Bruce spent the evening in Tony's lab, offering the occasional insight towards the billionaire's latest projects but mostly keeping to himself. Stark's tech was far more impressive even than the holographic screens and projections they had worked with on the Helicarrier, which he supposed was to be expected, but it was difficult to adapt to when he was used to relying on far more basic facilities.
Disconcerting, too, was the constant monitoring system that seemed to be in place around the tower; it was difficult to reconcile his natural aversion to any kind of surveillance with his acceptance that the Other Guy needed watching. Tony had programmed JARVIS to keep tabs on the team's heart rates and general locations within the tower, although Natasha had apparently managed to talk him out of monitoring video feeds before she had taken off. A screen in the corner of the room displayed a glowing image of Captain America's emblem, along with his location - the gym in the basement. Below it, a black and purple bow and arrow was annotated to show that Barton was in the control room that overlooked it, although he didn't appear to be doing any actual controlling, and was presumably just there to spectate. Bruce suspected it would be some time before the archer was comfortable training with the team.
And yet he'll be ready sooner than the Other Guy will ever be, he thought dryly. He knew Stark had undeniably optimistic plans for his green alter-ego, but then Stark hadn't had to spend seven years living with the possibility of destroying a city if he climbed the stairs too quickly. One of the reasons he had accepted the offer of lodgings here, however impermanent they might be, was because he knew that if there was anyone in New York who could handle the Hulk, it was the Avengers. Admittedly maybe moreso once Thor returned, but still.
He was awakened from his musings by Tony throwing a ball of paper at his head. Or rather, he assumed that the imaginary crosshairs had been on his head; in actuality, the makeshift projectile sailed straight past his eyeline and hit the wall behind him before falling, defeated, to the ground.
"JARVIS really does do all the work for you in that suit, doesn't he," Bruce said contemplatively, glancing sideways at the billionaire with amusement on his face.
"Yeah, yeah, nothing without the suit, sure, heard it, tell it to someone who hasn't. Come here and look at this for me," Tony said, sounding peeved. Bruce supposed he had been a little harsh; in the wake of the Battle they were all more than a little on edge, and it was easy to forget it while they were concentrating on helping Clint.
"Just, ah, remember who built it all," he said, avoiding eye contact as he got to his feet, scooped up the fallen paper ball, and tossed it in a trash can before walking to his teammate's side. "That wasn't important, right?" he asked as an afterthought.
"What?" Tony looked up from whatever he was scribbling, apparently having missed Bruce's carefully crafted reassuring compliment. "Oh, no, that paper? Dum-E tried sketching still life one time. It didn't work out."
He pressed some buttons and a blue-lit hologram emerged up from the desk he was working on, rotating gently. Bruce found himself staring at a life-sized model of what he could only assume was Hawkeye's destroyed quiver. The entire thing was battered and scuffed, and empty, and there was evidence of scorch marks disguised only somewhat by the monochrome hologram.
"How did you get this?" he asked suspiciously. Tony shrugged.
"Fury told me to build Feathers a new one. Avengers Initiative funds, guard it until he can be trusted with it, yada yada. I think he's outsourcing it so SHIELD have deniability when the Council comes crashing down on their heads, so keep it on the down low. I asked for the old schematics and they straight up sent me the whole quiver; it's not like it's in a condition to be much use anymore."
"You mean you didn't hack anything?" Bruce was almost impressed.
"Well I mean, I already had the schematics stored somewhere after hacking the Helicarrier, but SHIELD don't need to know how much we know," Tony smirked. "Look at this, though."
He gestured to the base of the quiver, where the bottom end had crumpled and collapsed, clearly having suffered under some considerable force.
"That's got to be from some kind of impact," Bruce mused. "But that part sits, where, his lower back? That can't be from Chitauri, surely, unless they have really terrible aim."
"That's what I thought," Tony said. "So I had JARVIS do some digging, and then I found this."
He brought up a different holographic display, one that showed grainy two-dimensional footage of the resident archer smashing through a window and landing, hard, on his back. Bruce winced sympathetically.
"I guess we found out why he looks so pained every time he moves," he laughed, humourlessly, watching the fuzzy blue archer roll to his feet and limp out of the frame. "I'm surprised he made it out of there at all, let alone able to walk."
Tony brought the footage back a couple of seconds and pointed. "See there? That quiver has jack shit in it. How do Earth's Mightiest Heroes manage to let their previously mind-controlled sniper out of sight long enough for him to run out of arrows in the middle of a battle, jump off a building through the window of another one, risk impaling himself on five-foot shards of glass, nearly snap his spine, and still manage to reappear for shawarma, all without any of us noticing? How fucking stupid can we possibly be, that we weren't paying enough attention to realise when he went off comms and we couldn't see him? He's a straight up human with a negligent team, no armour and an archaic weapon fighting aliens and a demigod piling through a hole in the sky - how is that man still alive?"
"I'm told everyone was rather, uh, preoccupied with you flying a nuke meant for Manhattan through the aforementioned hole," Bruce said dryly, twisting his hands together. "Not that I, uh, saw much of it."
Tony flinched almost imperceptibly. "The only reason people pay more attention to me than they do to him is because I demand it, and he actively avoids it. Of course people care about Iron Man! He's the coolest, he's a billionaire, he can fly, he has the best tech, there's great cosplay opportunities, he lives in a skyscraper, he's on TV… then there's the national icon, the god of thunder, a huge invincible green thing that is really quite hard to ignore, and the small red and black thing that's equally hard to ignore for completely different reasons. How does Barton stand a chance in a team like that if it apparently makes no difference to us if he's out of commission for half the fight?"
"Sir, Captain Rogers and Agent Barton are at the door," JARVIS said. Almost simultaneously, there came a loud knock at the doorway; presumably Steve had yet to work out the subtleties of the omnipresent AI. Bruce just had time to worry about how much the archer had heard before the billionaire waved his hand absentmindedly to open the door, apparently oblivious to the necessity of context in what he had just said.
A/N I'm harsh, yo
(bwahahahaha)
I wrote this before 11 and decided it was a weird order. I think I made the right choice, given what will follow :D
Thanks to my wonderful reviewers for the last chapter - LostHawk, T0ny4, and irishleesh93 \o/ you guys keep me writing, much love