Happy New Year and sorry I vanished. (Also, I got the new omnibus for Trial of Captain America and oh my Lord, aaaaaall the Bucky feels…) But I got this written, so here's some Hawkeye and Hulk being clandestine and maybe where this story is going! (Also, I got the first book of Hawkeye, so cheers to anyone seeing the winks in here)

Thank you to everyone who reads and everyone who reviewed. 3 I love feedback. Also, holy crap, did anyone else notice how many bloody B names there are in this? I didn't even. Barton, Bucky, Banner. If I were calling James 'Buchanan', that'd be one more… sorry guys. Can't change it now, so I'm plowin forward.

#

#

The front desk attendant paid little attention to the two men who came in just after 3pm – they were two of legion on the busy Friday afternoon. By their conversation, it was clear they were here for the taller one's book tour about soil in Antarctica and they were travelling on a budget. She directed 'Don Janes' and 'Rolf Whitehead' to their room on the second floor and thought no more about them.

-which was exactly what Clint had wanted.

"Nothing in the minibar," Banner noted from the far side of their two-bed room. Clint didn't glance up from unfolding the map; he knew the layout of the room already. It had a minibar, two beds, and a sliding glass door leading onto a small balcony. It was nice to have a quick escape route if things went the kind of south where ninjas showed up to kill you in your hotel room. The balcony 'view' overlooked a parking lot, good view of the freeway, but way off beyond that, you could almost see the ocean.

"Can't drink right now anyway," he replied. The map of the city took up a full quarter of the floral bedspread. Neither of them knew Chesapeake well and it would have been easier to take a taxi to Faustus's offices then drive the car they had brought from Manhattan. They needed a car for a meeting like this though. Needed to be able to get away fast.

"Doctor's offices are on 409th," Clint noted. "You want to drive?"

"I want to take another look at the plan." Banner sat down on the opposite bed. "Are you sure you want to do this? You have Stark thinking the whole thing is my idea when you're the one who hasn't sat down since Bucky got in."

"…"

"And I'm only here because you stole my car," Banner continued.

"Ah, easy answer for that, mine was—"

"That's why you don't pay for Dodge Challengers in cash to women you just slept with. Point is, you're bringing the Avengers into this."

"You see masks? And you didn't answer the question." Clint followed a street on the map with a finger, noting its twists and turns.

"You really want me driving," Banner said.

"It's your car."

"It's a bad idea."

Clint kept following the street, saying nothing until he stopped, a long way from where he had started, took out a pen, and put a circle with some dashes on their destination. Then, added a couple of others in case someone got a hold of the map. Then 'folded' the map into something that came out looking like a 6-year-old's Christmas present for mommy.

"Look," he began. "Cap's friend came in accused of murder, half-dead on top of that. Nobody lookin' out. That pisses me off. Cap's not gonna hunt anyone down til Stark gives the okay and Stark's not gonna give the okay until hell freezes over in SHIELD-Land. Cap will keep his people safe. That's what Cap does. We're going to clear the airways."

"If Avengers are in this, you can't kill this guy," Banner said, tone solemn.

"Who said I was killin'—"

"Ever since New York last year, you go off at the slightest hint of mind control. Cap's friend, Selvig, the man in the subway back in January—"

"That was different."

"You wanted me here because you think he can't control me. If you're wrong, I could break him. Break his apartment complex and most of this nice little resort town."

"So you're driving?" Clint shoved the map into a pocket. Banner seemed about to say something else, sighed, then nodded.

"Fine, I'm driving."

"Good, you need gas."

#

The building had been recently built, emulating the appearance of the rectangular Chesapeake City Hall. A sheer beige wall stood before Barton and Bruce, either side of the building made up of paneled windows reflecting the grey-white sky of the day. Parking had been easy, though Bruce walked through the arched door of the office building muttering 'they better validate this.'

According to the directory just inside, there were 4 psychologists' offices, 2 psychiatrists, a pharmacy, and half a dozen other medical plaza specialists in the building. Doctor John Faustus was Room 310.

"No paparazzi here," Barton noted. "You'd think local press would be here, seeing as he walked out of a morgue a few days ago."

"Well, Tony said people tend to do what he tells them to. Maybe he told them to leave," Bruce mused.

"Yeah, I already don't like this guy," Barton said, scowling, and headed for the stairs, rather than the gold-doored elevator. Bruce followed him, somewhat bemused by the action. If they really were here for a conversation – well, they weren't. They had brought a getaway car, for crying out loud; this was probably going to go terribly.

"Gotta knew where stairs are," the bowman said as he pulled open the stairwell door. "Already checked the outside paneling and there's three ways down from the 3rd floor."

"Remember when Steve told everyone not to put me in stressful situations? Gosh, that was fun."

"This isn't stressful, it's a shrink," Barton replied and pushed open the door at the top of the stairs. The pair stepped out into a short carpeted hallway. No windows here, but the domed lights overhead cast a golden glow over the corridor. Barton took a few quick steps down the hall and opened the door next to a copper-plated '310' label.

"Professor—er, Doc? Doc. Faustus?" he called. "I had an appointment?"

"Don, you're early!"

The doctor came to the door and ushered them both in. The magnificent red beard he had had in the mall was trimmed much shorter; he wore no glasses, and the hair was trending much closer to gray, but it was hard to disguise a man of his build and bearing. Barton immediately slid into the false identity they had discussed.

"Good to meet you, doc, I've been assigned 6 months of counseling because I—"

"You recognized me, Agent Barton," Faustus interrupted. "As did Dr. Banner here. I know who you are."

The bowman didn't blink but Bruce could see him running through alternate scenarios in his mind.

"Agent Barton, if I do not want to be found or seen, I am not found or seen. Your morgue attendants can –or rather cannot – attest to that."

"Why would you want to, then?" Barton challenged.

"You two were not supposed to follow me down here but, if you do not find me here, James will not even attempt to come."

"You want the guy who shot you to follow you."

"I needed to test if James's oath to never kill me would hold. None of this involves you, Agent Barton."

"If it doesn't involve me, maybe I never saw you here," Barton said snarkily. "Why do you care if he'll kill you or not? Where's your win?"

"Because, when we were working with the Winter Soldier, tabula rasa, Zola and I, I promised James that a day would come when our direction of Hydra would fall. I could see it, even then. If he kept loyal to me, never killed me despite the orders of his masters, I could get his memories back. We didn't erase them, you know. We built over them, hundreds of times, cities beneath cities like Rome, Paris, Seattle, London. The triggers keep the old cities at bay."

Barton listened to this without response; clearly the psychiatrist was eager to monologue. Quiet as a knife but Bruce could feel him seething like a kettle left hours on the stove.

"I'm still not seeing your win," Barton said, when Faustus paused.

"The mere telling of what I have done is overwhelming. I doubt you're able to listen to what I will do."

"You're right. Grab your evil cape, we'll head up to Manhattan and someone more patient can figure it out with you. We got a lot of patient people up there."

"Agent Barton, why don't you go look out the window?" Faustus suggested idly. The suggestion puzzled the archer for just a second and he moved towards the window, first hesitantly then moving with more ease, looking down at the street below. Barton wouldn't just break off an interrogation like that – not willingly.

"Barton, weren't we—" Bruce began.

"Agent Barton isn't an appropriate lead for this conversation," the doctor said smoothly. "I would much rather work with someone who managed to graduate high school."

"So the window thing…" Bruce couldn't stop glancing over at his companion.

"I have a certain skill with words. You may have heard. He is perfectly fine. For now."

Bruce took his fury and put it somewhere else – down a hole he kept in the back of his mind, anything to keep from feeding the beast.

"I don't appreciate shows of power," he said, voice even. "How about you tell me the message and we go?"

"Just tell James he needs to come visit me. Bring the captain. He knows this already, I just can't have you telling him I'm not here or 'dealing' with me yourselves. You two have simply have gotten involved in something very much none of your business."

"You really have the ability to give him back his memories?"

"I do not lie, Dr. Banner."

"Maybe not, but I'm familiar with supervillains modifying the truth. Can you even do what you're saying?"

"And I'm not familiar with being challenged. Agent Barton, would you be so good as to open the window?" the doctor asked. His back was to Barton; Faustus didn't even have to turn to see the bowman do it. There was noise enough as confirmation – the sound of the latch clicking, then another – a window grating upwards. Fury turned from the hole in Bruce's mind and began climbing back up the tunnel like a dog laboriously dragging a bone.

"Are you trying to make me angry?" Bruce asked quietly.

"No, I'm trying to make you understand. Your mind is terribly pliable, but you don't act on what you think. Agent Barton is terrified of being controlled – so terrified that he'll do what he is told to stop it from happening, take orders from anyone… including me. So stop doubting and go."

"I'll tell him you're here," Banner said.

"Agent Barton, there's a draft. Could you close the window?"

Barton appeared to come to himself, looking at the window, then back at Faustus, full of snark.

"Close it yourself and get ready. We're leaving."

"Oh, actually, we're not," Bruce said. The bowman blinked at him, a trace of puzzlement passing over his face.

"Uh, pretty sure we are, Rolf."

"Well, we're leaving. But not with him."

Barton looked from one to the other. "…why?"

"He made a convincing argument. So we're going."

Faustus chose that moment to chime in. "And could you show my next patient in on your way out? I'm trying to build my case load and it sets a bad precedent to go long."

" 'course," Barton muttered as they walked out, deliberately shutting the door behind them. A 20-something young man with a Navy crewcut stood waiting in the hallway. As they passed him, Barton gripped him by the shoulder – "that guy's a quack" – let go, and kept walking.

Then, on their way to the elevator, he glanced over at Banner: "What the hell happened?"

#

Following the validation of parking, Barton led the way to a Thai joint around the corner, where they made friends with at least one of the other tenants of the psych building (a blonde woman in her thirties who heard Banner talking about hypnosis). Finally, full of tom yam and massaman curry, they went back to the hotel.

"I turned off Stark's auto-locator, so you get to tell him," Bruce said, zipping the keycard in and out of the door. "See if he wants to bring someone high-profile down to out the guy."

"He's not doing anything illegally by living." Barton stepped forward and pushed open the door, entering first. "I got personal experience with that and until we have evidence, cops won't be interested and Stark will shrug." The archer's hand came up and Bruce stopped immediately in the entry corridor, his view partially blocked by the corner of the hotel room. Still, he could see a man in a black jacket and cap sitting in the corner chair. The sliding glass door stood slightly ajar behind him. Shadows cloaked most of his features.

Barton moved in cautiously, heading for the dresser across from the intruder. The man was dozing, quieter than he had any right to be. The archer pulled his bow silently from behind the dresser and notched an arrow from behind the TV to the string. Keeping the bow angled slightly down, he motioned Bruce farther back with his head. Bruce ignored him but Barton wasn't facing him.

"Hey," Barton called softly. "Bucky."

The Winter Soldier looked up and did a threat assessment in seconds. Bow, arrow, Barton, Banner, sliding door, distance. Moving as methodically as Barton had a minute before, he sat up, set two guns and a knife on the floor, and leaned back again.

"Where's the doctor?" he asked. His voice sounded less death-warmed-over than it had when Bruce saw him last, but there was a rasp and a cough to it. The man wasn't well, but he was clearly well enough to get here.

"We're negotiating," Barton said. "Does Sta—does Cap know you're here?"

"No, Steve had me on bedrest," Bucky replied. That phrasing – Bruce thought about it and realized, suddenly, that the assassin had read their files somehow. Somehow, Bucky knew that Barton hated bedrest and would understand, more than anyone, why it was unacceptable for the 'merely human' to be on bedrest while the superheroes ran around intact. Barton regularly got his butt handed to him without even changing into costume and did more travelling for personal justice-dealing-with-bad-guys reasons than was physically safe.

To Barton's credit, the bow didn't lower.

"Probably a good reason for that," the bowman said.

"This is my problem. Not Cap's. Not… the iron man's."

He'd forgotten Stark's name, Bruce thought. For a moment, Bucky had forgotten the iron man was Tony Stark.

"So you came down," Bruce said, stepping into the room. The assassin's eyes followed him.

"Did you find Faustus?"

Did he have to repeat that name to keep it in his mind? How long could he hold a new name before it became part of the drifting miasma of memory in Bucky's mind? Did it depend on how much he liked or disliked the person?

"He has some conditions before he'll talk to you," Bruce replied. "Namely… Cap being around. If you went, he'd tell you the same thing."

"No one ever tells me the same thing," the assassin said and there was a blade in the words – a real and palpable threat. Tell me the truth or things will start happening here.

"Just wait for Steve to catch up with us," Bruce said. "If you came by bus, you've been up all night. Barton will make a call to Cap, they'll come down and make movements legally. I don't want any… stress, and you don't need any more heat on you."

There was a threat in Bruce's words too, if the Winter Soldier could catch it, and Bucky seemed to. His handlers had probably known enough to teach him not to go up against the Hulk in close quarters. He thought about the statement a moment, then nodded. Thank God, at least that had gone off according to plan.

"Did you bring medications? The stuff the doctor was—" Bruce began.

"None of your business."

Probably just the antibiotics and the stimulants then; no painkillers or sleeping aids. Great, they could share the hotel room with a wired Winter Soldier. Damn it, Cap.

"Barton, you want to—"

"Calling," the bowman answered, putting the bow back behind the dresser. In the meantime, the ghost of the intelligence community had drifted back into his nap – knife in hand. Looked like Bruce wasn't going to be getting any sleep tonight.

If the Winter Soldier hadn't broken into this hotel room with such ease, he would have seriously considered getting another.

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Had to fix a lot of this one so maybe, maybe, hopefully, it reads smoother. Longer chapter too, but you guys definitely deserve it for waiting. Thanks for reading!