A/N: This is one of the easiest things I've written. It's just flowing out of my brain easily. I hope you're all enjoying. Incoming complications, hold onto your socks. :)


The welcoming sound of coffee being made is the only sound in the kitchen besides Tony tapping his tablet. Clint watches the coffee drip dismally, a little more than half asleep as his fingers play with the two mugs in his hand, one purple, one a mosaic of red, yellow, and blue. His toast pops just as the coffee machine beeps. He pours the coffee and moves to the toast, quickly butters it and takes a bite. He adds milk to his mug and a relaxed smile grows on his face. He remembers that day handing her coffee on an undercover mission only a couple of month after...

His thoughts are interrupted with a start when Thor, having uncharacteristically entered the kitchen speaks to the two men.

"I am going to visit Jane." He announces his deep voice much quieter than both Tony and Clint are used to.

"That sounds like a great idea." Clint agrees, he sees how beat up the friendly giant looks, notices his effort to be quiet, even though it's not he who needs to be quieter, but his brain waves.

"Yes, miss Cadence will not be able to awaken with my continued presence. Visiting Jane will be uplifting." He says his guilt is so visible on his face that even Tony notices it.

"It wasn't your fault. None of us knew that would happen." Tony says, trying to reassure Thor as much as possible. Thor nods, a grim smile appearing on his face.

"Be what your knowledge was at the time, it was still I who caused the girl of rhythm to cry tears of blood." He looks ashamed; Clint frowns curiously at what Thor referred to Cadence as. Typically poetic, but a nice. He's still holding onto the hope that what Natasha remembers doesn't implicate Cadence. He wants so badly for her to be good. As if thought alone brought her to him, Natasha walks in.

"Hello, Thor." She greets, eyes lighting up when she lays eyes on the steaming mug of coffee waiting for her. Her hair is in disarray and she has slight bags under her eyes.

"Good morning, I was just announcing my plan to leave the tower to visit Jane. Do you think that is it wise of me to leave?" After taking a sip of her coffee Natasha nods.

"As much as we'd like you to stay and bring us up to date on the trial in Asgard, we can find an alternate way. Right now I think you would benefit more from visiting Jane. We'll update you on Cadence's wellbeing, of course." She says; she honestly wishes he could stay, he'd taken on the Hulk for her, technically saving her, and she finds his confusion at earth terms endearing.

"I would very much appreciate that. It's regrettable that she and I met on such appalling terms."

"Are you leaving now?" Tony asks, and Thor nods.

"I requisitioned a vehicle. I will transport myself most of the way after I am brought to a 'secure location'." He explains, Clint laughs once.

"It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superma—no it's Thor!" Tony says putting on a childish voice of awe. Thor regards him confusedly.

"I don't understand." He says, and Natasha pats his arm reassuringly.

"Don't worry about it. It's just an Earth joke." She says, and he nods.

"I must be going now." He says, nodding respectfully to each of them.

"I'll set up a video call so that you can brief us later, alright?" Natasha says, and he smiles.

"Yes, Director Fury will want to be updated as well. Loki's trial is something to be discussed as soon as possible." Natasha doesn't miss the way Clint bristles at the mention of the other Asgardian.

"Have a good trip." Tony calls as Thor turns away.

"I anticipate one." Thor agrees and he makes his exit. Natasha takes an enthusiastic mouthful of coffee and her sigh of satisfaction isn't missed by her partner.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Clint asks, taking a bite of his toast. Natasha nods.

"After the incident Fury wanted any information we could find on the drug trials Cadence was in. I found the Doctor, a Dr. Rook he'd done extensive studies in neurosciences and the like and had produced a drug that once inside the subject would naturally reproduce. The test name is Cortexlimin for Cerebral Cortex Limitations Inhibitor. All of the science babble is on the shared domain." She takes another mouthful of coffee. Clint glances at Tony to see that he's already looking at Natasha's findings.

"I also found two trials, a larger one with fifteen subjects, starting from birth to age 4, in Vancouver, and one that took significantly more digging and a few messages to contacts."

"What did you find?" Clint asks, waiting for her while she opens the fridge and takes out some fruit salad.

"The Vancouver trial was a failure." She starts, pausing to serve herself some breakfast. "The second trial, with only seven children, was connected to a party in Russia that dealt with the 'improvement of the next generation', there were certain scientists that consulted and improved Rook's initial cocktail." The motion she makes with her hand, tells him he knows the rest after that. He nods.

"Any indication as to whether or not our guest is—"

"I haven't found anything concrete, I have my own hunch and there are analysts on base looking deeper." He looks a little relieved. She eats her fruit salad meaningfully; Tony disappears muttering something about needing to do some work.

"You handed me my coffee one morning and you were a goner." She says catching him watching her, the way he nurses his coffee cup brings on the fond memory.

"It was the look on your face." He says, and she smiles.

"You've told me." Her eyes smile as she pops a grape into her mouth.

"I have, and it never gets old." He assures, not that she needs it.

"Who knew coffee could bring people together in such a way." She muses, making a face at him. He chuckles, and attempts to fix her hair a bit. She rolls her eyes, and he gives up opting to wrap his arms around her from behind. She hums pleasantly, silently having missed getting to sleep with him with all that's happening.

"I'm going to bring Banner some food, and check on Cadence's status." She says, and feels Clint nod.

"Fury had a couple mission lined up for me; I'm going to look at a few." He squeezes her waist ever so slightly more before relaxing his arms.

"Anything interesting?" Dangerous? He shrugs.

"Lots of surveillance, two undercover, nothing longer than two weeks." She nods curtly.

"I'm sure there are other agents who can take care of it." He says, dismissing the thought. She brightens considerably after the dismissal.

"Spar later?" She asks twisting around to look at him.

"Alright." He agrees, she leans her forehead against his and closes her eyes.

"I also plan to sleep tonight." She says, he smiles.

"As do I." He moves back and watches her start to make Banner some breakfast.

"I'll see you later." He says, palm flattening over her back.

"I know where to find you." She replies shooting him a smile as he moves toward the door.

"That you do." He agrees, and then she's alone in the kitchen.

1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21-34-55-89-144

Bruce leans back in the chair he's taken up residence in. Everything in this room feels larger than they are. The steady drip of Cadence's IV is thundering. The beeps from the heart monitor echo through his skull, each of Cadence's breaths calm and slow are overwhelmingly evident to him. Her bruises look worse than they are, that's how they work, but his stomach twists whenever his eyes fall onto them. She'd been doing well. Spending four days in his lab with her, he'd learned a lot about what she'd been going through before finding Barton.

She'd had an overbearing sense of being followed, couldn't sleep because of it, and had noticed patterns. A grey clad man, and then a blue clad man, beige car, and then black car. She'd disabled the cars and cuffed the men to their respective poles—that they had handcuffs had bothered her—and threw their keys into sewers. She'd hidden in a motel, not being able to go back to her apartment. She'd done research, and found her way to the help she needed. A knock at the door interrupts his thoughts.

"Hey, Banner, how is Cadence doing?" Natasha asks, she's come in with a tray of food and a small pouch. She looks at the comatose girl on the bed, her expression is guarded.

"Stable. She's currently functioning at a low Delta brainwave pattern." He motions with his chin to two pieces of equipment, one on either side of the head of the bed; tall stands with balls on top.

"They're what Stark made. Instead of putting electrodes on her...they read brainwaves just as well, if not better." Natasha nods and walks over to him with the tray. He smiles when he sees what foods she brought.

"Ah, thank you." He says taking the tray from her. She shrugs, she looks a little guilty about what she's going to say next.

"I've been doing research." She starts and watches as Bruce's face falls slightly after he swallows a raspberry.

"Go on." He says.

"The drug trial Cadence was in was affiliated with the people who created me." She says, and Banner frowns.

"In Russia?" He asks and she nods.

"There's a chance that Cadence could be under a shade, which is a specialized method of hypnotic suggestion; months of being fed information subconsciously to make you believe you're someone you're not." Banner's expression is blank.

"I relate to it personally." She states, he nods again, telling her to go on.

"They made me think I was a professional ballerina for eighteen months, I was sixteen. A whole life of memories." Her expressionless face changes to something akin to masked grief. "There's a phrase that triggered me, because the whole time I was there, I was meant to kill the director of the company I was dancing for. He was trafficking girls and he had countless connections." She stops there, but the story hangs in the air as if there's much more to it.

"You think that Cadence is under a shade, then? How profound do they get?" He asks; the unease on his face is unhidden.

"It goes as far as to change accents and mother tongues; memories." She says and Banner starts to say something, she interrupts him.

"All her paper work lines up; always the best quality fakes; what doesn't make sense is why there's a trail back to the Russian drug trial. So I may be wrong, but those Doctors wouldn't have been solely concerned with perfecting a limitation inhibiting drug, they would have done something with it, and the odds that they used the children aren't in our favour."

"Where does that leave us?" He asks, looking at Cadence's unconscious form on the bed, he doesn't believe it.

"We can't let anyone from outside this tower get close to her on the off change that she could be activated." Natasha says near robotically. Banner nods.

"If she was 'shaded' at all."

"We need to take precautions. All the information is on the shared domain." She gives him a sympathetic look as she retreats.

"Thor left, he went to see Jane. You can take Cadence off the sedative." Her tone is softer and he nods again, processing what she said.

"Thanks for the food." He says.

"No problem." When she's gone he eats the food deliberately. Not tasting the eggs, or the fruit, but only eating because he has to. He sets the tray aside and moves over to Cadence and sits on the edge of the bed. He picks up her hand gently and removes the IV. After putting a bandage over the wound his eyes move over her face. If the ache in his chest is anything to say about it, he hopes that Natasha is wrong.

Cadence is so real. If she were to actually be under this shade, it would be like being lied to, regardless of the fact that she wouldn't know she'd been doing it.


So there you have it, next update should me Tuesday, Montreal time zone. Reviews are always appreciated. Thanks for reading :)

Also the coffee conversation between Clint and Natasha is courtesy of brbshittoavenge on tumblr for her amazing headcanons. I'll be using a few of them later on in subtle ways.