Chapter 11

Glancing down at the piece of paper in her hand, Parker silently confirms that she's at the right apartment and knocks on the door, doing her best to quell her nerves. A tall, blond man opens the door, his eyebrows furrowing slightly in confusion as he takes in the seventeen-year-old on his doorstep.

"Hi. I'm Parker Stark, I'm with SHIELD." She does her best to sound casual, as if she's not meeting her childhood hero, but her hand still trembles a little as Captain America shakes it firmly.

"Steve Rogers," he says, his voice deep and reminding her vaguely of Thor's voice when she had first heard it two years earlier.

"I know, I don't go announcing I'm with SHIELD to just anybody," she says before she can stop herself, but to her surprise, Steve smiles at last.

"Come on in, Parker." He steps back enough to allow her inside. "You're a little young to be working for SHIELD," he points out as he shuts the door behind her once she steps into the apartment.

"Oh, yeah, that's because I'm-"

"The new Avatar, I know." Steve nods to the coffee table in his living room, which Parker can see is covered with folders and loose papers. "I recognized your name from your file. Sorry about the mess, by the way, I've been trying to make sense of things."

"It's okay. That's mainly why I wanted to meet you," she reassures him as she toes off her shoes by the doorway politely.

"So you can say you've met Captain America, if anyone asks?" he deadpans.

"Actually, I came to ask how Steve Rogers is doing," she answers, "Because waking up seventy years in the future is a lot for anybody to go through, and nobody should have to do it alone. And for the record, nobody from SHIELD knows I'm here. I had to sneak your address from your file when I found out you were awake."

Steve stares at her, his mouth opening and closing a few times silently, before he quickly clears his throat and makes a beeline for the kitchen. "Can I get you coffee or something?" he calls over his shoulder, his voice forcibly casual.

"Yeah, coffee's fine," Parker calls back, giving him time to regain his composure as she heads over to the coffee table and sits down on the couch to start sifting through the pile of papers. She finds her own file easily, plucking it out as her thumb instinctively traces over the redacted fields where her biological parents' names should be. Even two years after visiting the town she had been born in, she still has no clue who they are and where they might be now.

"You said your last name was Stark. Are you related to Howard?" She's jolted out of her thoughts as Steve sets a mug of steaming coffee down in front of her, taking a seat beside her with his own mug cradled between his hands.

"Not biologically. His son Tony adopted me about four years ago. I forgot you knew Howard back then." She swaps the file in her hands for the mug to take a sip of coffee. "You knew Rachel, too, right? My past self?"

When she looks up again, Steve's smile is tinged with melancholy. "Yeah. She was around your age when I met her." He reaches for a sketchbook on the table, flipping to a specific page and holding it out to Parker. She sets her mug down again to take the book from him, her jaw dropping automatically when she sees the drawing on the page.

The pencil sketch of a teenage girl curled up against a handsome dark-haired man's side with a campfire in front of them is so detailed that Parker has to resist the urge to trace the lines as she studies her past self. Rachel has dark hair like the man beside her, her nose narrow and her eyes crinkled with laughter. Her smile is wide, revealing the dimples in her cheeks and a barely-noticeable gap in her front teeth, and even though Steve had only used a pencil, he had somehow captured the flickers of firelight illuminating the entire scene.

"Did you draw this?" Parker tears her eyes from the sketch to look up at Steve.

"Yeah, I sketch a lot, it helps me think." He shrugs modestly.

"This is incredible, you should've gone to art school or something." She hands the book back to him; it feels like an invasion of privacy to keep looking, even if all she wants is to flip through the pages and see his other drawings.

"Couldn't afford art classes when I was younger." He glances down at the sketchbook and points to the man beside Rachel, whose arm Parker notices is wrapped protectively around Rachel's shoulders, as if to shield her from the world. "That's Bucky."

"Barnes, right? You grew up with him?" Parker recalls from her history classes and Steve nods.

"He and Rachel were real close during the war, he used to say she reminded him of his little sister, Rebecca."

Parker stares at the drawing just a little longer, taking in the faint smile on Bucky Barnes' face as he looks down at Rachel, his eyes soft and fond, before reluctantly tearing her eyes away and reaching for another file. "So. You caught up on everything yet?"

"I don't think I'll be caught up if you give me another seventy years," Steve jokes, closing the sketchbook and setting it aside. "Took me a week to figure out how to send texts from my cellphone." He nods to the nondescript cellphone, clearly SHIELD-issued, nestled among the papers. "And don't even get me started on the microwave, I almost blew it up trying to reheat leftovers."

"Hey, I remember my history classes, you picked up how to use HYDRA technology almost the moment you got your hands on it. If you can do that, you can figure out modern tech, no problem," Parker points out and Steve turns pink, flattered. "Besides, if you ever meet Tony and he finds out you don't know how to use a microwave, he'll never let you live it down," she adds dryly, which makes him smile.

"So he's just like his old man, huh?"

"I guess so. I wouldn't know." Parker shrugs, dropping her gaze to the table again and coincidentally finding Howard Stark's file within arm's reach. She doesn't reach for it, but she's never seen Howard look as young as he does in the picture from his file, even in the old videos he left for Tony. "From what little I've heard, Howard wasn't exactly the best dad to him."

"Is Tony good to you, though?" She looks up to find Steve watching her intently, his eyebrows furrowed.

"Of course he is, he's great," she reassures him quickly and he relaxes again.

"Good. You're a good kid, you deserve that." It's her turn to flush bright red with embarrassment and Steve reaches out to ruffle her hair with a grin even as she makes a noise of protest and attempts to duck away. "Well, there's one thing that hasn't changed," he chuckles as she manages to smooth her hair down again. "Rachel used to hate it when I did that to her, too."

"Gee, wonder why," Parker deadpans as she grabs a hair-tie from her wrist to tie her hair back in a ponytail so that Steve can't mess it up again before her eyes fall on the shield propped up in the corner of the apartment. "Is that the real thing?"

Steve follows her line of sight before nodding. "Yeah. They found it in the ice with me." He pauses, glancing back at Parker with a small teasing grin. "You can hold it if you want."

"Give me a break, I've been dreaming about this my whole life," she mutters, embarrassed at having been caught in her curiosity as she gets to her feet to cross the room, ignoring Steve's laughter behind her. She slides her arm through the leather straps and attempts to lift the shield, staggering under the weight. "What, do I have to be worthy to lift the shield or something?" she complains, setting it back down before she can accidentally drop it.

Steve doesn't get the reference, probably unaware of Thor and his hammer, but he still smiles, shaking his head. "No, just gotta build up the strength to lift it. Vibranium's a dense metal." He gets to his feet, crossing over to her and scooping up the shield like it weighs practically nothing. "How about we take the shield down to the gym at SHIELD headquarters and I show you it's not so bad?" he offers and she perks up.

"Okay." She's definitely not about to turn down training with Captain America.

"Brace your knees," Steve calls from the other side of the gym and flings the shield towards Parker. She catches it, grimacing as the vibration from the impact travels through her entire body. "You're getting better at it," he reassures her as she throws the shield back to him, catching it easily. "Soon enough, you'll be a pro at handling the shield."

"No thanks, I'll leave it to the expert," she says dryly as she sinks heavily onto a nearby bench, her muscles aching all over from the effort it had taken to so much as hold the shield, much less throw it back and forth with Steve.

"You okay?" he says, sounding amused as he takes a seat on the bench as well and sets the shield against the wall next to them.

"I can't feel my limbs," she complains as she tugs out the hair-tie barely keeping her ponytail together and Steve immediately takes the opportunity to ruffle her hair before she can tie it again, earning a mild glare from her.

"You'll get used to it," he reassures her. "Just gotta build your endurance up a little more. We should do this more often."

"Do you think if I train with you enough, I'll eventually have biceps bigger than my own head, too?" she wonders and he laughs.

"I see you two are having fun playing Ultimate Frisbee." Fury's unexpected voice makes Parker jump, startled, as he enters the large gymnasium, crossing over to the two of them. "You know, Parker, I'd normally be mad you went behind SHIELD's back and met up with Captain Rogers here, but in this case, it means I can give you both your missions at the same time."

"So I'm off the hook?" Parker asks before she registers fully what he said. "We have missions?"

"Trying to get me back in the world, huh?" Steve guesses, all humor in his voice gone.

"Trying to save it," Fury clarifies.

Steve's expression is grim as he takes the manila folder from Fury's outstretched hand. Parker peers over Steve's arm at the image of a glowing blue cube. "I thought it was lost in the Arctic Ocean," he says darkly.

"Howard Stark fished it out when he was looking for you," Fury answers.

"What is it?" Parker asks, completely lost.

"It's HYDRA's secret weapon," Steve explains.

"Howard thought that the Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs," Fury adds.

"Who took it from you?" Steve shuts the folder, setting it aside on the bench.

"He's called Loki. He's not from around here."

"Thor's brother?" Parker blurts out before she can stop herself. "But I thought Thor was on our side."

"He might be, but Loki's a free agent. He sent the Destroyer after you in New Mexico, didn't he?" Fury points out before turning back to Steve. "There's a lot we'll have to bring you up to speed on if you're in. The world has gotten even stranger than you already know."

"At this point, I doubt anything would surprise me," Steve deadpans, climbing to his feet and tugging the shield onto his arm. There's an exhausted set to his shoulders that makes Parker inexplicably want to give him a hug.

"Ten bucks says you're wrong," Fury answers dryly. "There's a debriefing packet waiting for you in your apartment."

"Did you leave one for me at Stark Tower?" Parker asks.

"Is that what that big, ugly building in Manhattan is?" she distinctly hears Steve mutter under his breath and when she turns to look at him, he blinks innocently back at her.

"You're a little shit, Cap, you know that?" she retorts and to her surprise, she earns a bark of laughter from Fury.

"Four years at SHIELD and you've picked up one hell of a vocabulary." He shakes his head, amused. "No, I came to ask you to recruit someone to track the Tesseract down. I figure you're the best one to convince him to help, considering your track record." He brings another manila folder out from the recesses of his black leather coat, handing it to her.

She opens the folder, gaping at the contents. "You're kidding."

"Why, who is it?" Steve glances over her shoulder at the file. "Is it dangerous for her?" he demands to Fury.

"No, no, it's okay, I know him," Parker reassures Steve, a little flattered that he's so protective of her already, but she can't take her eyes off the picture clipped to the top of the folder. "I guess I'm going to Kolkata, then."

"Have fun." Fury claps her shoulder before turning to Steve, already finding him turning to walk out of the gym. "Anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?"

"You should have left it in the ocean," Steve tosses back over his shoulder bitterly without missing a beat as he heads out the door.

Parker's not prepared for the sticky humidity that greets her as she steps off the jet and onto the streets of Kolkata. It's not like California, where the air feels dry and arid most of the year, or even New Mexico when she had briefly visited it two years ago, where the desert heat had parched her throat almost the moment she stepped outside. India's heat feels more like a blanket soaked in hot water wrapped around her until her skin is dripping with sweat and her hair is sticking to the back of her neck even after she ties it into a high ponytail. She decides that the sooner she can get back into an air-conditioned jet, the better she'll feel.

Kolkata is loud and crowded, too, with cars and rickshaws and people everywhere she looks, and she's a little relieved she had refused the backup of the SHIELD agents Fury had offered. Feeling them crowd in around her would have just made her feel more claustrophobic than she feels now as she winds through the streets, checking her phone repeatedly to make sure she's going the right way, and climbs the stone steps of a large apartment building.

"You sure this is the place?" she asks as she presses her earpiece.

"That's the one," Phil confirms on the other end. "Remember, if he starts getting angry, get out fast, we can air-drop agents to help secure him."

"It's not going to come to that," she reassures him. "I'm sure he'll want to help if we explain the situation to him."

"Well, still. Just be careful," he answers, sounding skeptical. "I just dropped Pepper off at LaGuardia, so she's on her way to D.C., and Stark will be debriefing the rest of the night. He says to call him when you're on the jet back."

"I will," she agrees. "Talk to you later, Phil." She drops her hand before taking a deep breath and knocking on the wooden door. A harried-looking woman answers the door, startled to see her there. "Uh, you wouldn't happen to speak English?" she tries.

"I don't speak English, do you speak Hindi?" the woman answers, sounding confused, and though Parker knows somehow that she's not speaking English, she understands the woman perfectly.

"Oh, no, it's okay, I just-" She breaks off when the woman smiles broadly.

"You do speak Hindi," she says, relieved.

"No, I don't-" Parker stops again. She knows she doesn't know Hindi, not a single word, and yet somehow, she's speaking it fluently. "Oh. I guess I do." She tries to brush it aside, leaving it as a mystery to figure out later. "I'm looking for a doctor who came here to treat your daughter's fever."

"Yes, he's with her now." The woman ushers her inside and she makes a point to toe off her shoes when she sees that everyone else in the apartment - two more children playing and an elderly woman, probably their grandmother - are all barefoot. The apartment is small and cramped, but smells like delicious spices and jasmine flowers.

"I won't stay too long," Parker reassures the woman who had let her in, acutely aware that she's still inexplicably speaking Hindi, "I'm sorry to barge in like this."

"It's alright. He's in the room there." She points down the tiny hall, barely large enough for the bathroom and bedroom, and Parker follows her pointing finger to the bedroom, knocking briefly before peeking inside.

"Hello?" Bruce Banner nearly jumps in surprise as he turns to the doorway and she nearly kicks herself for putting him on edge already. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," she apologizes. "I don't know if you remember me, I'm-"

"Avatar Parker," he says, recognition dawning on his face as he gets to his feet. "It's been, what, four years?"

"Yeah, something like that." She relaxes a little when she sees that he's smiling.

"Let's step outside," he suggests and she nods, noticing the little girl fast asleep in the bed behind him, her cheeks flushed with fever. She follows him back down the hall and he stops to speak quietly to the girl's mother in Hindi, prescribing some medicine to her and pressing a few rupee notes into her hand so that she can afford it. She thanks him profusely as he waves it off, ushering Parker outside, and she grabs her shoes to pull them back on quickly on the way out.

As soon as Bruce shuts the door behind them, his smile drops off his face and Parker immediately regrets being so relieved that he had recognized her.

"So. How did SHIELD find me?" he asks.

"Apparently, they never lost you in the first place," she points out wryly, "Especially considering how easily they gave me your location when I was tasked with finding you."

He huffs a weary chuckle, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Right." He starts heading down the stone steps and she follows him. "You know, a mango lassi is good for the heat," he says. "I imagine you've never been outside of the States before."

"You'd be right," she agrees, already feeling the sticky heat descending on her again the moment she had stepped back out of the tiny apartment into the bustling street. Instinctively, she clutches the edge of his sleeve to avoid losing him in the crowd and he glances back over his shoulder, smiling faintly.

"Relax, I'm not trying to lose you. Although I'd have thought you'd try to isolate me somewhere."

"Well, honestly, this is kind of more incentive for you to not lose your temper if you're in public," she points out and his smile turns wry.

"Smart." He leads her to a small road-side shop, paying a few coins for two cups of a creamy, yellow drink and passing one to her. She takes a sip, overwhelmed with the cloying sweetness of the mango and the coolness of the yogurt.

"You weren't kidding, this is the first time I haven't been overheated since I stepped off the plane," she says, surprised, and Bruce nods to an empty table nearby.

"I can guess why you're here, but I'd rather give you a chance to be honest with me," he says once they're settled into chairs opposite each other, sipping their mango lassis.

"SHIELD would like you to come in," she admits.

"And what if I say no?" He raises an eyebrow.

"I mean, you're more than welcome to, but I'd prefer you didn't," she points out. "I've had very few missions, but so far I've got a perfect record, I really don't want to fail one now."

Bruce smiles humorlessly. "And what if the other guy says no?"

"From what I heard, you've gone one year without any incidents," Parker answers. "I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to break a streak like that."

Bruce drops his gaze to his cup, stirring the lassi absently with his straw. "I don't always get what I want." He sounds so forlorn, just like Steve had back in New York, that Parker suddenly wants to give him a hug, too.

"We're on the verge of a global disaster," she blurts out and he cracks a smile again.

"Oh, well, those I actively try to avoid."

Parker digs into her pocket for her phone, pulling up the image she had scanned onto it and placing it on the table in front of Bruce, who puts on a pair of glasses from his pocket to peer at the screen. "This is the Tesseract," she explains. "It's got enough potential energy stored to wipe out the planet. It emits a gamma signature that's too weak for SHIELD to trace."

"What does Fury want me to do, swallow it?" Bruce deadpans.

"We'd like you to find it," Parker clarifies. "It's been taken by a hostile party, and you're the leading gamma particle expert in the world, other guy aside. I read your research papers."

He blinks at her, taken aback. "Really? Those papers seem a little advanced for a seventeen-year-old. I wrote most of those in grad school."

She shrugs mildly. "My dad's Tony Stark, I deal with stuff that goes over my head all the time. Besides, the research was fascinating." Bruce is still staring at her, surprised, so she adds, "Look, if there was anyone who knows gamma radiation better than you, I'd probably be tasked with finding them instead, but clearly there isn't. And Fury thought that you'd be more willing to listen if he sent a familiar face, so-"

"So he's not after the monster?" Bruce interrupts her and she can't quite read the look on his face as he studies her.

"No, not that he's told me," she answers.

"And he tells you everything?" He raises an eyebrow.

"Well, of course not, but I've got a knack for knowing when someone's lying to me," Parker says, which isn't enough to reassure him, even if it's true. She can't quite explain it, but somehow, she can easily notice people's heartbeats quicken when they lie, the tremors traveling through the ground beneath her feet so that she can feel and decipher them. "Nobody's going to put you in a cage, so-"

"Stop lying to me!" Bruce slams his hands on the table suddenly, making her jump as he gets to his feet abruptly to loom over her. Fire blooms in her palms as she brings them up to shield herself instinctively, her heart hammering in her throat as she searches frantically for any sign of green in his eyes or skin.

People have stopped in the street to stare at them and she's distinctly aware of their whispering as they recognize her face. She doesn't see any recording phones, but hopes that no one puts a video of this online. The last thing she needs is to be made fun of for reacting so violently just because she had been shouted at.

"I'm sorry, that was mean," Bruce says mildly after a beat of silence, taking a step back again. "I just wanted to see if you'd pretend I wasn't a threat. So why don't we do this the easy way, where you put that fire out and the other guy doesn't make a mess?" She waits another moment, keeping her hands in front of her, and he holds his hands up in surrender. "Parker, it's still me. Promise. Don't want to break my streak, right?"

She reluctantly drops her hands, extinguishing the flames as she lets out a shaky exhale to slow down her heart rate again. The bystanders begin walking again and she's relieved that no one seems to call attention to her like they would in America. "Well, don't do that again, I hate being yelled at."

"That's why you reacted like that?" Bruce asks incredulously as he gets to his feet, collecting their empty cups to toss them into a trash bin nearby. "And here I thought you were just being reasonable."

"Please, I'm a teenager, I'm never reasonable." Parker grins back at him and he rolls his eyes, but clearly can't help smiling back.

"Give me half an hour to get my bag."

"Well, you're the world's protector, right? It stands to reason you can understand and speak most languages in order to help people around the world better," Tony reasons.

"Yeah, but I didn't even know I was speaking Hindi," Parker points out as she settles back in her seat. She and Bruce are a little over two hours into their flight from Kolkata to the SHIELD base that they've been instructed to fly to, the jet on auto-pilot so that Parker doesn't have to steer. "I only realized I was because that lady said I was."

Tony hums thoughtfully. "We should experiment with that sometime, I can try a few languages on you and see if you switch into them. In the meantime, why don't you put Banner on? I wanna talk shop."

"Nope, he's got homework," Parker retorts immediately and Bruce looks up from the folders in his lap, raising an eyebrow.

"Your dad wants to talk to me?" he asks curiously.

"Oh come on, please?" Tony's voice takes on a pleading tone. "He clearly wants to talk to me, too, I can hear him."

"No, I don't care if you want to 'talk shop,' he's busy debriefing," she says as Bruce shakes his head, amused.

"Come on, just a little quantum physics," Tony pleads. "Only a little bit."

"You can talk to him when you meet him," she answers firmly. "We'll see you tomorrow."

"Fine, spoilsport," he sighs, sounding dramatically put-out, but she can hear the smile in his voice. "See you tomorrow, Park. Safe flight."

"You, too." She hangs up the call, tucking her phone back into her pocket.

"I wouldn't have minded talking to him," Bruce points out with a chuckle.

"You do actually have homework," she says, nodding to the folders in his hands. "And frankly, so do I." She digs into the backpack at her feet, pulling out a physics textbook.

"I didn't think you went to public school," Bruce points out, peering over her shoulder curiously as she opens the textbook.

"I don't, but I still have to pass the exam in order to qualify for a senior-year curriculum," she admits. "And I'm thinking about starting public school in the fall, just to get the experience for my last year of high school." She grimaces at the page open in front of her. "If only I could wrap my head around nuclear physics concepts, though."

"You realize you're sitting next to a nuclear physics expert," Bruce deadpans.

"The thought had in fact occurred to me," she confirms, nodding.

"I thought I had homework?" He raises an eyebrow, holding up the folders in his hands.

"I know for a fact you finished reading all those files an hour ago and you've been staring into space ever since. Also, do you want to be the reason the Avatar doesn't get her high school degree?" She blinks innocently back at him and he rolls his eyes.

"Fine, hand it here." She passes him the textbook, relieved, and he grabs a notepad and pencil from her backpack to begin sketching out formulae and equations over the last hour of the flight.

The sun is just beginning to rise over the horizon by the time the jet starts tilting downwards for its descent towards the base sitting in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and Parker is just barely beginning to wrap her head around the basics of nuclear physics, thanks to Bruce's patient teaching.

"My brain hurts," she says as he places the textbook and notepad back into her bag for her.

"Welcome to nuclear physics," he answers dryly, patting her shoulder. "We have fun here."

"No wonder you've got so many anger issues," she says before she can stop herself and it earns a startled laugh out of him as the jet touches the runway and comes to a smooth halt. They climb out of the jet and a few SHIELD agents take it to begin buckling it in on the other side of the runway, leaving Parker to lead the way over to where she sees Steve and Natasha Romanoff standing near the edge of the base.

"Hey, Park," Natasha greets her, clapping her on the shoulder. "Glad you made it here okay." There's something about the tightness in her expression that makes Parker want to ask what's wrong, but she decides to save it for later when Steve smiles at her, clearly glad to see a familiar face.

"Hi, Parker."

"Hi, Steve." She grasps his outstretched hand to shake it firmly. "I see you've met Natasha, she helped train me when I first started at SHIELD."

"I take no credit for her being too frail to lift your shield," Natasha says, her tone light and teasing despite the obvious tension in her shoulders, and Parker rounds on Steve again.

"You told her?" she asks, affronted, and he shrugs helplessly.

"It was funny."

"Betrayal," she answers simply, fixing a glare on him and earning a chuckle from Natasha even as he shrugs again in response before turning to Bruce and holding his hand out.

"Dr. Banner." Bruce grasps his hand, shaking it. "Word is you can find the cube."

"Is that the only word around me?" Bruce asks wearily.

"Only word I care about," Steve answers without missing a beat and Parker can see the surprise settle in briefly on Bruce's face before he manages to regain his composure.

"Must be strange for you, all of this." He gestures vaguely around them.

"Actually, this is pretty familiar," Steve admits as they watch a team of SHIELD recruits jog by, rifles in hand.

"Gentlemen, you might want to step inside in a minute," Natasha speaks up suddenly, "It's going to get a little harder to breathe." She settles a hand on Parker's shoulder to lead her inside. "Come on, Parker."

As they turn away, Parker hears Steve ask incredulously, "Is this a submarine?"

"Really? They want to put me in a submerged, pressurized metal container?" Bruce deadpans as the ground beneath them begins to rumble. Parker looks back over her shoulder to find turbines rising above the water, the engines powering up and revealing that they are standing on a massive helicarrier as they rise out of the water and into the air. "Oh, no, this is much worse," Bruce says faintly, taking in the sight of the ocean falling away below them as they steadily gain altitude.

"This way to the bridge," Natasha calls to get their attention and they both follow her and Parker into the helicarrier, heading down the hallway until they enter a huge control room filled with monitors and blinking lights that threaten to overwhelm Parker.

"Gentlemen," Fury greets Steve and Bruce as they make their way to the console where he's standing and Steve wordlessly digs out a ten-dollar bill, handing it over. Smirking, Fury pockets the money before holding his hand out to Bruce, who hesitates before shaking it. "Doctor, thank you for coming."

"Thanks for sending the nicest agent you have to ask me," Bruce answers nervously, glancing back at Parker, who gives him what she hopes is an encouraging thumbs-up. He smiles, so she assumes she succeeded, before turning back to Fury. "So how long will I be staying?"

"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the clear," Fury reassures him.

"Where are you with that?" Bruce asks and Fury nods over his shoulder.

To Parker's relief, Phil approaches behind him, giving her a faint smile before answering Bruce's question, "We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cellphones, laptops. If it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us."

"That's still not going to find them in time," Natasha says as she crouches by a monitor and Parker recognizes Clint Barton's face on the screen.

"Them?" she echoes as what Natasha said registers. "Barton's with Loki?" She can't begin to wrap her head around it. She had seen Clint just the previous week at SHIELD headquarters and he had seemed fine; he had even started teaching her the basics of archery in the shooting range.

"He's been compromised," Phil explains, his hand resting on her shoulder. "Loki did something to him, got him under some kind of mind-control. He's got Erik Selvig, too."

"I remember him," Parker recalls. "From Puente Antiguo, right?" Phil nods in confirmation.

"What were you doing there?" Bruce blurts out and she remembers that he had been in that same town many years ago doing research on gamma particles with his partner at the time, Betty Ross.

"I was on a mission," she says vaguely, unsure how much she's allowed to say about the incident with Thor, and Bruce seems to relax again.

She wonders what had him so tense in the first place about the mention of that town, but is distracted by Natasha adding, "In any case, wiretapping isn't going to be effective enough, which is where the good doctor's expertise on gamma radiation comes in handy."

"Then let's narrow the field," Bruce answers, clearly having recovered his composure. "How many spectrometers do you have access to?"

"How many are there?" Fury asks.

"Call every lab you know, tell them to put their spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm based on cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places." Bruce seems to be in his element now, his eyebrows already furrowed in consideration as he seems to calculate an algorithm in his head. "Do you have somewhere for me to work?"

"Agent Romanoff, show Dr. Banner to his lab, please," Fury says and Natasha climbs to her feet with cat-like grace, leading Bruce away.

"You're gonna love it, Doc, we got all the toys," Parker hears her say as they round the corner.

"You'll want to join him once he sets up, Parker. I suspect with Stark still on the way, you're the biggest brain on this ship," Fury adds and Parker stares at him blankly.

"What." She doesn't bother to make it sound like a question.

"Don't make me say it again, kid, I don't give compliments out often." Fury raises an eyebrow pointedly and she turns bright red, embarrassed and flattered.

"He really doesn't," Phil adds as he squeezes her shoulder and she looks up to see him giving her a small smile. "In the meantime, why don't you help acclimate Captain Rogers?" He nods to Steve, who's moved to the far end of the bridge to stare out at the clouds rolling past the window. "I hear you two have become pretty fast friends."

"Are you jealous?" she teases and Phil rolls his eyes, shoving her shoulder.

"Go on." Still grinning, Parker hops down from the console and heads across the bridge to Steve's side.

"It's a lot to take in, right?" He starts a little, clearly having been absorbed in his own thoughts as he glances down at her, managing a small smile.

"Last time I had a view like this, I was headed straight for the Arctic Ocean." He shoves his hands into the pockets of his brown leather jacket, looking back out at the clouds. "Yeah. It's a lot."

"If it makes you feel better, this whole thing is kind of out of my league, too," she reassures him. "I mean, not because last time I was in a plane, I was headed for the Arctic Ocean. Not trying to one-up you or anything." Steve cracks a grin as she clarifies, "I don't usually get sent on missions at all, except for a few occasional ones. And my first mission was kind of accidental, too."

"I know, it's how you met Banner." Steve nods over his shoulder in the direction Bruce and Natasha had gone. "I read about it in your file after you left yesterday." He frowns suddenly. "It was a lot for a thirteen-year-old to take on alone."

"I was fine." Parker shrugs mildly. "I'm lucky I had the Hulk to look out for me."

"Lucky is one word for it." Steve doesn't look particularly convinced. "Just play it safe around him, okay?"

"I know, I will," she reassures him.

"Good." He squeezes her shoulder lightly. "I think I might've promised your friend Coulson to sign his Captain America trading cards," he recalls suddenly and Parker laughs.

"Oh, no, I was wondering when those would make an appearance. I used to love looking through his collection when I was little," she remembers fondly before seeing Fury waving her back towards the console. "Guess I'll leave you to it. If you need me, I'll be in the lab with Banner." With one last wave to Steve, she heads off in the direction of the lab, finding Bruce seated at a table and studying a holographic screen intently. "So what's up, Doc?" she asks as she takes a seat on the opposite side of the screen, finding that the data on the screen makes zero sense to her.

"If I had a nickel for every time I heard that, I'd be able to pay for my own lab equipment," Bruce deadpans, giving her a smile across the screen. "I put together the algorithm and it's scanning now, but it's not picking up any frequencies."

Parker frowns as she watches the code scroll by on the screen, tapping on the hologram to stop it from scrolling and editing the code to throw in a few more filters. "Try this one?" Bruce recompiles the program and a map pops up, red dots flaring up all over several regions.

"Well, that's more like it," he says, relieved as he readjusts his glasses on his nose and peers at the screen. "I didn't know you were good with programming."

She shrugs modestly. "I used to love computer science when I was younger, and after I found out I was the Avatar, I decided to keep it up on the side with Tony's help. I guess I don't want to be known as just the Avatar."

"I can understand that," Bruce says after a pause, not quite meeting her eyes, and she considers it for a moment before realizing that he really can understand the dilemma probably better than most people. He's probably spent the better part of a decade being tormented by not just the constant battle in his mind, but the reputation of the other guy that permanently looms over him every time he goes anywhere.

"So why India?" she asks something that's been bothering her ever since she had landed in Kolkata and seen the city for the first time. "Isn't it the opposite of peaceful and quiet? I thought that's the last sort of place you'd be."

Bruce smiles. "I was wondering when you'd ask. Peace and quiet isn't my secret."

"Then what is? Yoga?" she tries.

"Keep guessing and I'll tell you when you get it right," he offers, chuckling when she groans in complaint.

"You're killing me, Banner, I hate secrets."

"If that's the case, I think you're in the wrong business," he says dryly, making a show of glancing around them before turning back to the screen. Parker wants to argue that she isn't a spy, but then Steve appears in the doorway to the lab, his expression grim.

She notices that he's wearing his suit and recognizes immediately that Phil had had a hand in designing it, with its old-fashioned red and white stripes and the bright white star in the center of his chest. His shield is strapped to his arm and she still can't believe he can carry it with so much ease when she had struggled to hold it for barely more than a few seconds.

"Loki's been picked up on a satellite feed in Stuttgart, Germany. He's not exactly hiding anymore," he says, bringing her back to reality. "Park, you and I are going in since you've got first-hand experience with his people, according to Coulson."

"Okay," she says, startled. "I'll join you in a minute." Steve nods and heads down the hallway as Parker glances at Bruce. "You going to be okay here?"

"Don't worry about me, I'll keep working on the tracking algorithm." He gestures vaguely to the screen in front of him. "See you when you get back?"

"Yeah. Hopefully by the time I'm back, Tony will join us, so you'll have somebody more your speed to work with," she jokes as she climbs to her feet. "See you when I get back." She hurries out the door to catch up with Steve.

Aw yiss, the one advantage of being homebound during a pandemic is getting ample time to write.

I'm aware that the time jump of two years is a little extreme, but I wanted to jump right into the events of the first Avengers movie, especially since I couldn't think of much else for the in-between years that aren't really covered by the MCU.

I really wanted Parker and Steve to get along like a house on fire because I like to think their personalities are similar and Steve has the connection to her past life that makes him want to get to know her better as a result.

I also wanted Parker to be the one to reach out to Bruce and bring him in because, frankly, I don't care much for the angle Age of Ultron took with Natasha and Bruce and I have my own plans for the friendships and relationships in this universe.

Also, I'm craving a mango lassi now. Is it obvious how Indian I am yet?

Hope you enjoyed this chapter!