JARVIS finished his analysis around 7 pm that night, which was perfect timing, really, because now Tony could use pizza as a bribe to get his new teammates to agree to another meeting.
Bruce still hadn't returned from wherever he'd run off to earlier, but that was fine. He gave off 'veggie with no olives' vibes, and Tony was sure he'd be back by the time the food got here. There was only so much an agoraphobic with no source of disposable income could get up to in New York City, after all.
Unfortunately, half an hour later, when four of the six total members of their new little squad were gathered around the table serving themselves from pies dropped haphazardly in the middle, there was still no sign of their wayward scientist.
Tony frowned worriedly at the elevator as though willing it to open with the power of his mind. Eventually, he gave up and turned around to see Natasha eating a slice of pepperoni in a way that could only be described as 'dainty'.
"Are you seriously using a fork and knife, right now?"
She glared at him and stabbed her next piece with a little bit too much force. "Having greasy fingers makes it harder to hold a weapon."
Steve, already on his third piece in five minutes, glanced down at his own grease-covered hands as though he'd never considered that particular liability before. Then he shrugged and continued eating.
"Where's Bruce?" Clint asked (with his mouth full, like a heathen).
"I don't know. He left right after you guys did," Tony replied, distracted. "Cap, you seen him at all today?"
Steve shrugged. "No. But I was also hanging around the construction and SAR guys again, so that's not really that surprising."
"Oh, yeah? How's the clean-up going?"
Steve chewed a bit slower, and when he swallowed, the lump in his throat felt bigger than it should have. "Not well," he said soberly, "They haven't found anyone else alive since they rescued the people in that collapsed parking garage a couple of days ago. Joey says the dogs are starting to get depressed."
The mood in the room plummeted immediately, and Tony put down the slice he was pretending to eat. "They sure they don't need our help anymore?"
"Yeah, they're sure." Steve looked a bit put out as he continued, "They didn't even let me past the tape today. Said that I would just get in the way. They seemed to like those scanners you built for them, though. Every unit had one as far as I could see."
Well, at least there was that. Tony was about to turn to the two suspiciously quiet SHIELD agents and question them about what they'd been up to today when the elevator dinged.
Bruce stumbled through the doors looking almost as bad as he had when his radiation sickness flared up after the battle: face pale, lips bloody and peeling, and his whole body just…shaking. There was a phone in his right hand gripped so tight Tony was afraid it might crack.
"Woah! Buddy, what happened?" he asked, standing up and guiding Bruce towards an open chair. The poor guy looked like he was about to collapse.
Steve, hovering awkwardly nearby, took one look at his shaken expression and darted into the kitchen to grab him a glass of water. "Here. Drink this."
Bruce accepted the offering with a grimace that was probably supposed to be a smile and promptly chugged it all in one go. "Thanks," he said breathlessly, "I've been…lost all day, and I forgot to bring a water bottle with me."
"Lost?" Tony asked, retaking his seat as Steve reached over him to refill the glass. "Why didn't you just call one of us? We could've come to pick you up or given you directions or something.
Bruce frowned down at the phone he was still clutching in bloodless fingers as if just now realizing that calling for help was one of its functions. "I don't think you would have been able to find me," he said absently.
Tony scoffed and gestured between him and Steve. "Between the two of us, I don't think there's anywhere in this city you could go without us at least recognizing it."
"No, you don't understand!"
Tony leaned away, visibly surprised at his outburst, and Bruce paused, taking a few deep breaths and trying to force himself to calm down before he lost control completely.
"I was walking through Central Park," he said, speaking into the stunned silence. His new teammates were all looking at him, and though he knew he was safe here, the weight of their regard still made him hunch in on himself. "I went down this new path near the 6th Avenue entrance, and there were these…birds."
How was he supposed to describe the liminal feeling of that place—the too-quiet air and trees that laughed and crows with eyes too dark and knowing? The only way they'd understand is if he took them there, but he had a feeling that was impossible. The only way onto that path is by accident. He knew in his bones that the group of them could go down there and search for years and never find it.
Steve sat down on his other side, a concerned look on his face, and Bruce continued before he could interrupt. "They led me to this." He thrust his phone towards Tony, trusting him to know what he was talking about and to display the picture properly. The sharp intake of breath from across the table a few moments later informed him that trust was well-placed.
A thin glass screen had emerged silently from its compartment in the middle of the table and was now showing the gruesome scene from the park in disturbingly high definition for the entire group to see.
"Ugh," Tony complained, face screwed up in disgust, "I can smell that picture."
Natasha and Clint exchanged looks, an action not lost on Steve who'd been studying them instead of the screen. "You know something," he said, only the barest note of accusation audible in his tone.
Natasha didn't deny it, but she did consider for a few moments just how much to tell them. In the end, she resolved to hold nothing back. If Fury wanted them operating as a team, that meant they'd get clearance soon enough, and though secrets were her trade, there was no benefit to withholding this information. "We went to SHIELD headquarters today and did some poking around," she said, gesturing between herself and Clint. "All the Chitauri left on Earth were collected and sent to a facility in Nevada to be studied. These three being in Central Park all this time shouldn't be possible."
"Maybe they just missed them? We all make mistakes."
"That's highly unlikely," she replied. "Their weapons give off a unique energy signature that our analysts were able to track to within five feet. These three were obviously armed, so they shouldn't have been missed."
The discussion continued above him, but Tony tuned it out, instead pulling up the photo's metadata. "Huh," he said consideringly, eyes rapidly scanning the screen.
"What?" Clint asked, cutting himself off in the middle of a complaint about lazy new agents that Steve was 70% sure was a joke.
"The tag on this image is incomplete. It's giving me a time and date, but no location. If the bodies were in some sort of dead zone, it would explain how they got passed over." He handed Bruce his phone back and shrugged at Natasha's unsatisfied scowl. "Sometimes mistakes really are just mistakes."
"Yeah?" Clint asked skeptically. "If this really is so random and normal, then why did it freak Bruce out so bad? I mean, no offense, doc, but it's not like you haven't seen way worse shit before. Why'd you come stumbling in here like you'd seen a ghost?"
"Clint," Steve chided immediately, but Bruce shook his head.
"No, no, he's right. I don't know what happened. I just got this really intense feeling that I wasn't supposed to be there. I thought…Well, I don't know what I thought. But when I left the park, it was two miles further north and five hours later than it should have been."
Tony frowned. "You saying you lost time?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's not good."
Natasha tapped her nail on the table, eyes distant as she thought through all the possible explanations. "Maybe a toxin released by the Chitauri as they decay?" she suggested.
Bruce tilted his head consideringly. "It's possible," he said slowly. "I couldn't see or hear any animals anywhere nearby except for the crows. That's part of what made it so eerie to be there. Some sort of airborne toxin would explain their absence."
"We need to get word to that facility in Nevada, then," Steve said gravely. "Whatever it was must be potent to have such a strong effect on you. They'll need to take precautions when working with the bodies."
"We'll add it to the list," Tony said, still eyeing Bruce with concern. "You feeling better?"
Bruce nodded automatically and was surprised to find that it wasn't a lie. It was almost funny how the thought of being inadvertently poisoned made him feel less stressed. At least now he had a rational explanation. "Yeah, I'm fine. Thank you," he said sincerely.
"Good." Tony reached across the table and slid the last unopened box of pizza towards them. "Here. We got you veggie."
Bruce wasn't feeling very hungry, but he took a slice anyway to appease the worried man. "What were you guys talking about before I got here?" he asked, anxious to get the room's attention off of him.
"Nothing important. We can start going over JARVIS's findings, though, if you're up for it." Tony was pulling up the report even before Bruce replied. He knew well the look of someone desperate for a distraction, and he was more than happy to provide.
Bruce nodded, and across the table, Natasha sat forward slightly in interest. Tony knew that she'd gone off today with Clint to conduct her own investigation, and he hoped that by sharing the results of his, she'd be inclined to do the same.
He pulled out his tablet and navigated around so that the gory photo from the park disappeared from the screen, replaced almost immediately by a blurry picture of what looked like the Manhattan skyline.
"This is a still from another video taken during the battle," he said, launching into his explanation without preamble. "JARVIS noticed this figure on one of the visible rooftops." The photo zoomed in automatically, growing even blurrier in the process but making clearer the person standing tall amidst the chaos in the air with what looked like a bow drawn and aimed somewhere off-screen.
The image quality was too poor to make out any details beyond that, and Steve frowned. "Tony, that's probably just Clint."
"Au contraire, my friend!" Tony exclaimed, looking far too gleeful given their situation. "JARVIS analyzed our mystery archer's body proportions, and they are far too small to belong to Legolas here." Natasha and Clint didn't react beyond carefully examining the image for themselves, and Tony shot them a look. "You knew that already, didn't you?"
"We've never seen this photo before," Natasha answered slowly. "But we did find some arrows stored in evidence at SHIELD headquarters that didn't belong to Clint."
"Oh?" Tony asked, setting his tablet down on the table, "Do tell."
Clint sighed and slouched in his chair. "They must have been custom ordered because I've never seen anything like them. The tips were made of solid silver, but the shaft was probably some sort of alloy because it was far too tough to be pure. The fletching was made of real feathers, which is something I've only ever used when I'm in the middle of nowhere and have no other choice. It was strange, but there were only three of them, and the techs hadn't analyzed their composition yet, so that's all we've got."
Steve flicked his gaze back towards the screen. "Okay, so one of those fighters we saw in the last set of videos was using a bow with homemade arrows. That's weird, but it tracks with what we know so far."
"How'd they get up on the roof, though?" Bruce said, sounding more like he was wondering aloud than genuinely asking.
"Took the stairs probably," Clint responded. He shrugged when the others looked at him incredulously. "It would have been risky in the middle of a battle like this, but I've done it before. It's not impossible."
"Fine. Why not?" Tony exclaimed, exasperated. "So there's our mystery archer with legs of steel up on the roof, their friends fighting aliens with swords and spears on the ground, and this guy."
The screen changed again, this time showing a video of an old brick apartment building on the edge of the fighting. There was a huge chunk missing from the top right corner, and dark smoke billowed out furiously. The retreating roar of a Chitauri leviathan in the background was all they needed to figure out what happened, but whoever was taking the video was more concerned with the figures still visible in the top-floor windows than taking cover.
They were obviously trapped, and Bruce looked pained as civilians gathered on the street started shouting for someone to call the Fire Department. There was no way anyone official would make it on time (if they even came at all). This must have taken place near the beginning of the battle if they didn't already know that.
In the video, a boy pushed his way through to the front of the crowd so that he was visible in the bottom left corner of the screen. He was dressed strangely, with an old-fashioned leather toolbelt around his waist and what looked like welder's goggles pushed up into his hairline. On the top floor, a window cracked open as far as it would go, and a small hand appeared, waving frantically for help. The boy's shoulders seemed to set, and he ran forward.
"Wait! Kid, stop! It's too dangerous!" someone yelled. A man tried to reach out of the crowd and grab him by the arm, but he twisted and broke his grip easily.
"Not if I'm quick!" he called back. The last they saw of him was an impish grin shot over his shoulder. Then he turned, kicked the door open, and ran inside.
Clint whistled, impressed. "Damn. Kid's got balls. I'm assuming he survives if you're showing us this video?"
Tony just shushed him and nodded back towards the screen.
Several long moments passed before the kid showed up again, this time somehow on the top floor with the trapped people. He'd taken his shirt off and tied it around his mouth and nose to protect himself from the smoke, and when he broke one of the windows, it was clear he'd instructed the others to do the same. Glinting in his right hand was a large hammer made entirely of some sort of yellowish metal.
The video paused, and Steve sat forward to look at it carefully. "Is that bronze?"
Tony shrugged. "We can't know for sure, but it fell within the appearance parameters JARVIS was using during his search, so probably."
"So this boy is another member of our suspicious third-party group with Perseus and the other one with the spear."
"More than likely."
The video started to play again, and the team watched as the civilians trapped inside the building—three adults and one young child—climbed out onto the fire escape and hurried to the ladder. The kid who'd rescued them didn't follow, though they could still see his shadow faintly outlined against the roaring flames.
The building made an ominous creaking sound that the shitty microphone on the camera just barely managed to pick up, and the person holding it didn't even have time to finish cursing before an explosion knocked them flat on their ass.
The videofeed fuzzed out, but the audio still worked well enough for them to hear the screams and sobs from onlookers. When the static cleared, their view of the building was from the ground. An explosion had blown out the remaining front windows, and the entire thing was now engulfed in flames.
"Leo!" a little kid screamed from nearby. A boy, six or seven years old at most with a soot-stained scarf still tied around his face, darted forward as if to head straight back into danger to rescue his savior. A woman with painful-looking burns crawling up one of her arms darted out of the crowd and grabbed him before he could get far, cradling him to her chest even as he cried and kicked to get free.
From the camera's new position on the ground, her kneeling body was blocking most of their view of the destroyed building, so when she suddenly gasped, several tense moments passed before the reason why became visible.
The kid from earlier, the one everyone clearly thought had died in the explosion, came stumbling into view, coughing and covered in a morbid-looking mixture of soot and blood. Just when it looked like he was about to collapse, another teenager darted forward out of the crowd and threw one of his arms over his shoulder, supporting most if not all of his weight as they moved away from the building.
As the pair got closer to the camera, it was clear he was in bad shape, with several large cuts—presumably from the broken windows—littering his chest and arms. The video ended on a clear shot of his face as he looked at something over the camera. His brown eyes were still remarkably aware given everything he'd just been through, and Steve couldn't help but marvel at how the kid was even still conscious.
"Meet Leonidas Valdez, the boy who should be dead," Tony announced into the stunned silence.
The others didn't reply, but he moved on anyway. It had taken him a few minutes to come to terms with that video the first time he watched it, too. "He's 17-years-old and a ward of the state until he turns 18 in July. JARVIS flagged this video of him because of the hammer, but it stayed on the list because of the explosion. There's no way he should have survived."
"Are we sure he did?" Bruce asked, looking over what was visible of the kid's body in the last frame with the analytical gaze of a doctor. "It's impossible to determine the extent of his injuries without some scans, but the smoke inhalation alone could easily have proven fatal even if he was able to reach medical care."
"Well, he registered for his senior year of high school yesterday, so unless we've got a case of stolen identity on our hands, I'd say he's still alive and well. But," Tony said, pausing for dramatic effect, "JARVIS and I both agreed that there was something fishy going on with him, so I analyzed the video in more detail, and lo and behold…watch this."
The video rewound to a point just before the explosion, and the contrast and saturation were manipulated so that what was before just a vague shadow of Leonidas inside the burning apartment became a clear outline. Everything from there happened in slow motion. Leonidas was facing the broken window and moved towards it as if to follow the people he'd saved down the fire escape, but something in the burning apartment behind him made him pause and turn back. The groaning noise they'd heard on their first watch-through sounded infinitely more ominous in slow motion, and Bruce winced as he anticipated the explosion he knew would follow.
Leonidas threw up his hands as the fire bloomed and made a slashing motion to his left. The force of the explosion, unnaturally, followed suit and bypassed him to destroy what was left of the apartments to his left. Unfortunately, the blaze couldn't be as well contained, and the team watched in horror as his body was consumed.
The video paused right before it fuzzed out, and even Natasha seemed shocked at what they'd just seen.
Bruce gaped. "Wait– But– He didn't have any burns!"
This was just too much. First, he was poisoned by some mysterious dead-alien-fumes in the park, and now this?!
"Maybe we just missed it?" Steve suggested tentatively. "He was pretty covered with dirt there at the end."
"No, trust me, Cap," Tony said, "JARVIS and I went over every pixel of this video. The fire didn't touch him. The only injuries he got were the cuts from the glass and whatever concussive force he felt from the explosion. And before you ask," he added, turning towards Natasha, "I triple-checked the video. It's authentic and untampered with. Some guy uploaded it onto Youtube a couple of days ago to try and get Leonidas here recognized for his good deed."
Natasha humphed but didn't protest. She knew Tony wouldn't have showed it to them if it wasn't real, but it was easier to focus on explainable things—like editing a video for clickbait—than the idea that some random teenager was immune to fire.
"So…what? He's just built different?" Clint asked, faux casual.
Tony shrugged. "I was hoping one of you guys might know because the only explanation I can come up with is that the kid's got fire powers, and that's impossible."
"As impossible as super strength or turning into a giant green rage monster?" Bruce asked somewhat hysterically.
Tony paused, "Touché."
Across the table, the two SHIELD agents were intensely studying the last frame of the video. In it, Leonidas stood in the center of a fiery whirlwind. His hands were held out to his side, and tiny bright spots that might have been embers trailed from his fingertips.
"You two ever seen anything like this?"
Clint tore his focused gaze away from the screen and sighed tiredly. "I've seen a lot of shit," he said. "Not this, specifically, but the fact that it exists doesn't really surprise me."
"Ditto," Natasha added, distracted. "What do we have on him?"
"You mean who made him?" Tony asked dryly. "No idea. His CPS file is patchwork and he has absolutely zero online presence, but you'll never guess where he goes to school." Tony paused expectantly, but Natasha just raised an unimpressed eyebrow and silently waited from him to continue. "Fine. Tough crowd. The one red flag I managed to dig up is that he's at Alternative High School for Delinquent Youth, same as Perseus."
Clint frowned. "Do they know each other?"
"I'd say so," Tony replied. "Their school files list the same home address: some group home in Flushing sponsored by a Delphi Strawberry Services."
"What?" Steve asks, extremely confused. Looking around the table, it's clear he's not the only one. "Companies can sponsor group homes?"
"Apparently. Leonidas has been living there for the past two years. Before that, he ran away from pretty much every foster home he was placed in stretching back to when his mother died when he was eight. Perseus, on the other hand, still has a living mother and stepfather as his legal guardians and lives at the home as a caretaker."
"A caretaker?" Steve asked, incredulous. "He's barely an adult himself. How can he be a caretaker?"
Tony just shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know. The paperwork on this whole thing is patchy at best. Delphi Strawberry Services never applied for federal funding, and no funding means no mandatory check-ins and a way smaller paper trail."
"And no one at the school ever bothered to look further into it?" Bruce asked, appalled.
Clint scoffed. "Of course they didn't. They're mandatory reporters, not investigative journalists. Working at a school like that, I'm sure they've got enough on their hands as it is. If the kids came to class and seemed healthy enough then no one was going to ask any questions."
There was a note of bitterness in his tone that Tony hadn't expected. "Touchy subject there, Agent?"
The archer just glared at him, eyes cold. "Mind your business."
Tony raised his hands in placation but squinted at him curiously for another few moments before getting back to the report. "Fine, fine. Officially, the home was run by a Mr. Christopher Brunner up until last year when it was signed over to Perseus on his 18th birthday. As of right now, there's two other kids living there, both of whom also attend AHS: 16-year-old Niccolò di Angelo and 17-year-old William Solace."
"Four teenage boys all living together with no supervision in a sketchy apartment in Queens. What could possibly go wrong?" Natasha asked sarcastically.
"Hey! I'll have you know, I was one of those teenage boys once. Me and Bucky got an apartment together in Brooklyn when we were 16." Steve protested, a smile lurking at the corner of his lips at the fond memories.
"No offense, Captain," Clint drawled, "But that was like 80 years ago, and I've seen that apartment. You're not exactly making the argument you think you are."
Steve deflated immediately. "You've seen our apartment?" he asked, voice sounding far too small.
Clint winced, clearly not having thought through his words properly, and shot Tony a panicked glance. A distinctly uncomfortable silence reigned for a couple of seconds before Tony sighed and decided to bail him out. "Yeah, Steve," he said, trying to be as gentle as possible, "They made it into a museum after you guys…well, you know. Everyone's seen it. It's a big tourist thing now like the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building and shit."
"Oh." Steve trailed off, staring distantly at the last slice of pizza on his plate with a deep sadness in his eyes.
Tony reached out and awkwardly patted him on the shoulder a few times, the gesture feeling pathetic and wholly inadequate, even to him. "I'll help you get it shut down, if that's what you want," he offered.
Steve shook his head, blinking rapidly. "No, no. It's fine. Everything else has changed. It's nice to think that there's a part of us that survived."
Clint scratched the back of his head, feeling guilty, and Natasha kicked him under the table. Her green eyes were accusing, but it's not like he meant to make the big blond puppy dog sad! He just figured he already knew! The summer was the busiest time of year for touristy shit like this, after all. There were ads for the place everywhere.
Natasha shifted her weight, tapping a manicured nail on the table, and Clint sighed. "Hey, look, Steve, I didn't mean to make you upset about all that stuff. Why don't we wrap this up? We've all had a long day, and I, personally, could do with some shut-eye."
Tony shot him a grateful look. "Yeah, we can decide what to tell Fury tomorrow. What he doesn't know won't hurt him for at least another day."
Steve frowned as he looked between them, but before he could protest, Bruce interrupted. "I second that," he said, raising a hand, and unlike Clint, he actually looked like he was telling the truth.
Steve thought back to how haggard he'd looked stumbling in here just an hour ago and immediately felt bad. Of course he wanted to rest. The poor man had been poisoned or something. And if he was being honest with himself, Steve could use a little break, too. Today had been major information overload. It would probably do them all some good to sleep on everything they'd learned before making any big decisions.
"Fine," he muttered eventually. "But we're meeting again tomorrow morning. Putting this off for too long is only going to make things worse."
"Agreed," Natasha said, standing abruptly from the table.
She couldn't stop thinking about the look in Leonidas' eyes before he ran into that building. That grim sort of determination is one she recognized and associated with heroes—those willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of others. But at the same time, he obviously belonged to an organized group—one who was there that day during the battle without any of them knowing, and who appeared to be circling the Tesseract.
To tell Fury or not to tell Fury? Good or bad?
She didn't know anymore. And that scared her more than anything.
A/N:
Alright, as promised! The second part of what was originally supposed to be one massive chapter!
If it seems like everyone wrote off Bruce's experience in the park too easily, that's cause they did. Just like in the original story, the Mist is going to disappear slowly, so while it's thin enough for Bruce to feel uneasy in the glen around Hyperion's maple tree and know instinctively that something's wrong, it's still strong enough that he's easily convinced that he was overreacting. Sorry if that was a bit anticlimactic, but I'm still trying to set that up for right now. You'll see more dramatic reveals later.
Also, I had to go back to Chapter 2 and update Percy's age because I realized I made a mistake with the timeline. This story takes place 2 years after the events of BoO, so Percy is 18 turning 19 instead of 17 turning 18 as I originally wrote.
The next chapter probably won't be out for a couple of weeks, so happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates, and I'll see you then with the demigods' POV!