Hello readers! We're slipping away from Asgard for a spell to peek in (real time) on Stark Tower in New York! Now that you're oriented in time and space, I hope you enjoy this chapter!
"Alright, Legolas, you and me."
Clint picked up his favorite bow and half-jogged into the middle of the extensive training room to meet Tony, who was outfitted in gauntlets of sorts that fed on energy from his arc reactor. Checking his quiver for arrows, he gave Tony a nod.
"JARVIS," Tony called to the computer, "activate the decoys."
Tony and Clint stood back to back on a ten-meter circle that was situated in the middle of other, progressively larger, rings like a bulls-eye. On the tracks that ran between the outer rings, robotic dummies rose from the floor. The rings began to turn in opposing directions, speeds varying, around where Tony and Clint stood.
"Alright Stark, no cheating." Clint pulled an arrow from his quiver and nocked it to his bow with practiced fluidity, bringing the string to full draw and holding. "In three – two – one –"
A pulse of light from Tony's gauntlet shattered the first dummy, opening the field. Clint loosed his arrow and grabbed another without even thinking to do so.
Two more shots from Tony; two more dummies with holes straight through their middles.
Clint shot at something he only saw with the corner of his eye, immediately nocking another arrow to his bowstring. He didn't check to see if his first shot had made it home; he knew without a doubt that it had.
"Hey Stark," he said loudly, over the noise from the robots and Tony's energy pulses, "what does it tell you when an assassin can't shoot straight?"
Tony shot down another dummy before replying, "Uh, that he's probably not very good at his job?" He spun and picked off two more robots, adding, "No offense, Robin Hood."
"Ha-ha," Clint said, sarcasm clear as crystal. "It tells you he's not really trying." And with that, he pulled two arrows from his quiver, nocked them both simultaneously, and fired at precisely the right second. Two dummies in an inner circle had lined up with two in an outer circle, and, when he loosed his twin arrows, he managed to skewer all four at once.
"Yeah, what was that thing about no cheating?" Tony remarked, getting one robot down with each of his hands.
Clint just scoffed and kept shooting. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Two down. Fifteen.
Every time a ring made a full revolution, he got to see how many Tony had blown sky-high. So far, he counted seventeen. He needed to step up his game. Pulling more of the double-arrow trick ought to even the playing field.
Seventeen. Eighteen.
Three more from Tony.
He checked his quiver, debating an explosive arrowhead. He stopped himself before he could carry through with it, though; if that wasn't cheating, he wasn't sure what was. Two more of his arrows took out two more robots. Empty spaces rotated around on them, and the dummies that still stood were either pierced through with arrows or blown mostly to bits.
For a moment, he and Tony stood still, watching the robots circle them. The program was set to stop once all of the dummies had been compromised, but it still turned, telling them that there was one more left. And their scores were tied, if Clint had counted correctly.
His fingers itched at the bowstring, drawing it and waiting. Where was it?
Amidst the ruins of the outer ring, he spotted it: the one survivor. Not seconds later, his arrow was through its robotic forehead, and the rings slowed to a stop.
"I win," Clint said, turning around and eyeing Tony smugly. "I believe that's one all-expense-paid cruise to the Bahamas for me, thank you very much."
Tony rolled his eyes. "Fine, Barton. It's not like I'd want to go to the Bahamas again anyway. Seen it once, seen it a million times."
"That's not what I've heard," taunted Clint as he pulled an arrow out of a dummy's chest and checked the arrowhead for damages.
"Yeah, yeah."
"I'll talk to Fury and see if he'll let me and Nat off the hook for a week sometime"
"Whoa now," Tony said, unstrapping his arms from the gauntlets. "I never said anything about Natasha."
Clint grinned, his back to Tony so he couldn't see. "Oh, well, I promised Tasha and Steve that they could come along if I won. Which I did."
Tony groaned theatrically. "Just go ahead and make it a family affair, why don't you?" He tossed his gauntlets onto a table with other bits and pieces of his Iron Man suit that he used for testing and training in the massive basement of Stark Tower.
"You know, that's a really great idea!" Clint could almost see Tony's hair curling in annoyance; the knowledge that he was bothering everyone's favorite billionaire made him unusually proud of himself.
After a moment, Tony shrugged. "Alright fine. I could use a cruise anyway." He and Clint started out of the room; at the door, Tony turned around, almost causing Clint to run into him. "But I'm only buying for you, you got that?"
In response, Clint held up his hands in mock surrender. "Whatever you say, man."
"Hey JARVIS, fix these dummies," Tony said as he left. "I've gotta get better so Arrow Boy doesn't beat me again. Also gotta stop betting on cruises."
"Who's going on a cruise?" Pepper met them in the hallway with a smile, her ever-present clipboard pressed against her chest like a student's textbook.
Without missing a beat, Tony replied, "You and me. And everybody else." He took her by the shoulders and kissed her cheek. "We're all going to the Bahamas. A little sun, a little sand. How does that sound?"
"Great," she said, "but where are you planning on getting this time, Tony?" She glanced down at her clipboard. "You're kind of busy at the moment. Both for SHIELD and for the company."
Tony made a face that reminded Clint of a child who had just been told to eat his vegetables. "Always the personal assistant," he told her. "You know me; I'll make time." He gave her one of his classic, flashy grins and slid past her. After nodding his "hello" and "goodbye" to Pepper, Clint followed in Tony's wake. The elevator at the end of the hall opened as soon as they pressed the call button, and they took it up to the main floor of the tower – the one with the deck that wrapped all the way around it, sporting a landing pad at one end.
When the doors opened, the pair of them almost collided with Bruce, who had been waiting for the elevator to arrive. "Whoa there," Tony said, skirting Bruce. "Don't sneak up on us."
"Actually, I was just looking for you guys," Bruce responded, falling into step alongside Tony as he headed down the hall to the living room.
"What for?" Clint lengthened his stride to keep up, walking awkwardly behind and between the other two men, as if he wasn't as important because he didn't have a PhD of some variety hanging on his wall. He knew that wasn't how they thought of him, but it didn't change the fact that it was the truth, and sometimes it nagged him inside like an itch. He shook it off and asked again, "What's up?"
Bruce, who had always been the kinder of the two resident egg-heads, angled himself back so that Clint could hear as well as Tony. "Fury wants an update on the rebuild." Before Tony could speak, he clarified, "Not the tower. The city."
"He can look out the window and see it himself," Tony said, a hint of insolence in his tone.
Bruce shook his head. "We all know Fury doesn't play like that. He wants your perspective – your plans, not what he can see rising up out of the dust."
"When did he call?" Clint asked.
"A few minutes ago. I was going to keep him on the line so he could talk to you, but he had a meeting or something and had to run."
"How do you like that?" Tony scoffed. "The guy calls to talk to me, but he won't stick around long enough to actually talk to me."
Clint shrugged; he knew better than most the type of problems Fury dealt with on a daily basis. SHIELD more than had its hands full at present, trying to ensure that alien races stayed away from the planet, working with the Avengers to reconstruct what had fallen in the last battle, and keeping all of this out of the eyes of the public – it was a rather tall order.
Tony stepped behind the bar and poured himself a scotch. "Alright fine. I'll touch base with him tomorrow."
"Actually," Bruce said, a bit hesitantly, "I think he wanted you to call today."
Setting his glass down on the counter with a loud clank, Tony cocked his head at Bruce. "Well now, that's cute. He wanted plans and goals and stuff for the rebuild, right? Even Fury knows that I need time to come up with something like that."
"I think he was under the impression that you already had ideas." Bruce leaned against the bar casually, as if he was commenting on the weather. "You know, that you'd already started working on that, seeing as our city kind of took a heavy blow a couple months back."
"The city's been doing a great job getting back onto its own two feet," Tony said, downing his scotch and offering the others drinks as well; they both refused, so he poured himself another. "Why do I need to be involved?"
"Because it was your brilliant idea to tell the world you're Iron Man," said Clint, lounging on a sofa and staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Bruce shot Tony a look that clearly said, The man's got a point.
Stashing the scotch bottle under the bar, Tony replied, "Hey, you all weren't exactly being covert either. What did you want from me? Let you guys take all my glory?" He made a face and shook his head. "Anyway, the people wanted to know. They deserve someone they can trust."
As he downed this round of scotch, Tony took in Clint and Bruce – both wearing matching expressions of skepticism. "Alright fine," he concluded, "I'll talk to Fury. Tomorrow." He took off around the corner, calling back, "I'll be in my garage."
Once Tony was out of earshot, Clint said, "Speaking of Fury and SHIELD, have you heard anything from Thor?"
Bruce shook his head. "No." He seated himself in a chair opposite Clint. "I can only hope the intergalactic liaison thing is working out in our favor. I'd hate to have to deal with more alien jerks who think that they can just run our planet."
"Yeah, but even if Thor had been our ambassador before," Clint put in, "it's not like he exactly saw that whole mess coming. And it was his brother, too. No number of peace talks or alliances could have changed it."
"True." Bruce leaned forward, resting his chin in his palm. "Seriously, though, what made Loki do it? I mean, with a brother like Thor, why would he suddenly decide to go bad?"
Clint scoffed. "Who said he decided?"
With a small shrug, Bruce continued, "All I'm saying is that Thor is a good guy – a really good guy. I don't think he has a bad bone in him. But his brother . . . the comment about the bag full of cats still stands."
They heard the refrigerator open and close, and Clint turned around to find Steve shining an apple on his sleeve. "Are you all talking about Loki?" he asked before taking a hunk of flesh out of the fruit noisily.
"Yeah," replied Bruce. "I was just wondering about him."
Steve's brow knit in concern as he crossed from the kitchenette to the living room, swallowing his bite of apple. "Why? Is he out?"
"If he was, you'd better believe we wouldn't just be sitting here," Clint told him. "Oh, by the way, I won the bet."
"Really?" A grin spread across Steve's face.
"Yep. Pack your bags, Cap; we're going to the Bahamas."
Bruce looked confused, but he said nothing. When Clint saw his expression, though, he explained. "I made a bet with Tony and won. Everyone's taking a cruise to the Bahamas for a week. You're invited too, Doc, if you want to come."
"Sure," Bruce said. "Just let me check with the Other Guy. Sometimes he doesn't do too well on boats." He remembered the Helicarrier all too well.
They sat in silence for a moment, the quiet only broken by Steve, who bit off another chunk of his apple. "But really, though," he said, once he had swallowed, "Loki?"
Clint was not exactly glad of this resurface in conversation; he had hoped that his talk of the bet would defer Steve's attention. Talking about the battle was bad, but talking about the man who had caused it was worse.
"Yeah," Bruce began. "See, we haven't heard a peep from Thor."
"And that could be either really good or really bad," Steve finished.
"Pretty much nailed it."
As much as Clint wanted to shrug it all off, claiming that no news is good news, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Thor was pretty good about keeping in touch with Earth – Midgard, as he called it. Even if the only reason was a pretty girl out in New Mexico. "Has anyone called Jane?" he said. When the other two men just looked at him, he clarified, "He might have contacted her. She might know something."
"I doubt it," Bruce reasoned. "He's sentimental, but I don't think he'd talk to her and not us."
Steve shrugged, turning the apple around in his fingers. "Well, last he heard, we all did kind of want to kill his brother."
"Last we heard, so did he." Clint was surprised at the frustration that came through in his voice; but at the same time, he wasn't surprised at all.
"Brothers can't stay mad at each other forever," Steve said.
Clint scoffed, but Bruce just arched an eyebrow doubtfully. "How much do you know about Thor and Loki, Steve?" Bruce asked.
"Not much. You?"
For a second, Bruce hesitated. Finally, though, he admitted, "Nothing."