A/N; Due to ffnet's restrictions on character's listed I could only put two. Bruce/Tony/Clint are the protagonists of this story and the focus is on those three pretty evenly.

Maybe he didn't deserve nice things.

He thought this wryly. He thought this drenched with sweat, staring at a ceiling fan missing its wings, just watching the spokes rotate lazily on the ceiling. Everything was bathed in that infernal yellowing light, the kind of light he could never shut out. He'd turned out the lights in every room in the house. He'd unplugged the VCR and the air conditioning since both had enough monitor light to glow in the dark, and still he could see everything.

Maybe there was more than just radiation in his DNA and poison in his blood. Maybe there was tragedy. Maybe there was a genetic code for heartache and mishap that had been with him his entire life. Half asleep as he was, he liked to picture it. His heart, weak in some places and grotesquely muscled in others, pumping away. Not just blood, but sadness. Isolation. Hatred. More than he cared to admit.

Maybe the other guy had been with him all along.

He stifled a laugh and rolled over. The other pillow was cool, not sticky with sweat like the other, and he experienced a few moments of peace before it, too, heated up under his neck. He smacked an invisible fly.

The light went out and for a few moments there was peace. Or, moderately so. There was still honking and shouting from outside, of course the bustling sounds of the bar across the street and the sporadic hits of music. The sweet scent of overripe fruit hung constantly in the air, since those who couldn't sell at market would stand out on the corner for hours, sometimes until very late at night. If they couldn't sell they would stock home, defeated, leaving lumpy and browning mangoes, pineapples, and bananas to rot in the street.

The fluorescent lights of the bar across the street kicked back on and Bruce's room was again flooded with ungodly yellow light. It was in this moment that he registered the shadow that was now thrown into relief on the opposite wall, a silhouette he thought vaguely familiar, one that disappeared immediately with the beams of light. Almost immediately.

Bruce sat up. His chest and legs were both slicked with sweat and his left shin was purpled and bruising from a street vendor wheeling a carton of dates into him. Thinking a pair of striped boxers was not quite fitting for the occasion, he scooped a pair of jeans up off the floor and set about putting them on. He was just about finished with the zipper when Hawkeye, accepting that he'd been spotted, dropped in through the window and landed with barely a muted thud. There was an awkward pause as Bruce finished buttoning his pants and Hawkeye looked uncomfortably to the side, playing with the strap of his quiver.

"Clint, is it?" He finally said, extending a hand for lack of a better idea.

Clint looked at the hand and then, as a gesture of peace, took it and shook it once. "Dr. Banner. I know this may not be the best timing-"

"SHIELD has never been especially accommodating," Dr. Banner forced some barking laughter. He was referring to SHIELD's last attempt to recruit his help, which had involved them paying a young girl to lure him into a house on the outskirts of town, where Agent Romanov had been waiting for him. But that had been over a year ago, when they'd needed him desperately to help locate the tesseract - they'd left him alone since.

"Well, I'm not actually here on official SHIELD business," he admitted. "This is more of a...personal visit."

The corner of Bruce's mouth twitched into a ghost of a smile. A dangerous and highly-trained assassin visiting him at two in the morning on a humid summer's night, insisting that it was personal business? Well, that was either the beginning of an assassination attempt or a porno.

He had no feelings for Clint, at least not in that way. But the longer he spent alone the more he hated it, hated himself for hating it, hated himself for hating that he hated himself. The more he loathed the way the women on the streets looked at him, whispered to their friends of the well-paid doctor. They looked at him and he knew better than to look back, but there was a tug in his gut that was begging him to. And this time the tug wasn't from the other guy.

"What sort of business?" His voice came out tired, too exhausted. He scanned the room for a shirt.

"You're wanted in New York," Clint replied. "I want to make clear that this was an offer...not a demand."

"Offer from whom?" he located his glasses on the nightstand and put them on. In focus, the room looked no more welcoming and he wondered what Clint must have thought of it. But if he was curious about Bruce's less-than-adequate lodgings he betrayed nothing. He remained straight-backed with a serious expression on his face.

"Tony Stark."

"Why?" The name had definitely struck a chord in him. He had been a bad place the last few months, and it hadn't taken long for him to realize that though the danger and pressure of the Avengers had been unwelcome, the human contact had done him a lot of good. He missed the human proximity, even if it had been on strictly professional grounds.

"I understand it's something to do with...your condition," Clint continued. "But, I'm not really involved."

"Then why are you here?"

"I owed Mr. Stark a favor," Clint shifted his weight from one leg to the other, the first time he'd made a real movement since he'd dropped into the room. "And I'm relaying to you, on his behalf, that there is a jet ready to fly you to Stark Tower leaving tomorrow at nine."

"You want me to leave?" Bruce replied blankly, mostly for his own benefit.

"Not me. Tony."

Bruce ran a hand through his hair and sat on the edge of his bed. He liked to think he was doing good here, in Bangladesh. He'd carved out a bit of his name for himself amongst the locals as a good-natured albeit hard to understand doctor. He'd even picked up some Bengali, though his vocabulary was restricted mostly to medical terms and phrases ("what hurt", "where hurt", and "pee in cup" were among them). He liked it there, liked the purpose. It was one of the few places where he could maintain a life he enjoyed with people at a safe distance. Safe for them, anyways.

Clint sensed that Bruce needed time to think and withdrew from his jacket pocket a manila envelope. He put it onto Bruce's bedside table and awkwardly patted it with his fingertips. "9 AM tomorrow, details inside."

Bruce gave a half-hearted wave but Clint had already disappeared, presumably out the same window he'd arrived in. He ran a hand through his hair and looked at the envelope. It was too early in the morning to make decisions like this. But a glance at the clock - 2:18 AM - told him that he had only had about seven hours to make up his mind. How typical of Tony to assume that everyone's decisions were as spur-of-the-moment as his own.

He paced. It shouldn't have been a difficult decision at all. He'd been living in Rajshahi for eight months now. He considered himself fairly settled in and asking him to uproot his whole life here without so much as a full sentence of explanation - well, Bangladesh seemed the obvious answer. It wasn't even SHIELD business. He didn't even have to go, Clint'd made that very clear.

He lay back down in bed. Having the envelope beside him was too much temptation, he rolled over and took off his glasses, pushed the envelope onto the floor and placed his glasses on the bedside table. He pinched the bridge of his nose. If there was one complaint he could make about his stay in Rajshahi, it was that he hadn't gotten a good night's sleep since he was there.

The fan with no blades continued its pointless circuit. Occasionally it clicked. His efforts to find the electrical panel in his apartment had been unsuccessful and he'd never managed to turn the damn thing off. It just kept going in circles, accomplishing nothing. It filled him with a vague and unknowable feeling that made him want to lie down and die.

He lay on his side for what felt like an eternity, feeling himself sink inch by inch into his mattress until he was sure it had swallowed him whole. He tried to think about Rajshahi, the parks and the rivers he'd been to since his arrival, but his mind wandered back to Tony. To the envelope. It was stupid of him to immediately disregard Tony's offer. He hadn't even checked the envelope. At least give him a chance, he rationalized to himself before picking the envelope up off the floor.

Inside, no further details about his situation or accommodation were provided. Just a single plane ticket in Bengali, one that would get him aboard a Stark Industries jet and get him to New York.

He stared at the ticket in his palm. He sat frozen on the edge of the bed for some time, going over the past year, going over every word spoken and gesture observed. He thought about Rajshahi, about Tony, about himself, and when his mind had thoroughly exhausted every meaningful person, event, and symbol, he thought about trivial things. He thought about planes and how he felt about planes, and whether jets were safe, and what he should pack for the journey, and just how long was the flight anyway? Would amenities be provided? That automated butler, would he be on the plane? Bruce had never consciously decided to go but found himself making plans, dragging his suitcase out of the closet, dialing a cab company.

There was no real physical shift between him then and him now. But one moment, he was lying in the bed he'd slept in for the past year, and the next moment he knew that he was leaving. He closed the door behind him and the lock clicked with such finality that he knew, felt a reverberation deep in his bones, that he was never coming back.

While Bruce was busy embarking on his unexpected journey, Clint was on an unexpected detour of his own. Three stories above Bruce's apartment, Clint had sat vigilantly until he saw him exit, suitcase in hand. He'd grinned as Bruce crossed the street and stood for ten minutes before a taxi, presumably from some company he'd called inside, pulled up to the curb.

Satisfied that he'd fulfilled all duties expected off him, Clint made a mental note to never to owe Tony Stark anything again. Knowing that he was indebted to Stark was one but when Stark had called in his favor for a simple courier job - well, it was like Clint had offered him a samurai sword and he'd used it to slice cheese. And frankly, he was a little insulted.

But a deal was a deal, and with that he rose and stretched. The satisfaction of a job well done, even if it was quite possibly the easiest assignment he'd ever received, still felt pretty damn good. Clint had exonerated himself, Bruce was en route to New York, and Natasha would never even know. Clint leapt from the roof and dropped soundlessly onto the fire escape below. His descent was quick, in a matter of minutes he'd reached the ground. Now he'd got one night in Rajshahi and he was off on the same jet as Bruce first thing in the morning.

In one second something hit him. And maybe he owed it to Natasha, maybe their hours of sparring and her constant insistence that he "listen and feel with every fiber of his being" had finally paid off, because he felt it coming and he leapt. Not far enough to avoid getting hit, but far enough to not die. Whatever it was hit him in the shoulder and threw him several feet aside.

He regained his balance, strung his arrow and fired a shot into the darkness in one fluid movement. The nighttime air was unusually still and his arrow whizzed close enough to something that he heard fabric tear, but when he looked it was buried in a bench with only a shred of black fabric trapped underneath. Clint strung his bow again and began backing towards the wall, a good defensive position. He'd always hated battles like these, where he didn't have the high ground. He was not a close range fighter.

Moments like these brought Tasha back to him. She was all about close range fighting. He could hear her now with almost startling clarity.

"Keep your arms in, protect your center. You can't afford misses when they're up that close. Don't corner yourself - if you can't get to high ground, don't back up against a wall. It seems like a good idea, but trust me, it's the easiest way to get killed."

It was then that he realized he had just done exactly that - backed up against a wall. His instincts had told him it was the most defendable move in a situation where he couldn't even see his opponent.

He quickly realized he was wrong. His attacker had circled round and the sounds of footsteps on his right told him that he was no longer alone. Gauging the distance on sound alone he fired, felt the solid hit, and then felt them overtake him from the right. He swung his arm around and felt his elbow connect with someone's jaw, noting with a small amount of pride the satisfactory smacking sound. The smaller one had crept up behind, had a hold of his quiver. He turned rapidly, hoping to crush his assailant between himself and the wall. Instead, he found himself trapped, felt a wet rag being pressed over his mouth, felt his fists loosening and his knees going weak...

"Never panic," Tasha's voice was clear as day now, more real to him than the street and people around him. "Keep your calm and wait it out. If you want to survive, brute strength isn't going to get you anywhere. You have to bide your time."