A/N: Another chapter! Please review, fave, and follow!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything but Katherine!
"That was rude." Steve said with a small laugh when he caught up to Katherine. She let out a small laugh of her own before looking at the man.
"I couldn't resist." As they came to the door of the lab, they noticed Tony walk behind Bruce for a moment before the doctor jumped.
"OW!" Bruce said, pressing a hand to his side.
"Hey!" Steve called to Tony.
"Nothing?" Tony asked Bruce as the soldiers came into the room. Tony was looking into Bruce's eyes for any sign of green that would signal the Hulk.
"Are you nuts?" Steve asked.
"Jury's out." Tony said, glancing at them before turning his attention back to Bruce.
"I bet it is." Katherine mumbled as she crossed her arms over her chest.
"You really got a lid on it, haven't you?" Tony asked the doctor. "What's your secret? Mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?" Katherine's brow furrowed and her head tilted when she heard the last thing Tony asked Bruce if he used to keep calm.
"Tony, I don't think he'd be a genius if he smoked weed." She said, coming to stand beside Steve in front of the table.
"You might be right Kat." He said before Steve interrupted him.
"Kat?" She asked herself. No one had ever called her that, it was either Kathy or Katherine. She turned her attention back to the three men in the lab.
"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve asked Tony again.
"Funny things are." Tony said, pointing the shocking pen at Steve.
"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny." Steve said before looking at Bruce.
"No offense Bruce." Katherine said, trying to cover Steve's mistake.
"It's all right. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things." Bruce said, smiling at her before looking back down at the spear. She smiled back before turning her attention to Tony.
"You're tip-toeing, big man. You need to strut." He said as he walked away from the table.
"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark." Steve said to Tony. Katherine glanced over, Mr. Stark? It must have something to do with his father, Howard.
"You think I'm not?" Tony asked him. "Why did Fury call us in? Why now? Why not before?" Tony asked questions that Katherine couldn't help but ask herself several times since she'd met Coulson and Steve.
"What isn't he telling us?" Katherine asked the last question, leaning her hands on the table as she looked between the three of them.
"Yes." Tony said, pointing to her before turning back to Steve. "I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables." Steve glanced at her before looking back to Tony.
"You think Fury's hiding something?" He asked.
"He's a spy. Captain, he's "the" spy. His secrets have secrets." Tony popped a blueberry into his mouth. "It's bugging him, too. Isn't it?" Tony asked Bruce, causing Steve and Katherine to turn their attention to the man. Bruce looked up at them.
"Uh… I just want to finish my work here and…"
"Bruce?" Katherine asked, tilting her head as she looked at him. He stopped and looked at her before glancing at Steve and Tony before sighing and taking off his glasses.
"A warm light for all mankind. Loki's jab at Fury about the cube." Bruce began.
"I heard it." Steve said, a way of telling him to go on.
"Well, I think that was meant for you." Bruce said pointing at Tony. The iron hero held out a bag for Bruce. The doctor glanced down at it before reaching inside and pulling out a couple of blueberries. "Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news." Tony held the bag out to Katherine; she glanced at him before taking a few for herself.
"The Stark Tower? That big, ugly…" Steve began before changing what he was going to say when Tony turned to him with a glare. The look caused the woman to chuckle slightly. Steve's sentence trailed off, as if thinking about not finishing it… that didn't stop him. "Building in New York?" Katherine threw a blueberry into the air, catching it in her mouth before she turned back to the conversation at hand.
"Nice catch." Bruce said, smiling at her. "It's powered by an arc reactor, a self-sustaining energy source."
"Like the one in Tony's chest?" She asked, pointing to the man. Bruce and Tony nodded their heads.
"That building will run itself for, what, a year?" Bruce asked the man beside him.
"It's just a prototype." Tony said. "I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now. That's what he's getting at."
"So, why didn't S.H.I.E.L.D bring him in on the Tesseract project?" Bruce said, opening Katherine and Steve's eyes to a new point. "What are they doing in the energy business in the first place?"
"I should probably look into that once my decryption program finishes breaking into all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secure files." Katherine and Steve looked at the man, surprised.
"I'm sorry. Did you say…"
"Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours, I'll know every dirty secret S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever tried to hide." Tony said as he walked around Katherine to stand in front of Steve. "Blueberry?" He asked the soldier, holding out the bag to him.
"Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around." Steve said to him, his eyes never leaving Tony's face.
"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome." Tony said back to him. Katherine rolled her eyes and turned to Bruce.
"Is there anything I can do to help you since I know where this going." She said to the doctor. He smiled at her.
"Actually there is. If you could just keep scanning this here, I can see if I can get a frequency level." Katherine walked around the table, her heels clicking against the metal floors as she grabbed the device from Bruce's hand, gently waving it over the gem in the spear while began typing on his computer.
"I think Loki's trying to wind us up." Steve said as he watched Katherine and Bruce work before turning back to Tony. "This is a man who means to start a war and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed." Bruce and Katherine looked up at him. "We have orders. We should follow them."
"Following's not really my style." Tony said as he ate another blueberry.
"And you're all about style, aren't you?"
"Of the people in this room, which one is, A: wearing a spangly outfit, and, B: not of use?"
"Steve…" Katherine said gently, trying to keep the fight she knew was brewing from coming out. A few seconds later, the man turned to look at her. "Tell me none of this smells a little funky to you." The former soldier turned his gaze to Tony before he began to leave.
"Just find the cube." He walked out the door, leaving the three of them alone in the quiet room. Katherine sighed before turning her attention back to what Bruce had asked her to do.
"That's the guy my dad never shut up about?" Tony asked them. "I'm wondering if they shouldn't have kept him on ice." Katherine put the scanner down as Bruce moved onto a new instrument.
"Leave him alone Tony. He's having a hard time adjusting to life now-a-days and you're not helping." She said, leaning against the table.
"Really? I wonder why you think that…" Tony said as he checked something on a screen behind him. Katherine raised an eyebrow.
"What are you talking about?" She asked.
"I think there's something brewing, deep down inside you, for the Capsicle." Tony said, looking over his shoulder at her. She sucked her teeth for a moment, opening her mouth to say something when Bruce interrupted.
"Even so, he's not wrong about Loki. He does have the jump on us." Bruce began clicking things on the screen he was using.
"What he's got is an Acme dynamite kit. It's going to blow up in his face and I'm going to be there when it does." Tony said as he moved to a different monitor.
"Yeah, I'll read all about it." Katherine said as she pulled herself up to sit on the table behind her so that she could still watch them scientists move around. Tony looked up at her from over the top of the screen before going back to it.
"Uh-huh. Or you and Banner be suiting up with the rest of us." Tony said causing Bruce chuckled from where he was standing.
"You see, I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed, like a nerve. It's a nightmare." Bruce said as he focused on what he was doing. Tony glanced at him before turning back to what he was doing.
"You know, I've got a cluster of shrapnel trying every second to crawl its way into my heart. This stops it." He said, gently tapping the arc reactor in the center of his chest. "This little circle of light, it's a part of me now, not just armor. It's a terrible privilege." Tony had moved so that he was now standing in front of Bruce, looking at him threw the clear screen. She'd never known those things about Tony.
"But you can control it." Bruce said with emphasis.
"Because I learned how." Tony replied back.
"It's the same for me." Katherine said, drawing both men's attention to her. "My powers run highly on my emotion. I have to be careful and keep myself in check, otherwise shit goes wrong fast. I learned to control my emotions and in time, my powers as well." She glanced at the men. Tony nodded and pointed a finger at her, as if to say 'listen to her'.
"It's different." Bruce said, trying to go back to work before Tony swiped everything on the screen to the side.
"Hey, I read all about your accident. That much gamma exposure should have killed you." Tony said to him, causing Katherine to tilt her head. She'd heard about the accident but she'd never read anything on it.
"So you're saying that the Hulk… the other guy saved my life?" He asked. "That's nice. That's a nice sentiment. Saved it for what?"
"I guess we'll find out." Tony said before stepping back to what he was doing.
"You may not enjoy that." Bruce said.
"And you just might." Tony said back. Katherine sat silently, watching the two geniuses as they worked. There was more to each of these heroes than she had really thought.