Chapter 26. Doubt

From the doorway, Steve surveyed the room in front of him. What had once been the living room was now the home to a large fort constructed out of blankets, pillow, and what had once been Tony's comfortable sectional couch and matching love seat. Steve noticed that even Tony's large flat-screen had been subsumed by the fort.

Steve had a feeling that Clint had something to do with this, so it was no surprise when Clint's head popped up from an opening near the right side of the fort, reminding Steve of a gopher popping up from his burrow.

"Hey. Pretty sweet, huh? Stephanie and I even made it so that we could watch TV inside of the fort."

"Where is Stephanie?" Steve asked, stepping into a small sliver of space in the living room that had not been converted into a pillow fort.

"Kitchen."

Steve's eyes narrowed a little.

"She's not with you?"

"She just went to the kitchen to get more cookies."

Anger was slowly rising in Steve's chest.

"You're suppose to be watching her at all times, Clint!"

"Geez, sorry. I just wanted some more cookies."

"I don't want you to turn your back on her for a second." Steve ordered.

"She just went to the kitchen." Clint defended, crossing his arms.

"Clint."

"Okay, okay. I won't take my eyes off of her."

"Thank you."

"Why don't you just marry her already?" Clint mumbled to himself.

"Pardon?"

"Nothing." Clint responded before popping back into the fort.

Bruce had been vacantly staring out of the window when Stephanie walked in.

"Hey." She said quietly.

Bruce's hair was slightly disheveled due to running his hand through it so much while he was working in the lab. When he turned towards her, Stephanie noticed how worn out he looked.

"Hi."

He gave her a weak smile.

"I'm going to make some tea, would you like some?"

Bruce nodded. "Thank you."

"Where's Clint?"

"He's still in the pillow fort we built. We ate all of cookies we had in there, so he sent me to get some more. And by 'we' I mean 'Clint'."

Stephanie put the kettle on the stove, and leaned against the counter staring at Bruce.

"Any luck?" She asked, referring the Tony and Bruce's further attempts to find out who was behind the text message.

"We're trying a new decoding program, but nothing so far. Whoever sent it to you covered their tracks."

Stephanie nodded, mulling the possible senders of anonymous text message over in her mind. Whoever had sent her the text was clearly above intelligence, possibly had a degree in computer engineering, and had certainly done this before.

Her thoughts turned to Atticus. He had done his Masters in computer engineering before he decided to focus on physics. He had been to shown her how to send anonymous text messages, albeit not as sophisticated as the one that she had received. She bit her bottom lip. She wanted to completely reject the possibility that Atticus had anything to do with this, but all signs seemed to be pointing to him.

But why would Atticus have sent her the text? And if he did send the text, was it him who was behind the attack in the forest, too? Could Clint have been right when he said that Atticus might want to hurt her? Did he blame her for what happened with Oryx? For all she knew, he could have been the one who activated Oryx –he knew the device as well as she did.

"Stephanie?" This was the third time that Bruce had said her name.

"Huh?"

"The kettle is whistling."

"Oh!"

She quickly took the kettle off of the stove, and poured the boiling water into two mugs.

"What were you thinking about?" Bruce asked, looking at her with his large brown eyes.

"Nothing." She kept her back towards him, focusing instead on finding the tea. She felt guilty that she had doubted her brother, and didn't want Bruce's suspicion in Atticus to grow, which it undoubtedly would after learning that Atticus was a genius when it came to technology. "Is peppermint tea okay?"

"Yes." Bruce said, letting his question go for the moment.

Stephanie set a mug in front of Bruce before sitting across from him at the four-person pine table. She wrapped her hands around the mug, averting her eyes from Bruce's gaze.

"Stephanie."

She quickly glanced up at him before starting intently at her mug. The reality of what was going on, that Atticus was alive in this dimension and according to the other Avengers was trying to hurt her, had finally sunk in.

Bruce saw her lower lip tremble.

"What's wrong?"

She shook her head.

"You can tell to me."

"What if…what if Clint is right, and Atticus was behind the attack in the forest and the text messages? What if I'm wrong about Atticus?" She said quickly, revealing her thoughts to Bruce.

"I don't believe that Atticus is behind this." He comforted her.

"But how do you know?"

"I know how strongly you believe in him, and that's enough for me."

"Thanks." Stephanie gave a little smile. "It just…It just hit me that he's here. That he's alive. And I know that he would never hurt me, but it's just that everything's pointing to him. It's hard not…not to think about the possibility that he…" She trailed off, but soon continued again. "I'm his sister. I shouldn't have doubted…I should have trusted that he could never be behind any of this."

"Hey," He said gently. "It's okay."

Bruce went around to her side of the table, and sat down beside her, putting his arm around her.

Stephanie looked up at him. "Do you really believe that Atticus has nothing to do with this or were you just trying to get me to calm down? Be honest."

Bruce paused before speaking.

"It looks bad for him, but I don't think he did it. I don't think that he wants to hurt you."

Stephanie stared into his eyes for a few seconds before nodding, and put her head on his chest.

"Thanks."

The sound of Bruce's heartbeat and his familiar, slightly spicy, scent made her feel better.

The two remained close together for a few more minutes until JARVIS interrupted.

"Dr. Banner, Mr. Stark wants you in the lab."

Stephanie pulled slightly away from Bruce so that she could look at his face. "Do you think he managed to trace the number?" There was a hint of excitement in her voice.

"I hope so. I'll go-"

"I'm going with you." She interrupted. Bruce looked as if he was going to say something, but Stephanie spoke again. "If there's anything that Tony found, I want to hear it first."

Bruce nodded an okay knowing that there was no way that he could get her to change her mind.

"Clint! I'm going to the lab!" Stephanie yelled into the living room before grabbing Bruce's hand, leading him to the lab.

"What are you doing here? Where's Clint?" Tony questioned when he saw Stephanie step into the lab with Bruce.

"What did you find?" She asked, ignoring his queries.

Tony sighed. He didn't want Stephanie here to hear this –he didn't want her more worried than she already was.

"Tony, tell me."

"You got another text message."

"What?" Bruce and Stephanie exclaimed.

"It shouldn't come as much of a shock to you, seeing as how you two were together upstairs." He nodded towards their intertwined hands, smirking.

Bruce blushed, but didn't remove his hand. Neither did Stephanie.

"What did the new text message say?"

"You'll get hurt if you stay near Bruce."

Oooh this is getting good, huh? I plan to have another chapter within a week.

Also, since a lot of you seemed to get a tie between two, or even three, Avengers I made a tie-breaker question.

Tie breaker: Your kindergarten teacher is most likely to remember you as the kid who…

a) Duct-taped another kid to the wall (Tony)

b) Always stood quietly behind her and scared the bejesus out of her when she turned around (Clint)

c) Sat on another kid for taking your purple crayon while you weren't paying attention (Thor)

d) Freed the class gerbils from their cage, on purpose, on at least three separate occasions causing pandemonium to ensue when the gerbils climbed up the teacher's pants, ate three students and the secretary's lunches, and taught the second graders about the birds and the bees when they ended up "getting it on" with the two gerbils in the room across the hall during math class (Bruce)

e) Accidentally super-glued your hand to the face of your kindergarten crush resulting in an embarrassing trip to the emergency room (Steve)