A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter, I'm sorry I didn't really get to individual replies. This will be the penultimate chapter of this fic. Stay tuned for the final installment and enjoy Age of Ultron this weekend! :)

That Radium Glow

Chapter 13

I stared into the round black O of the barrel of Banner's gun. Slowly, I raised my hands so my fingertips were on level with my tousled hair. I didn't know what else to do. My sleep-addled mind was as empty as the bottles that littered my car.

Banner gestured me awkwardly inside, and I wondered if he'd ever held a gun before. I backed up carefully, never taking my eyes from him or his gun. If he was as amateur as he seemed, he might step too close to me by accident. I might get lucky and be able to make a grab for the gun.

I held my breath while I moved. No soap; he stayed in the doorway, well out of my reach. I stopped a few paces into the living room and watched Banner step across the threshold and reach back to pull the door shut. I didn't hear the latch click. A very tiny hope blossomed in my chest.

"Stark or Ross?" I said quickly, before he could notice he hadn't locked the door. My lips were stiff and my mouth was dry, like it had been stuffed with old socks.

Banner blinked in surprise. His dark eyes were clearer than I'd ever seen them, though rimmed by deep purple rings. He looked as exhausted as I felt. A slight sheen of sweat shone on his too-pale skin, and I could see the barrel of his automatic wavering slightly in his hand as he shivered. Withdrawal, maybe. He was still coming off whatever drugs Samson had shot him with. "I'm sorry?" he asked blankly.

I shrugged as best I could with my hands grabbing sky. "Who helped you escape?" I clarified. "Stark or Elizabeth Ross?"

He gaped at me for a moment. "You think I'd involve Betty in this?"

"Stark then," I confirmed.

"But how did you—" Banner spluttered indignantly, before he realized what he had done. His shoulders slumped dejectedly and he seemed to deflate before my eyes. I stifled a chuckle.

"You're not very good at this, are you?" I grinned. So my talking seemed to throw him. Good to know.

"Not really," Banner admitted, glancing up sheepishly from under the brim of his hat. He reached up to remove it and set it carefully on the table. His hair shone damply with perspiration. "It was Tony," he added glumly.

"How'd you pull it off, anyway?" I asked, both out of legitimate curiosity and to stall for time. Every minute I kept him talking was another minute Captain America had to come to my rescue. I wrinkled my nose a little at the thought. Jesus, now I was the damsel tied to the railroad tracks from the radio serials. I didn't like the idea. "You get him to start that fire?"

"Of course not!" Banner exclaimed. He looked horrified enough by the prospect of setting fire to a hospital that I figured he was telling the truth. He shivered and huddled into his shabby overcoat, though the room was plenty warm. "It was luck, mostly. They finally decided that I was…uh, well enough for a bath. The orderlies ran when the alarm sounded and they left the door unlocked," he explained almost apologetically. "I found a white coat in a locker, and I already had my glasses back, so I just put them on and…slipped out with the crowd. I called Tony from a telephone booth down the street."

Simple, but clever. I made a note to bawl Talbot out the next time I had the opportunity, as the fact that nobody had recognized Banner in the crowd meant his boys were sleeping on the job. It wasn't even worth asking how Stark had slipped his minders in order to collect his fugitive friend. There were a hundred ways he could have done it and none of them was particularly important to me in that moment, with a gun in my face.

Not that any of this explained why Dr. Bruce Banner had escaped only to come to my apartment and hold said gun in my face, rather than just skipping town. I felt my eyes narrow a little as I studied him, and Banner squirmed slightly at the attention. It was a bafflingly stupid move for a genius. Two geniuses if I counted Stark, who was undoubtedly involved. My intuition prickled somewhere deep in my gut. Not just a bafflingly stupid move, but a suspiciously stupid move. What was Banner playing at? I did the only thing I could do and kept talking.

"That Stark's gun?" I asked, jerking my head towards the small automatic. My shoulders were beginning to burn from the effort of holding my hands up. Banner didn't say anything, which was about as good as spilling his guts. "So far we got him on aiding and abetting a fugitive. We can probably pin some weapon charge on him too, for giving you the gun. Maybe even accessory after the fact if the judge is in the right mood."

I was grasping at straws, but Banner didn't know that. He shot me a miserable look. "Of course, we also have you for murder and now for escaping from Federal custody," I babbled. "That ain't going to go over so well with the judge. Get you a couple extra years, if they don't give you the chair for murder."

Banner shuddered and the gun wavered a little. "I didn't kill her," he said quietly. He looked sick. "I couldn't have killed her. I couldn't have done a thing like that."

"You sure about that?" I interjected. "I saw what you did to Talbot's boys. A little girl like Doreen Green wouldn't have stood a chance."

It was a low blow, but I wasn't too concerned about playing fair. Banner shuddered again at the sound of the murdered girl's name. His face had taken on the faint green tinge of nausea. He lowered the gun slightly and pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. I tensed for action, but he saw my foot twitch and immediately brought the gun back into play. I swore under my breath. Banner might be an amateur but he wasn't stupid.

"Tony warned me not to let you get too close," he said. He glanced down and clumsily removed the safety with his thumb. "I don't like guns much, but we were afraid you wouldn't let me leave."

I swallowed with a dry throat, kicking myself for not noticing the safety before. I had a hunch that Banner wouldn't shoot me, but given my recent luck and the damage he'd done to those Chicago cops, I didn't think it was a good idea to push him too hard. We stared at each other in silence for several heartbeats. What the hell was keeping Rogers? I had a sudden horrible thought; that perhaps he'd given up on his telephone calls and had gone back to his hotel to sleep and try fresh in the morning.

"Stay as long as you like," I said at last, forcing a nonchalance I didn't feel into my voice. If I could just get Banner to let his guard down for a moment, I might be able to get myself out of this mess and Captain America could go take a walk off Navy Pier. "Want some coffee?"

"Yes," Banner said, but as I turned to go to the kitchen, out of his line of sight, he quickly amended: "No."

I bit my cheek to keep from swearing aloud. "Can I at least take a seat?" I asked. "My arms hurt." I turned in place, so he could see I had nothing jammed into the waist of my trousers or up my shirtsleeves. I desperately wanted a smoke, but I'd left the pack in my bedroom. Figured. "Look Ma, no gun."

"Okay," Banner said uncertainly. He eyed me suspiciously while I pulled a wooden chair out from the dining set and turned it around to straddle cowboy-fashion. I folded my arms across the top of the back and looked him square in the eye.

"Banner," I stated. "What the hell are you doing here?"

He flinched and looked away. "I know- I know it was a bad idea," he stammered nervously. "Tony told me I shouldn't come. He said I should get straight out of town."

"Good advice," I drawled. "But you didn't, and here we both are. Why don't you just give me the gun, and we'll pretend this never happened-"

"No!" Banner cried. "I won't turn myself back in. That's what you want, isn't it?" His voice had taken on a note of hysteria that sent a chill down my spine. "You don't understand. You don't understand what that…place is. You don't understand what he is! I'll never go back! Never!"

Wait, he? I looked up sharply at the word and Banner's eyes went wide. I had a pretty good idea of who he might be. Banner had clearly said more than he intended. I smirked as his throat bobbed nervously.

"You don't understand!" he added hastily, a note of panic in his voice as he tried to cover his mistake. "If they try me, if they convict me, I'll spend the rest of my life in places like that and I can't do it. I can't do it, Agent Barton. I'm not crazy!"

That wasn't what he had meant, and we both knew it. I cocked an eyebrow at him. "Oh really? Because from where I'm sitting—"

"Enough!" Banner yelled in a sudden flash of temper, and I shut up as his fingers tightened on the gun. His dark eyes blazed with angry light. "I came here to say something and I'm going to say it, and then I'm going to disappear."

Reciting the list seemed to ground him. I gestured for him to continue, secretly pleased that my hunch had paid off. "Get on with it, then," I grumbled, but inwardly my heart leapt. There was something fishy about Samson after all, and he had it figured.

Banner took a deep breath. "Doctor Samson is not who he says he is," he burst out, clearly afraid he might let something else slip. "He isn't what he says he is."

My heart trickled back into place. Useful, maybe, but hardly the earth-shattering revelation I'd hoped for. "That's all?" I exclaimed, suddenly annoyed. "You risked coming back here just to tell me that?"

Banner flinched. So he did know more. "That's-that's all I can tell you," he stammered. "When I'm safely, uh, out of town, Tony will give you the rest."

I had a sudden vision of Stark's smirk and words tinged with half-truths and the scent of whiskey. There was no guarantee his information wasn't just bunk to get his friend time to leave the country, and I had the impression Stark would love to put one over on the FBI. "That's not how this works," I said sharply. "How do I know you really got something, and you ain't just playing for time to blow town?"

Banner swallowed hard. "I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for it, Agent Barton," he told me, jutting out his chin a little defiantly. His knuckles were white on the butt of his gun. "I'm going to leave now. I'm going to run and I'm never coming back. It's better for everyone that way."

He edged warily over to snatch his hat from the table and cram it back on his head. Words tumbled wildly from his mouth while he backed slowly towards the door. "Nobody will find me. I wanted you to know that, because I think you'll believe me. I'd never sell out my country. Not ever. I'd never defect, Agent Barton. I'm just going to run, as far away as I can, and I'm going to disappear."

I shifted anxiously on the balls of my feet. I couldn't let him leave. Whatever information he had about Samson might be crucial to the case. Banner was the only witness we had who might be able to connect Samson with this Loki guy. We needed him, cooperative and preferably intact.

"Banner," I started quietly, reasonably, even though my insides were knotting themselves with frustration and anxiety at my inability to do anything besides stand here and flap my mouth. "Please-"

"You're going to tell them," he interrupted, gesturing at me with the gun. I froze. "You're going to explain to them that I'm not defecting. I'm no traitor." He swallowed and gave me a little bitter smile. "No foreign government will ever benefit from my…knowledge."

I eyed him, puzzled. For someone accused of murder, Banner seemed remarkably unconcerned about the actual murder charge. What had Samson done to spook him so badly? "You think they're going to take my word for it?" I demanded, channeling some of my inner frustration into my voice. If he was arguing with me, he wasn't disappearing. "Samson's right. You are crazy, Banner."

His mouth tightened into a hard line when I mentioned Samson but fear flashed in his eyes. "You're a Fed," he spat, "Aren't you?"

"That don't mean I got a private line into McCarthy's office," I retorted, tensing a little. "Listen, Banner—"

Suddenly the floor began to shake. A train flashed by, cutting off my words with a roar and rocking the building like it always did. Banner jumped with surprise, his eyes darting to the window. I leaped to my feet. I'd have to be quick, but maybe-

Over his shoulder, I saw the doorknob twitch. There was only one person it could be. My breath caught in my throat. The train had muffled the sound of footsteps on the creaky wood flooring that covered the stairs and the hall floor. I stepped out from behind the chair. Banner tensed and brought his gun up.

"Please, Agent Barton, I don't want to hurt you," he pleaded desperately. The barrel wavered as his hands shook. "You've been kind to me! Trust me, it's better for everyone if I just disappear—"

The door opened, and Captain America stepped through on surprisingly silent feet. His eyes narrowed when he saw me at gunpoint, and Banner's back. I didn't dare signal him, for fear Banner would notice.

I took a risk and stepped closer to the desperate scientist. Time to play my trump. "Banner," I interrupted, naming him for Rogers' benefit, "you didn't kill her."

"What?" he asked, his voice cracking. His whole body shuddered. The gun wavered again, and the tip of the barrel dropped from my chest down towards my stomach. Not exactly an improvement, but I'd take what I could get. Rogers tiptoed closer.

I spread my hands. Banner's eyes were riveted to me and I needed to keep them that way. "You didn't kill her," I repeated calmly. "I saw the autopsy report. It wasn't you."

The blood drained from Banner's face so rapidly that I thought he might faint. Well, that would certainly solve my problem. His body sagged as if the strings of rigid tension holding him up were suddenly snapped. The hand holding the gun fell limply to his side.

Rogers pounced. "Dr. Banner!" he said sharply from over the scientist's shoulder.

"What?" Banner said, instantly turning at the sound of his name. He recognized Rogers with a shocked expression that was almost comical and fumbled to bring up his gun, but he was too slow. Trying to do two things at once rattled him and Rogers had already thrown his punch. His fist collided with Banner's jaw with a meaty crack! that made me wince. Banner crumpled to the floor. The bruise on my own jaw throbbed sympathetically.

"What were you waiting for, Christmas?" I demanded as Rogers produced a pair of handcuffs and bound the unconscious Banner's hands. His head lolled limply to the side as I turned him over with the toe of my stocking foot.

Rogers looked up at me and grinned. His tie was a little loose but beyond that he was his usual put-together self. I really needed to learn that trick. "Better late than never."

"I've never seen that side of your right hook," I quipped.

Rogers shrugged. "Guy holds my partner at gunpoint, he's not going to like what happens next," he said easily.

I chuckled and offered him a hand up. Together we hauled Banner onto the sofa, and I went into the kitchen to begin the business of preparing coffee. I found a half-smoked cigarette in an ashtray and lit it on the burner while the water boiled. Rogers hung in the kitchen doorway, so he could keep one eye on Banner and the other on me.

The first cold light of dawn poked through the half-tangled blinds over the kitchen window, throwing dim, striped shadows over both of us. Rogers was clearly agitated and it wasn't just the aftermath of the scuffle with Banner. He practically vibrated with excitement. Far too awake for anyone at this hour, I thought sourly.

"You found something?" I asked with a yawn, pouring a few mugs of coffee. I set one aside for Banner, when he woke, and handed one to Rogers.

"You remember those files Olavsson mentioned?" he asked.

I nodded between puffs of my too-short cigarette. "Sure. What's that got to do with anything?"

"I made a few calls," Rogers told me. "There was a burglary reported at Cook County Hospital a few months back. Nobody thought much of it, because it was only the records section. Just a bunch of paper."

I was inclined to agree with that nebulous nobody at Cook County. "So?" I asked.

"The fire started in the basement, in the records department," Rogers continued. "A lot of files were destroyed. Including the entire case history for the psychiatric division."

I raised an eyebrow. Given the timing, there was no way the fire was simple coincidence. "Go on."

Rogers grinned. He set down his coffee and reached into his jacket to produce a flimsy facsimile of a photograph. I studied it. A blond man with merry dark eyes and a double chin stared back at me from under an Army cap, trying desperately to keep a serious face for his official photograph. One corner was ragged and blackened, though the paper was intact. It looked like the original had been partially burned.

"I don't get it," I said, glancing between Rogers and the photograph. "Who's this?"

"That," Rogers replied, his eyes glowing with excitement, "is Dr. Leonard Samson."

The Leonard Samson I knew was all cheekbones and forehead, with dark hair and a predatory smile. He resembled the photograph about as much as I resembled Mary Jane Watson. "What?" I exclaimed.

"I contacted his old practice out in Reno," Rogers continued. "And they wired me this." He gestured to the blackened corner. "They also had a fire, eight months ago. Following a burglary."

"But this isn't Samson," I protested stubbornly. I stubbed out the unsatisfying cigarette and took a long drink of coffee to get the wheels turning.

"Exactly," Rogers said, with much satisfaction. He reached into his jacket and withdrew another document, a facsimile of a half-destroyed license to practice medicine in the State of Nevada. Samson's name was printed and signed at the bottom, a messy, child-like scrawl that was nothing like the elegant hand I dimly remembered from the back of Samson's card. "Leonard Samson went missing in action on Iwo Jima."

I knew better than most what MIA on Iwo Jima meant. A cold thrill twanged from my stomach to my heart. If Samson was dead, then who had we been dealing with? Slowly, I set my cup of coffee to one side and glanced questioningly at Rogers.

"Don't you see, Barton?" he said. "Samson wasn't working for Loki. He is Loki."

I picked up my coffee again only to immediately set it down. Samson wasn't Samson at all. I ran my hand through my hair, still reeling with shock. I started to speak, stabbing the air with one finger, but the thoughts were all jumbled and I couldn't put them into words for a couple of stuttering heartbeats.

"But," I finally spluttered, "You checked him out. I thought you said he checked out."

"He did, at first," Rogers replied. "I called the number he had on his card, the one to his practice in Reno. Cook County had his medical license on file. It all looked bonafide at the time."

"Looked bonafide?" I snapped.

"It's all phony," he explained with a shrug. "His practice isn't listed on the telephone exchange. It doesn't exist."

I stared. "Rogers," I said incredulously. "How in the hell did you figure that?"

"I couldn't find Samson's card," Rogers admitted, coloring slightly. "I had the operator look him up. She couldn't find him or the practice, but she managed to find his old office, the real Samson's office." He grinned sheepishly. "Don't worry, I found the card later."

I gaped at Rogers, trying to decide if I was more astounded by his luck or by the fact that Samson (Loki?) had not only gotten away with forging a medical license but falsifying an entire medical practice well enough to fool the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It smacked of resources and a degree of organization that struck frost into my Red-fearing heart.

"So why burn the files?" I asked blankly. "The handwriting don't match?"

"Or to cover up the fact that some were missing," Rogers replied. He took a drink of his coffee and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "He would have needed to study them to pass as Samson. He must have figured we'd eventually check."

I ran a hand through my tousled hair and decided my rattled nerves couldn't go any longer without a decent smoke. I brushed past Rogers to retrieve them from my bedroom and returned to the kitchen to light up.

"Look, it fits," Rogers added, setting his mug down and pinning me with a blue stare. "This is what he does, Barton. He becomes whatever, whoever, he needs to get what he wants. It's him, it has to be."

We had an honest-to-God nuclear spy in Chicago. Jesus. I took a very long drag on my cigarette and tapped the ash into the sink to hide the anxious tremor in my fingers. I cracked the window above the sink to let the smoke out in deference to Rogers, and said: "So what are we going to do about it?"

Rogers grinned again. There was a hardness, almost a grimness, about the expression that suddenly reminded me that he had a score to settle with this Loki. "We're going to bring him in."

"Right," I said. I craned my neck to read Rogers' watch and made a face at the time. Coulson was an early riser, but we'd make no friends Fed or otherwise by sounding the alarm at this hour. I really wasn't making any friends at the Chicago Police Department this week. "Let's call Coulson and get it set up. We can leave Banner at the office; Hill will keep an eye on him."

"Nix," Rogers said, and I looked up with surprise. "We need to do it. Just us."

"Three armies haven't been able to catch this guy and you think the two of us can bring him in?" I exclaimed. "You lose some marbles on the way over here, Cap?"

"Look, Samson, Loki, fooled an entire hospital and a couple of government agencies into giving him access to three nuclear scientists," Rogers countered, in his most infuriatingly earnest tone. "We don't know who he has on the payroll. If we want to catch him, we need to keep it between ourselves."

I chewed the inside of my lip. He had a good point, but if things went sour and we lost this Loki guy, Coulson would have my badge. Rogers' career would be over before it had really even begun. But we'd lose him if someone snitched, too. A chill ran down my spine at the thought. I'd lost plenty of sleep over the Reds, but Christ, at least they were predictable. The idea of an independent player running around knowing the kind of things that Henry Pym and Reed Richards knew was the stuff of nightmares.

Still, the idea of confronting a cornered, desperate spy with a deadly reputation without substantial back-up wasn't exactly nice, either. I grimaced and looked down at my hands. There were proper procedures for this sort of thing, and while I wasn't normally big on following the Fed playbook, even I could admit there was a time and a place.

I sighed. The trouble was that it was Rogers who was asking. My partner. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the plea written plainly across his patriotic features. I made my decision. God forbid Clinton Francis Barton should become the voice of reason, after all.

"Aww, hell," I growled, looking up at Rogers. "What d'you have in mind?"

Rogers smiled. He nodded towards something over my shoulder, out in the living room. I turned to see Bruce Banner, still unconscious on my sofa. "Well," Rogers said, "we have something Loki wants."

Please review!