Chapter Eight

The next morning, Klara reported to Dr. Banner's lab for another round of testing. Her shoulders were a bit stiff from last night's training, and there were sore spots on her feet (Captain Rogers had assured her this would pass once her new shoes were properly 'broken in'), but it was nothing she couldn't mask behind her usual servant's facade. She entered the lab with set shoulders and chin uplifted, ready to face whatever the Midgardian scientists might throw at her.

Alice was sitting in the corner, paper coffee cup in hand and head bent over a rather large book, a pen tapping a rapid staccato on a pad of paper. Klara blinked. Alice had not been here for her previous tests. She wondered what sort of changes her presence might portend. Dr. Banner was engrossed in something flitting across his transparent screen and had not noticed Klara's entrance. Leaving only Tony Stark, who jumped to his feet as if someone had prodded him with an electric jolt and then attempted to lean casually against one of the metal lab tables.

"Klara!" he blurted out, with an inordinate amount of good cheer, "Klara, Klara, what a great morning, isn't it a great morning? I mean, you slept well, right? You've been sleeping well, your room is okay, your...everything?"

He made a general motion with his free hand that Klara supposed was meant to encompass the whole of her accommodations in the Tower. Her brow furrowed the tiniest bit at his erratic behavior, but she dipped her head in acknowledgment.

"Yes, I am quite well provided for, Mr. Stark, thank you."

"Great!" he said, jerking upright and clapping his hands together, rubbing them vigorously, "That's great, really, I mean, I should have asked before, I guess, before now I mean, just, you know, I figured you'd tell...someone, I don't know who. Thor? Maybe? Do you tell him things? He doesn't tell me anything, that's for sure."

Klara could feel the furrow in her brow deepening the further Mr. Stark delved into this monologue. He had said barely ten words to her during their previous encounters, preferring instead to direct his thoughts and queries of interest to Dr. Banner. She wasn't quite sure what she should do at this juncture. Was he attempting jest? It was difficult to tell sometimes, his prolific use of irony and sarcasm made him a hard man to read.

"He's trying to apologize."

Alice's voice cut through Stark's ramblings like a laser-point. The girl looked up from her book and smiled at Klara.

"He's not very good at it," she explained, "But he's trying to apologize for offending you with his movie choice."

"I was not offended," Klara said, remembering only a few seconds after to direct her attention back to Mr. Stark, "Your thoughts and opinions are your own, and I do not fault you for them. It was quite clever, actually, to express them in such a manner."

"Passive-aggressive, you mean," Alice muttered, sipping her coffee.

"I wasn't expressing an opinion!" Mr. Stark insisted, glaring at Alice before returning his gaze to Klara, "Not about you, anyway. I mean, it is a great movie. But come on, you are way too hot to be Mr. Orange."

Klara blinked. Alice rolled her eyes.

"Really, Tony?"

"Well, it's true!"

"He really isn't very good at this, is he?" Klara asked.

Alice smirked and leaned back, coffee in hand. "No. No, he's not. But honestly, this is the best you're gonna get."

"Well, in that case-" Klara dipped a deep, respectful curtsy. "-Mr. Stark, I would like to accept your apology and to offer my own for falsely attributing thoughts to you that you may not have meant to express. Please, let us think no more on it during our continued acquaintance."

Tony Stark glanced around as if she might be speaking to someone else. Then he blinked at her for an awkward moment.

"So...we're good?" He gave her a tentative thumbs up. Klara smiled.

"Yes. We are good."

"Awesome!" he said, grinning delightedly, "Then you can take off your shirt, and we can get started!"

"Tony!" Alice snapped, as once again all Klara could do was stare.

"What he means is-" Dr. Banner said, speaking for the first time, but never taking his eyes from the screen, "-he and I are going to leave the room while Alice sets you up with some sensors to monitor your vitals and stats during normal daily activity."

"For which you will have to take off your shirt," Stark said, holding up a sheet of clear adhesive patches, "Is that not what I said?"

"Get out," Alice said, snatching the patches out of his hand and pointing to the door, "Before you do any more damage."

"Yes, Mom," Tony said, smirking and throwing a wink at Klara as he sauntered out of the room.

Klara watched him go, feeling...baffled. She turned back to see Dr. Banner shaking his head with a fond smile.

"Yeah, he's like that," he said, swiping the data off his screen and tucking his glasses up into his mop of curls, "Better get used to it."

He shoved his hands in his pockets and edged past her out of the room as well, air hissing as the door sealed behind him. Klara turned to Alice, who merely rolled her eyes and moved to tap on the screen the doctor had just vacated. The glass walls turned an opaque white all around, like being enclosed inside a giant egg.

"There," she said, "Privacy. Now you can remove your shirt."

Klara did as she was bid and stood very still as Alice carefully placed the thin plastic adhesive to her skin in various locations, her torso, her arms, one on her neck at a pulse point, one on the back of her hand, one at each temple. Finally, the girl stood back and surveyed her work with quick, thorough eyes, before nodding and stepping back to the screen.

"Alright," she said, after a series of taps and monitoring the readouts on the screen, "Try to...act normal for a second."

Klara furrowed her brow and felt the sensors crinkle at her temples.

"Act normal?"

"Yeah, you know, talk," Alice said, waving a hand as if to spur her on, "Like, I don't know, how was boxing with Steve?"

Klara straightened a bit and her face smoothed instantly. She started to clasp her hands behind her, hesitated, then remembered she was supposed to act 'normal' and followed through with the motion.

"It went well," she said, "He is very patient with me."

Alice nodded, though her eyes never left the screen.

"Yeah, he's a good guy." She gave the screen a few swipes. "A good guy who's had a couple of really shitty years. Just when he starts to think he's got things figured out, something else happens."

"You sound as if you've spoken with him," Klara said, curious despite herself.

"A little," Alice said, picking up the tablet Mr. Stark had left behind and tapping it a few times to bring the screen to life, "Not as much as you would think. He's been...busy. With stuff."

"Stuff?"

Alice looked up and considered her for a minute. Then she shook her head and dropped her gaze back to the tablet.

"Not my stuff to tell," she said, "But he likes you. He'll tell you in his own time."

Klara's brow furrowed deeply then, almost a frown.

"Likes me?"

"Sure," Alice said, her gaze flicking back and forth between the tablet and the screen.

"Forgive me, Alice, but I think the only Midgardian in this Tower who does more than tolerate me, is you."

Alice paused in the midst of making an adjustment on the large screen and stared at Klara.

"You really believe that, don't you?"

Klara dropped her gaze to her folded hands.

"It's quite alright," she said, "I'm not naive enough to believe that Clint Barton is the only one with...doubts."

There was a small pause and then she heard a few muted taps on the screens.

"Well, Steve likes you, whether you think so or not," Alice said, "And Bruce likes you too. And you're wearing Tony down. After all, you're helping with science. He can't help but like you for that alone."

She made a last flourish on the big screen and turned to face Klara, hands on her hips.

"Alright, that should do it. Everything feel good?"

Experimentally, Klara raised her arms and twisted her torso, testing the adhesive. It felt strange as it folded and stretched with her skin but then settled as soon as she relaxed with no adverse effects.

"I believe so," she said, inspecting the patch on the back of her hand. She could barely see the sheen of it against her skin. "I thought electricity required wires. I see nothing of that here."

"That's because the mesh is too fine," Alice assured her, "The actual sensors are minuscule, you're mostly seeing adhesive there. They'll monitor your heart rate, blood pressure, brain activity, breathing, hell when you swallow it'll know."

"And this is all necessary to help Dr. Banner?" Klara asked, skeptical.

"Well, it's necessary to understand you as best we can," Alice said, shrugging and handing Klara back her tunic, "And that might help Bruce, yes."

Klara pulled the tunic over her head and smoothed it down. "You are very knowledgeable about these things for one so young."

Alice rolled her eyes and keyed the glass to become transparent once more.

"That's what I'm doing all this damn studying for," she said, waving at the large book she had been pouring over, "Helping with stuff like this. I'll probably end up playing Avengers' school nurse most of the time, but I'm okay with that. At least it's useful."

Mr. Stark was in the room in less than a heartbeat, sliding in behind the transparent screen and taking the tablet smoothly from Alice's outstretched hand.

"You ran the calibrations?" he asked, all business, his eyes following the streams of data on the dual screens with astonishing quickness.

"Yes," Alice said, with exaggerated patience, "Everything is within one-hundredth of a percentile. Just like you told me."

"And nothing was loose?" he asked, "Nothing stuck out, nothing that might give a false positive or-?"

"Nope," Alice said, her arms crossing with a small smile, "All present and accounted for. She even ran a movement test."

"Good," Stark said absently, still paging through data, "Good."

Dr. Banner had entered the room as well and was leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, watching Alice with a look that could only be interpreted as pure pride and adoration. It was so naked on his features that Klara felt the need to avert her eyes.

"Is there...anything else?" she asked, feeling as if she should be patient, but also awkward and out of place.

"Nope," Mr. Stark said, his eyes never leaving the screen, "Go about your day as usual. If anything comes loose or feels weird let us know, but other than that, you should be good."

Klara dipped her head and left as quietly as she could. She doubted anyone even noticed.

Alice settled onto the couch next to Bruce in the lounge, resting her chin on his shoulder. The sun was coloring the evening sky in orange and purple along the glittering tops of the Manhattan skyline, and it was one of those increasingly rare moments when they were completely alone. Klara was back in the gym with Steve, Thor and Tony were both on long-overdue check-in calls with their respective girlfriends, and Nat was nowhere to be found. Alice watched the data scrolling across the tablet in Bruce's hand for a minute but didn't really comprehend any of the information she was seeing.

"So," she said, "Do I get my favorite scientist all to myself tonight? No pending experiments or world-changing breakthroughs?"

He glanced up at her over his glasses, a tiny smirk touching the corners of his lips.

"I guess that depends on what you had in mind."

Alice leaned forward and kissed him in answer.

"I guess you had a good day?" Bruce said, powering down his tablet and settling back on the couch cushions with her.

"I did, actually," Alice said, snuggling down into his arms, "Tony and I took the quinjet for a spin around Lady Liberty, we got to wave at some tourists so that was fun."

"I'm glad," Bruce said, pressing a kiss to her temple, "You deserve to have more good days."

"We all do," Alice agreed, a niggling little thought working its way back to the front of her mind, "Klara doesn't think we like her."

Bruce sighed and tightened his arms around her.

"Time, Alice," he whispered into her hair, "Give it time."

He was right. Alice knew he was right. But that night Alice dreamed, not of gods and monsters, but of blood shining in the moonlight and screams in the dark, an old familiar nightmare. And as she lay awake, shaking and gripping her wrist so tightly it hurt, she couldn't help remembering that time did not always wait. She was always running out of time.