Exposed Nerve

I tossed the quarter into the air and caught it back in that same hand before sliding it into my pocket. "Well, I was never really one for believing in luck," I commented on the bad luck of a coin landing on tails.

Tony shook his head and pointed towards the doorway as he moved about the lab, dragging his fingers over different screens on his way. "That's the guy my dad never shut up about? I'm wondering if they shouldn't have kept him on ice."

"Huh," Bruce chuckled once. "Well, the guy's not wrong about Loki. He does have the jump on us."

"What he's got is an ACME dynamite kit. It's gonna blow up in his face, and I'm gonna be there when it does."

"I could probably pull that off," I offered half-jokingly, shrugging one shoulder as I switched back and forth between looking over Bruce's shoulder and staring at Loki's scepter. "I've never tried cartoon tricks before. Might be an adventure."

Bruce peeked at me one of the times I was looking at his shoulder before turning to Tony and eventually back to his computer. "Yeah. I'll read all about it."

"Or you'll be suiting up with the rest of us," Tony suggested.

"No." Bruce shook his head, dragging one finger from the bottom to the top of his screen. "No, see, I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed, like a nerve. It's a nightmare."

I moved to stand on the other side of Bruce's screen and minimized what he was working on so that he could see me through the glass. "You know, Dr. B, you remind me of my niece. Smart, cute, and whiny as hell. I mean, she's three, so she kind of gets away with that last part. You can't keep hiding from situations you aren't sure are going to pan out. When I went up against Barton, I had no idea what was going to happen. But you know what? I jumped off that roof anyway."

"And got yourself hurt in the process." He pointed towards the white bandage wrapped around my forearm, partially hidden by the half-rolled up sleeve.

"That's not her point," Tony pitched in, leaning back against the desk and crossing his arms and ankles. "Her point is that at least she tried, and it's about time you manned up and tried something new too."

"It's different," Bruce tried again, switching back and forth between looking at me and Tony. "You can control your suit, and you can control your changes. I can't control myself when I'm like that."

"You know, I read all about your accident. That much gamma exposure should have killed you."

"So you're saying that the Hulk..." Bruce stopped himself, wiping at the edge of his mouth before looking back up at us. "The Other Guy... he saved my life? That's nice. It's a nice sentiment. Saved it for... what?

"I guess we'll find out."

Bruce glanced at Tony before shaking his head and bringing his work back up. "You may not enjoy that."

"Then again," I shrugged. "We just might. And if we're lucky..." I reproduced the quarter from my pocket and picked up Bruce's hand to lay it heads up on his palm, smiling when he started to fiddle with it. "You might enjoy it too."

"I thought you didn't believe in luck?"

"I've been known to change my mind," I laughed. "Though not too often. I'm usually very stubborn, so you should be feeling very special right about now."

"Speaking of stubborn," Tony added loudly, cutting into what had previously been a quiet moment between Bruce and I. "SHIELD's firewalls have improved since the last time I hacked into them. I don't like when they learn things." He adopted an excited expression and turned to face me, halting his hands over the monitor. "Could you change it so that they have no firewalls?"

"Mmm... probably not," I admitted. "I've never tried anything with electronics before. I would more likely blow up your computer than successfully break into SHIELD's files."

Tony mumbled something about "useless" and "no fun" as he returned to working on the computer. "No matter. I'll only take another thirty seconds or so anyway. I just really hate waiting."

At that moment, the lab door slid open as Fury marched in, eyes trained on Tony. "Mr. Stark, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Uh, kind of been wondering the same thing about you."

"You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract."

"We are," Bruce answered, causing Fury to look at him while Tony pointed in his direction. "The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile."

"And then you can get your Cube back," Tony concluded, turning back to his computer when it beeped. "No muss, no fuss... What is Phase 2?"

All of us turned to look at Steve when he came in with a giant gun and dropped it with a loud bang on the nearest table. "Phase 2 is SHIELD uses the Cube to make weapons. Sorry, computer was moving a little slow for me."

"Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract, this does not mean that we're making-"

"I'm sorry, Nick!" Tony shouted, cutting Fury off and flipping the screen around to display what looked like schematics for weapons. "What were you lying?"

"Nobody ever said anything to me about weapons." I crossed my arms over my chest, knitting my eyebrows at Fury. "Do you lie to everyone you recruit, or am I a special case?"

"Oh, it's definitely not just you," Tony answered for Fury.

"I was wrong, Director." Steve stepped away from the gun just as Natasha walked in with Thor. "The world hasn't changed a bit."

When Bruce noticed that Natasha had walked in, he used the glasses in his hand to point towards the screen displaying the blueprints. "Did you know about this?"

"You want to think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor?"

"I was in Calcutta, I was pretty well removed."

"Loki is manipulating you," she tried again, stepping sideways and closer to Fury. For some reason, watching her glare at Bruce as she neared the Director sent little hot flares of anger down my spine.

"And you've been doing what, exactly?"

"You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you."

"Yes, and I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy." Bruce grabbed the screen, pointing at it to draw all of our attention towards the giant gun displayed on it. "I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction."

Fury kept his narrowed eyes trained on Bruce while he motioned towards Thor. "Because of him."

Thor furrowed his eyebrows and pointed towards his own chest. "Me?"

Seeing that none of us had any idea what he was talking about, Fury took it upon himself to lock his arms behind his back and twirl in a slow circle to address all of us as he explained. "Last year Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but that we are hopelessly, hilariously outgunned."

"My people want nothing but peace with your planet," Thor insisted.

"But you're not the only people out there," Fury countered. "Are you? And you're not the only threat. The world is filling up with people who can't be matched. That can't be controlled."

"Like you controlled the Cube?" Steve asked, and Fury scoffed.

"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies. It is a signal to the other realms that the Earth is ready for a higher form of war."

"We don't want any form of war," I disagreed, but was cut off by Fury, who was only the first of people to continue interrupting as everyone began to talk over each other.

"You forced our hand. We had to come up with something!"

"A nuclear deterrent," Tony offered. "Because that always calms everything right down."

"Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark."

"I'm sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck deep in-"

"Wait, wait, wait- hold on. How is this now about me?"

"I'm sorry, isn't everything?"

"I thought humans were more evolved than this," Thor commented as Steve and Tony stepped closer to each other, glaring as they stood chest-to-chest.

Fury turned to look at Thor as he leaned backwards, a look of disbelief covering his features. "Excuse me, did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?"

"You treat your champions with such mistrust!"

"Are you really all that naive?" Natasha questioned. "SHIELD monitors potential threats."

"Captain America is on threat watch?" Bruce scoffed, moving around the desk to stand in the circle that had formed amidst all the arguing.

"I'm on threat watch?" I asked, holding a hand to my chest. "I do card tricks!"

"We all are," Natasha answered with a nod.

As more time passed, the disagreements became louder and more aggressive with each of us arguing one point or another. Steve and Tony stood toe-to-toe, arguing about respect. Fury and Thor argued over who had the right to power. Natasha looked as if she couldn't believe we were debating any of this at all. Bruce shook his head when Fury grabbed Thor's arm and called out, "Yeah, manhandle him, that'll help."

I could feel my face flushing as my frustration grew with the group, all of them ignoring my attempts to shut them up. "I would call you all children, but I have better luck getting kids to cooperate than I do with any one of you idiots."

"You speak of control, yet you court chaos."

"That's his M.O., isn't it?" Bruce asked Thor, waving his hand towards Fury as the group quieted down to listen to him. "I mean what are we, a team? No, we're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're a time bomb."

"You need to step away," Fury commanded, closing in on Bruce.

"Oh, god," I groaned, shaking my head. "Just leave him the hell alone for once."

"Excuse me?" Fury's eyebrows shot up to his hairline as he turned to face me, and I raised my hands up by my side before slapping them down against my thighs.

"You heard me, Mad-Eye Moody. Get off everyone's asses."

"Yeah, why shouldn't the guy let off a little steam?"

"You know damn well why!" Steve slapped Tony's hand off his shoulder when he laid it there, causing him to return to glaring at him. "Back off."

"Oh, I'm starting to want you to make me."

"Yeah, big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?"

"Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist."

Steve, obviously unimpressed with Tony's joke, lowered his voice to a husky whisper and stepped even closer. "I know guys with none of that worth ten of you. I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on the wire and let the other guy crawl over you."

"I think I would just cut the wire."

Steve smirked, shaking his head. "Always a way out. You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero."

"A hero?" Tony poked Steve's chest, which only made the Captain visibly angrier as he clenched his fists. "Like you? You're a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle."

"Put on the suit. Let's go a few rounds."

Everyone turned to Thor when he started laughing, and he looked at each of us with a grin that made me want to punch his stupid, ridiculously handsome face. "You people are so petty... and tiny."

"Yeah, this is a team."

"Agent Romanoff," Fury motioned from Natasha to Bruce. "Would you escort Dr. Banner back to his-"

"Where?" Bruce held his arms out by his sides. "You rented out my room!"

"The cell was just in case-"

"In case you needed to kill me, but you can't. I know, I tried."

The entire atmosphere in the room took a sudden drop from heating anger to chilling realization at Bruce's words. My mouth opened slightly as if I was going to say something, but I had no idea what to say to that.

Bruce looked at all of our reactions, and knowing he wasn't going to simply brush a statement like that off, he sighed before explaining. "I got low. I didn't see an end. So, I put a bullet in my mouth and the Other Guy spit it out... So I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good. Until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk. You want to know my secret, Agent Romanoff, you want to know how I stay calm?"

As Bruce's tone grew darker, I watched as he reached back and wrapped his hand around the scepter. I wasn't the only one to notice, seeing as everyone seemed to take the smallest step back as Fury and Natasha put their hands on their guns.

"Bruce," I almost whispered, saying his real name out loud for the first time. When he turned to look at me, I glanced at the scepter in his hand before returning my eyes to his. "Put the scepter back."

At the same time that he looked down at the scepter with confusion, as if he hadn't even realized he was holding it, the computer across the room started beeping incessantly and he dropped it back onto the table. "Sorry, kids. You don't get to see my party trick after all."

"You located the Tesseract?" Fury asked, which launched the boys into yet another pissing contest over who could get to it the quickest, or who was worthy enough to retrieve it.

"Just shut up!" I growled with annoyance as Steve and Tony went back and forth about hitting an old man and putting on the suit. "God, and I thought Bruce was whiny."

"Oh my god," Bruce breathed, and I turned back to face him with a huff.

"We've already been over this Bruce, you whine even more than my-"

Boom.