Chapter Four. Clint Spills the Beans

Clint whipped an arrow out of his quiver and in a smooth practiced motion sent it flying towards the moving target. He had to give Tony Stark points for doing exactly what he said he would. This practice room was state-of-the-art. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s was shabby in comparison. Of course, most of the other agents didn't use a bow like he did as his primary weapon, so the bow-and-arrow stuff wasn't exactly high on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s priority list for agent training.

When the arrow embedded itself exactly where he'd planned it to land on the eighteen-sided foam target, he allowed himself a small nod of satisfaction. Then he kept his hands and eyes busy emptying his quiver, repeating the same perfection.

This was how he kept himself cool. Nat liked to soak in hot water and do martial arts, Stark tinkered with his robots and suits, Cap demolished punching bags and drew shit, and Thor liked calling the lightning to his hammer and singing drinking songs while quaffing down impressive amounts of beer. That little bar in Puente Antiguo should put up a sign, "Thor Odinson drank here." Maybe the extra business would offset the cost of rebuilding what Thor and Selvig had busted up in their exuberance. He grinned, remembering the story Selvig had told one night to some of the other scientists on the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. Project about that epic night of drinking.

Not that Selvig had known he was listening. He'd been hidden up high, observing the guy. Something about the man had triggered a sense of caution about him when they'd met. Selving wasn't right, but at the time he hadn't been able to figure out what was wrong with him. Selvig had been leery of him, too.

In hindsight, it wasn't much of a mystery. Loki'd had his claws into Selvig's brain since the showdown between Thor and Loki in New Mexico. Loki had made the scientist his minion. Not entirely, it turned out, and Clint had to hand it to Selvig for building a back door for control of the tesseract. He'd helped make Loki's defeat possible.

Clint hadn't been able to do anything comparable to that when he'd been brainwashed by Loki. Although he hadn't taken a head shot to Fury when Loki stole the tesseract. So, maybe in a small way, he'd kept one tiny corner of his mind free. It didn't really change anything.

Compromised. He'd been compromised with a capital C. He was so grateful to Natasha for vouching for his return to sanity so he could help take down that evil son-of-a-bitch.

S.H.I.E.L.D.'s shrinks had quite a session with him the day after the Avengers had saved the world. He was scheduled to have some followup ones after he returned to active duty. While Banner had been getting his beauty sleep in, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s psych operatives had grilled and debriefed the rest of them. Clint, though, had received special attention. He'd never been chatty with the psych guys before, so he worked hard to stay in character. He'd managed to convey the right amount of regret over the destruction and lives lost that had been his fault. Guilt, sure, but not so much that it was crippling him. He'd been a victim of Loki's manipulations. That was what he told the shrinks, lacing his reluctant words with clenched fists and silences. He didn't trip any of the flags embedded in their questions that indicated he was suicidal or at risk for doing stupid shit like punishing himself, or going off on a drinking bender. In short, he was coping satisfactorily.

He could read people, and he knew the shrinks were buying his act. And it was an act. He wasn't okay with what had happened. Loki had raped his mind. Forced him to turn against his own people. It was going to take some time and effort to put that behind him, he knew. He could function as well as ever, though, and he wasn't going to be sidelined until he was over it. Him and emotional trauma were old buddies.

Bruce had learned to go the meditation route, and from all the reports it did seem to help him gain some peace of mind. Clint didn't think he'd like it. He wanted to be able to keep moving, or if he was still, he wanted to be positioned where he couldn't be surprised and had the advantage of being on high ground. He could never just sit in easy reach of an enemy with his eyes closed, like he'd seen Bruce doing.

Clint was the one who volunteered to climb trees and poles during missions; he knew other agents made jokes about him being in his eyrie when he went high. Actually, he liked that imagery.

After he'd picked off the entire other team by himself during a training exercise by using the air ducts at a training facility, he was something of a legend to the rookies. Trainers sometimes borrowed him, if he was in-between missions, to shoot harmless arrows at the baby agents during instructional sessions. Those were good times. Clint liked fun. He really did. So when he wasn't in the middle of an operation, he liked to joke and bet and hang out with Nat, if she was around. Or bug Coulson.

And now, he liked this team he'd joined. His knack, the one he was careful not to mention to, well, almost everyone, had vetted all of the Avengers as being good guys.

Of course, he'd already made that call about Natasha and Bruce and Thor long before Loki tried to enslave the world. It was why he'd brought Natasha into S.H.I.E.L.D. and enlisted Coulson to help free her from the brainwashing she'd been under since she was a little girl. He'd known she could be redeemed, and he'd risked everything to save her.

Bruce, well, he'd been the guy's watcher for all those long weeks in Guatemala. The first time it was his turn to be primary on the Hulk watch, he'd felt that tingle in his brain that told him his knack was curious about the guy who was the Hulk. If he hadn't seen the videos he never would have guessed that the short American with the dark, curly hair was him. The guy just looked harmless, his glasses sliding down his nose whenever he put them on to look at something more closely. A thermometer, for example.

Clint, in disguise on the ramshackle bus with Bruce, watched him rock a baby to sleep in his arms while the sick and exhausted mother he'd treated with medicine slept as they traveled to a new town.

He'd probably would have come to the same conclusion without going with his knack, since Bruce really was a good man. Nobody on the observation team wanted to see him hurt. Bruce did manage to engender a fair amount of exasperation among the other agents, though, as the help he gave to people in need often landed himself in hot water. He was fairly good about getting himself back out of it, but he'd made more than one agent curse Bruce's humanitarian impulses.

When he'd seen Bruce Banner ride up on that motorcycle to join them to fight Loki and the Chitauri, he hadn't been surprised that Bruce would help. He'd been a little amazed at Bruce's appearance, was all, since Natasha had told him the Hulk had jumped out of the helicarrier and they didn't know where he'd landed. At the time, the helicarrier had bigger problems than tracking the Hulk, or Banner, if he'd changed back.

His knack had started to kick in when he'd seen Thor fighting so hard to get to his hammer back in New Mexico. He felt that surge of understanding and he'd said into his mic that Coulson had better call it, because he was starting to root for this guy. He'd known that Coulson would get the message that this one was a thumbs up. Hopefully, then Coulson wouldn't order him to shoot the big blond galoot dead.

Coulson knew about his little gift. They'd had one very cryptic conversation about it, in which Coulson let him know that he knew Clint was tapping into something a little more than just a gut feeling whenever he gave a thumbs up or thumbs down on someone. Luckily for Clint, Coulson got a huge thumbs up, and Clint trusted him with his life. He certainly was trusting him with his secret. Clint didn't like to think of himself as maybe being tagged with the "M" word.

S.H.I.E.L.D. knew a lot about people who had manifested some kind of mutant talent. Some of them had banded together for support and tried to use their talents for the good of their communities. Some of them used their talents to become criminals. So far, S.H.I.E.L.D. had worked hard to keep that kind of knowledge from the public. After this week, he suspected that it would be harder to keep a lid on the wacko talents some people had, if they became problems. There was even a special prison that had been nicknamed, "The Vault," designed to keep those criminal mutants from breaking out. Clint knew it was in the Rockies somewhere. If he hadn't quit fucking up his life he might have ended up there himself.

Natasha knew too, although they'd never had any awkward conversations about it. He just knew that she knew and accepted his gift as part of the Clint Barton package.

"Master Barton, I have a message for you from Captain Rogers and Sir."

JARVIS's voice stopped him from brooding on that unhappy end to freedom, if he hadn't started listening to his knack and letting it guide his choices in life. Loki had said that he had heart, and he guessed maybe the bastard's magical talents had recognized Clint's gift.

"Okay, lay it on me, man. And it's just Clint, okay? I can't really picture myself as being Master Barton." Clint walked to the foam targets and started retrieving his arrows, looking them over for any damage before placing them back in his quiver.

"I've informed Captain Rogers and Sir that you haven't had breakfast yet, and they would like to know if it's agreeable to you to meet in the Avenger's Kitchen."

"The one where Steve and Bruce cooked us steaks?" Clint highly doubted that Tony had phrased JARVIS' polite request that way at all. He'd probably said something like, Tell Barton to get his ass up here; Steve's making coffee.

"Yes, Clint."

"Tell'em I'm on my way."

He trotted out the door and decided to jog up the stairs. He might be on stand-down for three weeks, but he couldn't afford to let his training slide.

x x x

Tony was scrambling eggs when Clint jogged into the kitchen. Steve actually was making coffee and stopped measuring coffee grounds into the basket of the coffee maker to smile at Clint.

"I've been trying to talk Tony into getting a percolator like I used to have in my apartment in Brooklyn, but he says nobody uses them anymore. Is that true?" Steve asked, a little skeptically.

Clint shrugged. "Pretty much, at least in the States, but people use them when they go camping or if the electricity goes off. S.H.I.E.L.D. had one we used on Hulk watch. Bruce would make coffee with grounds tied into a rag. He seemed to like it well enough."

Tony turned off the stove. "I suppose that's just another thing Bruce will go back to doing now." He didn't sound happy about it.

Swiveling to face them, Tony said, "Eggs are done, help yourself. Steve, we live in a world full of technological miracles and that coffee machine is one of them. Hurry up, okay? I'm dying for a cup."

Clint noticed that it was a Stark Industries model. "Looks like that one's got a lot of bells and whistles, Tony."

Steve grinned at Clint, pushing buttons, and the sound of water gurgling through the machine began. "Tony showed me how it works. Coffee will be done soon."

Tony patted the coffee machine fondly. "I'll be test driving my latest coffee machine pretty soon down here. You guys can be my lab rats. Did I tell you that it can be programmed to play music to tell you when your coffee is ready?" He got down a plate and dished himself up. Grabbing a fork from a drawer, he dropped into a chair and began eating.

Clint filled plates for himself and Steve, joining Tony at the table. Steve murmured thank you to Clint, then slid into his own seat.

The eggs were actually pretty good. Tony had added in green and red peppers, onions and cheese, and he'd made plenty.

Steve got back up and filled mugs for all of them, and Tony made a contented sound after his first sip.

Clint had finished breakfast quickly and was about to get up to leave when Steve caught his eye.

"Clint, the information in the files S.H.I.E.L.D. gave us on Bruce was minimal. You seem to know a lot more about him, and if you could brief us it would be helpful."

Tony added, "Yeah. I don't want any surprises being revealed later that we're not prepared to handle for the media campaign. So, c'mon, dish up the dirt on our dear, departed Doctor Banner."

Steve frowned disapprovingly. "Tony, you make it sound like he's passed away. Are you that angry with him for leaving and not telling you first?"

Clint just sat quietly and watched the Captain America and Iron Man show. Nat had told him that these two had clashed at first, while the team was just beginning to pull together. Right now, Tony had sounded, well, a little bitter, mixed with a liberal sprinkling of hurt and obnoxious.

"He could have told me," Tony muttered. "I would have taken him anywhere he wanted to go." He drank the rest of his coffee, and didn't look at Steve at all.

"He wanted to protect you, Tony. He was worried about you, and he did what he thought was best. But you can take it up with him when he comes back." Steve moved to the counter and brought back the coffee pot. He filled Tony's mug and his own and looked inquiringly at Clint.

Clint nodded, and within moments his taste buds were in heaven again. Tony bought the good beans, and his coffee was about a hundred times better than the sludge S.H.I.E.L.D. usually offered its agents. He thought there must be a rule that all bureaucratic organizations had to buy the cheap shit. He'd call Coulson this morning and mention his new conspiracy theory. Coulson wouldn't laugh, he never did at Clint's jokes and wild-ass speculations, but Clint knew that the corner of his mouth would turn up and Clint would have been able to read the amusement in his eyes. It had taken him a few weeks to see that look in his handler's expression, but once Clint had cracked the code he could read Coulson like a book.

Coulson probably needed to hear Clint shovel some bullshit his way, bored and stuck as he was in his hospital bed. It would be like donating to charity. Clint had called him the day they'd all trooped into Tony's tower, and he'd bent Coulson's ear grousing about being kicked out of headquarters. Anticipating his next move, Coulson had made Clint promise not to sneak into the medical ward to visit him. Clint was still miffed about that.

Steve laid a hand on Tony's shoulder and startled, Tony half-turned to look at Steve.

"Are you angry with Bruce?" Steve asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

"No! Yes. Maybe? It's complicated," Tony said, making air quotes around the last word.

"Tony..." Steve said quietly.

"Well," Tony exploded, "he wouldn't even let me try to help him, and that pisses me off. I'm going to get even with him, though, for dumping me. All those reasons he listed in his heartfelt little video, I'm going to demolish each and every one. And then when it's safe for him to come back and our 'The Hulk is a Good Guy' campaign is working, then I'm going to have a conversation with the good doctor."

Clint said mildly, "Good luck with that. He's not bad at hiding."

"I'll find him. And I'll talk him into coming back." Tony sounded calmer, and Steve let him go and sat back down.

"Clint, what should we know about Bruce? I assume Tony or you can get us the uncensored file S.H.I.E.L.D. has on him, but for now just talk to us," Steve said.

"And besides the CliffsNotes, cough up anything else you know that's not in the file," Tony commanded.

"CliffsNotes?" Steve looked mildly puzzled. Poor guy must run into twenty references a day he didn't get.

"JARVIS, care to do the honors?"

"Of course, Sir. Captain, according to Wikipedia, CliffsNotes are a series of student study guides that present and explain literary and other works in pamphlet form or online."

"Okay, now that Cap's had his vocabulary lesson for the day, spill the beans, Clint," Tony ordered. "JARVIS, audio record and transcribe this and send it to my Hulk media campaign folder, file 'Green Kimble.' Steve, just consider the name 'Kimble' to be a synonym for fugitive."

Clint walked over to the coffee machine and refilled his mug, then glanced at Steve and Tony sitting at the table, lifting the coffee pot to ask if they wanted any more, too. They didn't, and Clint looked thoughtfully at them, organizing his thoughts on Bruce. He rejoined the other two at the table.

"Okay." He took a hefty swig and swallowed. "Let's start with how Bruce handles being on the run. He knows how to live cheap, barters with people for food and shelter, clothes. If he's going to be somewhere more than a few days, he'll identify a key person in that community and let them know he's a doctor and is willing to see people for what they can spare, or for free, if they can't. He gets his patients mostly from doing that, but he'll offer his services on his own, too, depending on the circumstances."

Sipping at his coffee for a moment, he remembered Bruce seeing patients in the evening after he would come home from whatever day job he was working, or during the day if he worked an evening or overnight shift.

Tony asked, sounding baffled, "Why does he call attention to himself that way? People would remember a guy who moonlights as a doctor."

Shaking his head, because, damn, he'd wondered that same thing himself when he was on Hulk watch, Clint said, "Well, he doesn't do it all the time. And he didn't see patients at his own place, as far as we know."

"What? He was trying not to leave a bread crumb trail to his hideout?" Tony asked.

"Yeah, something like that. He'd see patients in a makeshift clinic somewhere and did home visits. It's important to him, so much so that he's willing to take the risk. He's not motivated to work as a doctor by the need to make a living. It goes a lot deeper than that for him."

Steve said, "I thought he was working a factory job at a bottling plant when Ross caught up to him in Rocinha."

Clint chuckled sourly. "He was. He'll work any job that needs doing; he's not afraid to get his hands dirty."

Nodding decisively, Tony said, "I'm so dragging him into my workshop and making him show me what he's got."

Clint said, "The manager of that bottling factory? He couldn't say enough good things about how Bruce would keep the machinery from going belly up. Word gets around if he stays put for a while that he can coax dead gadgets back to life. Word gets around like that when he's doctoring folks, too."

Steve said, "He really wouldn't make a very good spy, would he? It seems like people get to know him wherever he ends up."

Clint laughed. "Nah, he's not really an undercover guy. He's not very good about acting stupid, so he'll end up getting promoted fast, or sometimes getting lectured about how he's wasting his talents. Sometimes other workers end up resenting him because of shining like that and they'll take it upon themselves to teach him a lesson. Sometimes that's triggered a transformation. More in the early years than more recent ones. Over time, for the most part, Bruce has learned how to save his own ass without turning green. Cap knows this but I'm not sure about you, Tony. Did you know Bruce has taken some martial arts classes?"

Tony shook his head.

"He's just a beginner, but it's helped him skedaddle out of some tight spots. He also learned how to control his breathing, calm his heartbeat. His Akido instructor in Brazil talked to Coulson after he was convinced that S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't going to hunt Bruce down to kill him."

Steve said, "Kill him?"

"There was a lot of rumors floating around the favela after Ross' extraction team went after Bruce there. His instructor really liked him. Bruce diagnosed his kid correctly after some clinic bungled her care. Saved her life. She had meningitis, not the flu."

Clint looked first at Steve, and then at Tony. "So. Way you guys looked yesterday you didn't know Bruce had to peddle his ass sometimes."

Tony crossed his arms. "No. Fury left that out of the files Coulson gave us."

Clint stared at his coffee cup. Well. Bruce had owned what he'd had to do when he stood up to Fury. He'd understand why Clint had to give up the details. "We know he agreed to sex sometimes in return for being smuggled out of the area, when Ross' team got too close. Or for clothes, food, money. That happened when he transformed and come back to himself naked and lost somewhere. Fuckers liked to brag about it. Sometimes Bruce wrote about it, but, not like the therapists want you to do. It was more like footnotes in his research."

"God," Tony said. "He talk to anybody about it?"

"Not that we know about,"Clint said with a shrug. "He's not afraid to touch people or even kiss them, but he shies away from getting naked and having sex. From a notebook Ross nabbed from a dive Bruce was staying in, we learned he'd been experimenting with his heart rate. Apparently two hundred beats a minute brings the Hulk roaring to life. Whenever he tried to have sex and his heart would speed up, he'd stop. In his notes, he'd written about anxiety being tied in with his heartbeat increasing so much, so it's possible there were some after effects of those deals with those assholes. But he never changed into the Hulk with those men. One of his footnotes said he didn't care about them, so he didn't enter the arousal stage of sex and his heart beat stayed normal."

Clint glanced at Tony. "Do you think if this became public that it would hurt Banner's acceptance even more? Or would it make people sympathetic to him, to learn how desperate he was at times?"

Tony bit his lip. "Would Bruce care if it became public? You know, I've thought about that conversation Fury and Bruce had during our last meeting, and now it makes sense to me. At the time, I was texting Pepper and I thought I'd just misheard them."

Clint said, "I've got pretty good recall. Fury said that Bruce had sold himself before and Bruce answered him that he wasn't as desperate now as he was then. I don't know how much it would tear him up if it became public. You'd better be prepared to spin it in his favor, though, because if Ross leaked that news, he'd say that Banner had been a prostitute. And Ross does know all about it. This happened when Ross was in charge of tracking down Bruce and taking him into custody."

Steve said, "If it's leaked, as a team we'll express our outrage that Bruce was ever hounded like he was, so that he fell victim to unscrupulous men in order to stay free."

Tony said, "The Hulk comes out when Bruce is under severe duress, when he's being attacked, unless he changes on purpose. As far as I could make out with the information S.H.I.E.L.D. gave me, most of the times where Bruce changed to the Hulk were because he was attacked by Ross' units."

"Somebody always attacked him in the other incidents, too," Clint said. "Various assholes. The Hulk is all about survival, and if Bruce is backed into a corner and being seriously hurt - cause he can take it up to a point – the big guy comes out to stomp those assholes like a little kid's big, tough brother kicks a bully's ass. Bruce had gained even more control by the time Natasha scooped him up in Kolkata. The Hulk hadn't been seen for over a year. Damn Loki anyway, for taking that away from Bruce."

Tony sat up straighter in his chair, looking suspicious. "So why did Ross have such a hard-on for Banner following the gamma accident?"

Clint opened his mouth to explain, but Tony kept on talking, making a face like he'd just caught a whiff of dog shit on his shoe. "I know the man, a little, in a professional way," Tony explained. "That was why Coulson sent me to talk to him about recruiting Blonski for the Avengers. I'm glad Ross shot me down. The Abomination would make an awful addition to the team. And before my fun vacation in Afghanistan, I supplied weapons to Ross, some of them special orders, like the sonic cannons to take down the Hulk. Old Thunderbolt Ross is a persistent, sour, stubborn son-of-a-bitch. He's one of the Army's golden boys, and he's got pull like you wouldn't believe."

"I don't understand." Steve said.

"What, Cap?" Clint asked.

Steve frowned. "It was an accident in his lab that changed Bruce. Why wasn't help extended to him, instead of Bruce being hunted down like a rabid dog?"

Tony said, rapid-fire, "You know, the way Ross's gone after Bruce, it really does feels personal. Like he's Captain Ahab and Bruce is the one who keeps getting away." He snapped his fingers three times in a row. "Captain America just asked a very good question, Legolas. General Ross was overseeing the work Bruce and his team were doing, after all. Why did Ross go after him, instead of helping him?"

Clint rolled his eyes, and figured he'd better jump in and answer before Tony started yakking again. "Guess you didn't know. General Ross has a daughter. A very intelligent, very beautiful daughter. I'll give you three chances to figure out who she was sleeping with for years. It's the same guy she was working with to develop the gamma proof serum for the Army. Here's a hint: it was the head of the team, a brilliant scientist who is the world's foremost expert in gamma radiation – are you catching on yet, Tony?"

Steve said, "So it is personal. The honorable thing to do would have been to step down, let someone else handle the Hulk since Bruce was dating his daughter."

Clint nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly. "It's more involved than that. Tony, you know that Ross was in charge of the project his daughter and Bruce were working on, but do you know about what the research was based on? Because Ross fucked all of them over."

"Yeah, Ross screwed them," Tony said flatly. "Doctored the records, too. Bruce wasn't trying to make himself into another super soldier like Cap."

Steve started. "He wasn't? Coulson said he was."

Clint said, "Well, to be fair to Coulson, that's the intel S.H.I.E.L.D. was given from the Army records."

"Fucking Ross." Tony looked like he wanted to spit on the ground. "Nah, Cap. Bruce wasn't being an egomaniac or wanting to be your clone. Bruce thought the project was to develop a serum that would keep gamma radiation weapons from harming soldiers. Uh, civilians, too. Ross didn't tell Bruce and the team that the serum was derived from Erskine's super-soldier serum."

"Bruce said something to Nat on the flight from Kolkata and it didn't match up with what S.H.I.E.L.D. had on that whole mess," Clint said. "She had it looked into and looky-looky, guess who was being crooky."

Tony said, "Ross wasn't that interested in developing a way to protect soldiers from gamma weapons. He saw the potential for a different outcome. He wanted to make people into weapons. He put a lot of pressure on the research team to come up with something because the program was going to be shut down unless they got enough results. So, yeah, Bruce jumped ahead instead of running a lot more trials. The whole team gave the experiment a thumbs up, though. And I'd bet anything that Ross authorized Bruce to do that experiment and then covered his ass and made Bruce out to have gone rogue, against Ross' orders."

Clint said, "Betty Ross was hurt pretty badly in the lab accident, and two other scientists on the team died from injuries caused by the Hulk tearing the place up. General Ross was also hurt, but not as severely."

"Ooohhh, personal grudge and resentment because Bruce was sleeping with his daughter. Nice combination for a nutcase like Ross to obsess about," Tony said.

"You got it," Clint said. "Ever since then, he's been after Banner. Our sources tell us that he never liked him, didn't think he was good enough for his daughter."

Steve said, frowning, "Not good enough?"

"Ross is such an ass. Bruce is a real catch," Tony threw in. Then he shrugged. "Or, you know, he was, before the whole gamma thing happened. But if I wasn't in a committed relationship I'd go for him. I'd smooch that wariness of his right off his face. With those lips, I bet he's a great kisser, right, Cap?"

Clint mouthed to himself, "Right, Cap?" and watched color bloom on Steve's cheeks.

"Tony." Steve said, and right then he didn't look like Captain America at all. Just a young, good-looking blond guy, kind of flustered and a little shy.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Oh, I'm sorry. Were we keeping it a secret that you and Bruce played kissy-face?"

Steve's posture straightened and there it was. Captain America was back in the room. "There's a difference between wanting something to be private and keeping it secret because of being ashamed. I'm not ashamed about kissing Bruce."

"Okay, good to know," Clint said, rolling his own eyes.

Steve continued, the blush starting to fade. "I saw him sitting on the steps of the Met, hugging his knees, and I realized he was going to leave. I like him. I wanted a kiss to remember him by. And he asked me to kiss him the second time. So what is it you guys say these days? Something about court?"

Clint said, "So sue me."

Steve nodded. "That's it. So, Tony. Sue me."

Clint said, laughing a little. "He's just jealous, Steve, that you got there first with Doctor Banner."

Tony said, "Do you two have a hearing problem? Committed relationship. As in with a smart, sexy redhead. Not jealous."

Clint said, "Ya know, I don't think Steve has one, but I do."

"You do what?" Tony asked.

"Have a hearing problem. I use a hearing aid in one ear when I'm on a mission."

"You don't wear it all the time?" Steve, no, Captain America asked. He looked like he was filing that information away under Barton, Clinton Francis, codename Hawkeye. Avenger.

"Most of the time I can hear well enough with my good ear, unless I've got a bad cold or something, so I don't need it."

"Let me see your hearing aid sometime. I'll see if I can design a better one," Tony said.

"Sure." It worked okay, but if Stark wanted to turn his genius loose on fiddling with it, then Clint was fine with that.

"So, were you born with a bad ear, or what?" Tony said, curiosity in his voice and on his face.

Steve opened his mouth, and then shut it. Clint guessed he was giving up on trying to rein Tony in. Clint would share with the class, though. He didn't give a shit about keeping it to himself.

"Nah. S.H.I.E.L.D. mission. Big boom."

"Surgery not an option?" Tony asked.

"Nope."

Steve said, "What else should we know about General Ross?"

Clint stretched his arms out and cracked his knuckles. "Well, he has a dislike of scientists, which didn't help endear Bruce to him. He wanted Betty to marry a soldier and kept introducing her to some of the men in his command. General Ross and Betty became estranged after the accident. They still are. Ross blames Banner for that, too. She blames her father for making Bruce a hunted fugitive. She's not shy about stating her opinion, either."

Clint was tired of sitting down and resettled himself by the counter, grabbing apples from a pretty blue pottery bowl. He started juggling them, five at a time. Coulson would have looked at his watch pointedly, and then held up two of his fingers. When his two minutes were up, he'd have looked at Clint and Clint would have dropped the apples back into the bowl, saving one to eat as the meeting went on.

Tony just grinned. "Hey, can you do more apples? How about knives? Ever juggle them? What about fire sticks? Where'd you learn to juggle?"

"Grew up in the circus. Learned lots of shit there. Sure, I can juggle knives and fire."

"Cool. Here, I'll get out the knives." Stark was totally the enabling type, but Cap reached out and kept Tony from getting up.

"Clint, I'm sure you can put on an impressive show, and I'll want to watch sometime, to see how your talents might help us in a battle – or for some good publicity. You could juggle for kids in a hospital, for example. But now's not the time. So take another minute to finish juggling to get it out of your system and let's get back to trying to help Doctor Banner."

Coulson and Steve were going to get along great, Clint thought.

"Okay, Cap. It's just that if I'm not on a mission, I don't like staying put in one place too long with nothing to do with my hands."

He dropped the apples back in the bowl, except for one he lobbed at Tony and the one he kept to eat. He hoisted himself up on the counter and sat cross-legged. He liked being up high. He didn't know why. For as long as he could remember, he'd always preferred it that way.

"Obviously Bruce is good at crossing borders in North and South America. How did he get to Sierra Leone? And to Kolkata?" Steve asked, sending Clint a "time to get back with the program" look.

"He used a fake ID and passport to join a charity medical ship that was in Guatemala. Their next port of call was Freetown in Sierra Leone. Bruce jumped ship there when the charity sailed to the next place. He stayed around Freetown and ended up helping a research group trying to cure Lassa Fever. He used to send them patients. We had one of our agents join the group, and when Bruce started getting itchy feet, he offered him a plane ride to Kolkata and to keep being sort of their agent in the field. They'd take the patients he sent to their clinic, give them more extensive medical care. He did some good work on the research, apparently. Then Fury sent Natasha to bring him in."

Tony said, "He can still work on curing Lassa Fever when he comes back. Well, if he wants to. I can add that research group to my charities list."

"That's all information that shows Bruce in a positive way, helping sick people. That's helpful. What about things that might be seen as shady?" Steve asked, a small furrow showing on his forehead.

"You know, there's not really much, other than turning into the Hulk and damaging a shitload of property. And the deaths. That'll be tough to get past. Shady stuff, hmm. He's pretty decent at hacking, although probably not as good as Stark," Clint said.

Tony bowed his head a little, acknowledging the accolade.

"He's used a lot of fake IDs and he falsified a ton of job applications. Can't see anybody really caring about that." Clint took a bite of his apple.

"Bruce is brilliant," Tony said, and rocked back on his chair so that it was only on two legs, then let it down again. Clint wasn't the only one in that room who could get fidgety after a while.

"Mostly," Clint agreed, "But he doesn't pick up languages very easily. He's better in Spanish than Portuguese, or Krio, Hindi, or Bengali. He tries, though. I've heard him practicing."

Clint added, "He's good with his hands. He was always fixing stuff for people, their washing machines, sewing machines, vehicles, even worked at a monastery as a handyman. Ross found two or three computers he'd built and used to track stuff like Ross' plans, or information to make false IDs. Also he researched the hell out of possible cures. That was what he was doing in Brazil, researching plants from the rainforest. He was corresponding with Sterns, and they were working on an inhibitor. They got partway with it. You know, don't you, that what Sterns synthesized did reverse the metamorphosis, right?"

Tony and Steve both nodded.

"Too bad for Bruce that it's only a temporary fix. His fight with Blonski showed that. Ah, other stuff that would be considered scandalous..." Clint chuckled.

"He took hallucinogens in an experiment when he was getting his M.D. and Ph.D at Harvard. It's how he met Betty Ross. General Ross has groused about that, too, that Banner seduced his daughter into joining that experiment. Like Bruce was Timothy Leary and Betty was his groupie. It's not true, not even a little bit. They each signed up before they met."

Steve's eyes had widened, and Tony was looking intrigued. Clint grinned at them. He thought this story was hilarious.

"Bruce got picked up by the cops one night babbling about gamma radiation after he'd been dosed. The experimenters thought he'd come down from tripping and they let him go home. He hadn't; he'd just hidden that he was still hallucinating."

Tony started snickering. "I can't wait to rib him about this."

Clint chuckled again. "He gets kind of sheepish, when people bring it up now. "

Tony, his eyes lit up with amusement, said, "So what happened? Bruce go to the Pokey?"

Clint said, "Apparently Bruce was meandering around Harvard Square and thought he could actually see gamma ray bursts with his own eyesight, which you can't, and he was overcome with the beauty of it all. He kept telling anybody within listening range about it. When the cops found out he was part of an experiment, they hauled him back to the guy running it, and gave him an earful for letting his doped up subject wander around high as a kite. He didn't go to jail. Bruce got a disturbing the peace citation out of it, but the judge dropped it."

"Why did Bruce sign up for that?" Steve asked.

"Money. Bruce got scholarships and financial aid, but basically he was putting himself through school and he was always broke. And I should make sure you know about his family. That's bound to come up, if anybody really wants to get dirt on him. Not that any of it was his fault, but some people will probably pull the genetics card about it."

Clint noticed how Tony's body language had shifted; he was tense, poised to react. Maybe most people wouldn't have noticed, because Tony's facial expression still radiated only a mildly interested look, but Clint had been a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent for a long time and noticing things like that was second nature to him. And then there was the way he'd grown up. It had left him... well. It just had.

Tony had a trigger about family history, then. Knowing what he did about Tony's family, he didn't blame the guy. Still, unless there was shit that was pretty deeply buried, Tony's father hadn't been near the monster that Clint's dad or Bruce's dad had been. As far as he knew, Tony had never been physically abused by his father. He hadn't met Tony's emotional needs as a child, but he'd never deprived him of food, or medical care, that Clint knew about, anyway. Sometimes families kept those things secret, and even the kids who'd been treated poorly would stay quiet about it.

He never got into "my dad was worse than your dad" one-ups with people. No point. Everybody's experience was unique, and if they were fucked up by it, then they were fucked up by it. God, he and Natasha had gotten really drunk together a couple of times and talked about their childhoods. Well, he talked. She alluded. But they were both survivors, and so was Bruce Banner.

"What about Bruce's family?" Steve asked, and Clint stopped letting his thoughts meander.

"Okay, here we go. Brian Banner, Bruce's dad, was an alcoholic and a mean son-of-a-bitch. I don't know if Bruce became a physicist because his dad was one or not. I'm pretty sure Bruce became a doctor because of his mother.'

"His mother?" Steve asked.

"I'll explain that in a bit. Brian Banner was convinced that his genius was misunderstood and he didn't get along with his co-workers. He took his frustrations out on his wife, Rebecca, and later, Bruce. He thought that he'd been damaged by radiation from the research projects he'd worked on and that when Bruce was born his son was a mutant. I guess we can be grateful that he didn't shake the hell out of Bruce when he was a baby and give him brain damage."

Steve and Tony were staring at him, and Clint remembered from reading a Captain America biography Coulson had in his office that Steve's father had also been an alcoholic. Wow. Looked like Thor was going to end up as the one with the least damaging childhood, and how bent was that? Odin as dad of the year. Century. Millennium. Whatever.

Clint took a deep breath. "The autopsy on Rebecca Banner showed a long history of injuries, fractures. There weren't any records of her being treated at any hospital or at a doctor's office for the injuries that her husband had given her."

You could have heard a pin drop in that kitchen, Clint thought. He guessed all of this was news to them, that Fury hadn't included any of Bruce's family history in the abbreviated file he'd sent to Tony and Steve.

"Yeah. Brian Banner murdered his wife in front of his son. She finally had enough of his drunken beating on her and Bruce. From what they got out of Bruce, his mom was leaving the asshole, taking him with her. His dad beat his mom to death. Stopped her from driving away in the car. Cracked her head on the driveway, then dragged her into the garage."

Tony was trying to bore a hole through Clint with his eyes. Steve nodded at Clint to go on. So he did, feeling again the empathy towards Bruce that he'd felt the first time he'd been briefed on Bruce Banner's background.

"A lot of this was pieced together later by the cops and counselors, but they think she finally decided to get out because of what he was doing to Bruce. See, he'd slap her around and when she'd be down on the floor, he'd grab Bruce and make him hold onto a hammer or a heavy skillet and tell him to hit his mom. He'd call him all kinds of names – monster, freak, mutant – when he wouldn't do it, and then he'd beat the snot out the poor kid. He was sober enough to make sure to do it where any marks would be covered up by Bruce's clothes. Of course, sometimes the poor kid would get bruised on his face or arms anyway when his dad would throw him against the furniture. Told Bruce's teacher that his kid was just clumsy when the teacher called to ask about the bruising. Probably the school would have figured it out eventually. His teacher reported the bruises to the principal and they'd started keeping documentation."

Steve asked, "Didn't they talk to Bruce about what was happening?"

Clint nodded. "They asked."

Steve said, sighing, "But Bruce didn't admit he was being hurt, right? Kids at my orphanage often didn't either."

Clint swallowed down another bite of his apple and said, "Nah. He wouldn't rat his dad out."

"So he lied about it," Tony sighed, too.

"Learned that from his mother probably, since she never called the cops on Brian Banner. Hell, he was only six when his mom died."

"His mother did try to escape, though." Tony was staring at his hands.

"She did. The last straw for Rebecca apparently was when Bruce started fighting back against his dad. He'd go into a rage and try to hit his dad when his dad started hurting his mom or would go after Bruce. His dad thought it was great. He thought it showed Bruce was learning to act like him, and not like a mutant. He was still proud of Bruce fighting him, the bastard, when the cops arrested him."

"So he tried to make Bruce be like him, violent, and make him his ally in hurting Rebecca. What a prince." Tony glanced up at the cupboards and tightened his lips together.

Nodding, Clint said, "Didn't stop him from beating the kid, though."

Clint dropped his eyes down to his hands for a moment. He didn't like talking about this; his own memories of his father smacking the hell out of him and his brother were clamoring for his attention. He shook his head, shoving those memories back down.

"After his dad killed his mom, Bruce attacked him. Just went wild. You can imagine how well that ended. Brian gave his son a mild concussion, a lot of bruises, and a spiral fracture of his left arm. When his dad passed out, Bruce called 911. When the cops and ambulance arrived, they found Bruce sitting with his mom in the garage. She was covered in band-aids and he'd put an ice pack on her head. She'd died hours ago, but Bruce did what he'd always done for his mom after the beatings were over. He played doctor for her."

"Jesus," Tony said. "I need a drink." He cringed as soon as he said it. "God, even I know that was a shitty thing to say. My God, Bruce. Steve and I wondered what had happened for the Hulk to have been born when Bruce was exposed to all that gamma radiation; we suspected maybe he'd been abused, but this is just... no wonder."

Steve just looked sad. "Did he go to an orphanage, afterward?"

Clint shook his head. "He went into foster care until his mom's sister took him and raised him. He acted out for a while, had bad temper tantrums. He rarely hit other people, mostly he tore stuff up, and yelled a lot. He used to run away, too. He had counseling and by the time he was nine or so, he'd settled down. From all the school reports and interviews with his aunt and cousin, he turned out to be a nice kid, helpful but guarded."

"Did he have friends? I had Bucky and we helped each other. Did Bruce have anybody like that?" Steve asked, his eyes looking faraway for that moment.

Clint made a so-so gesture with his hand. "Well, adults tended to like him. Other kids, that was a mixed bag. He had some run-ins with bullying types – he skipped a couple of grades, so he was a lot younger and smaller than the other kids in his classes. He was liked by a fair number of kids, but he rarely let himself be friends with them. I don't think he had anybody like your friend, Steve."

Steve said, "I was the same age as the kids in my class, but I was always the littlest boy of the bunch. Bucky helped me out of a few jams." He nudged Tony. "You skipped grades, right?"

Tony nodded, but didn't offer to share if he'd been bullied. He'd started college when he was still a little dude, Clint knew. There was no way that he hadn't been up close and personal with guys who resented his intelligence and his money. Also, Tony's mouth had gotten him into trouble as an adult on a regular basis, so it was a pretty good bet that he'd said things that riled up other kids to the point of wanting to take a swing at him.

On the other hand, when Tony turned on the charm it was hard to not fall under his spell. He'd probably talked his way out of trouble as much as he'd talked himself into it. Clint had seen the news conference when Tony had come back from Afghanistan. He'd had the entire room of reporters sitting on the floor because he'd sat down on the dais and asked them to join him. He'd been so likeable, so sincere, and had caused an uproar when he said Stark Industries was now out of the weapons business.

Tony grinned. "Rhodey had my back when I was at M.I.T. Still does. But Bruce, he never had a best friend like that?"

Clint said, "Not really. Not as a kid. He was closest to Betty, and they were lovers for a long time, but they didn't meet until they were at Harvard. They went back and forth about getting married for years."

Clint stretched, going from cross-legged to extending his legs, and then letting them hang over the edge of the counter. Apparently that gave Tony the green light to get up; he stretched, then deposited his apple core into the trash. He ended up facing Clint, but Steve stayed at the table.

Steve said, "Bruce made strong connections with all of us, the few days he was here. It's hard to believe that he didn't have more good friends, at least before the accident with the gamma machine."

Clint shrugged. "Nah, even as an adult, his circle of friends was small. His younger cousin, and a kid, uh Rick something, who'd attached himself to Bruce after Bruce had saved his life. But, he was good friends with a guy who runs a pizza place in Willowdale, Virginia, the town where Culver University is located. Those were the people he was closest to, before the accident. Just like when he was a kid, there were a lot of other people who liked him and would consider him a friend, too, of sorts. A friend who'd help you in a heartbeat, but kind of shied away from sharing personal stuff or hanging out together much."

"The genetics card... you think people will say Bruce, the Hulk, is evil, bad, because he inherited it from his father?" Steve stood up and folded his arms over his chest. He looked determined.

"Some will. Tony, you know they will, so this is something you need to have a really good response to. You'd better cite research or something that shows that most kids who are abused don't become abusers themselves," Clint said.

"Will do. Is Bruce a good doctor?" Tony said, looking grim. He kept glancing at a high cupboard where Clint knew he kept alcohol.

"Yeah, he is. He's a great diagnostician. He's never had his own practice, but after he got his license, he put in his time wherever he lived. He worked as a sub for Culver's Student Health Clinic and had a regular shift about twice a month. He also subbed at Willowdale hospital's ER and for a medical practice, if the regular docs were sick or out-of-town."

Tony glanced again at where the liquor was kept in the kitchen and Clint scowled at him. "So Tony, I see you eyeballing the booze cupboard. Isn't it a little early to start drinking for the day?" Clint asked, and yeah, he was getting peeved that after hearing how Bruce's dad beat his family when he was drunk, that Tony thought now was a good time to get into the Scotch.

Tony shook his head. "Actually, I'm fighting an impulse to empty it all down the drain." He got up and stood next to Steve, and Clint noticed how their shoulders were touching.

Tony sighed. "I think I've got enough information about Bruce now. I'll keep you guys in the loop about the campaign – ah, should we have weekly meetings? Pizza night or something, talk to each other about what we're doing? Not just about Bruce, but you know, Avengers stuff."

"Sounds good," said Clint. "We'll do movies after we eat. I'm making it my mission in life to introduce Steve to all the classics."

Steve smiled wryly. "I'm not sure if I'd call Santa Claus Conquers the Martians a classic, Clint. It was terrible."

"Yeah, but it was terrible in a classic way. It's been named as one of the worst films ever. It's even on the bottom 100 movie list. That kind of stupidity deserves a spotlight. Besides, you had fun throwing popcorn at the screen, too, just like me and Nat." Clint grinned, and started running movie titles in his head for the next time he could drag Steve to the great little home theater room Tony had installed. Maybe Ice Pirates or Clash of the Titans .

Steve said firmly, "We'll take turns picking the movie. I can already tell that if we let you pick them all the time that I'll never see a decent film again."

He added thoughtfully, "Tony, what if we contacted Betty Ross, asked her if she'd help us? Maybe she'd agree to be interviewed?"

Tony nodded and stepped toward the door, pausing there. "Why don't you call her, Steve. I suspect that my time as her father's weapons supplier isn't going to make her feel like talking to me. I realized she's E. Ross, brilliant in her field of cellular biology; she co-authored papers with Bruce, and I was impressed when I read them. Ross is a common name, and I didn't connect her with General Thaddeus Ross. Maybe you could talk to the other people at Willowdale who knew Bruce, too. I could arrange for some camera work, and we could show it to the public when the time is right."

"I think I'll motorcycle down to Virginia, talk to her in person," Steve said, and he grabbed one of the apples in the bowl.

"Road trip. Cool. You said you wanted to travel around the country on your bike. Two birds with one stone this way." Clint jumped down from the counter. "Meeting adjourned, Cap?"

"I think so. Tony?" Steve glanced at him.

"Yeah. We're done. Let's make Thursdays Avengers meeting and movie night. I'll pick the next movie. It'll be a surprise." Tony ducked out of the kitchen and Steve finished the apple in three bites and started filling the sink with hot water.

Clint left him being responsible about kitchen cleanup and went to his quarters. He wanted to call his handler. He thought Coulson would like to know what the team was doing about Bruce. And probably Coulson missed talking with Clint. He was a little surprised to realize just how much he missed seeing and talking with Phil Coulson.

x x x