Disclaimer: I don't own The Avengers.
They'd been walking the subway tunnels for hours, finding larger groups of people the farther uptown they went. There were wounded and dead mingling with the live and terrified; people already trying to form groups and take charge, and whatnot. Banner and Betty stayed together, trying to give as much assistance as possible without the benefit of having any equipment. Banner did a few makeshift medical procedures: he cleaned a shrapnel with rubbing alcohol and bandaged it with a woman's headscarf, and stitched an open cut on someone's head with a sewing needle-thank god the city was full of smokers, and so many people had lighters to sterilize that sewing needle with-and dental floss. Betty broke into abandoned snack stands and distributed snacks, turned off signals so that no trains could run, and began helping people set up temporary camp on the platforms and in the tracks.
At every station they went through they spent at least twenty minutes trying to comfort the children who'd had to hide and did not know where their parents were. For awhile they even had a few strays following them, but they, one by one, dropped behind due to exhaustion, hunger or thirst. Banner and Betty were alone for much of that walk along the green line, trying to talk out what had happened. Trying, to some degree, to understand what was going on beyond the simple: "well, the city's getting destroyed again." At 77th street, the number of people hiding in the tunnels was dwindling, and the noises aboveground didn't sound so much like an all-out war was being waged.
"Do you want to go up?" he asked her as they dragged themselves from 77th to 86th.
"Not really, but I have a feeling we should."
"Yeah," he said, pursing his lips. "We should call Stark."
"I was thinking the same." she replied, looking over at him. "Great minds, huh?"
"Sure," he said. "Why not."
They walked to the 86th and Lex stop before they clambered out, crawling over debris and around stairs that had been blasted to rubble. When the two of them had finally gotten to the top step, they reviewed, with a growing sense of terror, what the black ships had done to the city in a matter of hours.
Everything was at a standstill. Cars were parked all over the sidewalk-some in shop windows-and had been abandoned. The traffic lights blinked silently overhead. Buildings had enormous chunks ripped out of them-she looked over her right shoulder and saw that the Lipstick Building, or what was left of it, was missing about forty of its impressive fifty two floors-and the streets themselves looked as though someone had bombed them out. 95th was three quarters of the way ripped out, the concrete-asphalt cocktail doing an impressive reach for the sky.
"Goddamn." Banner muttered, trying to take it all in at once. Betty felt tears of frustration welling fast behind her eyes.
"Fucking Christ," she wailed, slamming a car door closed. "Look at it, Bruce."
"I haven't exactly got my eyes closed." He replied.
"What the fuck are we gonna do?" she cried. She was almost sobbing; the tip of her nose red and her cheeks blotchily flushed. Banner jogged over to rub her upper arms-really, to stop her from swinging them so violently back and forth.
"Hey, hey. Relax, Betty, we're going to be okay. This all is going to be okay." he made a large, all-encompassing gesture that somehow made Betty cry harder.
"Fuck, fuck!" she wailed. "You don't understand."
"What don't I understand?" he was desperately trying to calm her. The cynic inside him wondered, briefly, if this was how bad he was before he Hulked out.
"You don't...Bruce, this is my home, okay? You've been all over the place, doing crazy stuff and being important, but this is my home. I grew up here, I live here, my mom lives here. My brother is buried in Brighton, fuck's sake, I will die here! What the fuck even were those things? One of them blew up downtown-and we saw a fucking fleet on fourteenth street. We are fucked." she was rambling and crying, collapsing a little against him. Her breathing was heavy.
"We're going to get them out," he promised. "Whatever they are. They're going to leave, I swear. Even if we have to get the Avengers Initiative back on track." She laughed a high, bitter laugh, but there was something in the way that she looked at him for half a second that was thankful. Even if the promises were empty, hearing them was better than hearing the truth.
And for once, to Banner, they were the truth. She threw her arms around his neck and pulled him close, burying her head in the crook of his neck. Banner pressed the side of his face against her hair and breathed her in. He felt a peculiar tightness in his chest, that he was almost sure had nothing to do with the smoke coming off the streets, and the dust and rubble that was everywhere.
"We've leveled the city, nearly," Loki said carefully, looking at the man with purple skin. "Do you think now might be a good time to...give them a chance to surrender?" He made no reply, just looked the god of mischief up and down with the kind of stare that would've made lesser men tremble in their tracks.
"You are young, Loki," said Thanos smoothly. "You have yet to understand the true joys of rulership."
"I would like to have a world to rule, instead of a pile of rubble." Loki spat back. Thanos chuckled darkly.
"And you shall; a world you can shape yourself with no thought of petty rebellions or unruly subjects. Is that not better than trying to bring the dreks to you?" Thanos almost cooed, walking slowly from one end of the windowed ship to the other. Loki's teeth sunk into his lower lip.
"I do not want to...to kill them all." he said, almost boyish in his whispering.
"We shall not kill them all," replied Thanos. "But a few, however stupidly or unfortunately, will die for this puny, desolate rock."
