II. Iron Man, Part One
There were two things Bruce was distressed to learn after Tony bullied him and Steve into his two-seater car: 1) Tony was the type of driver who screeched his tires, stomped on the accelerator and brake hard at the last minute, and 2) Steve was now so skinny, the passenger seat accommodated the two of them without a lot of squishing. While Bruce could tune out the former, he couldn't bring himself to ignore the latter. Hence he risked some questions:
"Mind if I did a medical once-over on you, Steve?" Bruce asked, eyes firmly shut.
Steve tensed. "I don't like medical exams."
"Well, no pressure," said Bruce easily. "I won't do it if you don't want."
"Thank you," Steve muttered.
Tony eventually parked his car in what Bruce assumed was his private garage in Stark tower. He then marched Bruce and Steve over to an elevator and slapped the button for the top floor once they got in. Bruce felt his ears pop as the elevator shot up.
The elevator came to a smooth stop when it reached its destination. The doors slid open and revealed a penthouse luxuriously decorated in white, black marble and gold. A tall and beautiful woman who had her strawberry-blond hair up in a ponytail came over to greet them.
"Tony," she said, smiling warmly.
Tony bounded over to her like a lab puppy. The two of them hugged. Then, after staring deeply (and stupidly) into each other's eyes, Tony and the woman stood side-by-side with their arms wrapped around the other's waist.
"Pepper, Dr. Bruce Banner and Captain Steve Rogers," said Tony. "Bruce, Rogers, Pepper Potts, my girlfriend and CEO of Stark Industries."
Pepper beamed at them. "Hello, nice to meet you, Dr. Banner and Captain Rogers."
"Hi," said Bruce awkwardly, as he tried not to slouch.
"Ma'am," said Steve, equally awkward, but standing in soldierly attention.
"He called you ma'am," said Tony.
"I like it, it's sweet," said Pepper, which made Steve blink down at his socked feet (he left his shoes in the car; they were too big).
Pepper eventually maneuvered Bruce and Steve to the sitting area, where there was an egregiously large sectional leather couch and matching armchairs made of charcoal leather and chrome frame. Tony offered alcoholic drinks from the bar and pouted when Bruce and Steve refused. Tony then came over with two glass tumblers full of amber liquid and plopped himself next to Pepper.
"Right. So I told Pepper everything—" Tony started.
"Except you didn't make a lot of sense," Pepper interjected.
"I always make sense. What are you talking about, Pep?" Tony shot back. "Now where was I? Oh, yes, options. We're going to talk about options. Your options, Steve, to be specific. If there's one thing you should know about life in the 21st century, that it's about having options—all the options, baby."
"If you say so," said Steve, bemused.
Tony smirked. "Now the first step of having options is being legal, which in your case is being legally alive. Do you have a passport or driver's license, or are you banking on no one pulling you over for driving without ID?"
Steve reached into his inner jacket pocket and produced an old and weathered looking passport. It very much looked like a historical document one would expect to see in a museum. "SHIELD gave me my old one in storage," he said.
"It's expired," Tony pointed out. "So no driver's license?"
"I have a temporary one with the state of New York," said Steve.
"I'm surprised they didn't take care of your passport first," Pepper remarked.
Steve shrugged. "I guess they thought I wouldn't need it just yet."
"How presumptuous of them," said Pepper.
Tony started drumming his fingers against an armrest.
"There hasn't been any official statement about you," he said. "This doesn't mean the powers-that-be aren't aware of you. I mean, look: SHIELD basically claimed custody over you, which means the World Security Council is aware of you, and I'm betting the guys who found you told the President or Army or whatever they thought should be told. The point is: there are powerful people who can vouch that you are you and are willing to give you the paperwork that says that. Your temporary driver's license, case in point. But."
"I have to make it worth their while for more," said Steve grimly.
"Exactly," said Tony, pointing dramatically. "Now the good news: you do kind of live up to your legend. See, even I'm admitting it. Just look at me, admitting that you're pretty good, even if the thing that made you special came from a bottle."
"Tony!" Pepper exclaimed while Steve flinched.
"What? It's true!" Tony protested. "Captain America came to be when Steve took the best drugs science could offer."
"Tony, seriously, you're saying things you're going to later regret saying," said Pepper angrily. "And even if you don't, Steve doesn't deserve this."
Tony looked at Pepper, at Bruce, stole a very brief glance at a stony-faced Steve before looking down at his tumbler like a chastised kid.
"Okay, sorry, I may have gone overboard," Tony muttered. "Maybe. Anyway, Capital Hill, Army, SHIELD … they'll all want you, Steve. Doesn't that give you warm and fuzzy feelings?"
"Sure," said Steve stiffly. "Though I do wonder why they'd launch a missile to Manhattan where we fighting if, as you say, 'they all want me'."
Tony hunched his shoulders and shivered when Steve mentioned the nuke.
"Stark?" said Steve, now looking concerned.
Tony waved a hand jerkily. "Don't mind me. Bad reminder. How rude of you to give me one. Didn't it occur to you that it might … upset someone? You pretty much said that it does."
"You're right," said Steve, in a low voice that left no room for sarcasm—only frankness and sincerity. "The World Security Council's decision to bomb Manhattan upset me. What you did to save it, in contrast, struck me as absolutely heroic. I'm sorry and thank you."
The expression Tony wore after this little speech would've been more appropriate if Steve had tossed him out of a window without a parachute or warning. Why he was so thrown, Bruce couldn't even start to guess. Bruce, for his part, was awed at Steve's ability to take Tony's cruel barbs and an agency that thought they could make him fight their wars without bitterness.
Was this the reason why the serum turned Steve to Captain America? When Bruce was researching the serum, he'd read a reference that said the serum amplified everything that was inside, so Good became great, and Bad became worse. Bruce hadn't paid much attention to it then, seeing as it was talking about a person's character when the serum, in his mind, was entirely biological in its effects.
Well, he'd been wrong about the serum. In so many ways.
If the serum went beyond the body, could even touch a person's character, then Steve must've been like this even before. Whereas Bruce himself … he responded to hardship and difficulty with rage and retreat. So perhaps he'd been doomed from the start. Even if he had recreated the serum correctly, which he didn't, the serum may have still turned him into a rage monster.
Another Red Skull.
Bruce waited to observe his response to his train of thought. He expected bitterness and envy, and yes, he detected some of these unfurling inside his gut like a small seed of poison. But mostly he felt regret and … curiosity. Namely, what does it look like when a good person's goodness gets amplified?
Look at me, I'm seeing beyond myself, Bruce mused, even as he noted the irony of thinking in such terms in the current context. Then he turned his attention back to the others.
Both Steve and Pepper were watching Tony, who was still floundering speechless. Then Tony drew in a deep breath and exhaled.
"Okay. You're welcome. Anyway, moving on. Let's just … move on."
oooo
The conversation drifted back to Steve's legal status, and what it was worth to SHIELD/Fury, WSC, America in general, and the US Army in particular, to officially declare Captain America alive. This lead to a discussion on why SHIELD/Fury was looking for Captain America in the first place.
"They wouldn't have been interested in me as a person," said Steve, with an unflinching acceptance of the hard truth that Bruce really had to admire. "The best they could've hoped to retrieve is my corpse. If they were after my corpse, then this means my body has something they want."
"The serum," said Bruce.
"Which will let them create an army of super-soldiers," said Tony in a perfect relay. "Military minds simply can't get rid of this idea. No offense, Cap, but you doing such a good job at winning the war back in the forties probably only made things worse."
Steve sighed. "Probably."
"Well, SHIELD's expedition found more than what they hoped for," Tony went on. "I bet their scientist minions creamed their pants when they found you alive. All your lovely DNA perfectly intact, with you yourself alive for further study. That said, I won't completely discount the idea they would've preferred you dead since then they'd been able to poke all they want. Have they, by the way?"
"Poked around at my body?" Steve asked for clarification.
Tony stared. "Yes, well?"
"I'm not sure," said Steve. "Like I told Dr. Banner, I woke up in a cold salt bath. What they did before they put me there, I don't know."
"Mmm, something tells me they didn't have the chance," said Bruce. "The guys wouldn't have expected you gain consciousness so quickly. I would've expected you to stay under until you were ready to leave the brine bath."
"I did hear a lot of yelling," Steve said dryly. "So why put me in a brine bath in the first place?"
"To melt the ice without raising your body temperature," Bruce replied. "Drastically uneven body temperatures leads to frostbite or gangrene."
"No one wants a limbless Captain America," Tony agreed.
Steve paled. Bruce only then realized the inappropriateness of their conversation topic.
"Sorry, moving on," said Bruce hastily. "Did you have a tube down your throat when you woke up?"
"Yes," said Steve. "And the bath was inside a much bigger metal can."
"Okay, so they hooked you up to oxygen and ventilator ASAP and did everything inside a decompression chamber. Good to know the SHIELD scientists knew what they were doing," said Bruce thoughtfully. He then noticed Steve's puzzled expression. "The ventilator would've ensured you breathed. The decompression chamber would've made sure any inert gasses in your blood didn't suddenly expand and burst your veins as you thawed out."
Steve managed to turn even paler. "Oh."
"So what happened after you woke up?" Tony asked.
"I took out the tube and climbed out of the bath," said Steve, and Bruce noticed he seemed to be folding into himself. "Someone gave me a blanket. I waited – for hours. Fury talked to me through a screen. I threw up a lot." A pause. "I couldn't stomach solid food. Still can't."
Bruce and Tony shared a look. Steve hadn't partaken any food when the team had Shawarma. At the time, Bruce thought it was because Steve was too tired to eat. Now, it was clear Steve didn't eat because he couldn't.
"Freezer burn to the stomach, huh?" said Tony, and Steve nodded glumly.
"What have you been eating?" Bruce asked.
"Liquid stuff that tastes worse than things coming for a second pass," said Steve, grimacing. "And something called Muscle Milk."
"Yeeech," said Tony, pulling a face. "Okay, that's it. No more talking about what SHIELD may or may not have done to Steve while thawing. Or what happens when a person comes out of cryogenic freezing. Let's return to Steve's legal status and options."
"I don't think you can completely avoid SHIELD," said Pepper, picking up the thread. "Fury was fully prepared to handle your defrosting, and he probably made preparations as soon as he learned that you're alive. Meaning, he had a lot of plans for you, and wasn't afraid to fight other interested parties to carry them out."
"He certainly had plans for my body," said Steve sardonically. "I'm more inclined think my survival was an unpleasant surprise he had to respond quickly to."
"Don't say that," said Pepper. "You're a hero. I know Phil was delighted beyond belief when they found you. For my part, I'm very happy that you're alive, Steve."
Steve gave Pepper a sad little smile. "Thank you."
"Right. Back on topic, peeps," said Tony. "Now Pepper, because she's absolutely perfect and brilliant, is correct. You can't avoid SHIELD. The best you can do is leverage what you've got. Brucie, you're a genius, and far more valuable as yourself than the Other Guy, so we'll play on that. Steve, you have the whole super-soldier thing going on, and that alone has the military-intelligence community salivating. Plus, you can transform in ways no normal human being can. It'll make you very valuable for undercover work. Right up SHIELD's alley."
"But my transformations are not up to me," said Steve. "It really depends on how close to battle I am. Right now I'm in an intermediate state. I've still got three more inches to shrink." He wet his lips. "I wasn't able to get this far until now."
Bruce and Tony shared another look. Clearly, Steve had been in a state of acute terror/rage since waking up and only recently been able to relax enough to shrink down half-way. It also was no surprise that he still had some residual but still significant amount of fear/anger running in his system, therefore couldn't reverse the transformation completely.
Really, knowing what they knew now, it was even more remarkable how well Steve handled Loki and SHIELD. It made Bruce want to say something encouraging, but he couldn't think of a tactful way of saying: 'Hey, you did a really good job for someone who woke up seventy years in the future, and then was pushed to fight another war immediately afterward by a bunch of dicks'. As is, it was too easy to construe the words as mocking. Though Steve had been taking Tony's … Tony-ness very well, Bruce didn't want to add to it. Or was gruff words the best way to show solidarity? At this point Bruce noticed his thoughts were going in a tailspin, so he decided to refrain least he botched things up with words.
"Will, uh, it cause problems?" Bruce asked.
"I think I'm all right," said Steve. "When I was out in the field, I would stay like this for months until there was enemy engagement."
"And you came out with your sanity intact," said Tony. "Of course you could be hiding it really well…"
Steve chuckled darkly.
"If I do go insane, Stark, it'll be as obvious as Hulk. Sorry, Dr. Banner."
"S'alright," said Bruce. "Let's go back to leverage. You've got a lot of skills SHIELD wants. But I don't recommend you going full-time with them. If you do, it'll be too easy for them to just take over your whole life."
"Don't give them more than strictly necessary," Tony agreed. "And full-time goes completely against having options."
"Do I even have options?" Steve asked.
"Of course you do," said Bruce, with more conviction than he felt. "See, SHIELD would want you to get up to speed. That doesn't mean they can dictate how you get there. Maybe you can agree to work as a contractor on a part-time basis, so you can go to school? School's a great way to catch up, you know, and you look young enough to pass as a student. How old are you, by the way?"
"Is that a trick question?" asked Steve, lips quirked.
"Okay, I deserved that," said Bruce, smiling back. "Seriously, though: how old were you back in 1945?"
"Twenty-three," said Steve.
"Ohmygosh, you're a baby," Tony cooed. "Pep, our leader is a baby."
"Tony, behave," said Pepper. "I'm with Dr. Banner. College is a good idea. Is there anything you're interested in studying, Steve?"
Steve turned blank. Bruce thought he looked exactly like a baffled teen who was trying to fill out his college applications.
"I … don't know," said Steve slowly. "College was never an option for me before."
"Didn't you study art?" asked Bruce.
"I took a few art classes to get an advertising job. That's not the same thing."
Tony looked appalled. "You worked in advertising. Advertising."
"It paid the rent," said Steve defensively.
"Don't mind him, Steve," said Pepper firmly. "Now back to college majors. You don't actually need to declare one for admissions. You can feel around to find out what suits you best as a freshman, and change it if it doesn't work out. You just need to come up with a decent proposal for SHIELD."
"Maybe you can tell them you're interested in studying computers because of your dinner with Alan Turing," said Bruce. "They'd totally eat it up if you mention computers."
Pepper perked up. "You had dinner with Alan Turing? The man who broke the Enigma?"
"The one and only," said Steve. "And it was dinners."
"Dinners. Plural. Ooooh, this just got even more interesting," said Tony, wriggling in his seat. "Give us a rundown, Steve. JARVIS, transcribe and record."
"As you wish, Sir," said an electronic voice with a British accent.
"That's JARVIS, my Artificial Intelligence, by the way," said Tony. "Exchange pleasantries later. Steve, go."
Steve looked at Tony for a second. Then a smile of pure affection bloomed on his face. It took both Bruce and Tony completely aback.
"Uh, what just happened to your face?" said Tony, alarmed.
"Nothing. You just reminded me of someone," Steve said. Then he drew in a breath. "Dinner one was at this bistro down Mass Avenue. Served French food, I think. Anyway, Alan plowed right into it…"
oooo
Two days after the Chitauri attack, Bruce found himself in Stark Tower's top R&D floor, looking up GED testing centers. He also encountered Nick Fury and Natasha Romanoff apropos nothing.
"Oh, hi, Agent Romanoff … Director Fury…" he murmured.
"Hey, Doc," said Romanoff, grinning easily.
Fury pulled up a chair and sat. "You look busy."
"Ah, well, you know, research waits for no man," said Bruce, as he adjusted his glasses. "Tony's flying to Malibu, by the way."
"Good thing I'm not looking for him, then," said Fury, looking at the tablet in Bruce's hands pointedly. "Thought you were way beyond taking GEDs, Doc."
"It's not for me," said Bruce. "Got involved in an interesting project."
Fury leaned back. "Tell me, I'm all ears."
Bruce studied Fury and Romanoff. He got exactly nothing from their demeanor or expression. Spy or Emotionally Intelligent he was clearly not.
"So, uh, Steve mentioned to me in passing he'd met Alan Turing," said Bruce. "You know, the father of modern computing?"
"Sure," said Fury. "And I suppose you wanted to know what they talked about."
"Mmmhmm," said Bruce. "It turns out Steve and Turing got along like a house on fire; what was supposed to be one dinner turned into several dinners when Steve figured out a real life Turing Machine would have to use binary instructions because a machine can only understand yes and no. From there, he and Turing designed a layered hierarchy structure of commands with increasing layers of abstraction for each computing unit, pretty much nailing future computer development. Then they started talking about scalability. Turing argued for a single data center with dedicated segments, kind of like virtual machines, and Steve argued for a series of computing units that communicated with each other, which is basically parallel computing and networking. But what really blew my mind was this. JARVIS?"
JARVIS dutifully played the recording Bruce had him ready for exactly this sort of occasion:
"I thought we shouldn't put an emphasis on the standardization of instructions, but standardization of communication protocols. 'Cause, no matter how generalized you make a computing unit, people will want to tinker and customize. If nothing else, there will be as many different instruction languages as there are human languages. Anyway, one thing I knew for sure was, no matter how people choose to do their work, almost everyone wants a shared platform where they can show their work. So my bet was, there will be a universal language, routing and addressing system that would let each computing unit identify their location, how to get from point A to B, and send information across a communication line that all computing units can interpret, regardless of their own individual instruction interpreters."
There was a long, long silence in the lab.
"…In case you haven't noticed, Steve basically prophesied the birth of Internet in 1942," said Bruce, at length. "No wonder Dr. Erskine favored him, huh?"
Agent Romanoff remained inscrutable. Fury seemed to deflate as he exhaled noisily through his nose. Then he planted his elbows on the lab table, threaded his fingers, and nailed Bruce with a penetrating stare.
"What are you suggesting, Doctor?" he said, voice low and gravely.
Bruce drew in a steadying breath.
"I think we should stop making assumptions on what Steve can or cannot do," he said. "I'd hate for him to waste his brains. I recommend he get a degree in computer science with a focus on distributed and heterogeneous networks. He's already at the four hundred levels on the theory side of things. He just needs to catch up on the practical stuff. I'm putting the word out in Harvard, and Tony said he'll hit up his buddies in MIT and CalTech."
"Seems like you already got things in motion, Doc," remarked Romanoff.
"It doesn't hurt," said Bruce. "Look, I don't know what he should do. He might get into research, or he may not. I just think he should have more than just 'soldier' as an option."
There was another bout of silence. Fury re-threaded his fingers and somehow made the gesture look menacing.
"The world isn't fair, and no one gets all the options they should have," Fury began.
"I know," said Bruce.
"And I know you know," said Fury. "You're not dumb, Dr. Banner, so I won't waste my time explaining to you what Captain Rogers is up against."
"Agencies that may or may not include SHIELD who wants an army of super-soldiers," said Bruce bluntly. "Barring that, the one and only successful super-soldier under their control."
"Like I said, you're not dumb," said Fury. "Now I'm gonna tell you how things are: I know you're invested in Captain Rogers. I know you're compromised. I also know you're the best expert in super-soldier serum we've got."
"I'm not recreating the serum," said Bruce.
"And I don't want you to," said Fury. "Now I will admit, I did have plans to give a tamer version of the serum on promising people who could step up and defend our planet. That's why SHIELD went looking for Captain Rogers. But while we were prepping for it, we found something that made me shelve this plan completely."
Fury handed over a folder to Bruce. Bruce took it reluctantly and opened it. Enclosed was a printout of what looked like a transcript.
"Dr. Erskine left no notes on the serum," Fury said. "That doesn't mean he didn't talk about it. Someone from the SSR days had the presence of mind to jot down everything he said."
Bruce stole a brief glance at Fury before he started reading:
MC: According to Zola, your serum is a failure, Doctor. Johann Schmidt turned into Red Skull after he injected himself with it.
AE: My serum did not fail. It did exactly what I designed it to do. It enhances what is already within. It is Herr Schmidt who has failed at being human.
MC: I grant Schmidt was not an ideal candidate. However, Michael Rogers was a good man, and so was his brother Grant, and yet here we are.
AE: I'm terribly sorry about what happened to Michael and Grant. I also admit there are difficulties in reconciling what I designed the serum to do and what happened to the Rogers brothers. But I do have some theories.
MC: which are?
AE: We are prone to mistake outside appearances for inner goodness, and we frequently have the wrong idea in whom true goodness may reside. Are you not as brave and true as any man, Agent Carter? Yet no one even thinks to name you as a candidate. We are all fixated in finding the perfect grown man candidate.
MC: … so what you're saying …
AE: It could be that my serum will only work as intended for the least us. You know: the women, children and infirm.
Hands trembling, Bruce put the folder down.
"May only work for the ill, children or girls, huh?" he mumbled.
"Sounds like it," said Fury. "Whatever you think of us, we have a policy against recruiting children."
"How do you explain Agent Romanoff, then?" Bruce asked.
"I wasn't underage when SHIELD took me in," said Romanoff. "FYI: I'm here for little girls who might get turn into me."
Bruce swallowed, hard.
"Captain Rogers has refused all medical examinations for the last three weeks," said Fury. "If I'm interpreting his character correctly, this is him trying to take his biological information to the grave, least it is abused. While I respect his reasons, I can't have him continue to refuse the medical attention he needs. It's also possible we need your expertise to treat his unique physiology."
Fury looked at Bruce like a man who held the ace of trumps.
"Do I have your cooperation, doc?"
Bruce took in a deep calming breath. Damn you, Fury, damn you to Hell…
"I'll see what I can do."
Notes: I have no idea if Alan Turing would've preferred a virtual machine solution over a distributed computing system. I merely thought Steve would've preferred a distributed computing system for resiliency and greater fail-over abilities, and so made Turing take a different side.
MC in the transcript was, of course, Margret "Peggy" Carter, and AE was Dr. Abraham Erskine.