AN: Strictly movie-verse. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: The Avengers do not belong to me.
"Okay, that's enough," Bruce said, pushing away from the table and the equations that were refusing to make sense. He and Tony were trying to improve the sensors on the helicarrier, the jets, and Tony's suit to detect some of the more exotic energy signatures they had encountered recently. What should have been a straightforward project had hit a snag that stopped them cold.
"We're so close," Tony said, still staring at the monitor. Bruce knew that; it was part of what was so frustrating. They were stuck inches from a solution. "It's right there, Bruce. What if we-"
"Tony," Bruce interrupted, and Tony blinked at his sharp tone and looked at him. "We have been staring at this for hours. The numbers are not adding up and if we keep working I think I may move past annoyance into actual anger."
"Right, time for a break," Tony said, waving a hand and hiding all of the screens that contained the oh-so-frustrating numbers. "Much as I love the other guy, I'm the only one who gets to smash up my mansion."
Bruce quirked a smile. Tony constantly made quips like that, but there was never, not once, any trace of actual worry about the other guy or what he might do. He still thought Tony was a bit too cavalier about it all, but Bruce couldn't deny that he had grown to appreciate it. He watched Tony walk across the floor of his basement lab/garage of his Malibu mansion, going to a stack of boxes piled up against a wall. "What are you looking for?" Bruce asked as Tony started to open boxes.
"A distraction," Tony said. "These all belonged to my father. Every time I think I have found and sorted through all his stuff, someone finds another stack of boxes like this."
Bruce wandered over and started looking through boxes himself. Notes, files, old pieces of electronics... "Looks like it's all from one of his labs?" he guessed.
"Seems that way," Tony said. "An early one, I think." He pulled out a file and opened it. "Yep. This is all from Cap's era. He might actually recognize some of this."
"Hmm," Bruce said. He wondered if they could find something Steve actually used in the war. He poked through a few boxes, finding mostly files and pieces of half-finished electronics. Then he found something a little more interesting. "What's this?" he asked, pulling out a rectangular metal device with some dials and other readouts.
Tony grinned. "Let's find out," he said, leading the way back to a table and clearing a spot. Bruce set it down, and Tony produced a screwdriver to take off the casing and reveal the inner workings. From the few labels and by looking at the machine itself, they quickly determined it was some sort of tracking device. What they had was the base unit. The homing tags had to be somewhere in the boxes, but a quick search didn't turn them up; no notes or files on the tracking device turned up, either.
Back to staring at the box, Bruce poked at the wiring. "This is just..." he trailed off, trying to find the right words to describe the mess of wires.
"Overly complicated?" Tony suggested. "Yeah, dear old dad could go overboard sometimes. Seems like everything's in good shape, though, and hooked up to where it's supposed to be."
"How can you tell?"
"Years of practice," he said. "I have been looking at his designs my whole life. Used to correct them, too, until I learned it wasn't worth the grief." Bruce looked at Tony but kept his mouth shut. He knew better than to open the can of worms that was Tony's childhood. "This one is something else, though," Tony continued. "What do you think? Do we turn it on, try to find some of those tags?"
"Sure, why not? What's the worst that can happen?" Bruce stopped as soon as the words past his lips. "I shouldn't have said that."
"Nope, you've jinxed us," Tony said, grinning. "It's probably going to blow up on us now." Of course, that didn't stop Tony from flipping the switch. "Be ready to duck."
Bruce tensed and took a step back. The machine did nothing exciting, though, just hissed with static. Tony and Bruce leaned forward. "Maybe there is a loose wire," Tony said.
"Or it's just on the wrong frequency," Bruce said, twisting one of the dials slowly.
"The homing tags could all be destroyed or out of range," Tony said. The machine started chiming. "Or it was just on the wrong frequency."
Bruce frowned. A numeric readout on the machine was just spinning, instead of settling on a coordinate or unit of distance like they had thought it would. "Huh. Why do you think-" Bruce was cut off when his jinx finally came into play. A flash of light burst from the machine. Bruce and Tony dove to the ground, but it wasn't an explosion. It was worse.
A portal - smaller in size, but still shockingly similar to the one that had appeared in the sky over New York City - formed midway between Tony's floor and ceiling.
"Oh fuck," Tony said, but before either of them had time to do anything, a man fell through the portal, the base unit shorted out in an explosion of sparks, and the portal closed, leaving no evidence - besides the man on the floor - that it had ever appeared.
Bruce and Tony just stayed where they were for a few seconds. "Tony, I think your father used the tesseract to enhance his tracking device," Bruce said.
"Sure seems that way, doesn't it?" Tony said. "At least it didn't spit out aliens this time."
"Just because he looks human doesn't mean he isn't an alien," Bruce said, getting up and going over to the man who appeared to be unconscious. He had dark hair and was wearing a thick navy coat and brown pants and boots. Bruce checked his pulse, which seemed normal, and there were no other obvious injuries. He noticed a chain and tugged it out from beneath his shirt. "He's wearing dog tags," Bruce said. "James Barnes."
Tony frowned. "I know that name," he said. "JARVIS, why do I know that name?"
"There are a number of men named 'James Barnes' in the United States, three of whom are currently serving in the US military. What is the ID number on the tags, Dr. Banner?" Bruce read it off. An instant later, JARVIS continued. "That ID number matches the number issued for one Sergeant James 'Bucky' Barnes. He served with Captain Rogers in WWII and died during a mission."
"He fell off a train," Tony said, looking completely shocked. "He was Steve's best friend, there was a mission, and he fell out of train down a mountain before Steve could pull him back inside."
"That information corresponds with mine, sir."
Bruce stared at the man lying on the floor. This was impossible. Completely impossible. There was no way a man who had died 70 years ago was lying on Tony's floor. "Any chance we're hallucinating?" Bruce asked.
Tony didn't take his eyes off the man on the floor. "Both of us hallucinating about Steve's dead best friend, who you didn't even know about before just now? Uh, yeah, I think time travel's the more likely explanation."
"Crap," Bruce said. "We have to call someone."
"Do we really?" Tony asked. Bruce gave him a look and Tony sighed. "Yeah, okay. Steve? Wait, no, not until we're sure it's really Barnes."
"Fury?" Bruce suggested, even though he knew Fury would be, well, furious.
"Oh, hell no," Tony said.
"That leaves Clint and Natasha."
"Clint's less likely to kill us."
"Like he's not going to tell Natasha immediately," Bruce said, going to retrieve his cell phone. "Besides, neither one of them can kill us until they get here from LA."
"I, for one, would not bet against Natasha knowing how to kill someone over the phone."
"He's a master assassin too, Tony."
"Yes, but again, he's less likely to kill us."
Bruce rolled his eyes, but he did hit Clint's contact number instead of Natasha's. It was when the phone was ringing that Bruce froze. "Uh... what the hell do I say?"
"You're the one on the phone, you get to figure that out," Tony said. In response, Bruce put the phone on speaker and placed it on the table between them. Tony immediately protested. "Hey, no, what are you- You're the one who insisted on calling someone, you talk to him!"
"You're the one who turned on the machine," Bruce said.
"You're the one who changed the frequency," Tony returned. "And you're the one who jinxed us!"
"Did you two blow something up again?" Clint's amused voice came over the line; Bruce hadn't even heard him pick up.
"Clint! Hi! Um..." Bruce trailed off.
"Oh, crap," Clint said, sighing. "Tasha, Bruce and Tony blew up something and Bruce is at a loss for words, so it's probably bad."
"Is the mansion still standing, at least?" Natasha asked, and Bruce was apparently not the only one who had his phone on speaker.
Tony gave Bruce a dirty look, but Bruce just rolled his eyes, because really, he had told him that Clint would tell her right away.
"Okay, now you two are making me nervous," Clint said. "What the hell happened?"
Bruce again looked to Tony for help, but Tony just shrugged in a "I have no fucking clue what to tell them either" manner. Bruce glared at him. Tony just motioned at the phone, and okay, Tony was right. There was no good way to do this so best to just get it over with. And it probably would be better coming from Bruce. (And apparently he and Tony knew each other well enough to hold silent conversations with each other and when the hell had that happened - but there wasn't time to figure that out right now.)
Bruce took a deep breath. "Well, you see, it's like this..."
