Tony was right. As the week ended, the whispers and rumors around the school blew away with the October leaves in the storms that were beginning to roll through.
Her first full week in the tower had gone smoothly; it was strange to her, living in a place where she didn't have to sneak in and out on the days when she stayed after school to practice, where the kitchens were full of food and the electricity was always on. Slowly, the living communities on the upper floors had emptied out; Steve left on wednesday for a goodwill tour of China and also had his own apartment in DC. Clint had left sunday night to go somewhere (she wasn't sure where) but then popped back in to brief Natasha, pack up and hit the road in the middle of the night on thursday after getting called in by SHIELD. Pepper had given her a hug and headed off for a three day conference in England, starting friday morning. According to Steve before he headed out, there were only about two weeks out of the month total when everyone was in the tower at the same time, even if it was a holiday. Espionage and SI business waited for no man, apparently.
So by the time the first storms rolled in early on saturday morning, the tower was empty with the exception of Katie, Bruce, and Tony.
As soon as she woke up, she knew it was going to be a bad day. The low pressure system had crept up while they were sleeping and her once-broken hand was throbbing. Swearing quietly under her breath, she stepped into the shower, JARVIS turning on the hot water, and stood in the steam, rubbing carefully at the aching appendage.
Giving it up as a lost cause, she dried and dressed, leaving her hair how it was and walked through the hall to the kitchen. Part of her longed to play the piano Tony had found on a lower floor and moved to the room next to hers, but as soon as she looked at it, her hand twinged again. She sighed mentally. Practice was out for the day.
Katie ended up wandering the tower after her late brunch, walking through the smaller labs and a few of the R&D departments. She didn't see Tony anywhere and assumed it was because it was a weekend; he probably was in the lab with Bruce. Getting back in the elevator, she just let JARVIS take her wherever; she was surprised when instead of the communal floor, he opened the doors on the big lab, the one that Bruce and Tony should have been in.
To her even greater surprise, they weren't working. Tony was sitting on the low couch they kept in there, half slumped over. It was almost scary, how quiet it was in the room. The times before when she had come in, Tony had either been blasting music or talking a mile a minute, and if neither was happening, there was the hum of the bots and the many machines running tests. But today, it was next to silent, just the light whirr of the air conditioning filtering the cool air.
Bruce came over, carrying three mugs of dark tea on a tray. He handed one to Katie, smiling a little at her expression. "JARVIS said he was bringing you up," the scientist commented as he handed Tony the other cup and sat down with his own.
Tony took a deep, wheezing breath that set Katie's nerves on edge as the genius sat up. Her eyes were drawn to the center of his chest as he rubbed it with one hand, the same way she massaged her once-broken hand. Spotting a bottle of tylenol on the small work table by her elbow, she scooped it up and read the label, then gave Bruce a questioning look. "It really is just tylenol. Nothing weird." He responded, holding out a hand. She handed over the bottle and he cracked it open, simultaneously tracking how she was holding herself, how she was rubbing her hand. Handing her two, he then stood and passed three to Tony, who moaned in a slightly exaggerated fashion.
"Screw this… Bruce." He had to stop and take a breath in the middle, scaring Katie slightly with how hard he seemed to have to work just to breathe. "I deserve at least… four of these for... putting up with this." Bruce rolled his eyes, fond exasperation covering most of his worried demeanor.
"Stop talking and take the painkiller Tony." The physicist stood and crossed to the small microwave, considered for a moment, and placed three hot pads in the device, setting it to heat and carrying them back to the small group when they were warm. He tossed one to Katie, who took it gratefully and laid it over her left hand, taking a gulp of tea with the other.
Tony got the other two, laying them over the center of his chest, where Katie remembered the hard whatever it was being when she hugged him. A deep, painful sounding breath later, he spoke. "So, what's with you?" He make a vague motion in the direction of Katie's hand.
Katie took a deep breath of her own. Do I want to tell them this? For a few moments her mental war waged, then she started. She owed them that much at least. "It's sort of a long story."
A pause. Neither Bruce or Tony interrupted.
"My father… he was a soldier." There was a small snort from Tony, and she looked up, face flaming, to find that he looked equal parts mortified and amused.
"Sorry. That's exactly how Steve started his autobiography when he told me." She smiled at the parallel and that Tony wasn't laughing at her, and went back to the story.
"He left. Afghanistan. He got called back into duty, even though he was supposed to be on leave for another month." Katie stopped to take a breath, because if she didn't, she was going to start crying right then. "You saw the photo, Tony. It's the only one I have. I don't even remember him."
"And then he was gone." She pulled in another breath of cool air. "Everything was fine for a while. But eventually my mother told me that he was dead, that nothing could change that. She hit me…" Katie's free hand slid over her cheek, remembering the blow. "I guess she was tired of it, of telling me that he would come back and be fine, putting up with a five year old who wouldn't stop asking where her Daddy was and why he hadn't called recently."
"Later, things got worse. For a little, it was okay. We moved to the apartment, she sold the car. She still had a part time job to pay the rent and for food and power and everything. I went to school." Katie shrugged, taking another sip of tea. "But then she started hanging out at nightclubs. She would come home drunk and with various boyfriends. I would go to my room and stay there until they left."
"When I was ten, not long after my birthday, I came home one day and she was already drunk. It was the middle of the afternoon and she was screaming about how much she hated me and how it was my fault that my father had left." Katie swallowed. "That was the worst time…"
Before she could go on, she was interrupted by Tony's coughing. The billionaire gripped the arm of the couch as he hacked, face in a grimace as one hand clamped over his chest. Bruce scooted over and pushed him on his side. "Breathe, Tony, come on…" A moment later, Tony was panting, but breathing shallowly again. Bruce shoved him back down when he tried to sit up and handed him an oxygen mask, ignoring his complaints as he strapped it back on. Tony ignored Katie's wide eyes, waving her off, and she sat back in the chair and continued.
"He - her boyfriend - broke my hand." Katie stopped, trying to ward off the fogginess that was descending over her eyes. Sniffing, she took another deep breath. "We didn't go to a hospital for a few hours until her boyfriend for the night insisted. She told them that I fell down the stairs. It hurt so much and they kept asking questions and I didn't know what to do."
"And that was that. For the last seven years, she's either been sober and ignoring me, drunk and screaming and hitting, or high and half dead." Katie tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. "So that's my life." She curled a little deeper into the couch and didn't look up, almost afraid to see the expression on Tony and Bruce's faces. Despite her efforts, a tear slid down her cheek and she brushed it away with her good hand.
There was a moment of silence. Then Bruce's voice rumbled over her. "Was."
She sniffed. "What?"
He looked at her steadily, dark brown eyes melting with shared pain and sadness and compassion. "Was your life."
Katie inhaled sharply, feeling another tear slip. "Was my life." She agreed softly, waiting with baited breath about the lecture of some kind that was sure to come.
"Katie." She couldn't meet his eyes. "Katie, look at me." A hand brushed over her cheek, abnormally warm, and she looked up to find that Tony had pulled one hand free from the hot packs on his chest to tip her head up towards Bruce.
"Katie, we don't care what happened to you."
Instinctively, she recoiled, the words echoing what she had heard so many times. I don't care what happens to you. The warm hand on her leg (the closest thing Tony could reach with ease) grounded her and she glanced back up to see Bruce still looking directly at her. "Trust me, Katie, there's not a place in the world where you'll find more messed up people than you have in the top few floors of this tower." He gestured at himself and Tony, then waved his hand upward toward the other floors and the other Avengers by extension. "I was raised in an abusive home. My father didn't care that I was smart. To him, I was a freak."
At this, she raised her head. Bruce continued. "He beat me and my mother on a regular basis. I was sent to a hospital a few times. When I was eight…," the scientist took a deep breath, "When I was eight, my father murdered my mother. She… we were going to run away, to leave my father. He came home early, caught us packing the car. He took her down, smashed her head open on the pavement."
Bruce stood, shoving his hands in his pockets and walking to make himself another cup of tea. Katie, remembering her own cooling cup, took a sip with shaking hands; realizing she was still being eyeballed by Tony, who couldn't talk very well through the oxygen mask he was still wearing, she curled around her hand and pulled a blanket that was stuffed between the arm of the couch and the cushion over her lap.
Bruce's footsteps broke the silence that had descended and he sat back down, mug in hand, fiddling with a pair of pliers in the other. "So what I'm trying to tell you with my sad sob story is that we're all pretty messed up. I had that -" He waved one hand towards a vague corner, as if the story of his childhood was there. "- and the Hulk. I turn green on a regular basis. I won't tell you the whole "origin story", but let me tell you, it was not fun." He leaned forwards, abandoning his cup and playing with the pliers with both hands. "Katie Wolfe, we aren't going to like you any less because your childhood was terrible. I think the only person with a mostly happy childhood was Thor, and he's an alien. Otherwise it's Steve and he grew up in the Great Depression. We don't care. If you tell us, we can help. If you have nightmares, we'll make you a cup of hot chocolate at three in the morning. Whatever."
Satisfied that he had gotten his point across, Bruce leaned back and took another sip of tea. Tony, careful not to disturb the oxygen mask, gave him a couple of quiet golf claps, then went back to sealing his hands over the center of his chest.
Her eyes must have lingered on him for a moment too long, because he pulled the oxygen away for a moment. " 'll be fine. Just the… pressure system."
"Are you going to tell me what's wrong with you?" Katie leveled him with a look. "I told mine."
Tony waved a hand in a vague gesture. "Sure… tomorrow or something." Clamping the oxygen mask back over his face, he gave a "Now, shoo," look at her.
Bruce nodded. "I suggest you go eat something and turn in early. You probably want to be alone for a while anyway." He turned to Tony. "And you should be upstairs, too. Pepper won't be happy if she finds you down here."
The billionaire blinked at him, each a little longer than the last. Looking like he wanted to argue, he acquiesced anyway, letting Bruce pull him to his feet and hold him steady while he got his balance, then walked slowly to the elevator with Katie and Bruce on either side.
BACKSTORY! What do you think?
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