.

Clint

.

The old man's babbling about something or the other. "Fuck-off, Pa," Clint says. "I gotta go."

Pa glares at him, his hand already reaching for the bottle. "One day Stark Industries will be yours – " and yeah, Clint is so out of here.

.

Steve

.

Sometimes they call him "The Good Assassin," and Stepan refuses to take that in the way it's meant. Tucking his gun into his jacket, he stops in at a restaurant and scarfs down a quick, if huge, lunch. Since the serum, he's been eating more than a snow leopard and he's been avoiding the vodka - there's little point in enduring the burn when you can't get drunk,

He tips his waitress 50%, like he always does. It's been a hard few years, here in Russia. She needs the money; they all do. And maybe people are being mocking, when they call him good, but Stepan kills because that's what his country needs him to do and there is nothing wrong or bad about that.

.

Bruce

.

"Bruce!"

Bruce hides his flinch and walks over, head held low.

"Heard a few books went missing last town we stopped at," the ringmaster says. "Eyes on me, rat. Now look, I'm not telling you this again. This circus doesn't want thieves. You stop, or you get."

You're all thieves, Bruce thinks. You're worse than thieves.

"Y-yes," he says.

"What was that?"

"I said I understand."

"You'd better."

Bruce thinks of the chemistry textbook stored in his pack and thinks, I could blow you apart I could blow this down I could blow you up into bits.

.

Tony

.

Woah now, that's a real sexy dame leaning on over. "I saw them give you medal," she says, tongue licking the champagne off her lips. "What for?"

There's an opening just begging to be taken. In more ways than one.

"Doll," Tony says, "those boys out there are fighting for us, dying for us, and here on the home front us mechanics are just doing our best. With what I've made for our country, there's gonna be a million more of our boys coming home - all of them will come home, if I've got anything to say about it." And as she smiles coyly, he takes a sip of his drink and thinks, What now world? What now for little Tony?

I'm not just a boy from Brooklyn anymore.

.

Natasha

.

His lips smell of liquor.

Natalia washes the blood off of the knife and then stores it in the basement, with a pile of other silverware. She lies in bed, her blood hot under her skin, until she falls asleep and her alarm rings and she rises. She showers, long enough that steam moistens the walls. Pulling on some clothes, she walks downstairs, hair wet, heart beating.

She enters the front room and screams.

First Ms Heisler will come, the nosy bitch. Then the police. Then they'll lead the shocked girl with the wet hair over to sit down and gently tell her that her father must have been drunk, must have gotten in a fight. A wonder he made it home.

She'll think of her mother and she'll cry loud and wet.

And then.

As she hears Ms Heisler's slow shuffle up to the door, Natalia allows herself a quick smile.

Father is dead.

.

.

.

tbc . . .