15. Flight and Fight
"ETA in Pakistan, seventeen hundred thirty-eight," Clint announced from the cockpit as he piloted the quinjet off the Tower landing bay. "In other words, anyone needs a nap, you got about three hours."
Although she'd pulled an all-nighter and was likely to again tonight, Natasha knew she wouldn't so much as doze on the flight. She'd been keyed up since Thor exploded onto the party scene in a way that took arriving fashionably late to a whole new stratosphere.
Not wanting to alert the guests to the fact that the Avengers were assembling in their very midst, they'd left Rhodey and Wilson in charge of the fireworks, which they could see from the floor-to-ceiling windows of their conference room while Maria Hill relayed her intel. With each boom and blast of glittering color, Natasha's pulse accelerated and her adrenaline surged. As much as she'd come to enjoy her furlough, she was ready to get back to work.
Clint felt the same way, she knew. He had a personal score to settle with the scepter, as did Thor. She watched the roll of his knuckles as he flexed his fingers around Mjolnir, like the churn of white-capped waves in the sea. The storm that brewed in his eyes was mirrored in Steve's, who was brooding about his own unfinished business with Hydra. In the cockpit with Clint, Tony had his usual manic energy.
"Are we there yet?"
"Am I landing the jet?" Clint replied. "Are we getting out of it? No? Then we're not there."
"But I have to go potty," Tony whined.
"Told you not to drink that Big Gulp."
"Damn. You're good at this, Barton. Ever thought about having kids?"
If Tony only knew. But how could he, with Clint's blank expression and neutral tone?
"How 'bout we play the quiet game?"
"I'm in," Bruce spoke for the first time since boarding the quinjet.
"Bruce loses!" Tony announced.
"Nothing new there," Bruce muttered, then leaned his head against the back of his seat and closed his eyes.
Despite his relaxed appearance, Natasha read the subtler signs that he wasn't. His brows twitched, lines flickering across his forehead and around his eyes and lips. He wasn't tripping all over his words as he had on the flight from Kolkata to the helicarrier or, more recently, on the chopper to the Fridge with Colonel Talbot-who'd just been promoted to Brigadier General. That meant Bruce was more or less at ease with the team, even if the mission itself put him on edge. Which was a valid feeling, considering their destination.
"Your mission, should you choose to accept it," Maria had said, "is a heroin lab in the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa-"
"Um, I hate to be that guy-" Tony interjected, only to be cut off by Steve.
"Do you? Really?"
Tony had given Earth's mightiest eyeroll. "Okay, fine. No more false modesty. I doubt I'm the only one thinking drug rings, while very bad, not really Avengers-level stuff."
"They are when the lab's a front for a hydra research facility." Maria's reply effectively shut them up.
There drugs that came out of this lab had a potential connection with a product found in Hell's Kitchen a year or so earlier and traced to a Chinese drug and human trafficking ring. What put it on her source's radar instead of just leaving it for the DEA to deal with was behavior not typically associated with opiate users. Mind control. Special abilities. It was their most promising lead on the scepter.
Apart from a few questions about the specs on the lab and its product, Bruce hadn't said much during the meeting. He hadn't voiced any misgivings, although Natasha knew better than to think his silence meant he didn't have any. She watched him now, and thought as she had on the helicarrier how out of place he looked, wearing his regular slightly disheveled button-down and slacks and glasses while everyone else was suited up. It didn't help matters that he sat by himself.
Feeling Steve's eyes on her, she unstrapped herself and crossed the bay to Bruce.
"Excuse me, mister," she drawled. "This seat taken?"
"Romanoff loses, too!" Tony announced cheerfully from up front as Bruce blinked up at her.
"I sure have heard a lot of talking from you," Steve said.
"Not talking, judging. Someone always has to judge the quiet game."
"I thought Barton was judging."
"You people?" Clint said. "Not a minute goes by that I don't."
Thor looked desperately like he wanted to speak, but he kept his lips pressed together.
"Welcome to the losers' corner," Bruce said to Natasha, gesturing to the empty seat beside him. "Although that doesn't seem like a word that could ever apply to you."
He glanced away, ruffling his hair, so he missed the smile Natasha couldn't stop forming as she thought of him calling her the cool one. With a shock, she realized it had only been a few hours ago that they were in Central Park together, wearing matching t-shirts like a couple of dorks.
"You weren't sleeping, were you?" she asked as she lowered herself into the seat, even though she knew he hadn't been.
"No, just…trying to remember my Urdu. In case I need it. Not that the Other Guy's big on speaking in any language."
"How do you say smash in Urdu?"
The muscle flickered beneath his cheekbone as he tensed his jaw, shadowed with a growth of salt and pepper stubble. "Can't say that's one I hope to learn."
"It's going to be fine, Bruce."
His eyes snapped up to meet hers, darkening with his intensity. "I don't know how you can say that. You've seen the Other Guy be pretty much the opposite of fine."
Although he didn't say it out loud, she could hear him ticking through a mental checklist of the Hulk's rampages: Culver. Harlem. The helicarrier. And those were just the ones she'd witnessed.
A slight smile cracked across his face, brittle as his voice. "I guess it's fitting we're headed to Pakistan. I broke a long streak there, too."
"And saved a village from bandits, according to your file."
"Which might have been written by Hydra agents."
Natasha had too much training in self-control to react; if she'd had less, she might have inhaled sharply, or flinched, stung. Apparently something gave her away, though, because Bruce hunched forward in his seat, raking both hands through his hair as he huffed out his breath.
"Sorry. It's just…I'd prefer to know who I'm working for."
Natasha appreciated that- to such a degree, in fact, that she'd cornered Maria after the mission briefing to give her the third degree about her source. Maria, however, remained tight-lipped. "Believe me, Natasha, if I could tell you, I would. You just have to trust me on this one."
"I trust Maria," she said.
Bruce nodded against the headrest but didn't look her in the eye. Something inside of Natasha buckled. He'd been so open with her earlier, about his childhood…about Betty… She thought he'd begun to trust her. One step forward, two steps back, as they said.
Or maybe this was just reality, reminding her of who they were and what they did, before she got too comfortable with the idea that she could have anything else.
"So does Cap," she said, a little louder, glancing across the jet where Steve had been watching them the whole time, unable to help but overhear their conversation.
"Believe me," he said in his rousing Captain America voice, "I'd like to know where Hill got her intel just as much as you. But if we have a chance to get that scepter out of Hydra's hands, and cut off one of their heads while we're at it, we don't have any choice but to take it."
Bruce nodded again, but still looked unconvinced.
"I promise," Steve went on, "we won't call for a Code Green unless it's absolutely necessary. We need you in there, scanning for the scepter's energy signature. And who knows what kind of chemicals we'll find in this lab. Your expertise will be invaluable."
"Romanoff's trained him," Tony added, "so I expect to see him in a catsuit doing ninja moves."
"Are we picturing Banner in the catsuit, or the Big Guy?" Clint asked.
"Both images are equally horrible and not ones I ever wanted to have in my brain." Bruce's voice was heavy with defeat, but Natasha thought she saw a glimmer in his eye as she caught his gaze and smiled.
"WILL NO ONE DECLARE ME VICTOR OF THIS GAME OF QUIET?"
At Thor's outburst, everyone snapped their heads to stare, except for Natasha and Bruce, who continued to look at each other. Now the amusement was unmistakable as his eyes, which had rounded in surprise, relaxed, the laugh lines appearing at the corners as his mouth twitched.
"Thor Odinson," Natasha said, turning a little reluctantly from Bruce, her deadpan easily mistakable for solemnity, "you slayed the quiet game."
He flashed his glorious grin. "So shall we vanquish our many-headed foes and retrieve Loki's scepter."
The heroin-slash-Hydra lab was hidden-unsurprisingly-in a network of caves in the Hindu Kush mountains. Actually, they weren't caves so much as ancient lapis lazuli mines that had long since ceased to produce gems. The quinjet flew into the area in stealth mode to avoid the inevitable barrage of machine gun fire which would trigger an inevitable Hulkout. "Which would be one way to take out Hydra," Bruce remarked.
"But not the elegant way," Tony countered.
"I'm sure Agent Hill and her source would prefer the Avengers avoid an international incident," Steve added.
"Better make that intergalactic," Bruce attempted to joke, noting the scowl that crossed Thor's features at the mention of elegance. His fighting style wasn't actually words away from the Other Guy's. Not that Bruce found that reassuring.
Tense as he was about the mission and the likelihood of starting an international incident whether SHIELD and the rest of the Avengers wanted to or not, he noted that the nearer they came to their target in the Kowkcheh Valley, it was Tony's heart rate and blood pressure that peaked higher on the vital monitors. Bruce felt his forehead furrow in a mirror of Pepper's expression before they left New York, when she learned where Maria was sending them. "At least it's not Afghanistan," Tony had said with a shrug.
Pepper nodded, putting on a brave front for him, but even she knew it may as well have been; the mountain pass where Clint landed the quinjet had served the US' invasion of Afghanistan, of which nearby roads, badly in disrepair, still bore testimony as the dust settled.
Tony's role in that conflict wasn't lost on Bruce. The instability of the region after the fall of the Taliban provided the ideal environment for another terrorist organization to thrive beneath the infertile ground, which just happened to be the next generation of the very evil Steve had fought. A vicious circle of war in which Bruce now found himself caught. And he the resident pacifist.
His own vitals spiked on the monitor, and he drew deep breaths to calm himself. After a moment, he noticed he'd matched the tempo of his breathing with the steady blip of Natasha's pulse. He turned to find her watching him with an unblinking gaze and a slight smile.
The plan-if this went according to plan-was for the two of them to wait in the plane while the other four took out the artillery hidden in the rocky hillside and secure the base. At Cap's signal, Natasha would escort Bruce in. Although she hadn't objected to the battle plan, Bruce couldn't help but wonder whether she wouldn't prefer to be on the ground, with Clint-STRIKE Team: Delta, he remembered the old SHIELD footage-than be stuck here as a glorified bodyguard.
Or worse, babysitter.
"JARVIS," asked Tony, coming into the rear of the plane, eyes flickering briefly to the vital stat displays, "you got the scans of the base?"
"Yes, Mr. Stark. You will, of course, have limited visual from your suit, but Dr. Banner and Ms. Romanoff will have the full schematic here on the computers."
"So make sure your comms are open at all times," Steve said, slipping into leader mode as easily as if it were a well-tailored pair of trousers. "We've got about an hour of daylight left, and I'd prefer not to have to navigate this terrain in the dark."
"I think that's something we can all agree on," Natasha said, and Bruce nodded emphatically.
Tony's mask encased his face, and his voice sounded robotic over the comms. "Then let's go break bad. Guys."
"Is that a reference to the meth show?" Steve asked, strapping on his shield.
Tony turned back at the bay doors. "Mmm. I thought it was apropos, seeing as it ends shooting up a Nazi drug ring."
Steve heaved an extremely put-upon sigh. "I was gonna say no spoilers, but…"
Thor gave him a commiserating clap on the shoulder as they fell into step behind Tony. "Jane's friend Darcy shared the passwords to her Netflix and Amazon accounts with me so I might be entertained when Jane is out of her flat and gain a better grasp of your cultural references. Do any of you watch Vikings?"
Bruce decided this must be the Avengers' own weird version of watercooler talk.
"Ah, Vikings…" Clint chuckled. "Or as I call it, Game of Thrones Lite."
"I also enjoy Game of Thrones!" boomed Thor, cape swirling as he wheeled to Clint. "Who do you wish to sit the Iron Throne?"
Their voices trailed away as they disembarked the quinjet; the quiet they left in their wake rang in Bruce's ears. He was about to ask whether Natasha watched Game of Thrones or Vikings, just to break the silence, but thankfully she spared him that moment of idiocy by speaking first.
"Kinda pretty out there." She indicated the screen with a jerk of her chin, where they got an aerial view of their teammates splitting off into the scrubby landscape as Iron Man took flight.
Bruce shambled alongside her, taking his glasses out of his shirt pocket and putting them on. "I thought so, when I lived here. Especially this time of day, when the sun gets low behind the mountain."
Natasha started to respond, but the sudden snare drum roll of machine gun fire interrupted the conversation. Bruce jolted, heart hammering in his chest and pulse points. On the monitor, he saw Natasha's heartbeat accelerate slightly, but her fingers curled around his wrist, and she spoke to him in a tone that didn't sound the least bit rattled.
"An hour, Bruce, then we'll be flying off into the sunset. Or walking, if Cap'll let us take a moment to enjoy the landscape."
"Join the Avengers, see the world."
They didn't talk any more after that, the comms coming alive with chatter, screens displaying the visuals from Tony's suit. Bruce couldn't watch, nauseated by the abruptly swooping, swerving angles-he'd never done well on rollercoasters-especially in combination with the headache that developed from the audio and the increasingly present rumble of the Other Guy in his mind, wanting to get in on the action.
"Is that Hydra?" he asked, taking off his glasses again to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I mean, the people we're fighting out there…They are Hydra agents? Right?"
When Natasha didn't respond, he looked up. Her expression was obscured by the curls falling in her face as she hunched over the screens, but he saw rigid set of her shoulders, the way she folded one arm across herself and chewed the thumbnail of her other hand. She hadn't put on her gauntlets yet.
"Nat?"
She glanced sideways at him, mouth giving that wry twist. "Well…they're not wearing skull and tentacle armbands."
Even the single snort of a laugh he gave relieved his tension somewhat-though only for a second. Natasha turned back to the action, voice serious again. "They look local. But if they're not Hydra, they sure are wasting a lot of ammo defending a Hydra base."
"Yeah, but they may not have a choice," Bruce argued. "Hill mentioned mind control."
"They're still producing heroin-"
"Banner, Romanoff." Steve's voice crackled over the comms. "Do you read me?"
"Roger, Rogers."
Natasha threw another smirk Bruce's way. He didn't return it, feeling paralyzed as his ears registered that they were no longer picking up the sounds of artillery and laser blasts and the battle chatter of the team. Then his heart jump-started in his chest.
"You're up to bat."
"Stepping up to the plate." Grabbing her gauntlets, she tugged them on, powered up the widow's bites with a flex of her fingers, the glow reflected in her eyes. "Let's go, Big Guy."
Part of him-a big part of him-liked that, if Bruce's lack of hesitation in following her to the bay doors of the jet was any indication. He did turn back as they creaked open, admitting dust and the hazy remains of daylight, but only to take his glasses out of his pocket and place them on one of the work stations.
"Just in case," he answered in response to Natasha's raised eyebrow. "I'd hate to be without, afterward, and I actually like that pair."
He almost wished he'd kept them on as they disembarked the quinjet and he had to squint against the dust that immediately swirled into his eyes.
"Stark's scanning for additional gunmen," Cap said as he and Thor strode up to meet them, shield and hammer brandished, and Bruce glanced up to see Tony flying low over the rocky hillside, "but we think we've cleared the perimeter. Barton's staked out on sniper duty in case the cavalry show up. Ready?"
"As I'll ever be."
Bruce felt woefully out of place with them as he trudged up the ragged terrain, unarmed and unarmored. He didn't even have proper shoes for this kind of thing. If this was going to be a habit, he'd have to do something about that.
They passed several bodies of gunmen, and he tried not to look, like the other three-with the exception of Natasha, who stopped to check their weapons were emptied of ammunition, or to lift a knife or a gun for herself-but he couldn't help himself. The only thing that allowed him to check impulse to drop down beside them and stop the blood flow was the fact that Clint's arrows seldom struck non-fatal areas, unless he wanted them to. Which in this case, he didn't.
When they reached the entrance to the mine, Bruce was almost relieved, until Thor broke through the iron door with one swing of Mjolnir and the low narrow shafts confronted him with what a terrible place this would be for the Other Guy to make an appearance. The light of sporadically placed lanterns revealed that at least Hydra had replaced the old timber ceiling struts that with metal. He leaned in for a closer look.
"Well what do you know." He huffed out a dry chuckle, and the others turned to look at him. He ran his hand over a beam. "Vibranium. Almost like they prepared for the eventuality of a Hulkout. Or tried to. It's cute."
The Vibranium might give everyone just enough time to escape before the whole mountain came down on top of them.
"It's cute that Stark's influence makes you think everything's about you," Natasha said as they resumed their deeper trek into the mine. "Maybe they have a Big Guy of their own."
"Thanks. That makes me feel a lot better."
"I try."
"Agent Hill did mention effects not typically associated with this heroin," Thor said, as though not entirely confident of the word. "Stark described it to me-"
"Of course he did," Steve mumbled.
Bruce leaned toward Natasha. "I guess this wouldn't be the ideal moment to mention the time Tony showed up at the Tower with a not insubstantial amount of pot."
"What?" She shoved his shoulder, almost pushing him into a wall. "And you didn't invite me?"
"Sorry. Maybe next time."
"Your heroin sounds rather like a substance we have on Asgard," Thor went on. "Only much less potent, of course. Our version would no doubt be lethal to humans-"
"Let's cut the chit-chat," said Cap, and Bruce drew back from Natasha to see they were approaching a branch in the tunnel. "Banner, you got JARVIS' schematic?"
He fumbled with the clasp of his leather shoulder bag, rifed through it for a tablet. He pulled up the scan they'd made when the quinjet flew over, holding it closer than normal due to the lack of glasses. Even so, he appreciated having something to do that made him feel slightly more like he was contributing to this mission.
"Yeah….Looks like we're picking up some interesting energy levels from the tunnel on the left."
They took that path, Cap ordering Thor to stay behind in case anyone-or anything-came out of the right. At first it was identical to the tunnel that led them to it, but gradually widened, and lightened, the lanterns replaced with fluorescent tube lights which reflected on the tiles and stainless steel that covered the floor and walls, more like a subway than a mine. Slightly less creepy to Bruce in terms of aesthetics, but still a confined space.
"Hey," Tony's voice crackled suddenly in their earpieces. "You guys gonna be much longer? It's just, Barton and I were thinking of hopping in the quinjet and making a run over to Kabul for shawarma, if it'll be awhile."
"Stark was thinking of doing that," Clint said.
"I take it you're reporting that everything's all clear outside?" Cap replied.
"Um, no. I'm reporting that our vitals show hunger pangs and a craving for good authentic shawarma."
"I am famished," Thor's voice came over the comm, "but shawarma would not be my preference. Unless of course Stark intends for that to be our traditional post-battle celebratory feast, in which case I will gladly partake."
"How about we wait to discuss this until we've actually had a battle?" Steve said, testily.
"Just planning ahead, Cap," said Tony. "Oh shit, incoming!"
"In my sights," came Clint's calm reply.
The walls trembled with whatever it was that had been incoming outside. Although Bruce had repressed the Hulk up to this point, he was more present in his mind now, his skin tingled as though the Other GUy was nearer the surface.
"Thor, get out there and give them some backup!" Cap barked. "The three of us will find the scepter and get out."
"I'm on my way. Soon the victory shawarma shall be ours!"
Bruce switched off his earpiece. If he wanted to get this job done, the Other Guy didn't need the distraction of the fight outside.
In their hurry down the corridor, or perhaps because he was struggling now for control of his body, he dropped his tablet. When he picked it up again, he almost thought it had broken, despite Tony making these things damn near indestructible, because the energy levels indicated were so strong.
"Very soon," he said. "We should be coming into the-"
He stopped just short of plowing into Natasha as the tunnel terminated abruptly at the entrance to a larger chamber.
"Lab," he finished, unnecessarily, as they goggled at the roomful of scientific equipment. It didn't have a patch on his and Tony's workspace, of course, or even the one on the helicarrier, but still. For a hidden underground laboratory, Hydra hadn't done too badly.
"And there's our skull and tentacles," he added, gaze settling on the red and black flag hanging on the opposite wall, above a trio of heavy doors that looked better suited to a dungeon than a science lab.
"Where's the scepter?" Steve asked.
"What, did expect to see it in a display case?" Natasha replied.
Bruce checked his tablet and gestured to the door beneath the flag. "The energy signature seems to be coming from-"
Natasha stepped around them, sidearm drawn. "Let's find out what's behind door number one."
Steve had no argument with that and strode after her. Bruce, on the other hand, stepped backward, almost out of the lab. Clutching the tablet tightly in both hands, he watched Natasha try the lock, while Steve reached over her to tear down the Hydra flag. He wadded it up like trash and pitched it into a corner, a look of mingled disgust and satisfaction on his face.
"Got it." Natasha tugged the door open. Bruce expected it to creak, but it opened silently on its hinges, the booms above ground still faintly audible.
She and Steve recoiled as a chemical odor, mingled with the stench of filth, emitted from the darkness beyond.
Bruce broke out into a sweat. His breath came rapidly, in shallow gasps. "What…what's in…?"
"Not the scepter," Steve said, coughing, as Natasha shone a light from her belt into the room.
He stepped aside as a hand groped around the edge of the door, then a ragged young woman emerged with her eyes closed. No, not closed, Bruce saw; her eyes were…gone. After her stumbled a boy who couldn't be older than twelve, also blind, then a girl, then another…They kept coming and coming, women and children, all of them blind.
Bruce was, too.
With Hulkrage.
A/N: Evil cliffie is evil, I know, especially since I went two weeks between updates. ;) I've already begun work on Chapter 16, and I should have an update next Sunday at the same bat time, same bat channel. In the meantime, I hope you'll let me know what you think! I had a blast writing this chapter, with the ensemble and all their shenanigans. If I spoiled anyone for Breaking Bad, I'm as sorry as Tony is for spoiling Cap. ;) I also couldn't resist including more Daredevil connections! I'm fascinated by the way the MCU co-exists.
Thanks for bearing with me last week while I went on hiatus to adjust to the back-to-school schedule and write my HulkWidowNet Fanwork Exchange fic! (It's called Never Lost You, in case you missed it; just check out my profile for the link.) I love this fandom!