Chapter 13

Bruce had a headache. It was lurking behind his eyelids, a product of too much florescent lighting and too little sleep. And the threat of Loki lurking in the hold of the helicarrier did nothing to ease his mind. He studied the Asgardian from the bridge monitor, trying to mask his growing anxiety. He had every computer and piece of equipment at his disposal working at full capacity and he still wasn't sure it would be enough. If Director Fury could just get something out of Loki, anything that might help…

"It's an impressive cage," Loki said, "Not built, I think, for me."

"Built for something a lot stronger than you," Nick Fury shot back.

"Oh..." Loki smirked, looking straight into the camera, "I've heard."

Bruce kept his eyes fixed on the monitor, ignoring the looks he could feel lock onto him around the room. His head was pulsing.

"The mindless beast, makes play he's still a man."

Loki tilted his head, and for a moment Bruce was sure he was actually looking right at him.

"Of course, he has good reason to maintain the ruse."

Loki grinned, showing his teeth, then held out an upturned fist. Bruce felt the hairs on his arms stand on end. Slowly, Loki's hand opened and two glinting gold objects slowly floated into the air, twirling and catching the light.

Two gold rings…

"She's very pretty, isn't she, Doctor?" Loki said, "Your Alice…"

The screen went black, but it was too late. Every muscle in Bruce was tense with fury and loathing and fear. Alice… Loki knew about Alice, had seen her, had been close enough to rip her parents' rings from her neck! How the hell was that even possible?

Was… Was she…

Bruce felt his chest constrict, a fear too dark, too horrible to even contemplate fighting its way into his conscious mind. He gripped the back of the chair in front of him so hard the muscles in his arms ached. He closed his eyes and forced deep breaths of air in through his nose. He couldn't lose it. Not here. Not now. Not even if she…

He took one more breath, and opened his eyes. Natasha met his gaze with calm composure, but he could see the fear in her eyes, could smell it on her.

"Where is she?" he growled.

Natasha hesitated.

"Miss Ripley was in Stuttgard," she said finally, her voice steady, "We didn't know. She just happened to be there at the wrong time."

This couldn't be happening. His heart was threatening to pound its way out of his chest and with every beat of his pulse a dull thud hit the backs of his eyes. God, this damn headache…

"You said you would keep her safe!" he said, trying to keep his voice level and failing miserably.

"She is safe."

Captain Steve Rogers reached into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper.

"She asked me to give you this."

Bruce stared at the paper for a moment before he finally took it.

"You saw her?" he asked. He trusted Captain Roger's word a bit more than he did Agent Romanoff's at the moment. The man might be military, but at least he came from a time when honesty was a valued trait.

"Yes, I did," Steve said, "She was very brave. She saved a man's life."

Bruce fought the urge to scoff. Maybe she'd saved a man's life, but he doubted very much it was out of bravery, not after what she'd told him at Holi. He should be with her, protecting her, not just from aliens and gods, but from herself. Instead he paced a laboratory on a flying metal boat full of skittish government flunkies and just prayed that nothing went wrong.

He turned the folded paper over and over in his hands before he finally opened it. A series of numbers was scribbled hurriedly in the corner. A phone number. And written underneath, the script so rushed that it was barely legible:

"Don't worry, I'm okay. Be careful."

He read the words three times. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep shuddering breath. She was okay. The words were small comfort, but seeing them written in her hand eased a weight off his chest and he felt like he could breathe again.

"Are we passing love notes now?"

Tony Stark sauntered onto the bridge, a cocky smirk plastered on his face. Bruce could feel color rising to his cheeks, but he kept his face blank as he folded the piece of paper and slid it into his pocket. Tony jabbed a finger in Bruce's direction.

"Now, now Dr. Banner, don't you know the rules? If you're caught passing notes you have to share with the class!"

Despite the blush in his cheeks, Bruce felt his lips twitch up. He quickly wiped it away. He didn't want to encourage the snarky billionaire.

"Are we good, Dr. Banner?" Natasha asked.

The stiffness in her posture and the way her eyes followed him made her look like a cat crouched to pounce. She probably had her gun in her hand under the table. Bruce shifted his glasses in his hands nervously. Everyone here was so damn trigger happy.

"Yeah, we're good."

His head was throbbing again. He resisted the urge to rub the bridge of his nose.

"Clearly Loki is trying to drag things out, keep us from discovering his real purpose here," Captain Rogers said, "Thor, what's his play?"

With the attention of the room directed elsewhere, Bruce felt a knot in his neck relax. His head cleared a little and he forced himself back to the matter at hand. Thor spoke of alien armies and a fight for power, but none of that mattered to Bruce. He slipped a hand in his pocket and ran his fingers over the edge of the torn paper. All he cared about was getting off this damn ship.

"I think it's about the mechanics," he said.

Everyone turned to look at him again. He didn't like the attention, but it was the only way to get the conversation back on track. His free hand fidgeted with his glasses and he tried to stay focused.

"Iridium, what's the iridium for?"

"It's a stabilizing agent, to keep the new portal from collapsing on itself like it did at SHIELD," Tony said.

He wasn't looking at Bruce, probably the only person in the room that wasn't. He seemed far more interested in the panels of controls used to navigate the helicarrier.

"It also means the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants. Is no one gonna point out the guy playing Galaga over there?"

Everyone glanced over at the poor sap, who looked up with a blank look of shock and horror on his face.

"Aren't we in the middle of crisis? He's gonna beat the international high score he keeps playing with that kind of dedication," Tony said, turning away from the guy with little more than a wave of his hand. Bruce smiled then, but only because the overconfident ass couldn't see him.

Tony turned back to the control and put a hand over one eye.

"How does Fury even see these?"

"He turns."

One of the more senior agents, a serious young woman by the name of Maria Hill, was glaring at Tony across the room, her arms crossed, appearing thoroughly unimpressed with Tony's bullshit. Maybe it was just the note in his pocket, but Bruce was reminded of Alice for the briefest of moments.

"That sounds exhausting," Tony said, unphased.

He started pushing buttons and playing with the controls.

"The rest of the raw materials Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. The only major component he needs is a power source of high energy density. Something to kick start the cube."

He turned with a flourish and looked like he was waiting for everyone to be impressed. No one was, but Bruce's mind was starting to turn. A power source… What could generate that kind of energy? Where could you find something like that? His mind began working through the possibilities, the chatter around him just background noise. Almost involuntarily, he started voicing his thoughts aloud.

"He's got to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier…"

"...unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect."
Bruce brought his focus back to the present. Tony's eyes were bright with the challenge to his intellect, clearly passing it back to Bruce. Bruce accepted.
"Well if he could do that he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet."
Tony threw up his hands as if in triumph.
"Finally! Someone who speaks English!"
"Is that what just happened?" Steve muttered, clearly confused.
Tony ignored the Captain and extended his hand to Bruce. Bruce took it with a hint of a smile. He had to admit, the guy was smart, even if he was an overconfident asshole.
"Dr. Banner, I just want to say that your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled."
Bruce was surprised that Tony had even heard of that, it had been years since he'd published that research. He was about to reply when Tony added.
"...and I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into a huge green rage monster."
The billionaire's eyes were sparkling and Bruce couldn't tell if he was joking, or if he really was that naive. He wasn't sure how to respond. It wasn't a joke, but Tony made the whole thing seem so… simple, as simple as mentioning his merits as a scientist.
"Thanks," he said, at a loss for anything else to say. He felt his headache coming back.

"Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube," Director Fury's voice punctuated the tension in the air as he walked onto the bridge, "I was hoping you might join him."

Bruce had to curb a fit of anxiety. He wasn't sure how he felt about having this careless firecracker of a man sharing a lab with him. Tony Stark was notoriously reckless and clearly lacking a healthy dose of respect for Bruce's particular… condition. On the other hand, he was also brilliant, one of the most forward thinking men of his generation, possibly of any generation.

"Also, Doctor Banner, I thought you might like these."

The director held out a gloved hand to Bruce. Alice's rings were in his palm. Bruce felt like the air had been knocked out of him. He swallowed, then took the two rings from Director Fury, turning them over in his hand, watching them catch the light.

"Thought you might like to hold on to them until you could return them to their rightful owner."

Bruce looked up and saw in the director's eyes that he wasn't just giving him these rings on a whim. It was a promise. A promise that Alice was safe, that SHIELD would see that she remained so, and that Bruce would be able to see it for himself when this was over. He wasn't sure that he trusted Nick Fury's unspoken word anymore than anyone else's on this boat, but he didn't have much of a choice. He slipped the rings into his pocket and his fingers brushed the ragged edges of Alice's note. He just wanted to get out of here, as quickly as possible. And he could use all the help he could get.

So when Tony grinned at him and asked, "Shall we play, Doctor?", Bruce managed to muster a smile.

"Yeah, let's play some."

Even with Tony's help, Bruce could feel the anxiety building in his chest. His head still pounded steadily and he could feel the Other Guy shifting uneasily under the surface of his skin. The low levels of gamma radiation seeping from Loki's spear probably weren't helping the situation, but studying the spear yielded valuable information about the signature of the Tesseract, helping to narrow down the cube's location. The sooner he could find that damn blue box, the sooner he could get the hell off this boat. The sooner he could find Alice, see her with his own eyes and know for sure that she was okay.

Bruce knew that Tony could sense his tension. He just seemed determined to ignore it. In fact, he appeared to be trying to push Bruce to his limit, poking and prodding and dragging him into arguments and confrontations that Bruce didn't want anything to do with. He didn't want to crack secret computer codes or reveal dark government secrets. He just wanted to find Alice and get as far away from this mess as possible, and he tried to make that clear. Once Captain Rogers stormed out of the lab, Bruce thought he might finally be able to get some work done.

"That's the guy my dad never shut up about?" Tony said, "Wonder if they shouldn't have kept him on ice."

Bruce knew that Tony was frustrated, but he liked Captain Rogers and so felt inclined to put forth at least a half-assed attempt to defend him.

"The guy's not wrong about Loki. He does have the jump on us."

He could still hear Loki's words in his head.

"She is pretty isn't she, Dr. Banner… Your Alice…"

Just the thought made his blood boil and he gritted his teeth, trying to concentrate on his work past the unending throb in his head. He really needed to get some sleep…

"What he's got is an ACME dynamite kit," Tony said, punching a few numbers into an equation and sliding the result over to Bruce's screen, "It's gonna blow up in his face and I'm gonna be there when it does."

"And I'll read all about it," Bruce said, working with the equation and sending it flying back across the room.

He could feel Tony's eyes on him, but he ignored it. His hand slipped into his pocket, folding Alice's note between his fingers. He and Alice would be far, far away by then, he would make sure of it.

"Uh huh…" Tony said, sounding unconvinced, "Or you'll be suiting up like the rest of us."

Bruce scoffed at the idea of 'suiting up'.

"No, see, I don't get a suit of armor," he said, bitterly, "I'm exposed, like a nerve. It's a nightmare."

He could feel the raw emotion roiling through him, could feel the beast straining against him, feeling out his weaknesses. He tried to focus on the screen in front of him, but Tony had moved to the other side of the glass and his eyes were piercing through him.

"You know, I've got a cluster of shrapnel, trying every second to crawl its way into my heart."

He tapped the arc reactor glowing blue under his t-shirt.

"This stops it. This little circle of light. It's part of me now, not just armor. It's a…" Tony paused, "A terrible privilege."

"But you can control it," Bruce said.

"Because I learned how."

Bruce shook his head. Tony thought he understood, but he didn't really. What he had was not a choice, it wasn't a privilege, it wasn't something he could use the way Tony wanted him to. He was reminded of that night by the Holi fire with Alice, how disappointed she had looked for a moment as he'd tried to wrap his mind around what she'd told him, about how she felt about her life. Was this how it had felt for her, this feeling of frustrated misunderstanding?

"It's different," Bruce said finally, turning back to his work.

Thinking of Alice had renewed his focus and his resolve. He didn't care what Tony thought. He just wanted out of this place. He just wanted to be with Alice, to make sure she was safe.

"Hey!"

Tony swiped his hand over the screen, clearing away all of Bruce's work and leaving him staring into Tony's irritated face.

"I've read all about your accident," Tony said, "That much gamma radiation should have killed you."

This was starting to sound like a slightly familiar conversation, one he'd had over a year ago, but he could still hear in the back of his mind.

"What if… that… Other Guy… What if he hadn't saved your ass last night?"

He could still hear the indignation in Alice's voice, see the fire in her eyes. It made the corners of his mouth twitch up.

"What are you laughing at, Big Guy?"

Tony's voice brought Bruce back to the present and he dropped his eyes to his hands, fidgeting nervously with a pen.

"Nothing," he said, "Nothing, you just reminded me of someone."

"Oh, you mean the girlfriend that you're exchanging love letters with?" Tony said, a smirk on his face, "What was her name? Ellen?"

"Alice," Bruce said, before he could think better of it.

"Well, she sounds like a smart girl if she's agreeing with me, which I'm sure she would," Tony said, pulling their research back up onto the screen in front of them.

"What, that the Hulk…"

The name was like a bad taste in Bruce's mouth and he rephrased.

"The Other Guy… saved my life?" He rolled his eyes, "Yeah, that's a nice sentiment, but why? Saved it for what?"

Tony stopped and stared at him, his signature smirk still tugging at the corners of his lips.

"I think Alice might have a few things to say about that."

Bruce stared at Tony for a minute, the realization of what he was saying hitting him hard. If the Hulk hadn't saved his life… what might have happened to Alice? What might still happen to Alice if he didn't stop this? Aliens and gods and hostile planetary takeover were all grand ideas that until now Bruce hadn't considered part of his problem. But if he failed to find the Tesseract, if they didn't stop Loki… He wasn't sure that was something they could run from.

He reached into his pocket and felt the ragged edges of the note.

"Don't worry, I'm okay. Be careful."

The words of the note were already emblazoned in his memory along with the series of numbers that were his only link to her. Be careful. It was something that he had been doing for so many years, tiptoeing through his life, trying to be careful, trying to be safe. But holding that note, he began to wonder how far he was willing to go to keep Alice safe. With so much at stake, could he still afford to be careful?