It was close to midnight and Bruce couldn't sleep. The past couple of days had been tense and exhausting. He was avoiding the internet and all news outlets, even going so far as asking Jarvis to block WiFi to his cell phone for the next forty-eight hours and on no condition to reinstate it, even if he should beg. Not that he had.

The story about Clint had blown up fast. Which wasn't surprising. What had been surprising to Bruce were the reactions. Even at his most hurt over the betrayal, Bruce hadn't thought half the vile things most of the news outlets starting saying about the man. They were crucifying him and most of them did it with a good deal of glee. They probably felt the harder they went the better the story.

As the news had broken, with most of the Avengers gathered in the common room (Nat had been the only one absent, having retreated to the gym) and the news station had picked it up and run with it, Bruce had begun to grow a bit green. He'd had to beat a hasty retreat. Hulk smashing up Avengers tower and who now how much of Manhattan was not likely to help their cause. Tony had found him in lab forty minutes later. Stark had placed a hand shoulder, but hadn't said anything, to which Bruce was glad. The two had worked together in silence for half the night.

The next morning had been Tony's press conference. They'd all played their parts, coached so expertly by Pepper, quite well. Stark had of course taken lead, the rest of them were just there as confirmation of his story. Some of the questions thrown to Stark had made Bruce's already shimmering rage start to bubble again, but he'd managed to keep a lid on it.

Since then...articles and reporting on the story had been more split. There were still plenty of people ready to drag Clint through the mud, news anchors willing to kill ten minutes of air time bashing him, politicians hoping that calling for his head would advance their standing with voters, but there was at least a counter movement as well. Not that that couldn't be exhausting too. Bruce had seen one heated debate on TV, where a pundit had argued that Barton was not the only Avenger with a murky past as well, there'd been shots of the Hulk, conversations about the past of Stark Industries…that was when Bruce decided it was time to take a step back from the news.

Both Bruce and Thor and been inclined to be dismayed by the reactions but Pepper seemed to think it was going well, so Bruce would trust her opinion.

"People aren't going to be okay with it overnight," she'd assured him when he looked at her like she'd gone nuts after she'd made that announcement, "but the Avengers have a lot of good will built up and all polls are showing that this has not changed the vast majority of people's opinion of them. And media programs are split 57 percent in our favor which is better than I'd expected at this point. And we've already gotten unofficial agreement from 17 countries out of 28 where we know Clint was involved in Hydra missions, not to attempt to press charges or call for extradition. This is going really well."

Nor was the press and fallout the only strain at the moment. Just being in tower right now was exhausting. It had been quiet when it was just him, Tony, and Pepper. You would have thought three additional people would have livened things up. Instead the strain was so palpable that Bruce thought it was a wonder no one had snapped yet.

Tony was back to barely leaving his lab when he was at the tower, which wasn't often as he and Pepper dealt with the media storm. Steve was polite to everyone and yet so clearly detached. Nat barely said two words to anyone. Thor was the only one acting normal. Or at least, not exactly normal, he was different than before, a little more somber perhaps, but it seemed real and he did not hesitate to engage with the others and Bruce appreciated that.

Stepping into the common room now, Bruce was heading over to the bar when through the glass doors between here and the roof, he saw the hint of a figure outside. He moved over to the sliding doors and stepped out. Nat tilted her head just a fraction, an indication that she had heard him but beyond that she made no movement. She was seated at the edge, cross-legged, a beer on one hand, looking out over the city.

Bruce hesitated a few moments. Nat had made it clear to him, and to everyone else, that she wanted to be left alone. But then again how was that really working out for her? She looked better than she had at Tony's Avenger meeting, less exhausted, but certainly still just as strained. So Bruce came forward.

"Hey."

She glanced up and then looked back out over the city.

"Mind if I join you?" he asked, sitting down beside her.

"Doesn't look like it matters." She took a swig of her beer.

He rolled his eyes and gave a snort of laughter. "Really Nat? Come on. What's up?"

She looked at him coolly. "Excuse me?"

"You've barely said two words to anyone since you've been back. What's going on with you?"

"The same thing that's going on with everyone one else on this 'team', or whatever it is anymore."

He thought about it. "No, I don't think that's true. We lost a teammate and a friend….but I think you lost something more than that. And I think you need to talk about it."

Her shoulders tensed.

"Come on Nat. Talk to me."

"I don't want to talk."

"Well then what do you want to do?"

She shrugged.

"…Clint meant a lot to you," he said tentatively.

"I don't want to talk about Clint."

He stared out across the city. "Look Nat, I understand wanting to hide: from your problems, from people, from the past, from the future…from yourself. Especially from yourself. I tried to hide. I was good at it. I made an art form of it. And you were the one who showed up and proved to me you can't hide forever. You can keep running from the issues but sooner or later they're going to catch up with you."

Nat let out a deep, tired, boned shatteringly exhausted breath and leaned back. He glanced towards her and he saw that her eyes were closed. He waited. He thought she would speak. He was right.

Eventually.

It took several long minutes.

"Clint gave me everything," she said softly.

"You loved him?"

Her eyes flew open and she looked at him. He was surprised to see a hint of an amused smiled play across her face. "Not the way you mean that question." The smile was gone the next instant. "He rescued me. My childhood, my life after that, it was covered in blood. He was supposed to kill me and instead he saved me, recruited me for Shield. Showed me that there was another way. A better way. And now I know it was all a lie. Everything he said to me. Everything he made me believe. I owed him, I believed him. He held my faith…and now…"

Bruce nodded. "Losing your heroes is one of the hardest things to go through. Then again, forgetting they were human in the first place, is our mistake not theirs."

Nat stared out over the city. "So you think I'm the fool for ever believing?"

"No. But I think at some point you need to find something to believe in beyond one man. And I think deep down you already have. You let Clint go. If he was all you held to you'd have gone with him. But you didn't. You're staying here and you're fighting."

"It doesn't feel like fighting."

"Yeah, the hard fights often feel like being pummeled and bashed. But that's why they're fights."

She sighed. "Pummeled and bashed: that sounds like a pretty good description of my life."

"Which is probably why you're the strongest woman I know."

She turned to him, the two stared at one another for a long moment and then she nodded. "Thank you."

Clint stood in what a week ago had been the server room of Strucker's base and swore. What hadn't been removed was destroyed beyond either repair or use. The same as everything else in this complex.

He should have come sooner. He shouldn't have been so weak as to need time. He swore again and punched out, ramming his fist into a burnt out hunk of metal that had once been a server bank.

There was the woosh of Petro's speed and the man came into the room.

"Nothing. The whole building is empty," Pietro reported.

"I don't suppose there's any computers left? Papers? Anything?'

"No. What's been left has been burnt. Even…even the chair is destroyed."

Clint shrugged. Well at least that was a plus. He'd had a mind to tear it to pieces himself.

But he'd failed. A sweeping sense of how badly he failed washed over him. The scepter had been here, within his grasp and now it was gone, who knew where. He realized, some small part of him had held an image, buried deep away, that retrieving this scepter, presenting it to Fury, would somehow make things right again, put things back the way they'd once been.

Then again, that image of what they'd once been had never been real.

He'd never been the hero. It was a lie. A lie he'd tried so hard to believe in himself near the end.

Clint closed his eyes, and breathed, the dust filling his nostrils as an overwhelming sense of loss and futility swept over him.

There were footsteps and Wanda entered the room.

"Now what?" she asked. "If the scepter is gone from here, how do we find it?"

His eyes flew open and he stared at the twins, who stared back at him, expectant. Not hopeful, for hope implied there was doubt that was being rejected. No. These two had a faith in him that was beyond hope. It was certain. They knew. They might be wrong. But they thought they knew.

For a moment that trust sent him even deeper into the black hole of doubt, futility, and desperation.

Then he clinched his fist and set his jaw.

He'd failed Shield, he'd failed the Avengers, he'd failed Nat, he'd failed Laura, he'd failed his own children. And here was another chance to fail.

He wasn't going to take it. No matter how easy life made it to do so.

"We hunt Strucker down. We find the scepter. And we get it back."

"Do you know where he might have taken it?" asked Pietro.

"No. But I have a friend who might."