I do not own any aspect of The Avengers, or any of Marvel's other creations.
-M.
Two days after the robot attack there's a thunderstorm that covers the entire state of New Mexico and lasts for an hour and a half. When it dissipates Tony calls Jane Foster and tells her to enjoy the reunion with her demigod boyfriend and then make sure he gets his ass to New York by the end of the week.
He doesn't expect the call three days later asking to arrange a ride from the airport.
Bruce is waiting with the others in the main living room of the tower. It's the first time he's seen Clint since the shooting range and he's made a point to sit as far away as possible from where the archer is perched on the armrest of Natasha's chair. Pepper's joined the group, and Bruce is asking her every question he can think of about running Stark Industries and managing Tony at the same time so he doesn't have to sit in silence and try to figure out what to do with his eyes and hands.
Clint keeps looking at him. Bruce doesn't know why.
The elevator dings and opens to reveal Tony followed by the much larger form of Thor. The god is holding a small suitcase in one hand and has the other wrapped around the waist of a wiry young woman. Mjolnir hangs from his belt, and Bruce wonders how the hell he got it past the TSA.
"My friends, it is so good to see you again!" The Asgardian's voice makes the expanse of the room feel confining. "I have brought my beloved, Lady Jane Foster, to meet you all."
"Hi," Jane says with a little wave. "I've been watching you guys on the news, and on more celebrity gossip sites than I should probably admit to. It's nice to meet you in person."
"Great," Tony says. "There will be plenty of time to talk over dinner at Le Bernardin, for now let me show you the rest of the house. You guys only need one room, right?"
"Yeah," Jane says with a blush.
Thor beams and Tony looks elated. "Finally! Another normal couple who does normal couple stuff. Pepper, weren't you just saying something about wanting to do the whole double date thing?"
Pepper's already making her way across the room. She takes Jane's hand with both of hers. "I was explaining that, when we go out, I like to have a real conversation without an eighty percent chance of you dropping into a monologue about your latest invention," she says to Tony over her shoulder. "You were the one who said we might need to bring another couple in if there's going to be any hope of lowering those odds."
Jane laughs. "Having an actual dinner conversation where I don't have to ask what every third object or place mentioned is sounds wonderful."
Pepper joins their tour, and the four walk off, leaving silence in their wake.
Clint breaks it. "I think we're supposed to be insulted," he says to Natasha.
"Are you saying you want to go on a double date with Tony and Pepper?" she asks.
"I just want to watch you make small talk for two hours while also trying to enjoy yourself."
"What do you think all of my conversations with you are?" she asks, smirking at him.
Clint raises a hand to his chest. "You wound me, Romanoff!" he says, rising from the armrest and crossing the room in a huff. He lands in the seat vacated by Pepper and shakes his head at Bruce. "This is what I get for trying to be friends with a black widow."
"You could always catch her in a cup and move her outside," Bruce offers quietly.
Clint drops his head back and laughs, eyes closed and mouth wide open. Bruce glances from him to Natasha to make sure she's not insulted, and catches her smiling at him conspiratorially. Bruce frowns in confusion and Natasha shakes the expression away.
Maybe he's just reading her wrong.
Steve's the one who brings up the question that's been buzzing in the back of Bruce's mind since he first heard about the lightning over New Mexico. He asks it as the servers clear away the forth course to make room for the fifth. "Thor, what ended up happening to Loki?"
Thor's expression falls. "My brother is being punished for his crimes."
"From what I've read, though, when you tried to exterminate a race of aliens you only had to spend a few days in exile before getting your powers back," Steve presses.
"Do you dare to doubt the Allfather's judgment?" Thor demands, voice booming. Tony has bought out the restaurant for the evening, so there aren't any other patrons they need to worry about overhearing, but several of the servers are trading glances.
Steve rolls his shoulders and straightens his spine. "I just want to be sure he won't be coming back here anytime soon."
"I assure you that my brother is paying for what he has done to Midgard," Thor says darkly. "If he is ever allowed to return here—and, unless his circumstances change greatly, that is unlikely—it will not be until long past the close of your lifetime."
Steve looks less than convinced, but Thor's stony expression doesn't allow for any further questioning. Tony turns to Jane and asks her about her latest research, and after reaching for Thor's hand, she begins to explain what she's been working on.
The evening slowly recovers from there.
It's sometime in the early morning when Bruce wakes to the sound of JARVIS' calm voice.
"Sir," the AI says, "Tony has requested the team's immediate presence in the living room."
"Thanks," Bruce mumbles, digging his palms into his eye sockets. "Tell him I'm on my way."
He can hear Tony before he sees him. Muffled shouting fills the air even through the elevator doors. They open to reveal that Clint and Steve have beat Bruce to the living room. Tony is standing inches away from Clint, screaming in his face.
"What the hell? What the fucking hell? You knew about this and you just, what? Went along with it? Did you agree with them? Did you think it was okay?"
Clint's expression is closed off and angry, he opens his mouth to respond, but stops when he sees Bruce. Tony follows his gaze, fury in his eyes. It changes into something else as Bruce steps into the room.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Tony demands.
Bruce wonders which of the Hulk's rampages Tony has uncovered. "I'm sorry, what are you...?"
"You didn't think to mention that the agency we work with had you in solitary for nine months?"
Bruce swallows. He's simultaneously relieved and concerned in a whole new way. "It was eight months. I was able to have visitors after that."
"Eight months," Tony repeats. "And what would have happened if Loki hadn't showed up and given SHIELD a reason to let you out?"
Bruce doesn't have to speculate. He'd be dead by now, nothing left of him but a carpet stain and an unmarked grave.
"Tony," Bruce begins, but Tony is shaking his head in a way that makes Bruce hold his words.
"How the hell can you be okay with that? You live in a house with two of the bastards who did this to you and you don't even blink when Fury snaps his fingers and we all hop to like good little pets?"
"They did exactly what anyone would do with a violent murderer; they put me away where I couldn't hurt anyone else." Bruce's voice echoes in his ears like it's coming from somewhere other than his own mouth. "They weren't cruel about it; they'd give me just about anything I asked for."
"Eight months all alone and that's not cruelty," Tony says.
The elevator dings behind him and Bruce glances over his shoulder to watch Natasha and Thor join the group. Natasha's in her uniform, but Thor is wearing nothing but a pair of red boxers. Bruce wonders briefly whether he sleeps in them normally, or whether Jane insisted he put something on before he left their room.
"What has happened?" Thor asks, meeting the gaze of each Avenger in turn.
"I've been reading through the files SHIELD keeps on us, and I finally got to Banner's." Tony explains. "Apparently, SHIELD locked him away for almost a year."
It's then that Bruce notices the tremor in Tony's profile.
"Tony, are you alright?" he asks.
The billionaire turns, and there's confusion layered on top of the rage. "How can you be okay with what they did?" he demands again. "How can you let them get away with it?"
Bruce doesn't know how to answer. "What would you want me to do?" he asks. "They probably saved lives by locking me away, and now I've somehow ended up saving lives by working with them. Shouldn't that be a good thing?"
"Yeah, because the end always justifies the means, isn't that what history always teaches us?" Tony demands, and Bruce realizes with a jolt that he knows why this is affecting Tony so deeply. Bruce was in Calcutta when it happened, so the the news didn't actually reach him in real time, but he read afterward about how Tony Stark was kidnapped by terrorists and held for ransom in the Middle East until he managed to build his first Iron Man suit and escape.
"It wasn't the same as what happened to you," Bruce says quietly. "I was a murderer."
"People called me the Merchant of Death," Tony shoots back.
"A cave in the desert surrounded by people carrying machine guns isn't the same as an apartment in the city."
"So maybe it was worse for me, does that excuse what they did to you?"
"They didn't—" Bruce begins, but Tony cuts him off.
"Do you ever have nightmares about it? Do you do things just to remind yourself that you're free to do them? Do you have that fear you can't shake that they'll send you back there?" Tony's hand rises absently to trace the edge of the arc reactor beneath his shirt. "Can you tell me you're really okay after that?"
"This seems like a sensitive issue," Steve says when Bruce doesn't respond. "I think we could let it sit for the night and decide in the morning how we want to handle this."
"Really?" Tony asks. "Because I think I should grab my suit right now and go tell Fury what I think about his tactics."
"I believe Tony is right," Thor says. "Bruce is our brother in arms and we should seek Fury out and demand to know why he chose to treat him in such an appalling way."
Natasha grits her teeth like she'd much rather be having any other conversation than this one, but takes a step forward anyway. "SHIELD has protocols for situations where we have to handle people who aren't purposely destructive, but who still pose a significant risk to themselves or others. The first and easiest choice is to put the individual down, the second, kinder, option is to detain them in a way that minimizes their potential to hurt others while still being humane. That's exactly what Fury did."
"Yeah, because if it's protocol then we shouldn't have a problem with it," Tony snaps. "There's no flashing red arrows pointing to a screwed up system there."
"Arguing about this tonight isn't going to help anything!" Steve says, voice rising. "Everyone, take a few hours to finish sleeping and think it over and we can reconvene in the morning."
Tony sneers. "What's the matter, Rogers, are you afraid of Fury?"
Steve starts on a rebuttal, and that's when Bruce walks out of the room. He doesn't stop until he's seated at the main computer in his lab. A few clicks open Tony's music library and he turns Led Zeppelin up until the music rattles his limbs more than his pulse does. He slouches in his seat and massages his hands.
The music fades out mid-song and JARVIS' voice overthrows the speakers. "Sir, Agent Barton is asking permission to enter."
Bruce swivels his chair to glance at the glass wall where the door to the lab is set. Clint waves at him from behind the pane.
Bruce motions him inside before twisting back to turn down the music that JARVIS has let start up again.
"You know," Clint notes, crossing the room and leaning against the desk to look down at Bruce. "If someone had asked me to pick a music genre for you, I would have gone with classical."
Bruce runs a hand through his hair. "Some classical is okay, but a lot of it is too passionate for someone who spends so much time trying to keep their emotions under control."
"Yeah, I guess that makes sense," Clint says.
"How about you?"
Clint snorts, reaching over Bruce's keyboard for the pen that's lying beside it. He begins taking it apart. "Natasha accuses me of being a hipster, so whatever music you associate with that I probably go for."
"You're a 20-something art student who likes ironic mustaches?" Bruce asks.
"Clearly living in the third world for a while didn't keep you from figuring out current stereotypes. She just uses it to insult the fact that I tend to listen to more obscure bands."
"That's so kind of her."
Clint has the pen broken into four different pieces and he's using the tube of ink to dab little navy freckles on the back of his injured hand.
"So, who do you side with?" Bruce asks.
"What?" Clint's eyebrows rise, but he doesn't look up from his work.
"The argument in the living room. What's your opinion?"
"Oh." He twirls the tube between his fingers while he thinks. "I guess it starts with the fact that people like to fear things they don't understand and everything goes to hell from there. You probably didn't need to be locked away in the first place, but even if you did, I think it was cruel to make you stick it out alone. Okay, so maybe visitors might not have been the best thing some days, but you could have skyped or something."
Bruce laughs, pulling his feet up onto the edge of the chair and wrapping his arms around his knees, because if he doesn't there's no telling how far his emotions will swing in the other direction as his selfish brain asks, 'Then why didn't you help me sooner?'
"It really doesn't matter what I think, though," Clint says. "Yours is the opinion of the hour."
Bruce returns to massaging his hands so he doesn't have to look at Clint. "I just want it to be over so I don't have to think about it any more."
"You don't have a vengeful bone in your body, do you, Banner? You're the biggest saint out of all of us, and that's including the god." Clint pushes the corner of Bruce's chair with the ball of his foot and Bruce spins in a slow circle. "You should be the poster boy for the Avengers or something."
"Yeah, the skinny, tongue-twisted man that no one recognizes. They could put my face on lunchboxes."
"I'd buy one," Clint offers.
"Tony probably would, too; he likes things that are funny."
Clint smiles down at the artwork he's created on his hand, but there's something off about the expression.
"Do you—" Bruce begins, before the lab door slams open and Tony enters. The rest of the team is a half step behind him, all dressed up for a battle against evil.
"We're going to SHIELD," Tony says. "Fury needs to know that we don't support abuse, especially when it comes to one of our own."
"We'd like you there with us," Steve adds, looking at Bruce intensely. "Although if talking to Fury will bring up memories you'd prefer not to face again, we would understand if you chose not to come."
Everything in Bruce screams for him to stay as far away from SHIELD as he can, but if he's not there he won't know what's being said, and if things go badly and SHIELD decides their prisoner-turned-hero is too much of a liability and want to send him back to the apartment, he needs to be there to fight it. Or, at least, be there so he knows it's happening. So he's not woken again in the middle of the night to a needle in his neck and a swarm of people in black uniforms who swim before his eyes and melt away to eight months of silence.
"I'll go," Bruce says, standing.
Clint steps forward, close enough that his arm brushes against Bruce's. "Fury's not going to like this."
"If you think I give a fuck what Fury likes—" Tony starts, but Clint speaks over him.
"I'm just saying—and I'm guessing Nat's already covered this, but it's worth repeating—that this is long haul shit right here. This is us against the most powerful agency on the planet; they're not used to having opposition they couldn't eradicate with a couple well-placed agents, and I'd know, because I usually was one of the people on those teams. You want to make Fury see reason? Great, but you need to realize that man has never apologized for anything in his life, and he's not likely to see the need to start now over the handling of a prisoner SHIELD deemed too dangerous to leave on the loose."
"So we'll make it a first time for him," Tony says. "I can be extra persuasive in my suit."
"No," Bruce blurts out. Five pairs of eyes latch onto him. He digs his short thumbnails into the curve of his index fingers to keep himself focused. "If you really want to do this then it can't be with the suit or with weapons. If you go in there and try to bully him down you'll just reinforce his idea that some people are too dangerous to be out in society. If you really want to try to change things then you have to do it with words.
"Please," he adds when the rest of the team can't seem to think of anything to say.
"Banner's right," Steve says, Captain America ringing in his tone. "Everyone leaves their weapons here—Tony, that includes the suit. We're going to show Fury that we aren't the monsters in this situation."
Thor's knuckles turn white around Mjolnir's handle. "And if the director cannot be made to see reason, what then?"
"We aren't called the Avengers for nothing," Tony says. "We'll just have to remind him of that."
Bruce is getting an itch beneath his skin that reminds him he hasn't been up on the roof in over twelve hours, and really all he wants is a couple minutes with the New York skyline and maybe a cup of chamomile, although he'll take anything, really, over the idea of going up against SHIELD. Running and hiding are his main skill set; confrontation and aggression are more the Hulk's forte, and he'd prefer to stay as far away from them as possible.
"Let's go," Steve commands, and the team follows.
Bruce watches the squared shoulders and purposeful steps of the people who want to badly to right what they've decided is a terrible wrong. He should probably be feeling hope right now, or pride, or appreciation, or something fulfilling like that. All he can drudge up is a pretty strong sensation of nausea.
A hand lands on his right shoulder blade, and Bruce jumps at the contact. Clint, he realizes, hasn't hurried to follow the others.
"I guess we're not really the kind of team that can just leave things alone," Clint notes.
Laughter bubbles up in Bruce's chest and enters the world in a desperate, anxious garble.
Clint's grip tightens, six points of contact, and though Bruce is pretty sure he can't actually feel them, his mind supplies the exact positions of the calluses he's noticed on Clint's hand, where decades of archery practice have planted their memory in his skin.
"It's going to be fine," Clint says, the sincerity in his words running cool water through Bruce's nerves.
The touch ends and Clint walks from the room like nothing had happened. Maybe it hadn't. Maybe that's just how Clint is; steady reassurances to teammates before a conflict. It's nothing special; it just means he's a decent human being.
But Bruce can feel the ghost of Clint's hand on his shoulder urging him forward as he slowly follows.
He feels a bit like Clint pulled something out of him when he took his hand away, and Bruce doesn't know what that something was or if he needs it or if this is just a testament to the fact that not all of his sanity survived him time with SHIELD.
He still wants a cup of tea.
