Chapter 3: Stark Realities
Warning! In this chapter, beware of some good-old-fashioned, boot-to-the-butt, motivational pep talks from the least likely person to do so. You have been warned.
Steve P.O.V
When Steve had first moved into the tower, he'd spent so much time in the gym that Tony had locked him out of the room two weeks in and laughed. Afterwards, Tony set up an industrial strength hook and made new bags out of some new fabric with dyneema. Steve was astonished when the new bags didn't disintegrate under his barrage of blows, and made sure to sincerely thank Tony next time he saw him. Tony had just waved it off and said something self-deprecating. Tony did that a lot: give someone a gift and the shrug it off. Steve always noticed how no one noticed.
Now, don't get him wrong. Steve still mostly dislikes Tony. He's rude, arrogant, crass, smug, sarcastic, and never follows orders. But Steve could see the potential to be a better and happier man resting dormant in him.
Now, Tony's lying in bed, injured, and with no sign of waking up.
Steve punches the bag even harder and faster, blinking the sweat from his eyes. Normally, boxing sets him at ease, but today, all the punching bag does is remind him of the good man dying right now. The bag splits apart, the fifth one, spilling sand over the already gritty floor. He unhooks the bag before putting it next to its disemboweled fellows and grabbing a fresh one. He hooks that one on and readjusts the wrappings on his fists. After that, he begins pounding away at the new one.
Uppercut, hook, jab. Cross, jab, block. Straight, twist, jab.
It's not enough. He can't run from himself. He feels anger welling up, and grief trailing behind. Disgusted, he throws one last punch before walking to the bench and chugging a bottle of water and throwing a towel over his shoulder.
"I thought you might be here. Still working the ring, I see."
Steve whipped around, his hand reaching for the absent weight of his shield at his back, before he recognized the figure at the doorway. Once he recognized her, he was acutely aware of how little he was wearing; a white undershirt and cargo shorts. Back in his day, everyone was fully clothed, even at home.
"Natasha." He acknowledged. "What are you doing here?"
She tilted her head, red hair falling to the side of her face. "I thought that you might need a friend-slash-therapist."
"It's awfully hard to trust someone when you don't know who they are." He sat on the bench and wiped at his face.
She sat gingerly next to him and faintly wrinkled her nose. "How long you been down here?"
"I dunno. Maybe two hours." He hadn't exactly stopped to look at a clock.
"In that case, you smell like a fresh daisy." The corner of her mouth twitched up.
"What are you doing here, Natasha? Really." Steve looked into her unfathomable green eyes.
"Tony would want us to be a team. I know it doesn't sound like him, but you're important to him, we all are, and you want us to be a team."
Steve scoffed. "And how do you know all this. I doubt he would spill his guts to the master spy."
Her gaze crystallized. "I see, and I observe. What I notice, I can connect. I see him, every day, give people stuff because he genuinely likes them, without expecting anything in return, because he wants them to stay with him. He thinks of us as all one weird family, and he's never had a family, so he does the best he can. And his best is making us happy. Did you ever wonder why he spruced up the gym for you? It's because he knew that you like exercising whenever you think of your past. It's also why he stocks the kitchen up with quality foods for Thor. He made Clint and me a firing range that actually tests our abilities. He even hangs up our used paper targets. He gave Banner a lab and a place where he can not worry about the Hulk. Tony gave us all a home, and wanted nothing for it but friendship and a dysfunctional family. Now, you can sit up here and feel guilty, punch a bag or ten, or you can move on and get your ass downstairs where you can focus on finding a cure. He's not dead yet, and you're acting like he is. Give Tony something back for once."
Natasha left him, stunned, and swept out of the room. Steve blinked.
Bruce P.O.V (in the hospital room)
Bruce frowned down at the lab results. They said that nothing was wrong, but obviously something was wrong. His friend wouldn't be convulsing with seizures if something wasn't wrong. There had been two more fits since Romanoff and Barton left, and Banner had held down Tony with a sickly feeling in his heart. He sighed and rubbed his face with his hands, glancing at his patient as he did so. There was no change. The EEG test had said that Tony's brain activity mirrored an awake person's, which was obviously wrong, as Tony wasn't awake. Bruce heaved a sigh and sat back in his chair, looking at his friend.
He remembered when he had seen Tony rocket past them and crash. The Hulk had roared so loud and rattled the bars of Bruce's control. But thankfully, he had desperately convinced Hulk that Tony was more helped by a doctor than a fighter. Hulk had subsided, grumbling, and a relieved Bruce ran to Tony's side.
Even now, anger simmered just below his surface and lent strength to Hulk. He was furious that Tony had done such a stupid thing as face Doom on his own. He was hurt that Tony hadn't even looked at him after the fight. And he felt guilty that he wasn't there for the one time his friend needed him. He wanted to do something. He wanted to cure Tony. So he ran the tests again, fruitlessly. When those came back clean, he ran them again, and then again. And when those came back, he threw the whole sheaf of paper in the air furiously. Leaning against the desk, he pinched the bridge of his nose and took off his glasses.
"I was worried there for a minute."
Bruce jerked backwards and looked at the spy suddenly in the doorway. He always wondered why the two agents always stood by doorways. He supposed that they always wanted an easy way out if a situation came up in order to feel safe.
"Agent Romanoff. What brings you down here?" Bruce never liked Romanoff; she always lied.
"I had a little talk with Cap, so now I'm going to have a little talk with you."
He snorted. "I'd rather not."
"And I'd rather not stay in the same room as you with the Hulk so close to the surface, but here I am." She said honestly.
"Look, I know what you're going to say. 'I need to control myself' or 'I need to distance myself from the situation'. I can already tell you that I'm not distant from this!" He was suddenly shouting, and when he looked at her, he could see a hint of fear in her eyes and in her slightly defensive stance.
"That's not what I was going to say at all. Isn't it a good thing that I stayed here to hear that?" She tried to joke but it fell flat when coupled with her tense tone. "I was going to tell you to get angry."
"What?" Bruce wrinkled his forehead. Usually people tell him not to get angry. Hulk perked up a little when the heard 'angry'.
"Anger is a powerful motivator as long as you don't let it control you. If you can hold onto it and focus it on something, there is nothing you can't do. There are two types of anger: cold and hot. Hot is here and gone. It burns bright, but fast, and gets out of your system as soon as you feel it. Cold is like a distant star inside of you; always there and always burning. It can bring revenge, and it always keeps you focused on a goal. Thor's a great example of hot anger. I've always preferred the cold myself. If you can feel your anger, finely balance it between the cold and the hot, and it will help you with anything that will erase itself. So, get angry, just don't let Hulk use it all up." Romanoff smiled tightly.
Bruce had never thought of anger as a tool like that. He was always hot anger: ephemeral and destructive. If it would help him help Tony, he would try. He channeled the anger into one big breath, and focused it onto one part of his body. It drew inward and crystallized, like a dying star, but instead of exploding, it waited for the moment that it could go supernova.
Bruce inhaled again and nodded, just once, at Romanoff. She smiled a little and got up to leave, but he stopped her with a question.
"Is that how you always think? You save your anger and bottle it up until it can be used against your enemies?"
She smiled, strained, her eyes distant. "It was. Before I met Clint, it was."
"You love him." It was more a statement, or an affirmation of suspicions, rather than a question.
She paused again here. "As much as someone like me can love. It's different for us, isn't it."
Clint P.O.V
Clint felt at peace. Which was weird for him. He always was on guard and ready for any and every eventuality. His breathing was slow and steady, and he was almost asleep. Nat was in his arms, tucked together like puzzle pieces. His nose was buried in her hair, so each time he inhaled, he smelled her unique scent: gunpowder, roses, and cinnamon. They were almost cuddling, and she'd never been one for that, preferring to keep him at arms length, even after their trysts. He wondered what was up. Knowing she would never tell him sent bitterness aching in his heart. When she started to move, he decided to keep pretending to sleep. He heard the rustling of cloth and the creak of metal on metal door. He quickly slipped on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a leather jacket, and popped the hatch on the air ducts. Stepping on a chair, he squirreled into the small space.
It was a tight fit for his shoulders and waist, but he'd make do. After all, he's made do with worse.
He pulled out the tracker he'd slipped into Nat's hood and makes his way through the ducts to her general direction. She stops outside the gym, so he stops just in the hallway. Her voice and that of Steve drifts up to him waiting in the air ducts.
Clint never liked Cap. Maybe it's the impossible do-gooder attitude or the way he parts his hair. Maybe it's the way that Nat looks at the Captain. They do make a good team, with her deception and his honesty. She probably finds it refreshing. Clint shakes off jealousy and listens harder to the conversation. He bangs his knee into the side of the really too small space, and freezes instinctively.
His mind races as he puts the pieces together. Their conversation earlier, Nat's conversation with Steve. Of course. She's getting the team back up on their feet with a healthy dose of intimidation and no-nonsense toughness with a dash of sympathy thrown in for the heck of it.
Clint grins as she chews Steve out. The grin drops when she quickly walks off and he has to army crawl silently after her. He ends up just outside of Tony's hospital room and listens in on Nat and Bruce's little talk next. It's the average spiel that therapists give agents who have anger management issues, but with a personal spin. He knows Natasha's kind of anger. It's the only thing that kept him going when he was younger, before he met Natasha.
But the end of the talk floors him. He knew that he loved Natasha, but to hear that she loved him was … unexpected in the extreme. They were both agents. They had to remain objective. They knew intel that they couldn't tell the other. They had secrets nothing could bring them to say.
They both loved the other.
His heart constricted strangely. Normally it only did that when he saw a gorgeous longbow and had to get it, or a sweet long rifle, or when he thought of Nat when he or she was on a mission. He wasn't sure what drove him to kick out the screen and drop down to the floor, but he did it. He was just leaning against the wall when Nat came out of the hospital room.
"So how'd it go?" He asked.
She paused a nanosecond before joining him in leaning against the wall opposite. "Not bad. I think I talked some sense into them. Too bad I had to do it without using agent brutality."
He grinned. "'Cause you always beat your teammates before going after bad guys."
"I know you were listening. How much did you hear?"
The grin slipped, and he avoided looking into her knowing emerald eyes. "All of it. What gave me away?"
"Nothing. Just the fact that I slipped a tracer on you too." He heard the smugness in her voice, and smiled ruefully, running a hand over his hair.
"Did you mean it?"
"Yes."
"How long?"
"Does it matter? A while."
"Okay."
Just, a note. I don't take boxing, so if I seem a bit uninformed, I am. But I did the best I could with copious internet researching and background knowledge from other books.
Did anyone get major feels from this chapter? I know I was almost crying and laughing while I read it, and I'm the one who wrote it! I hope no one's too OOC. It was hard to get Clint right, and I'm still not happy with the ending, but I thought the scenes with Bruce and Steve were pretty good.
And just a shout out to my friend writtingnut135723. I don't know why she didn't post last week. So if you're reading this, Nutty, then you should know that I will chase you around with a carving knife or become your internet stalker if you don't post. :)