”
“Me too,” Tony replied. “Not sure I’m done though.”
“Loki is still occasionally trying to kill Bruce,” Clint said. “Just thought you should know.”
“I should know,” Tony agreed, looking agitated. “I love Bruce.”
Clint grinned. “Well, he’s still kicking. I think he’s alright at fending for himself.”
“Man,” Tony said, shaking his head in the manner of one who was most perplexed. Natasha knew the feeling.
“I’ll need to continue to monitor in order to tell you about Steve’s view,” Clint said apologetically. “I’m usually faster, but someone—” here he sent a scorching stare Natasha’s way—“thinks it’s more fun to eat and laugh at me while I handle all the hard work.”
Natasha lifted her box of Cheez-its in a toast.
“I definitely want to know what Steve thinks,” Tony agreed. “Although he’s usually so vocal about his stupidly smart opinions. Maybe he doesn’t care either.”
“Maybe.”
“I’ve also got another job, if you want it,” Tony said, in an offhand way that alluded to how much he wanted Clint’s help. “I don’t know if you know this, but half the people who started working for me in recent years came from Shield. You can imagine the problem. How would you feel about monitoring the whole tower, as in…keeping an eye for any Hydra heads that might have grown back?”
Clint started signing before he spoke. “I’ll have to think about it,” he said, the words somewhat belayed by the intense smile on his face. “See if my partner’s interested.”
That was all Natasha heard about it for the next few days. She came back from a small mission with Pepper Potts to find Bucky Barnes sitting on her couch and ranting about the travesty of modern baseball. Not only was it her couch—well, Clint’s, if anyone wanted to be particular, and nobody did—but his Russian was a travesty and a half.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Annoying you,” Bucky Barnes replied immediately. “Is it working?”
“Your roommate is getting on my nerves, I don’t care how much you love him, he’s got to go,” Natasha informed Steve that night, noting the way his ears reddened. Interesting.
“He does that sometimes,” he replied lightly, not brushing her words aside the way she’d been expecting. He went back to his book.
Natasha could grudgingly admit to herself that if Barnes’ baseball opinions amused Clint, then the baseball opinions could stay. Although with Clint, it was hard to say. It could’ve just been the copious amounts of swearing.
“Fuckin’ freakin’ fuck shit sonuvabitch,” Pietro said the next time Wanda beat him at cards, and Natasha had to put her foot down.
“You are ruining the kids,” she hissed, shoving Barnes out the door.
He went, but had to get the last word in. “Didn’t know you were the mother hen type, Tashka.”
Natasha wasn’t. She wasn’t. The kids just lived there. They were roommates. Clint had some weird adopting issue and Natasha was simply living with the latest results. It wouldn’t be very fair of her to complain, since she was one herself. That was all.
Loki and Thor went out occasionally together and blasted bad guys to Long Island—the Avengers didn’t include the god of mischief, but they were getting used to seeing him around, and even working with him, although nobody would ever have admitted it. It was just as normal to watch Loki hold up a car to block heavy fire as it was to see him pouring milk in his tea while gossiping to his brother. Which was to say none of it was normal, but they’d given up paying attention.
“So, you wanna help spy on the whole tower with me?” Clint asked while they were brushing their teeth Friday night. There were suspicious sounds coming from Wanda’s room. Natasha suspected a pillow fight.
“You know you adopted the Maximoffs, right?” she said, ignoring him. “You know they’re never going to leave now, that they’ve bonded with you like ducklings. You know that, right?”
“Would that be so bad?”
Natasha shook her head at him, fond. “You’re going soft in your old age, Barton. 9 to 5 day, home to kiss the kids goodnight?”
Clint put his toothbrush down and stared at her in the mirror. “I’d need a wife for that, wouldn’t I?” he signed.
“I married you in Porto, back in ’08, remember?” Natasha didn’t know why she said it. The wedding had been a front—half their lives were a front.
The memory still swam to the surface.
She’d worn a blue dress—not white, because the fabric was more opaque and she’d had to stow weapons beneath the skirt. They’d braided white flowers into her hair. Clint had been barefoot, if she recalled. She’d noticed his feet in the sand and promptly kicked off her own sandals. It’d been a moment of pure impulse, a rarity for her, even then, twenty-three and finally a well-oiled machine with her partner.
The few guests that had gathered—out of anticipation? Pity, for the newlyweds with no family and friends?—had cheered and laughed as Clint and Natasha danced around the beach for a few moments, stirring up sand with a vigor usually reserved for killing men.
Then they’d had a short ceremony and Clint had dipped Natasha in his arms, whispered sorry, and kissed her.
A few minutes later they shot the man masquerading as the officiant, if she recalled right.
“Portugal,” Clint said now, reminiscing. “They had all that lovely tile, remember? And the cork jewelry.”
“I mostly remember the buildup for three days and then killing the target,” Natasha said, washing her hands off like the blood was still there.
Clint handed her a towel. “I remember the way those flowers looked in your hair.”
Natasha dried her hands and left the bathroom. “Yes, well, who wouldn’t? I was a radiant bride.”
Clint didn’t answer.
The shouts in the room down the hall grew louder, and going to investigate, Natasha threw open the door in time to see Wanda’s red magic lift a pillow and knock Pietro on to the floor. “Hey,” he wailed from his back. “No fair.”
“It’s bed time,” Natasha said firmly. “I will separate you if you can’t act like human beings and close your eyes. If you’re not tired, at least put some effort into pretending.”
Wanda pulled her knees up to her chest and nodded, eyes big. Her brother sighed and grumped as he climbed up next to her.
“Goodnight,” Natasha told them with a slight flick of her eyes to let them know she wasn’t angry. “Sleep well.”
Their chorused goodnights echoed through the closed door. Clint was in his pajamas when she returned, hearing aids still in. Natasha eyed him. Some nights if one of them wanted space, they would separate, sleep in different rooms. Maybe this was one of those nights.
Natasha thought longingly of already warmed sheets and his comforting weight at her back and steeled herself. “I’ll go, then? And tomorrow—”
“No, it’s fine,” he said, gesturing to the mattress. “Come on.”
Glad, Natasha went through the motions of cleaning up her last bit of laundry and brushing her hair in the mirror.
Clint watched her. He made a face at her reflection and said, “Hurry up. I’m tired.”
“You’re not exactly helping the 9 to 5 family lifestyle allegations,” Natasha teased, setting her brush down. “Even your wife can see that.”
Clint laughed, staring up at the ceiling, hands tucked under his head. “If I asked you to marry me, would you say yes?”
He didn’t specify anything else. Let her make her own assumptions, turn the question around however she liked. Natasha pulled back the blankets, settled into her own side of the bed. The room was quiet and still aside from the faint rise and fall of his chest behind her.
“I wouldn’t have to,” she settled on, staring resolutely at the wall. “I already did.”
She didn’t hear him move, only felt the incredible warmth settle over her as his arm wrapped around her waist and his face mashed into the side of her neck. He was like a coat made from the finest mink—he was better than the thickest parka.
“I love you,” he said, and kissed her shoulder.
“Really?” Natasha asked, hoping he couldn’t hear the erratic jumping of her heart. “We’re doing this here? Now?”
Clint shrugged against her back. “I been waiting this long, it doesn’t seem like it matters much in the end.”
Touched, Natasha twisted so she could see his face. “You’ve been waiting?”
“Well, it didn’t seem right to say anything. First, I didn’t want to take advantage of you. Then, I didn’t want you to think it was only because you were attractive. And you could’ve had anyone you wanted. Then…well, a lot’s happened. Who knew when the next job was gonna go belly up? And then…I felt like you knew. I felt like you knew all the important stuff.”
Natasha looked at him and saw the young man who’d arrived to a beach wedding without any shoes on, who’d held her when she was injured and when she was trying not to cry. She saw him now, miraculously without any cuts on his scruffy face, holding her close in the dark, unveiling all the goodness in his heart, the goodness she already knew and loved.
She wriggled her hands up and signed to him. “Clint Barton. I love you too.”
He cracked a grin. “I know,” he said. “Ya znayu, Tasha.”
Before she could lose the courage, Natasha tugged him close and kissed him. It tasted like years of companionship, like ClintandNat and NatandClint, like just the same as always with a little bit of something better. His arm slide around her back, pulled her as close as physically possible.
“Damn,” he said weakly when they pulled apart for air. “Do you think—I mean, only if you want—do you think you could do that again?”
Neither of them were very poetic, but Natasha thought privately that she could kiss him until the day she died. Which may or may not be decades away. “Clint—”
“Nothing’s really changed,” he said, immediately knowing just where she was going. “But I won’t lie, helping Tony weed out any Hydra is a lot safer than going out in the field every day. If you were interested in helping, that is.”
“We have old enemies that won’t just die.”
Clint squeezed her close. “So, we’ll handle it the way we’ve always handled it. Only with about eighty percent more kissing, please.”
“You drive a hard bargain,” Natasha said, and rolled on top of him to kiss him some more.
He laughed. “No, you’re just in a very agreeable mood. And a terrible haggler to boot.”
If anyone else had said that, Natasha would’ve knifed them. As it was, she allowed him a private smile, and thought about how one offered hand in a warehouse more than ten years ago could blossom into something beautiful and wonderful, into a life she could never have imagined for herself, let alone wished for.
** Tony
Tony could easily say he had a lot of experience with the whole formal suit thing. It was pretty damn effortless, if he did say so himself. And he had the range, too. A deep blue suit made of synthetic snake skin. A maroon one made of velvet.
“You’re wearing this one,” Pepper said, handing him a hanger. “You can pick the tie yourself. Be ready in ten.”
Or, there was always the classic black. “Yes ma’am,” Tony said, eyeing it with a little melancholy. But Tony wasn’t a genius for nothing, and he was smart enough to know that Pepper Potts was pretty much always right. And the gala was sorta important. He could slum it with the rest of them.
“Are you feeling alright about this?” she asked him in the doorway. “Making it official to the world?”
Tony was. He smiled at her. “You know me, darling, nothing’s final until it’s plastered over the news. Billionaire Tony Stark’s newest tragedy: his girlfriend is the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“That’s a tragedy?”
“Only for everyone that isn’t me,” Tony said, going over to her for a quick kiss. “But me, I kinda prefer happy endings.”
Pepper hummed indulgently and then shot him a look. “Downstairs in ten minutes. Don’t disappoint me with your tie choices.”
“Yes ma’am.”
The tie was gold and red with an Iron Man face right in the center, where every single politician and reporter would be forced to be face to face with the sheer cleverness of it all. Pepper made no comment, which meant she hated it, but not so badly she wanted to intervene. Instead, she shooed him out onstage with the rest of the Avengers, who’d all had the fear of God drilled into them about what they would and would not be saying that evening.
Tony had never been so glad they’d defrosted Captain America as he was that night at the start of the festivities, when said Captain opened with a long speech that Tony could zone out during. Giving speeches about exciting things was fun, but boring speeches were quite literally a snooze.
And Steve was so good at boring speeches. His voice rang with conviction and honesty and patriotic truth, reminding everyone in the room just how lucky they were to be listening. Everyone except Tony, who was immune. And maybe Barnes too, who was surveying the room with casual flicks of his eyes, looking for exits and jackets disguising weapons.
The guy needed to relax a bit. It was all covered.
The team looked good, Tony had to say. Most of them had gone for the classic black suit, either of their own accord, or Pepper’s good taste, and Barnes was sharp, to say the least. He’d tied his shaggy hair up and had black gloves on both hands, and Tony wasn’t above saying he was a tall drink of water.
Next to him, Natasha was wearing a lovely green dress, low in the back and gauzy, the kind of dress that reminded Tony of something good, but he couldn’t remember what. What did the damn dress remind him of?
“—Bringing in new Avengers is no easy choice,” Steve droned on loudly, the snap of cameras the only thing occasionally interrupting him. “How do we ensure we’re not making a mistake?”
Tony was making a mistake tuning into that. He instead glanced past Natasha and Clint—boring suit, boring tie, whatever—and over to Thor.
Thor was finally not wearing something knitted, thank every god in every universe. He looked fine, he always looked fine, and next to him, Bruce looked alright too. Thankfully, Loki had not made an appearance yet—knock on wood—and would only be joining them later in the evening. Next to Bruce was Harley though, and although Tony understood having the kids all together, he really wished Harley was next to him.
So he could tell the kid how proud he was of him, not so he could make fun of Steve’s ridiculous speech.
Tony glanced out at the audience. There, on the side, he could make out Harley’s mom and sister. They looked nice there. Tony was glad they’d come.
“—And until then, our goals remain the same. I’d like to welcome all our new Avengers, starting with one you already know. Sam Wilson.”
Tony turned. What? Had Sam been on the new Avenger list? Wasn’t he already an Avenger?
The press seemed confused too. There were whisperings and the camera flashes died down a little. Sam stepped up next to Steve, and he wasn’t as tall, but he was trying. His tie was periwinkle, which would’ve looked like trash on anyone else. Pepper probably picked it out, damn her.
“Sam Wilson,” Steve said again, in case anyone was both deaf and blind, “You know him as the Falcon. I’m lucky enough to know him as a friend.”
“Who wrote this,” Tony whispered loudly.
Barnes leaned over and whispered back, “Steve never writes his speeches. He makes them up on the fly.”
“Well, it shows,” Tony replied. “I literally hire people for this job.”
Barnes shrugged. “He doesn’t sound as truthful when he’s telling other people’s lies.”
Cynical. Tony could appreciate that. He tuned back in, right in time to hear Steve say, “The mantle of Captain America has always meant numerous things. It’s been an icon, a reminder, for a long time, and hopefully the man behind it will continue to live up to what it stands for. And from now on, that mantle will be carried between us.”
The press exploded.
“We haven’t even gotten to Harley literally stealing Iron Man,” Tony said out loud, since no one could hear him anyway.
“Did you know about this?” Barton demanded of Barnes, looking like he was trying not to pee his pants with glee.
Barnes shook his head, biting back a grin like a kid who’d spotted Santa on Christmas Eve—honestly the two of them deserved each other. “I suspected something was up. Steve always goes above and beyond.”
Tony sighed. “Can we get to the good stuff already?” Then he had to go quiet because the audience was calming enough to barrage Steve with questions that he began answering gracefully.
Barnes punched Tony in the arm. “Don’t be an asshole.”
Sam and Steve waved and smiled, ignoring all the hands in the air and cameras clicking. “And now,” Steve said, and there was definitely some shit eating in his smile, Tony knew it, “I’d like to welcome Tony Stark and Harley Keener.”
Tony saw Harley’s mom and sister start clapping excitedly, and then Harley was next to him, and honestly? Tony didn’t keep track of anything after that.
“I think it all went well,” he said over the string quartet as Pepper handed him a champagne flute, trying to hide the fact that he was asking her if it went well.
Pepper smiled, winked and said, “I’m on to you, dear, but yes, it went well. There’s upheaval, there’s some backlash of course, but the feedback is already more approving than not. And all our new Avengers are more than suited to the job. Enjoy the party, but not too much. There are still businessmen to chat up.”
“Your Pepper is excellent for this job,” Thor said appreciatively, raising his glass in her direction. Tony didn’t even mind.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Hor d'oeuvres?”
Over at the finger food table, the newly announced and welcomed Maximoffs were each holding a paper plate and sampling everything in sight. “Oh yeah,” Pietro mumbled, picking up small toasts with smoked salmon and dill or tomato and goat cheese. “I could get used to this—this is not so bad.”
Natasha walked by and took the wine glass out of Wanda’s hand.
“You don’t know that I’m not twenty-one,” Wanda called, disappointed. Tony resolved to slip her something when Natasha was busy kissing Barton. “I’m actually twenty-two!”
“Like hell you are,” Steve muttered, walking by and tugging on her braid. Wanda’s hair was pretty immaculate—and so was her slim dress—but she didn’t flinch.
She reached out and smacked Steve back. “Shut up, Steve, you don’t know everything.”
“I know you’re more than five years younger than me,” he said, dodging her next blow. Tony was surrounded by children.
Which is when, of course, he remembered what Natasha’s dress reminded him of. “I left her on the roof!” he said excitedly, ignoring Clint and Thor’s worried looks. He’d left Pepper on the roof that night, that night she’d looked like the most alluring and beautiful thing in the world—which was how she looked every night—in that blue dress he’d bought for her birthday, the one without the back.
Damn, where was that dress? Pepper wouldn’t have thrown it out, so it must be in a closet somewhere. Tony should really follow up on that. At a later date.
“Mr. Stark, Captain Rogers?” came a smooth voice, and there was a big name of Pepper’s standing there, along with a couple of dumb looking interns.
Steve straightened up, using those big shoulders to block the fact that he was definitely holding a young girl about half his size in a headlock.
“I had a question for the two of you,” Pepper’s big name said, smiling greasily and extending a hand. Tony took to it buy Steve a few more moments—Tony was nice like that. “Do both of you feel a hundred percent in your choices to step back and welcome in the new heroes? No old insecurities arising? No egos?”
Tony stared. It was a really good question for him, but he was mildly insulted on Steve’s behalf. “We are human, George,” he said loudly, about a hundred percent certain George wasn’t the man’s name at all, and enjoying that. “Of course, there’s doubt. I think that doubt is good. It means I’ll be keeping my best eye on things, as opposed to my second best eye, which is, second best.”
Steve made a strangled noise but when they looked at him, he appeared totally unbothered. Tony was having fun, alright.
“Harley is more than capable,” Tony continued. “I’m honestly impressed you all care so much—I believe the majority of you were screaming I was unfit, like, two weeks ago.”
“Well, your rescue of the Maximoff girl,” Not-Really-George said kindly, which of course was just too good.
Tony winked. “Would you believe me if I told you that was Harley in the suit? Because it was.”
“I can vouch that it was,” Steve said into the silence that followed. “I think we’re in good hands, sir. The future looks bright.”
“Do you say that sincerely?” Not-Really-George’s Intern Number 1 asked, eyes as big as saucers. Behind him, Intern Number 2 scribbled furiously.
Steve stared back at him, and as Tony watched, one side of his mouth crept upwards. It was a most crooked smile, a smile more sincere than anything Tony had ever seen from Steve Rogers before.
“Yeah,” Steve said, and beamed over Not-Really-George’s shoulder. “Yeah, I do.”
“And he’s always sincere,” Tony added reflexively, having just caught sight of what—whom—Steve was looking at like they’d hung the sun in the sky. It was fucking Bucky Barnes, leaning oh so casually against a pillar and smiling back proudly.
“That’s all, folks!” Tony waited till they offered their hands for shaking and their faces for preening, and then steered Steve away along the edge of the room. “Okay,” he said once they’d passed the string quartet and were over near the bar. “Be free, young man. Go…frolic and…do whatever Barnes has been suggesting with those bedroom eyes for the last hour.”
Steve turned red, but didn’t duck away. Tony was proud of him, oh god. Tony was honest to god happy for him and glad. Tony needed a stiff drink, pronto.
“Thanks, Tony. Nice party,” Steve said, which was as much of a compliment a party ever got from him.
“Gala, Rogers,” Tony said to be a dick, and left him for the bar.
There were many unspeakable cruelties in the world. And the people in the room, from Thor all the way down to Pietro Maximoff, well, they knew it better than most. Tony had had his fair share of tragedy; he was familiar with loss, pain, and just plain butt-kickery.
He was only half done with his martini when the front of the Tower exploded.
** Bruce
Right before the press conference had started, Bruce had stopped in the living room for a word with Loki. The god was still slouched on the couch in a yellow bathrobe, needles clacking absently while the television hummed.
“Don’t worry,” he’d said, not looking away from the basketball game. “There’s a button here on the magic wand that takes it to the people reporting on your gala and I will be ready when the revelries begin.”
“That’s actually not why I’m here,” Bruce said. The buttons of his dress shirt marched upwards, crimping the collar tight around Bruce’s neck like a noose. He hated having to dress up. “I’m here to threaten you.”
Bruce hadn’t really meant for it to come out that way. But maybe Bruce’s unconscious mind knew his audience. Loki just perked up and set his knitting aside.
“I’m listening.”
“Don’t ever purposely or inadvertently,” Bruce amended, sensing way too many loopholes there, “Don’t ever mess any of the team, or anyone they care about. No illusions, no hurting people, no causing unrest.”
Loki smiled. “Or?”
“Or it all stops,” Bruce said, as stern as he could manage. He’d put a lot of thought into this, and he had to get it right. No point making threats he didn’t intend to keep, that’s what all the parenting books said. “All of it stops. The pokemon, the yarn. And you won’t be welcome here anymore. You’re part of a team now, Loki, and you have to act like it. For good.”
Loki sighed. “Fine.”
“Fine?” Bruce thought he’d have to get more creative, think up impossible punishments. “Fine, like okay?”
“Fine like okay because I want to, not because of anything you just said,” Loki said moodily.
Bruce straightened his shoulders. “Cool. Although, you really should be doing it out of the kindness of your heart, not threats, but this is a start, and we’ll work our way up.”
“I just said I’d do it because I wanted to, not because of you,” Loki grumbled, “But fine. Good talk. Go have fun at your gala, and don’t stay out too late.”
“I can still smash you into the floor for a few hours,” Bruce warned, but he was smiling without meaning to. “Don’t be late.”
He’d left Loki to his basketball game. By the time Loki arrived at the gala to spice things up a little, Bruce was so glad to see him he could cry. There were only so many politicians trying to ignore him that he could take.
“Why are they tiptoeing around you?” Loki asked, holding a champagne flute like he knew he had to hold one to look elegant, but not that he knew he could drink from it. “Surely they know you’re too good to let go in here.”
Bruce sighed and cleaned his glasses. “I’m a failed government experiment,” he told the god. “They kept things from me, told me I was working on something safe. This…happened, and now half of them feel guilty, and the other half are ready to shoot me if I out them to the press.”
“They can’t shoot you,” Loki said, a grin on his face. “Shall I tell them?”
Would it be terrible of Bruce to sic Loki on a senator or two? Bruce nodded towards an oily character talking to Steve and Tony. “See that guy? He’s—”
“Say no more,” Loki said, and strode toward him, Bruce on his heels.
“Big yikes,” Tony said as they passed him. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m rooting for Greased Lightning there.”
So, when the front of the room exploded, Bruce was sort of sad about it, for selfish reasons. The oily senator’s face went from bright red to white in the space of a heartbeat before he was pulled away by his interns. The Avengers moved into place like professionals, pulling weapons out of everywhere, even though Bruce was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to have any on them.
Barton’s bow, okay, that thing folded up three times. The quiver, not so much. And then Steve had the shield—where had he been stashing that?
Bruce did what Bruce always did, and crept away from the explosion along with everyone else in the room.
“Quickly,” Loki muttered, hand on Bruce’s back, helping him through the crowds.
“Avengers!” came a ringing voice. With all sane people backing up, that left said Avengers at the front of the room, in their fancy dress and weaponry. “Can you hear us?”
“Um, the ones of us who aren’t deaf can,” Tony called. Bruce spotted the Maximoffs and Harley crowded around the bar, and beelined toward them through the crowd.
The ringing voice came again—Bruce bet it was a specialized megaphone of some kind. “We see you’ve gathered to congratulate yourselves and your friends on another sunset. We see you with an excess of wealth and laziness. We see you failing at your one mission.”
“Damn, they got good eyesight,” Barton said appreciatively. “Me, not so much. Who’s doing all this talking?”
Natasha had her back to the speaker below, gun raised, scanning the room around them. “JARVIS?”
“I am under attack,” the AI informed her. “I am fighting their hacker now. They have ammu—a—ammunition stashed throughout the bottom ten floors. I think—going to try—try—”
Oh, that wasn’t good. Bruce and Loki reached Harley and the Maximoffs. “You guys okay?”
“I need to get to the suit,” Harley said blankly, trying to push away.
“No need,” Bruce said, making a guess and glancing at the cuffs of Harley’s tuxedo. “See that inlay there?”
“The embroidery on my sleeves?”
Bruce nodded. “The suit will come when you need it. It’s not time yet.”
“The Avengers are a blight!” the megaphone voice called. “A parasite. They claim to protect us, and yet they fail to. They call death with every forward step. It’s time we stood up and protected ourselves!”
Steve made a quick gesture. Natasha and Clint both slipped to the side and slunk away.
“Tonight, we expose you,” the megaphone voice said, voice dark with finality. “Tonight, we wipe you off the gameboard, simple as that. Tonight, you die!”
“They’re going to blow up the bottom of the tower,” Steve called. He was slipping something into his ear, and in a moment, Pepper appeared and handed comms to Bruce and the kids. “We need to get everyone out, as quickly as possible. Sam—”
“On it,” Sam said in their ears, sounding like he was running. “My wings are two rooms over. If Iron Man can take them too—”
Harley turned to Bruce, clarity written all over his little face. “It’s time, Bruce.” Holding his arms up, he started pushing away through the crowds.
“Everyone!” Thor called, voice magnifying through the room. Along with everyone else, Bruce turned to him. “We need to slowly make our way to the stairwells.”
Right as everyone began moving in a slow controlled manner, the grenades came flying through the windows.
Barnes blurred into action. Bruce had never seen him like that before—he kicked three grenades back out the smashed windows, and another two to Steve, who dropped the shield on top of them without a word. Thor had Tony, was ushering him through a doorway. Bruce stayed, for lack of anything better to do. The Maximoffs were with him, he needed to keep an eye—
Something exploded behind him. Behind him? Bruce ducked, trying to see past the screaming party guests, and found a nondescript man in a suit holding several devices. He fiddled with another, and there was second deep boom throughout the room. The chandeliers rattled.
Bruce charged him. Right before he got close enough, the last bomb went off. Bruce flew back and came to behind the bar. A few feet away, a young woman was smeared on the ground, eyes wide and vacant, neck at an awful angle.
There was noise, so much noise, and smoke too. Bruce shook his head to clear it, but the screaming didn’t go away. All he could hear was panic, all he could see was death.
Bruce bit his lip, caging the growl that wanted to come out. Caging the wail.
Crunching to his right—he whipped his head around and saw Thor, coming toward him, hammer in one hand, suit gone and armor in its place. Thor, he couldn’t say. Thor, stop me, please, please stop me, help, please.
“You can’t,” Thor said, dropping Mjolnir with a metallic thud, and kneeling besides Bruce, heedless of the broken glass surrounding him. “You can’t lose yourself here, Banner.”
“I can’t,” Bruce got out, but he wasn’t sure if he was pleading, or simply repeating Thor’s words back to him.
Thor shook his head and put his warm hands on Bruce; one on his shoulder, one on the side of his face. It was good, but it wasn’t enough. The woman—the woman right behind Bruce, she was dead—
A bottle above them shattered with a crash, and Thor instinctively shielded Bruce from the worst of it. In their ears, Steve shouted, “They’re surrounding the building, I need support—”
Thor ripped the earpiece away from Bruce. “Banner,” he said. “Look at me, can you look at me?”
Bruce was doing that, wasn’t he? Bruce was always doing that. He was shaking, he was vibrating apart at the seams in Thor’s hands. He couldn’t—he couldn’t stop it, he couldn’t keep the anger out.
“Stay with me,” Thor said, and then he kissed Bruce.
Bruce inhaled and everything whittled down to Thor. His fingers were digging in to Bruce’s skin, the callouses rough. He was warm; he was always warm, it seemed, effortlessly. He tasted like static, like a spark contained. All of Bruce’s hair lifted straight up.
When he pulled back, he smiled at Bruce, the lines around his eyes crinkling with humor. With one hand, he reached up and patted Bruce’s hair back into place. “You’re with me?”
“I am,” Bruce said, breathing easier.
“Good.” Thor handed him his earpiece and stood, cloak swirling around him. “Get somewhere safe, can you do that? I’ll be back as soon as I’m able. Bruce—”
Bruce turned and looked at him again.
“If you get caught, if you get stuck and have to leave,” Thor said, gaze strong, “I’ll come find you.”
“I know,” Bruce said, and then he ran.
The Maximoff kids were ushering people through the doorways, but Bruce wasn’t sure what good that would do, if the bottom of the Tower was rigged to blow. There was no way they could get everyone out in time.
“What did I miss?” Bruce yelled, helping up an elderly man in a suit dusted with rubble.
“The bombs haven’t gone off yet!” Wanda called. “We need to get down there—help—”
Her brother grabbed Bruce’s arm. “I can go,” he said. “I can go and start moving people, I just need to know where.”
Bruce didn’t know where—Bruce wasn’t the guy that made those decisions.
Tony was speaking in his ear, words pouring out of him like a flood. “Go left, Harley, there’s pedestrians in the way—Rogers behind you—we need Thor on the west side, there’s a huge mass of them—does anyone see the detonation controls yet? Hawkeye, report.”
Bruce was going to have to make the decision. Bruce didn’t even know the buildings around the Tower—when Bruce went out it was almost always against his will. “Take them out through the garage,” he told Pietro. “But take me there first. I can help if…if there’s an ambush.”
Pietro offered his back, and feeling twelve kinds of stupid, Bruce climbed up. There was a strange woosh-ing sensation, and then they were in the garage.
Hopping on one foot to regain his balance as Pietro sped off again, Bruce opened the garage doors. There was indeed a crowd outside, containing rubbernecking pedestrians, news crews, black clad attackers, and Loki.
Loki seemed to be the cause of all the other groups—he was still in his black tuxedo, shooting knives out at any attackers who tried to get close, yelling what sounded suspiciously like “These are my subjugates, you frauds!”
Bruce sighed. Then he turned to help the first people Pietro was bringing down.
** Steve
Harley was a lot easier to work with than Tony, to Steve’s relief. They flew much the same way, operated the suit with the same ease, but Steve could tune out and know Harley would actually listen to advice. It was nice.
The view downstairs was just as bad as the view up. When the interior bombs started going off, Steve jumped out of the skyscraper. He didn’t have a death wish, thank you, and he was working on some Things, mainly for Bucky but also maybe for himself, but the most strategic thing to do at the moment was to get near the enemy and fast, and the whole front of Avengers Tower was a perfect doorway.
“You fuckwit!” Bucky predictably screeched out after him, and Steve fell tucked behind his shield and hoping really hard that Bucky’s inevitable scolding wouldn’t go on too long.
He landed on top of a few fellows, their bodies breaking his fall. “Thanks, guys,” Steve said, and went to deck a few more, before snapping firmly to the present when the jacket of his tuxedo made a groaning unhappy noise. “Oh shit.”
It was decidedly a challenge to move the same ways he was used to without ruining the suit Pepper gave him. It wasn’t that he was worried it’d hurt her feelings, Steve mused, knocking two more black-clad attackers into each other and muffling their grenades under the shield, he knew she wouldn’t mind. More so it would be so incredibly wasteful to rip an article of clothing that had cost so much. Steve wasn’t planning on any more growth spurts, and the odds were good that he could get at least a decade of wear out of the suit.
Especially at the rate he went to parties requiring black tie.
“Clear the streets,” Steve ordered, following his own instructions. “We don’t need anyone getting ideas about civilian hostages or more collateral damages.”
“Yes sir!” Harley chirped, zooming overhead. Steve liked that kid.
Sam reported in from the other side of the building, and Natasha was skulking around disabling explosives. “They’re in the building too,” she said. “Got in past security somehow—once the streets are cleared, we could use a few sets of hands down here.”
“Yes ma’am,” Harley replied, and soared back, four attackers writhing in his hands.
Steve finished with the north side of the building and jogged around the block. On the east side, Thor was a blur of silver and red, hammer knocking back the hoards faster than they could come. Steve gave him a salute and continued on. The south side had Loki, Sam, and Bruce, who was still Bruce, and ushering party guests out the garage doors. Taxis had discovered they could make a mint if they flocked to the curb, and Loki’s knives kept the street clear for them to get through.
Steve hurled the shield up to Sam—no time like the present for him to get used to it. Also, they’d plaster it all over the internet and Steve was looking forward to that.
Bucky was on the west side, taking out a whole battalion by himself. Steve stopped and caught his breath, enjoying the view.
“Oh, now he shows up!” Bucky yelled, blocking bullets with the metal arm and taking some shots of his own. “Took the gravity elevator down here and still take a century to come help?”
Bucky’s suit, Steve realized like a punch to the gut, was missing the entire left sleeve. “Did you rip that?” he gestured, trying to stop the rush of blood to his face.
“Send me the bill,” Bucky said sarcastically, dropping low and kicking out the legs of five guys before cartwheeling and knocking back three more. “These things weren’t built for movement and you know it. And stop ogling me, I’m still mad at you.”
“North side is clear,” Steve said, still watching. “Thor and Loki are mopping up the south and east.”
A few attackers broke away and made for Steve. Before he could dodge, Bucky dropped them with a few well thrown knives.
“Thanks,” Steve said wryly. “My hero.”
Bucky flicked hair out of his face and very mildly said, “Sometimes I wish they’d left you in the freezer.”
“I love you,” Steve replied, and then ducked the unconscious body thrown his way.
The streets cleared easily. The biggest threat was still the explosives in the building, and Natasha and Clint were clearing out the sublevels, no doubt leaving behind a trail of exposed spies and traitors. Steve tried to be bothered that apparently some of Tony’s security staff had been quietly plotting to kill them for weeks, but he couldn’t really summon up the energy for it. They would find new security staff.
“Guys, guys, I have a question,” Tony said over the comms. “Harley go lend Bruce a hand, Loki let one through—oh wait never mind the guy’s been speared. Okay. Is the Hulk immortal?”
Bruce didn’t answer. Tony was probably counting on that. Steve ignored him and climbed over the pile of unconscious or dead bodies to kiss Bucky. Bucky took off his mangled suit jacket and threw it over Steve’s face.
“He’d better not be!” Loki yelled. How he had access to the comms Steve had no idea.
“Or what,” Thor taunted. “Scared you may have to deal with him for eternity, Brother?”
“Can we not talk about this?” Sam sounded tired but firm. “We’ve all got more important things to focus on right now.”
“Yeah sure,” Tony said. “Regroup, pull back, retreat and all that. The streets are clear. Let’s finish up with the explosives.”
Natasha and Clint met them in the deserted and smashed up Gala room, both of them beaming satisfactorily and their fancy gear ripped and flecked with blood. Natasha’s dress had been slit up and down the seams to allow for movement, and Clint’s gaze kept dragging back to her as they talked. Bruce and the Maximoffs were covered in dust, but still in one piece. Sam was holding the shield and looking damn good.
Steve grinned into his collar and took Bucky’s hand. Bucky didn’t break his wrist immediately, which was a win all around.
“JARVIS, are you back?” Harley asked, out of the suit.
“Yes sir,” JARVIS said instantly. “NYPD is already picking up the bodies you so kindly left for them outside.”
“And the explosives?” Natasha asked. “Did we get them all?”
There was quiet while JARVIS scanned.
“We know bullets can’t do Bruce in.” Tony scratched his goatee. “Fire, explosions, hell—alien blasters don’t even leave a mark! What would?”
Loki whipped out a sparkly pink notebook from the depths of his suit. Bruce sighed and said, “I suppose lava might be a good place to start experimenting. The high temperature would keep cells from healing as fast.”
“Could lava kill me?” Bucky wondered out loud, making Steve sigh as well.
Bruce made a thoughtful noise.
“Me and Steve ain’t makin’ ourselves out to be invincible,” Bucky said. “I’m just joining in. Loki?”
“I would pair lava with a bullet to the head,” Loki said, sounding interested. “I believe you and the good captain wouldn’t survive that. Banner though…I don’t know.”
“Loki’s going to be the leading scientist on Hulk data one day,” Bruce said, surprising everyone. “Aren’t you, Loki?”
“I’m not a scientist.”
Bruce smiled. “No? Coulda fooled me.”
“Excuse me,” JARVIS interrupted. “The tower is secure. The Cleanup Protocol, Mr. Stark?”
Tony surveyed the damage. The entire ballroom was gutted, smoke still rising from piles of rubble. A few bodies had been pushed to the side, and the entire front wall was a skylight for pigeons to nest in. The Avengers stood lopsidedly around, adrenaline giving way to exhaustion.
Steve slumped a little against Bucky’s side, and Bucky didn’t push him away.
“We’re not a bad team,” Natasha said.
“Yeah,” Clint chimed in. “Like, we’re a mess and a half, sure, but we’re not so fucked up we can’t be friends and save the world while doing it, you know?”
Loki rolled his eyes and put his pink notebook away. Thor clapped him on the back and beamed. The Maximoffs fist bumped each other, then Harley.
“Cleanup Protocol whatever,” Tony grumped, crossing his arms. He was the only one whose tuxedo looked remotely clean. “I just fucking rebuilt this place and now I gotta do it all over again!”
“Boo hoo,” Natasha said, leaning on Clint and taking weight off her right leg. “You’re vibrating just thinking about it.”
Tony leveled her with a glare. “Nah, that’s the cocaine, Romanoff.”
“There are fucking kids here learning from your terrible-ass habits,” Bucky snarled out.
Pietro squeaked. “But we were being so quiet.”
“I can hear your heartbeats rabbiting around,” Bucky said, fully in his bossy older brother mode. Steve would kiss him in front of said kids right now if he didn’t think Bucky might punch him in the jaw if he tried. Steve was already sore, he didn’t need anything on top of that. “So, you’re not foolin’ anyone, punk.”
“I want a shower and a bowl of soup,” Loki announced. “Surely you can clean up this mess without me.”
Tony muttered something under his breath about where Loki could put that bowl of soup, and the Avengers filed out.
** Natasha
The debriefing was, to be perfectly blunt, a fucking fuck disaster. “This debriefing is a fucking fuck disaster,” Clint said, feet on Natasha’s lap. “I’m starving.”
Tony, Sam, and Steve, standing at the head of the table in the sadly not at all blown up conference room, shot him disapproving looks. Tony’s was laughable, Steve’s uncomfortably guilt tripping, Sam’s pure venom. Clint shifted, but didn’t move his feet.
“I’m hungry,” he said, like they might have missed it the first time.
“I thought you were deaf, not blind,” Barnes said from his chair, metal hand resting casually on the sleek tabletop. “The sooner we get through this, the sooner we’re done.”
“Thanks, Socrates,” Clint scoffed.
Over to Natasha’s right, Loki was back to scribbling in his sparkly notebook, and Bruce and Thor were doing some weird thing where they took it in turns to smile at nothing in particular and then stopped themselves sternly. Maybe they were planning Loki’s demise—they wouldn’t be the first ones to spend a debriefing that way.
Harley and the Maximoffs were playing tic tac toe on paper napkins.
“You’re so lucky we didn’t make slides,” Tony said importantly, and then cleared his throat. “We’re keeping some of our new friends in for questioning, and the renovations to the ballrooms and garage have already begun, as we speak, because that’s what money will do, kids.”
“Garage?” Pietro looked up and frowned. “We did not damage the garage, no?”
Tony shivered. “Yeah, but Senator what’s-his-face was in there farting nervously for hours and that’ll do terrible damage to the ceiling integrity, and also my brain. So, renovations.”
“That’s pretty damn wasteful,” Steve said, voice low. “Maybe we should be looking at civilian casualties, like the bakery Loki there took out by throwing too many bodies through the windows.”
“Steve—” Sam tried.
Loki stuck out his tongue. Steve balled his hand into a fist and made a move towards him; Barnes put up a hand and Steve immediately backed down. Natasha was maybe a little jealous of that skillset. She could learn every trick Barnes knew, but not that one. Years, years spent trying to talk Steve Rogers out of a fight, and one specific eye roll from Barnes had him quieting faster than a cheetah on drugs.
She was maybe a lot jealous.
“Tony, this has gotta be against the Geneva Conventions,” Clint complained again, shooting Natasha a wink. “Can’t you feed us while we discuss media backlash and damage fines? Come on.”
Tony glared. “Fine. What do you want?”
There was another pause in the plans while everyone around the table got involved in a superpowered shouting match. Clint wanted pizza, Barnes wanted Thai. Loki was screaming soup soup soup at the top of his lungs for some reason, and Harley and Pietro were having a staring match to debate which Italian restaurant. Natasha banged her gun on the table and everyone fell silent.
“Indian curry,” she said, daring anyone to argue with her.
“Oh,” Wanda said, happily letting go of her brother’s hair and sitting back. Barnes huffed and sighed, which was as good as a yes please from him. No one else peeped up, so Natasha raised her eyebrows at Tony.
“JARVIS, order Indian food,” Tony said. “Enough to feed an army.”
Sam started flicking through a report Steve had drawn up for him. Natasha tuned him out. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Sam or that he wasn’t good at his job—he’d always been good at his job, and was already showing signs of being a perfect Captain America—but Clint was staring at her, and well, that was distracting.
“What?” Natasha signed under the table.
Clint grinned. “You’re really hot in that dress,” he signed back. “We made a pretty good team tonight, didn’t we?”
Natasha sighed fondly. “Yes, I will help you investigate and interrogate all the remaining staff.”
Clint’s smile brightened. “Cause you know,” he signed, just to be a jerk, “If you’d helped me with it earlier, we wouldn’t have had Nancy from Security almost shoot us in the face.”
“Stop that,” Steve barked, and Natasha jerked up thinking they’d been caught, but he wasn’t looking at her or Clint.
“I didn’t say anything,” Barnes said lazily, leaning back in his chair like a cat ready to pounce.
Steve wasn’t buying the act. “You didn’t have to, I know what you’re thinking.”
“What am I thinking then, Rogers?”
Sam held out his papers. “Um, hello? We’re trying to have a debriefing?”
“Maybe we should table it,” Bruce said gently. “You’re doing great, Sam, but everyone’s starving, and you know how that goes.”
“Can we do that?” Sam asked. “Can we just table things like this?”
Tony shrugged and the food arrived, the smell drifting through the room and furthering the argument for eating. “We’re the Avengers! Food just shows up at our door whenever we want, I guess we can cancel whatever we want.”
“Hey,” Steve said, swinging around from arguing with Barnes to shoot Tony a death stare. “You cannot keep brushing aside real problems like it’s play time, Tony—”
“Aw hell, stop that,” Barnes said, yanking Steve into a chair.
Wanda slid a tray of lamb across the table. “Ignore them,” she said. “Eat, Natasha.”
The Avengers settled in. Clint even took his feet off Natasha’s lap to focus on the food properly, so she put her feet on his lap. The food was…pretty good. Even Loki tucked in without complaint.
“Mmm,” Bruce said appreciatively. “This is really yummy, thanks, Tony.”
He leaned in for another bite and Loki stabbed him with three separate knives.
Bruce was instantly replaced by a huge and disgruntled Hulk. Natasha jumped, pulling her guns out, and Steve leaped up in shock, a piece of naan dangling from his mouth. Before their eyes, Loki burst out laughing, throwing his head back. “Come back,” he said between giggles. “Come back, Bruce, I’m sorry, I promise I am.”
The Hulk blinked and shrank back into Bruce.
“Sorry,” Loki said, straightening his tie. “But you never said I couldn’t mess with you.”
“We’re discussing this sort of behavior at tea tomorrow,” Thor warned. Natasha sat down slowly.
Steve eyeballed them, slowly pushing the remaining naan into his mouth.
Tony threw a napkin at him. “That’s disgusting, Steve, you’re done leading the Avengers. You’re benched. Until at least tomorrow. Sit down and chew with your mouth shut.”
“Who made you number two?” Steve asked tartly, taking his seat again. “I think it was me, actually, who made Sam Captain America, so Sam, back me up and tell Tony to sit down and do some chewing himself.”
“Man, I’m not helping you sort out your shit,” Sam said, shaking his head, his face bringing giggles from the kids. “Captain America duties never once covered Steve Rogers’ shit.”
Steve immediately resumed shoveling his food in. He reached over with his fork and speared a vegetable off Barnes’ plate. Barnes swatted at him halfheartedly, listening to Harley go on about paint colors.
Clint handed her a piece of naan, his fingers warm where they brushed against hers. He was shooting the Maximoff twins stern looks to eat their onions. Wanda stuck out her tongue and dumped hers on her brother’s plate, and then groaned as Clint cheerily served her another portion.
“Back off, Dad,” she said, young disdain dripping from her every pore.
“If I’m dad,” Clint said without batting an eye, “Then sit down, young woman, and eat your goddamn vegetables.”
“Hear hear,” Barnes muttered, raising his glass in one hand and shoving Steve’s fork away with another.
Natasha bent over and gave her full attention to her lamb; the lamb was the most important mission just then. The others would wait.