Bruce knows that the moment Tony finds out, he'll put the pieces of the puzzle together. As perhaps one of the smartest men on the planet, it doesn't take much deduction to understand what's happened here. Bruce and Pepper let Lee go. It explains Bruce's twitchy, uncomfortable behavior while in Tony's presence this morning. The shut-down of JARVIS. Pepper's early departure. It all makes sense. And, so, it comes as no surprise to Bruce when the man in question storms into the lab, where Bruce is currently working, with the erratic energy of a raging bull during Pamplona. Tony wastes no time; there's no mincing of words. He simply slams through the door and bats a few empty beakers off of the nearest experimentation table with a careless, angry paw. They shatter against the floor and Tony's boots crush the glass into dust as he walks across the destroyed fragments.

"What the fuck?" He roars, his voice shaking the walls.

Bruce looks up from his work, trying with all of his might to contain the shaking that has begun to wrack his hands. Around him, the air cracks and fizzles with an unnamed force of electricity, humming and buzzing in his ears until he hears everything as if he's listening from underwater.

"What?" Bruce asks, refusing to raise his voice, retreating into some place deep within him where peace has settled in for the long haul.

Bruce has spent the last sixteen hours preparing for the inevitability, preparing for Tony to unleash the wrath of an angry god upon him, and now that it's finally happening in real time, Bruce must only imagine the look of defensive helplessness that he saw in Lee's eyes to renew his battlements against Tony's attacks.

"Did you know that Lee left?" Tony asks, knowing fully the answer to that question before he even thinks to ask it.

If the moment weren't so tense, Tony might have laughed at how close he and Bruce are; Tony wants to give his friend no room to evade this questioning, no room to back away from the discussion, so he hovers over his friend predatorily, looking at him with the most enflamed eyes Bruce has ever seen in his life. This look wouldn't kill; it would vaporize. It would disintegrate its recipient where he stands, leaving no trace of his existence, much less his demise. Bruce shrugs and tears his eyes away from his friend's stare, serene as ever.

"Well, I-" He begins.

Tony just wants a simple answer. No bullshit. Just simplicity. Just an admission of what he believes, without much introspection or rational thought, to be one of the most cutting and harsh betrayals he has ever endured at the hand of someone he calls friend.

"Did you know?" Tony spits, separating each world with a universe of lashing silence in such a way that it leaves no room for misinterpretation or diversion.

Gravity weighs in Bruce's eyes, but not guilt, which sends Tony reeling. Bruce believes that he's done nothing wrong at all, while Tony sees the events of the last few hours and Bruce's involvement in them nothing short of a massive transgression. His pulse is pounding against his weathered skin, like the blood itself is yearning to spring from his body and fight Banner itself.

"I was there when Pepper cut her check," Bruce confesses before continuing, "We tried to get her to stay-"

The small fragment of a sentence that Bruce managed to get out before being cut off once again isn't a defense of himself or Pepper. Instead, it's an impassioned explanation of Lee's desire to leave. If not even Bruce and Pepper could convince her to stay, surely there was nothing to be done to keep her in this massive cage that Tony and S.H.I.E.L.D. have constructed for her. Tony huffs air from his nose, loud and frustrated like a struggling steam engine. Pepper. Of course Pepper was in on this too. Another sting of betrayal pinpoints, shoots, and ricochets around his chest.

"But you let her go?" He questions, not backing away, even in the face of serenity that is Bruce Banner.

If Lee's presence in his life has taught him anything, it is that everything is a choice. Everything. And perhaps Tony's greatest flaw, as far as Bruce is concerned, is that he has worked with things and ideas for so much of his life that he's only learned to treat people in the same way, as if they're things and ideas to be manipulated and controlled and bent and molded to one's will. And humans, especially not one like Lee, aren't programmed to function that way.

"She's a person, Tony. She makes her own decisions," Bruce responds cooly, "We don't let her do anything."

It's supposed to be a reminder, a lesson that Tony should know somewhere inside that categorically selfish brain of his, but has forgotten along the way. The reminder, however, is lost on him, and he merely continues on his incredulous line of questioning, as if he's shocked that people would think he wants nothing to do with the daughter he's been so keen on telling everyone he wants nothing to do with.

"You didn't think to ask me about it first?" Tony asks.

For this first time in this conversation, Bruce feels the slightest itch of annoyance and injustice scratching at his veins, and it reflects in the clawing of his words as they struggle to escape his throat.

"You wanted us to ask permission to follow through on a contract that you proposed?" He replies, furrowing his brow in incredulity.

After all, as Lee was so quick to point out, her leaving was actually a contractual obligation. Legally speaking, there was little Bruce or Pepper could have done to prevent her leaving at all. Bruce doesn't agree with Lee's decision to leave, to run away. But he will defend her right to make that choice to anyone who dares to go toe-to-toe with him on the subject. Of course, he fears for her so far away from where she can be watched. In Boston, there's no one to look after her, whereas here there is no shortage of agents and fallout shelters to protect her from whatever is coming their way soon. But... It isn't Lee's life that he worries about, not really. Bruce worries about her soul, and has done since perhaps the moment he met her.

"You didn't ask my permission because you knew I would say no," Tony fumes.

Bruce knows that there is no way of getting it through the other man's mind. Tony could never understand that Lee couldn't make herself stay here, not anymore. In her eyes, Bruce saw all of the guilt, all of the pain, and all of the hurt she learned to hide so brilliantly. Another trait she shares with her father. And even though there is no hope for Tony's understanding of the situation, of any sort of empathy that could lead him to accept his daughter's evacuation from pain, Bruce tries anyway. Eyes softening, he puts a hand on Tony's shoulder and attempts to get through to him.

"She didn't want to stay," Bruce implores.

Tony shrugs out of Bruce's grasp and points his finger in the other man's face, the veins in his throat bulging, portraying the distress he's fighting to keep hidden in the bottom of his stomach. His chest heaves with the effort it's taking to breath as his mind plays images of his daughter being stolen off of some city street by a mad man called the Taskmaster. It's the stuff of nightmares, distressing and painful and sure to keep him up at night. What a time to develop a paternal instinct.

"There was no safer place for her than right here and you know it!" Tony shouts through gritted teeth.

Rolling his eyes, Bruce wonders why he is engaging in this conversation at all. After all, Lee certainly needs no defending, just as Tony deserves no explanation. This is all just emotions running high, feelings getting the better of him. Or, maybe, he knows that if he were to wake up one morning and find that his daughter had just vanished into the night and that his best friend and partner had helped her run away, he would want someone to talk some sense into him, however futile the effort may seem.

"She's already on her way to Boston. She seems pretty safe to me," Bruce says.

The girl will be miles away from New York City, where the conflict is supposed to be centered. If all goes according to the plan, this Task Master should be done with in a few hours' time, and the city should be safe. Lee going away, just as Pepper went away, should be nothing short of safe. Tony, however, isn't convinced; a man hardly can be when he's inconsolable.

"We have no idea what's going to happen in the next few days. Boston may not be safe. If she would have stayed here, we could have at least looked after her."

Bruce scoffs and shakes his head in abject disappointment, returning his attention back to the experiment awaiting him at his lab desk. Tony hasn't looked after Lee since the moment she was born. He left her, and the only time he paid her any mind was when she could be used to his advantage, and hardly even then. This sudden rush to question Lee's departure makes Bruce sick to his stomach. The man cannot just pick and choose when to care for and love another human being, certainly not when that human being is his daughter. Bruce cannot stand it.

"What a time to start being a father," he mumbles under his breath, thinking that maybe Tony won't hear him.

His hope is in vain, however, and Tony, unable to stop himself, picks up the nearest voltage cylinder and throws it against the wall, feeling none of the relief he hoped he would get when it explodes into a thousand pieces against the paint.

"Fuck you," He screams, staring at his friend with shuttering breath.

For a moment, they remain just like that. Shattered glass against the floor, eyes locked, air thick and tense. Bruce opens his mouth to quietly ask his friend what it is, exactly, that he thinks he's doing, but they are interrupted by a uniformed S.H.I.E.L.D. agent bursting through the door to the laboratory.

"Mr. Stark?" The young woman asks.

"What?" Tony cries, turning around with a fiery expression.

The agent cowers under the harsh gaze of her superior, but clears her throat and soldiers on anyway.

"Peter Parker is in training and I think you want to keep an eye on him. He's starting to look a little..." She trails off, searching for the word that might properly and politely express the look in Spider-Man's eyes, "crazed."

Tony looks between Bruce, who has gone and collected a broom so he can sweep up the mess of shattered beakers that Tony has left in his wake and the woman waiting in the S.H.I.E.L.D. jumpsuit. He releases a long sigh before motioning for her to lead the way.

"Fine," he concedes before following her out of the door, leaving a quiet Bruce in his wake.

In the training center, there is a particularly heavy, faceless dummy. Dense as a moon rock and immovable as a stone wall, it hangs from the ceiling with imposing solidity, as if it's staring down on any who would dare defy its silent command to remain a safe distance away. When Peter walked into training this morning, it is this dummy that he chooses to spar with. He doesn't tape his knuckles to keep them from blistering; he wants to feel the unfettered skin of his hands break and bleed from the impact. He doesn't turn down his music even a notch below its loudest volume; he wants the pain of a headache that will pound his skull in time with the music. He doesn't take a break from the moment he walked into this room; to black out from exhaustion would be sweet, sweet relief from the pain he's enduring at this moment. This is his punishment; this pain is his penance. And with every strike against the dummy, he can almost imagine that he's striking himself, throwing punches into his own flesh for the stupid mistakes he made with the best thing ever to happen to him as words fly through his mind. Don't make the same mistake twice, Gwen said. This is your life, Peter, Lee said.

If you disappeared, I'd search until I found you again, Peter said.

An empty promise that now claws against the inside of his chest, desperately ripping out pieces of his flesh in attempts to gain some control of his motions, as if trying to reach his mind and command him to move away from the dummy and out into the streets where he could find her. But he can't. He knows he can't.

So he boxes against what feels like a lead brick in the guise of a punching bag and does his time in guilt-ridden solitary confinement, with no company but his own tortuous thoughts and his own collapsed city of pain which rests in piles of rubble around his soul.

He does not even realize that salty tears are mixing with the sweat of his face.

Nor does he hear a voice calling to him from the doorway.

"Peter," the voice shouts.

But the young man is thinking about that moment, playing it on repeat. Thinking of the moment when he opened his eyes to nothing but an empty bed where only a few hours before he was kissing the woman he loves. Emptiness. Amazing how something so vacant can leave him so full. The flesh of his hands bleed freely now, leaving track marks on the fading tan punching bag with every painful strike he throws at it. The music from his headphones and the memories from his mind consume him.

"Peter," the voice calls again, drowned out by the multitude of other sounds dominating Peter's world.

How can something hurt so much? And how could he have done this? That's the thing that really gets to the young man. Not the vision of the empty bed or her disappearing without a word. It's the fact that Peter believes it is all his fault. If only he had proved himself stronger, if only he hadn't shown that moment of weakness where he doubted himself...If he had convinced her that there was nothing to fear, she wouldn't have run away. He scared her off, and now he's left with nothing. Now, he has no one.

The headphones are ripped from Peter's ears and a voice pulls him from his sparring.

"Peter."

Turning toward the source of the distraction, Peter furrows his brows in anger at the sudden interruption, especially at the sight of Tony being the one to have pulled the music from his ears.

"What?" Peter growls, before turning back to his punching bag, disinterested in anything that Tony might have to think or say.

As far as the young man is concerned, the older man has no reason to intervene, no reason to return to torment him after the situation on the terrace. Peter isn't in the mood for being made fun of or called names. He just wants to return to his training, since this morning Fury made it absolutely clear that Peter will not be allowed to leave the facility until after Task Master is put under control. After all, Fury reminded him, there are three agents currently looking over Aunt May. It would surely be a shame if something were to happen to that detail. So, Peter is stuck here fighting a war he isn't a part of and killing himself over losing the one thing that made it all worthwhile.

"You've got to calm down," Tony says, reaching out to pull Peter away from the poor dummy taking the young man's punches.

Peter dances out of Tony's reach, grinding his teeth together and his words escape him. This promise he made, this promise he can no longer keep, is the only thing on his mind.

"I promised her I'd go and look for her," he mutters.

"What?" Tony barks.

At this point, Peter is talking more to himself than to Tony, verbalizing his pain.

"I said that if she was ever lost, I'd find her again," Peter clarifies.

Tony knows that speaking to Peter isn't going to get them anywhere. Waiting for the moment just before Peter's fists hit the bag, Tony wraps his arms around it and pulls it away, holding it just out of Peter's reach, sending the young man staggering for a moment. Peter looks up at the other man, struggling to catch his breath, holding up his hands as if to ask what the hell he did that for. Tony struggles to articulate every single word, his eyes portraying just how serious he is.

"She isn't lost, Peter. She left. And you've made a promise to be here. Will you stop beating the shit out of this thing? What's it ever done to you?" He scolds, scoffing at the young man with bleeding hands.

With no place to throw his energy, nothing to punish or to punish him, Peter is forced to simply stand there under Tony's intense stare and breathe. Nothing but breathe and stare at the blood staining his knuckles. For a moment, he comes to his senses, and breathes normally again. Blinking to clear his mind, Peter just lets the image of those red wounds on his hands burn their way into his mind. A metaphor for the destruction he's caused. A physicalization of the pain threatening to destroy him from the inside out. There's a ringing in his head that quiets the sounds of the room around him.

"Sorry," he chokes out, not sure who he is saying it to, "I'm sorry."

Tony clears his throat and attempts to continue with some level of dignity, unsure of how exactly to approach the existential, pain-ridden Spider-Man.

"The best thing you can do right now is fight for this city," he says, regurgitating exactly what he knows Fury would want him to say, the thing he thinks will make Peter concede to his point of view.

Peter, however, is smarter than that. Now the ache in his bones makes him a little wiser, see the world a little clearer, and it makes him understand the flimsiness of that suggestion. The young man does not cease staring at his bloody hands.

"Do you actually believe that?" Peter asks.

Tony clucks a laugh. This kid is smarter than he gave him credit for.

"No."

Peter sighs dejectedly.

"At least someone's honest around here."

Pepper Potts has a secret. Well, many, many secrets. But today, she has two. Two that are resting on her chest like elephants sitting against her breastbone. Two secrets that Tony would hate her for.

But Lee doesn't know that. She doesn't know that yet, anyway. For the moment, she's just driving in a bus down the Eastern seaboard, staring at the trees passing from the window in a massive, impressionistic blur. The music selected from her headphones drown out all of the thoughts in her head, and it's almost as if she is nothing but this moment. No past, no future. Just this moment of a being in a bus, surrounded by an earth of painted skyline. That is, until the thoughts of MIT fill her head once more. Her hands reach blindly in her bag as her forehead remains on rested on the cool pane of the window. When her hand grabs for the MIT brochures, it touches something foreign. Narrowing her eyes and pushing away from the window, Lee fishes out the odd object and holds it up to her eyes. An envelope. It's an envelope with her name on it, and the Stark Industries watermark embossed on the back.

The young woman's heart sinks to her stomach as the thought crosses her mind that maybe her father wrote her a note. But the handwriting on the front is distinctive. It's a letter from Pepper. How the woman managed to get the envelope into Lee's bag before she left, Lee will never know, but she stares at it all the same. This is Pepper's first secret. A secret letter for Lee. The young woman thinks about ripping it up, about tearing it to bits and throwing it out of the window and letting it get eaten by the wind.

Something inside her tells her not to do that, though. So, Lee fills her lungs with air and slides her finger into the flap of the envelope, revealing a small "From the Desk of Pepper Potts" leaf of paper. Lee's eyes adjust to the small, lithe handwriting for a moment, then allows the woman's words to wash over her, building up her defenses so she will show no emotion to the other passengers on the bus.

Dear Lee,

A few months ago, a week before you visited your father for the first time, you'll remember receiving a letter in the mail. A letter typed and signed on his behalf about wanting to meet you. The letter that brought you to our front door. I guess by now that you've realized Tony didn't write that letter after all. JARVIS revealed to me your existence. After the events of Loki's incursion and the entire Mandarin situation, I felt that Tony needed grounding. He needed a family. I think now I know that, while he may have needed a family, while he may have needed you in his life, he wasn't ready for a family. And you, unfortunately, now have the scars to prove how careless he has been. I don't say any of this to excuse his behavior or to guilt you into coming back to New York. I only say this to apologize for dragging you into a situation that has only caused you pain, and to implore you not to give up on your father. It's my hope, my only hope, really, that one day you'll find it in your heart to forgive him. And that one day we'll all learn to be the family we might have been.

Best of luck at MIT. And call Bruce every once in a while, alright? Only ten minutes gone and he's like a lost puppy without you.

Yours,

Pepper Potts.

And so, there's the second secret. It was Pepper who tried to connect Lee and Tony. It was her idea all along.

Lee holds the letter in her trembling hands, letting it weigh heavier than an axe. Perhaps, she could be angry, or sad, or self-pitying or relieved or happy. But instead, Lee feels nothing. She feels empty.

Just empty.

Which might just be the saddest feeling in the world.

Lee is only just registering what it feels to be empty when the sky darkens above her. As if the day turned to night in the middle of the day. Lee's stomach drops, and she recognizes the faint haze of smoke from the videos S.H.I.E.L.D. once showed her of The Task Master.

And just at that moment, the once solid asphalt highway the bus is traveling down begins to tear right down the middle, as if the thread is ripped from a seam, and the bus itself begins to shake.

Oh, goodness! It looks like the Task Master has found Lee! I cannot wait to hear what you guys think about this chapter! Thank you so much for the 225 reviews so far! (oh my GOSH) I'm hoping we can get to 300 before the story ends in about five chapters! That would be amazing! Anyway, I cannot wait to hear your thoughts about this chapter! Happy Thursday! Also, if you ever talk about this story on tumblr, rec this story on tumblr, etc, please tag me! My username is juniorstarcatcherfiction!