Part 1 - Chp 14
With Natasha back, there’s now a buffer between Tony and Steve again; probably for the best, considering how Loki 'helped' Bucky and how pissed Steve likely still is. Natasha is also the best equipped of them to coordinate, since her job is basically not ruffling feathers in the first place.
Tony doesn’t want to say it, but it kind of looks like they have a team coming together. Two gods, a Hulk (provided Banner wants to help; Tony hopes so), two top tier assassins, Rogers and whoever he’s pulled together…
Oh, and Tony. Of course.
They might actually have a shot at this. How about that.
***
“You’re awake! Welcome back.” Tony sits down in the chair by the bed they put Bruce in, resting his elbows on it and grinning wide at the doctor.
“What?” Bruce asks, groggy and rubbing his face.
“It’s great to finally meet you. You know. In person.” Tony offers his hand. Bruce just stares at it, eyebrows furrowing. “Big fan of your research, and you know, the humanitarian efforts, those don’t hurt.”
“Where?”
“Secret base, I’m supposed to be dead. Hydra. Or SHIELD, they’re practically the same thing at the moment. Which is what we’re working on fixing like some sort of slapdash super hero team.” Tony frowns, leaning to look Bruce in the eyes. No green or anything; Bruce just looks confused and very, very stoned. “You follow?”
“Who are you?” Bruce says instead. He’s probably not following.
“Tony Stark, or, you know. Ir0nManR0xx.”
Bruce looks a bit green, but more in the kind of sick way than the going to become an angry monster way.
“Oh,” he says, then passes out again.
***
“What I don’t get is getting in,” Barton complains. “Some of us can sneak in, but that doesn’t make an army, and it won’t serve to disable more than the main hellicarrier if we go for that, or take out the building. Everyone’s going to know what’s up.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Steve says, confident.
“Provided we can get in, I can get control of their network…”
“Tony,” Loki murmurs in Tony’s ear, jolting him out of his half-paying attention reverie. “How long do you intend to allow this farce continue?”
Tony stares blankly at Loki for a moment.
“Wait, you need us to get in? Disable things? Fuck up their tech?” Tony waves his hand. “I’ve got that covered. Why aren’t you--we planning the more important details again?” God, he hates meetings.
Everyone--except for Loki, who has settled back in his chair looking smug and possibly proud--stares at Tony.
“What?” Tony asks irritably, glancing up from his phone. “Did tech change overnight or something?”
“What exactly do you mean, Stark?” Natasha says, voice silken.
Tony shifts in his seat, trying to keep from bouncing his foot under the table. He wonders if Banner is awake again yet.
“I’ve got the best tech and designs on the market. I’ve practically got a monopoly these days, there’s not a damn thing on the market that doesn’t have part of my work in it--everything from toasters to supercomputers. They’d need to make everything from scratch if they’d want to avoid it and even that isn’t sure as current network is—”
“82%, sir,” Jarvis chimes from his phone.
“Really? It’s gone up, great.” He looks up at them, setting his phone on the table and folding his hands over his stomach. “I’ve got 82% of all worthwhile tech--computer systems run nearly everything important these days, didn’t you know--ready to shut down at a moment’s notice. Or worse.” He shrugs. “I’m not picky. The rest is hackable.”
“All, like all SHIELD? Or--” Barton says.
“Everything. On the planet.” Tony smiles in the silence, showing his teeth. “I did say I wanted people to stop destroying themselves. No one ever listens to me.” He huffs. “Anyway, I’m going to go check on Banner again. Let me know the rest when you get that sorted.”
***
Tony doesn’t think anything of Loki following him out into the hallway until Loki pins him to the wall and starts to kiss him within an inch of his life. By the time he starts to find his feet, Loki’s let go and walked back to the conference room, leaving Tony in the hallway half-hard and still trying to pull his brain back together.
***
Banner is awake again; less stoned from the looks of things, too. He’s glancing around the room when Tony comes in and sitting upright on his own--all good signs. Maybe they’ll actually talk this time.
They’ve talked for just over a year at this point--always online, usually email exchanges. Tony’s never really tried to push into Bruce’s space for all he admires the other man and wants nothing more than to get some science on with him; it seemed like it might be too much. Tony had found him via a forum--Bruce was sometimes inclined to help desperate biochem and physics students with their homework.
Tony honestly doesn’t even care if Bruce wants to help take down Hydra; he just wants to talk to the other man.
“Hello again, good—” a glance at his watch, “evening.” Tony grins. “Do we want to try this again?”
Bruce blinks at him, owlish and adorable. Tony wants to keep him forever.
“Am I being held hostage?” Bruce asks tentatively. “Because I don’t think that would work so well.”
“No,” Tony says. “If you want to go you can.” He tries not to let his face fall.
“Oh. Okay.” Bruce rubs his face. “I remember… I don’t remember much, actually. What happened?”
“Your greener self was chasing one of—chasing Romanoff. No idea what she did to set you off really.” Tony sits down next to Bruce. “We intercepted you two, the resident crazy knocked you out, and I insisted we bring you back so you wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the Carpathians without anything to wear.”
“Thanks?” Bruce frowns. “Do I know you? Other than you being Tony Stark.”
“Ir0nManR0xx.”
“Huh. That’s pretty self-centric of you.”
“I know,” Tony says, preening a bit. “No one ever suspects it’s actually me. It’s great. How do you think I get anything done when I want to browse?”
Bruce smiles at that.
“Anyway, how are you feeling? Loki said that what he did should wear off within the day. Do you need water? Is that a thing? Do you eat? One fourth of the people here don’t eat in the traditional sense of food to mouth.”
“I have a headache,” Bruce admits. “And I could go for some water.”
***
Bruce hadn’t so much been planning to be in the Carpathians as he was trying to get out of Europe and back to India. He’d ran into Natasha along the way and she had, at least at the time, pretended she was heading to India too. The details about what had set him off were fuzzy, though there was some being shot at when they hit the edges of the mountain range--most likely at Natasha, but then Bruce couldn’t remember.
Then Loki happened—”zero to seeing other galaxies stoned in less time than it takes to blink”--and blew what little coherent memory he might have had out of the water.
Which is really all Tony bothers to find out before he brings up a theory they were tossing back in forth in their latest email chain, and really, why would anyone expect Tony to let Bruce know what was going on in the world and why they were in a hideout when Bruce is coherent enough for science?
After all, he told Bruce already. It’s not his fault that Bruce was still too out of it to remember. And Loki didn’t say anything when he tracked Tony down (apparently the meeting was over) and quietly settled in next to Tony, watching them discuss quantum physics with sincere interest if no commentary of his own to throw in the mix besides the occasional sentence that got them both more worked up and excited.
“What?” Tony asks, annoyed, when Barton shows up.
“So does it sound good?” Barton asks.
Tony actually stops, looking at Loki. Loki blinks back innocently. Tony, having learned his lesson on just agreeing to things because they put Loki in a good mood, decides that he’s not going to chance it.
“Does what sound good?”
“You said you were going to tell him,” Barton complains, which just gets Loki to smile more.
“What’s going on?” Bruce asks.
Barton sighs.
“Right! So Hydra and SHIELD are basically the same thing now. We’re trying to take them down. You did go without burning SHIELD down, too, right? There’s no saving that tree.”
“Rogers and I persuaded them that would be the best course of action,” Loki says.
“Great. Anyway, they tried to kill me and think they pulled it off, so now we’re going to make them regret all that mess and put them down for good.”
Bruce is staring at him.
“Would you like to join us?” Loki adds.
“I…” Bruce trails off, pinching the bridge of his nose. Tony leans in for a closer look, which just gets an amused huff from Loki.
“Could you possibly start from the beginning?” Bruce finally says without looking up.
“How about I field this one," Barton says.
***
“I don’t know why Barton thinks he’s going to do a better job of that than me,” Tony complains to Loki in the hallway.
“You skipped several pertinent details.” Loki seems unaffected by the look of betrayal that Tony gives him. “At any rate, now that you are no longer occupied…”
“Oh. The plan. How dumb is it on a scale of one to ten.”
“You’ll survive it.”
Tony blinks.
“That is not a number.”
Loki shrugs.
“It’s the only thing that matters to me.”
“We’re going to make sure we all survive it,” Tony says. “So with that in mind, is it workable?”
Loki heaves a sigh like he has no idea why he bothers with Tony, giving him a pained look in the process.
“Yes,” Loki finally says. “It is workable.”
“Great,” Tony says. “Tell me all about it. Also, I’m hungry. Are you hungry? Do we have time for food?”