Chapter 2: Tony

She spoons the batter onto the hot griddle and doesn't flinch when it sputters and pops. She peers more closely as the blueberries grow shiny from the heat. It smells good. It's also unhealthy and therefore the kind of breakfast that slows you down to the mortal benefit of one of the scores of people who want you to bleed out on the floor, but still good.

"Should I flip this now?"

Tony has spent this entire morning audibly enjoying teaching her something. And drinking two pots of coffee. The combination has not been winning. "Sure thing." He bounces up and down on his heels in excitement. He winks and adds something about how it's nice to see her frying something that isn't someone's metaphorical genitalia.

With a controlled and conserved motion she attempts just that, losing half of it to the stove top. Stark notices and his chuckle is grating, but his clear inability to figure out why half of his face is numb is satisfying enough to make up for it. She wonders again just why she is here and then remembers. Oddly enough, she likes them. No reason to make it complicated, but there is probably nothing that could make her say those words out loud.

Thirty minutes pass and a pile of pancakes-some charred, many under cooked all suspiciously lumpy, towers on a thick plate. The rest of them stagger into the kitchen, with the exceptions of Steve and Thor who stroll in, humming and smiling respectively as though this is a tolerable hour.

"Pancakes! Jarvis, immortalize this moment, please." Tony crows and places a bottle of syrup on the table with a flourish. His smile is enormous and oddly genuine.

Clint speaks first, eyeing the stack with an eyebrow raised. "They smell good but-" Natasha slams one onto a plate so forcefully that the blackened top cracks open, releasing a tiny river of batter. He shrugs and coats it in a shiny layer of maple syrup and then immediately downs the whole thing. He has always eaten like that, always will. Natasha and Bruce, both of whom have seen X-rays of his spine know: He would have been taller but for years of ferocious malnutrition in his adolescence.

Stark does the same, absolutely drowning his in syrup before gnawing on it. Steve thanks her genuinely for making breakfast and manages to keep most of the struggle off of his face as he chews; Bruce rips into them indifferently, lost in thought. Thor declares them "gamey" with a huge smile and eats with apparent relish.

Nodding, she takes one of raw ones for herself, dips it into syrup from Clint's plate and consumes it delicately. Clint is on his third and suddenly his expression shifts, growing strained. Sweat is beading on his forehead. Are they that bad? Stark is swaying, and her own gut gives a twist.

Wait. She recognizes that feeling, that particular pain, that potent aftertaste. Her world tips sideways. No. No.

Apparently she said that out loud. There is a pronounced pause in the conversation. "Spit them out." An array of confused faces...They don't understand but they don't need to. "I said spit them out." Her hiss is more effective than a scream and they oblige, reaching for napkins or, in Thor's case, simply aiming for the floor.

Clint slides to the floor and she kneels next to him, agony in her torso, but she's had decades of practice ignoring pain. Stark is groaning, eyes wide, fear verging quickly into terror. "Captain," She says, "My room. Gray bag, top of the closet." She forces Clint to lie on his side.

Thor lowers Stark gently to the floor, Bruce crouches with them. "What was in it?" He asks, voice soft.

"Arsenic," She murmurs and Banner winces, "But I have..." That sentence is hard to finish. Clint's eyes are sliding in and out of focus and Stark's body is contorting in a way that suggests he no longer has the final say in what it does and does not do.

Steve returns breathless, presses the bag which rattles with the sound of many pills into her arms. "I don't know which one."

She finds the blue bottle. Thor allows her to struggle with the lid for all of a moment before he breaks it neatly in half with his thumb. She bends over Clint, because the day his life is not the one she saves with her own hands will never come.

"Two for Stark," she says and Bruce nods. She pries Clint's mouth open, calculates quickly and forces five of the pills down his throat with her fingers because even swallowing is beyond him now.

There is the sound of a struggle as Tony can't hold still despite the many arms pinning him down and the pills are spilling down his shirt and... With a growl she drags her body over and straddles him. In a single practiced motion (Bruce carefully does not ponder the origin of that skill) she saves his life. Then she throws up all over his arc reactor. Right. Her own body, violently opposing the metal trying to conquer it. She gropes around and someone asks, "One pill?" and she nods. They help her get it down.

She's back on her feet within hours. The other two are not even conscious.

They all take turns pacing around the sterile beeping room, staring down at their pale and intubated comrades. She and Pepper never leave. Natasha offers words of threat and adoration, off-key lullabies in Russian. Pepper cries sometimes, strokes Tony's forehead constantly, wishes this weren't so damn familiar. She takes a break only to hug Natasha and thank her for his life, leaving the other redhead somewhere between baffled and moved.

Nick Fury has already found why, what, how because he's really good at that. The answers: A man's daughter died during the New York fiasco, he put arsenic in the pancake syrup, he got a job delivering groceries, didn't mind that he poisoned fourteen others colaterally that same day.

They both wake up (to an extent) the next day, as a group they pretend that this isn't what they've been waiting a desperate 26 hours for. Neither are permitted to get out of bed.

Natasha leaves for thirty minutes around 2 am, whispers when she gets back in order to not wake up Pepper, who sleeps curled around the thing that makes her life simultaneously complicated and worth living.

She nudges his shoulder and he blinks sleepily up at her. She carefully pours syrup over the pancake, cuts him a small bite. "Eat this."

"Nat? What?" He can see her roll her eyes in the dark.

"Don't ask stupid questions. Right now or you won't be able to eat these ever again."

"Is that really important?"

"Yes." Truth: Maybe not, but she knows better than to ponder it.

"Depends. Did you make it?" His face manages a grin.

"No." She smiles back, for a moment proud of possessing a persona so intimidating that acquiring fresh pancakes a full five hours after the cafeteria closed didn't even require a verbal threat.

"Then sure." He chews and swallows and she doesn't mention how long it takes to test something for 2,000 different poisons.

Note: Thank you so much to all of you that reviewed last chapter. I'll reply to all of you before I write the next one. It's very rewarding to get feedback or to just know that someone's reading when I write these. So, please let me know what you thought or just say hi. I just love hearing from people.