The Meaning of Infinity

Will did end up going home with Carrie, that day. He stepped into the apartment complex she lived in, and apparently owned, and was hit with the dull realization that in all of the ten years they had been co-workers, (at least seven of which they had undoubtedly also been friends), he had never been there before. 

She led him up to the top floor of the building, and through the first door on the right. Inside the actual unit, it was clear that the walls between the next few units had been knocked out to create one super-apartment- it had been remodeled to contain just one kitchen, with most of the floorplan taken up by a common area that was decorated with several small tables and seating arrangements, almost like a coffee shop. In the middle of the floor was one large, round table with fifteen chairs, six of which were already occupied upon their arrival. 

It was eerie, Will thought, seeing the heads of those clones snap up in tandem. Although they were dressed in different clothes, with slightly different haircuts or dyed hair colors, they were undoubtedly the same person. Six identical pairs of eyes narrowed on him, and then un-narrowed a moment later as they seemed to come to some kind of simultaneous conclusion. 

The original Carrie- or, at least the one who had led him here- ushered him to one of the sofas in the corner. He slumped into it, watching with interest as she walked up to the table. She raised one hand once she was standing behind one of the chairs, two fingers up with the rest down, and then crossed him. In an instant, she was gone- and there were two Carries in her place, standing slightly off from where she had been originally. The one on the left didn’t stick around, trudging away and disappearing behind a door further down in the apartment. 

“Shower,” the remaining copy sighed, and slumped into the chair she was standing behind. “I’ll explain. Then tap me out, and she’ll discuss.” 

The discussion was exhausting. Even Will, who had initially felt a keen interest in observing the copies interact with each other and organize their business, quickly abandoned the task of eavesdropping to fuck around on his phone. Sitting round-table with six other copies of yourself wasn’t easy, after all. In such a circumstance, everyone was thinking the same thing; making the same assumptions and having the same doubts. The only thing that was stopping the conversation from becoming too one-note were the differential experiences each copy had obtained from living as separate individuals for the past five years- working at different companies, in different industries, and interacting with different people. 

The information Will did gather wasn’t all too intriguing in itself. There had been ten “representative” copies in different industry positions. Six were left- FSM, Apple, Tesla, Stark Industries, Exxon, and JP Morgan . The first was the most identical to the Carrie he knew- Apple had a pixie cut, Tesla’s hair was blonde. Stark Industries and Exxon sported matching bobs, one dyed a sort of auburn color. JP Morgan had shone her hair clean off, leaving only peach-fuzz behind. 

The other four were dead- dusted in the blip, the rest assumed. They would get better confirmation later, but they were mostly convinced that they would have been home by now had they been alive. At some point in the evening, JP Morgan Carrie pulled out a laptop, logging into the accounts that had been under the names of those who hadn’t returned. She peered over it with Tesla, deciding what to sell and transferring ownership of the rest over to Will’s Carrie, who checked the notification it caused on her phone absent-mindedly before replacing it face-down on the table. 

And there was another copy- Homebody , the others called her- who was gone, too. She should have been here, running the apartment during the day. Apparently, she had been the main organizer behind their little operation- making sure everybody communicated and keeping track of the overall flow of cash. Her being dusted was the biggest issue that needed to be solved. 

In the end, the conclusion was simple. Rebuild and push on. Keep one eye on the market but leave most of the profit in high-yield accounts for the time being, so that they could ride out the fallout of the snap. Keep another on the Avengers, in case they come sniffing back around. For the moment, at least, it seemed like their focus was on more important things than some random mutant who had popped in just for one fight. Of course, though, one could never be too careful. 

Will’s Carrie was the one who copied herself to replace Homebody. Even though all seven of them communicated frequently and knew the gist of everything going on, it was ultimately decided that Will's Carrie- who they called Main Cover- had spent the most time with Homebody, and would probably be the most adept with running the apartment and taking over the books.
“Alright,” She sighed, pushing out from her chair and standing behind it again. “Left will be Homebody from now on. Right stays on as Cover.” 

She made the same motion from before- raising two fingers and crossing them- before she was replaced by two identical copies. They glanced at each other, orienting themselves and what role they would be taking on, and nodded deftly before re-claiming two seats of the table. Weirdly enough, Will thought as he watched from the corner of his eye, neither of them went for the seat she had been sitting in before- instead, they left it open in-between them. 

They didn’t stay at the table for much longer after that. They had already spent the better part of a couple hours fiddling around on computers, scouring over trading apps, spreadsheets, market trackers and the news. Will faded in and out of sleep as they worked, and by the time he blinked blearily awake again to see that all but a couple had disappeared from the table, assumedly heading back to whatever rooms they slept in, the sun was already rising through the windows. 

One of the three copies- either Stark or Exxon, he couldn’t remember- closed her laptop and trod away, clapping one of the other two gently on the shoulder as she passed by her. The two left behind were the two that had split off from the Carrie Will had originally known- and they glanced over at him, then, matching weary expressions on their faces.

“Will,” one of the copies called gently to him. He sat up, looking over at her over the back of the sofa. “Let’s have a chat.”

She went to join him. The other disappeared behind one of the doors at the other end of the open common area.

“Which one are you?” Will asked, blinking sleep from his eyes. Carrie seemed surprised that he had even asked. She smiled.

“We’re still the same,” she told him, her voice soft. “It’s still today. I haven’t become the Homebody yet.” Will frowned, considering her response for a moment. If both of the copies he’d just seen produced were identical to the version who had produced them, that meant both of them had identical memories of the past ten years- both of them were the one that he knew, that he saw at work every day, the waitress and the cover for the rest. This copy- the new Homebody- had given all of that up in an instant, no adjustment period, and would do something entirely different with her days from then on. By chance, she’d been the copy on the left.

“So you’re abandoning your life, tomorrow.”

Carrie’s smile didn’t waver, but it did soften. She reached out a hand, ruffling Will’s hair roughly. Out of habit, he ducked away. 

“All of this is my life,” she told him. “We’re all just me - I’ve always been.”

***

The next months were a whirlwind. Will was irritable- overly stressed by the sudden swamp of paperwork that comes with taking over Antonio’s shop, Antonio’s money, Antonio’s life. He and Carrie went together, when the news came out that an organization was being thrown together to record who was and was not alive following the snap. The white tent propped up outside of the dark, closed-down halls of the New York Public Library felt almost too normal- like a red-cross event or a donations claim would have looked just months before. How they did look, even now, dotted tenfold across each street in the city as those who had once worked to help the homeless, the hungry, the cold, had shifted gears towards helping people reorganize. Rebuild. 

The legal process became even slower than it would have been pre-snap, if that was even possible. The notice that Antonio has been officially declared dead doesn’t come to Antonio’s mailbox for another few weeks, even after he and Carrie had gone in person to add his name- as well as some others who had been dusted on shift in front of them- to the list. 

They got contacted again, a week or so later- some notice that whoever is responsible for reading out a will and testament- Carrie had no clue what the process of that was- had attempted to contact Will, only to find no-one had been home. Carrie watched over his shoulder as he held the phone, mumbling that he had been staying at a new address. He glanced back only once to look at her, and she nodded, before he turned around again, rattling off the address to Carrie’s own apartment complex to whoever had gone knocking. When he hung up again, Carrie reached across the bar to squeeze his hand. 

Even without the legal shit taken care of, life didn’t stop. Will kept the shop open, and the copy of what he had come to think about as “ His Carrie ,”  now regarded in some vague past-tense as no longer being around, came with him, day after day. Although she had done little more than waitressing and keeping track of the phones for the past ten years, she easily moved gears towards helping him manage the store, allowing him to divert half of his attention to the remaining kitchen staff- all of whom needed new training and guidance as their roles shifted. For her own part, Carrie delegated work to the remaining waitstaff. Even with half the population decimated, it seemed a pizzeria in New York would always be busy, at least relative to the staff still left. And though the money in Antonio’s business account was still tied up, Carrie had offered Will that if they didn’t make enough to break the bills, they could dip into her savings. At any sign of trepidation on his part, she had assured him she had more than enough stashed away.

For her own part, Carrie had found the future of her operation to be more optimistic than she’d expected. The quick action she’d taken in selling off most of the stock held in the various accounts belonging to her shell identities had allowed her to keep most of her current profit before the market crash, and she’d wasted no time in re-buying after the fact, while the prices were low. While staying with her, Will had become so used to the quiet bustle of the different copies of his friend moving about the apartment that it hardly even unnerved him anymore- except on the rare occasion that some off-hand question or action prompted multiple copies to suddenly react in that eerie tandem that seemed to come over them whenever they were placed into an identical situation- moving or speaking in time. 

It had become obvious to him that although the two copies of His Carrie , Homebody and the ‘new’ main cover, retained the memories shared with him over the past ten years, the rest only knew him to some certain other extent- probably the time at which they had peeled off from the original following Carrie’s college graduation and had begun working in her little operation. 

They were still friendly- and they still seemed to know him well. After all, even the copy working for JP Morgan, who he speculated had been the first to split off, had memories of working with him in high school all the way through to the end of her college graduation. She had even ended up spending some time with him and the Carrie who still worked with him on some nights, drawn over by the soft explanations of market trends and how best to manage his finances now that he was going to be a business owner. She would peer over their shoulders from the back of the couch, lean down and tap some things on the laptop screen- sometimes even cutting in to finish the first copy’s sentences- which she never seemed to mind. 

***

There would always be peace somehow, Carrie mused to herself. Even in the wake of disaster. Life just moves on. 

“Quit standing around,” Will snickered, nudging into Carrie’s side. She stumbled slightly, almost dropping the heavy box in her arms, and turned around to shoot him a glare. 

“If I drop these, you’re picking ‘em up,” she grumbled, but followed him anyway to deposit the box next to his on one of the empty tables near the host stand in the front. It was only midday, and on a weekday- so the place was hardly busy. There were a few tables being tended to by the sole waitress on staff, and one of the high school kids was in the back, cooking on his own until the second shift showed up to join him later in the afternoon. They hadn’t bothered to put anyone on staff for takeout- on a slow day, the two of them managing were enough to fill out any gaps in the staff that might’ve arisen.

Will cut open the boxes, beginning to haul out the stacks of new menus sitting inside. Carrie flipped one over, scanning it over with narrowed eyes for any mistakes. It had been a rough decision for Will to update the menu- she knew he hadn’t wanted to mess with Antonio’s recipes or what he liked to offer. But it was a new world, and they didn’t have the manpower anymore to offer so much variety. 

“They look good,” she said, her voice soft and assuring as she replaced the copy onto the pile in Will’s hands. She gently pried it from him, moving to shove the new menus underneath the podium at the hosting station. 

“Yeah. The artwork’s really nice,” Will mumbled back. He stood in place, watching her as she returned, picking up the second stack of menus which detailed wines, draft beers, and specialty drinks before shoving them away next to the others. 

Carrie was still ducked behind the host stand as the bell above the front entrance jingled, and she straightened up with a smile, ready to greet whatever new customer had just come in. Will turned away so she could handle it without interrupting, picking up the empty boxes and retreating into the back room to break them down for recycling. 

“Hey, welcome to Antonio’s pizza…ria…”

The thick cardstock of the menu in hand made a warbly sort of noise as it dropped to the floor by Carrie’s feet, her grip going slack as her face paled. Somewhere in the back room, her phone had been buzzing on and off for the past couple of hours- not that she’d been back there to check it. 

“How… can I… help?”

***

ST IND REP: Looks like they didn’t forget about us. Whole thing’s comped- sell now. 

HOMEBODY: How comped?

ST IND REP: Wiping my phone.

HOMEBODY: Alright. Reps, sell and disappear. 

Carrie closed the encrypted messenger, then reopened it, logging out of her secure server and deleting it all together for good measure. She made quick work of transferring all her assets to Homebody, even though she knew that her copy could have logged in to do it herself, from home, and then did as she had promised, wiping her phone completely with a shaky hand. 

She didn’t even bother to pocket the thing- she let it drop, not even wincing when it smashed down with a sharp clatter and a minute sound of cracking. She could hear the angry fists banging on the office door behind her, and she glanced nervously at the window. 

No-go, she thought, eyes fluttering closed and a shuddering sigh spilling from her lips. She had to be eighty, ninety floors up right then. She couldn’t even remember. 

“Come out of there, copy-cat! ” the woman’s voice snarled from the other side. There was the muffled voice of a man, too- Carrie could vaguely make out his shocked protests as Natasha rattled his office door, trying to get to the employee who had barricaded herself in on the other side. 

“Nat, what the…are you doing? She’s… I called for the files… just one of my people in R&D!”

The voice grew louder as Stark approached where Natasha had been bashing against the door. The rattling stopped for a moment. 

“That’s her, idiot!” Natasha hissed out. “The chick from the war!” 

“Oh, fuck,” Tony replied. Carrie could practically see the dumb expression on his face, despite the barrier between them. “The sacrificial lamb Bruce was mumbling about?”

Carrie winced. Her eyes flickered frantically around the room, but she froze as the door began to splinter behind her. She whirled back around, a split-second decision already being made in her mind. 

“ Yes ,” Natasha answered him, voice strained with impatience. A moment later, her shoulder appeared through the doors, the lock in the center broken as they opened with a slam against the wall. “Hello again,” she hissed, her voice dangerous as she steadied herself, ready to jump at Carrie and restrain her if she tried to flee. 

Carrie went still, raising her hands in a show of surrender. Natasha eyed her suspiciously- Stark poked his head over her shoulder to peer into the office, eyes raking over her.

“ This is the cloning girl? Melissa Smith?” he hummed, sounding unimpressed. “She works on phone batteries.” 

“Since when?” Natasha scoffs, her voice clipped. “I thought she was a waitress. And that’s not her name.” 

“I moonlight,” Carrie mumbled, her gaze hard and calculating as it flipped back and forth between their two faces. “You remembered my name?”

It wasn’t entirely clear who she was addressing- she was probably more surprised that Stark knew her alias as one of his many coworkers than she was that the elite spy, Natasha Romanoff, had remembered her name after the war.

“Carrie Greenwall,” Natasha supplied, before Tony could cut in and ask who she’d been referring to or which name was correct. Carrie sighed, a flash of annoyance crossing her expression. 

“Idiot. Why would I give my real name?” she hissed, almost to herself. “Well, it was a crisis,” she sighed, a second later, and slumped slightly. She could forgive her other copy for the lapse in judgement- after all, she was positive she would have done the same had it been her to take Peter’s call that day. 

“Interesting,” Tony’s eyes narrowed on her, no longer looking quite as intrigued- now he looked annoyed. “But you’ve been working here for, what, six years? I remember when your little friend in accounting sent me that video.” 

Carrie’s eyebrows shot up in spite of herself. If Tony had remembered her all this time, it was honestly a wonder she had never been caught snooping until now. Natasha’s head whipped to look at Tony, one of her own eyebrows raised in a silent question. After all, what Tony knew of her didn’t line up at all with her own experience. Carrie sighed, annoyance and exhaustion creeping into her tone.

“Cloning?” she offered, not caring quite enough to keep her mouth shut while they figured it out for themselves- she was sure they would in the end, anyway. Natasha’s lips pressed into a thin line, and Tony blinked as he processed the information. He shook his head, looking slightly mystified. 

“Damn,” he huffed. “So what’s the actual purpose? Why with the snooping?”

A grin crept over Carrie’s face. She closed her eyes for a moment, tilting her head back and taking a long, deep breath. When she let it out again, she faced them head-on, expression steely and almost wild. 

“You’ll figure it out,” she mumbled, her eyes flashing. “It’s not quite as fun if I come out and say it.” 

Before the protest could fully leave Tony’s lips, she was jumping forward toward them. Natasha whipped out her gun, ready to threaten Carrie into compliance. She resisted as Carrie’s fingers closed around her own, her superior strength more than enough to stop the trespasser from wresting it out of her grasp- but the last thing either of them expected was for Carrie’s fingers to tighten against the trigger, pressing Natasha’s own finger back and setting it off as she shoved her forehead straight into line the barrel. 

The shocked cry that left Natasha’s lips was so out of character, it almost startled Tony more than the sight of Carrie’s brains shooting backward through her skull and spattering over his desk- almost. The two of them stood, staring blankly at the body that fell before them. 

“What’s going on?!” 

It was Danvers who burst into the hall behind them, probably having heard the shot from the meeting room down the hall they had been conversing in before Natasha’s eye had caught the figure walking down the hall through the glass wall, darting away with Tony hot on her heels. She grimaced when her eyes settled on the body collapsed at Natasha’s feet. 

Natasha took a short, harsh breath of air, the sound breaking through the tension of the moment as she took a slow step back from the body, turning to face Tony.
“We need to run some background checks. We should’ve done it the moment she first turned up,” she murmured, her voice bitter and clipped. 

***

“Table for one.”

The Hulk- Bruce Banner- both? Stared down at Carrie where she stood frozen behind the host stand, looking weary and unimpressed. His voice was dry and sarcastic, and Carrie couldn’t help but wince. 

“Been a while, huh?” her voice was weak with shock as she stared up at him. He was surprised to note that she didn’t seem to be too on-guard. His mind reeled as he considered the circumstances- maybe this copy hadn’t caught wind that the clone working for Tony had been compromised? 

“Sure.” He relaxed slightly- it really didn’t seem like she was going to run or try to fight, and even if she did, he remembered, she wasn’t really trained like the rest of them. In the war, she’d mostly mobbed up against enemies, brute-forcing her way through the field with numbers alone. Or she had followed along other fighters, covering their backs and… taking blows . 

Bruce pushed that train of thought aside. That’s not what he needed to be thinking about, not right then.  

“How did you find me?” Carrie asked him. She’d begun to recover slightly from the initial shock of seeing him. Her voice was casual, but, he noted, careful. She ducked behind the host stand, and he tensed, waiting to see if she would make some kind of move against him. But she simply retrieved the fallen menu, setting it to the side before pulling a clean one out from the shelf under the podium. She straightened up again. 

“Saw you through the window, actually,” Bruce lied. He straightened his back slightly, peering down to observe her appearance. She looked no different that she had during the war- except a lot less frazzled. She blinked up at him, processing his simple answer, and then snorted, shaking her head in amusement. 

“Small world, huh?” she asked. She seemed to grow a bit less guarded, smiling up at him. Despite himself, he felt a pang of guilt for the lie. “You just wanted to say hello? Or you gonna eat?”

“I’ll eat,” he answered easily, his gaze slipping once again to take in the establishment. Antonio’s Pizzeria. It wasn’t huge or fancy, but it was nicer than the typical diner-style pizza place you could easily find on any of New York’s streets. It had a quaint, rustic feel. Soft jazz was playing through some hidden speaker system, but it was barely loud enough to be heard if there was conversation over top of it. It gave the place more ambiance without being obtrusive. 

She led him over to a table tucked away in the back corner of one half of the dining room- he hadn’t seen it from outside, but the place was a bit larger than it looked. Past the host stand to the left, the dining room extended past a short wall, almost like a private back room- they probably rented it out for private events, he thought absently. She handed the menu off to him as he sat, but didn’t retreat after like a waitress typically would. In the corner of his vision, he could see another waitress who had peeked, wide-eyed, around the corner. Carrie caught her eye, and shook her head, waving her off without a word. 

“It’s not busy, is it?” he asked, eyeing Carrie as she turned back around to face him. She cracked a grin.

“Why? You want to chat?” she asked. She seemed to have decided to trust him, Bruce noted, but she was still being careful . Not like she was guarded, but more like she was being deliberate. 

“I wouldn’t mind,” he replied slowly. “I’m curious who you are- we barely had time to think about it after everything. We should’ve thanked you properly, after what you did to help us.” 

He’d only said it to ease her mind- get her to open up so he could look more properly into why they’d found a copy of her snooping around Stark Industries. One who had apparently been there for years. It couldn’t be an innocent coincidence, they had all agreed on that after discussing the incident. But even with that in mind, the small reminder his words gave him of how she had fought- ( and died, again and again and again- ) for no reason stronger than somebody called me to help, left a guilty feeling curling in his stomach. 

“You don’t owe me your gratitude,” she replied. Based on the calm, even tone of her voice, he could’ve thought she really meant it. “You can… say thank you to Spider-man, if you want to. He called me up, probably at the last possible second that he could.” 

Her voice grew slightly softer as she said it, her gaze scrutinizing his reaction slightly as she mentioned the web-slinging hero. His lips pressed firmly together- he could guess at why she was so keen on what his response might be, he thought, and his guilty feeling only grew. There had been no official announcement yet regarding the current status of Spider-man, since he, as well as Tony and the others who had ended up fighting Thanos in space, had been assumed dead by the rest of the Avengers for a good couple of weeks before Carol managed to retrieve Tony and Nebula- the only survivors. It had only been a month or so since Tony had gotten back, and he had been tight-lipped about Spider-man’s death for almost all of it, shutting down at even a slight reference to the younger hero. 

Bruce sighed, his head lowering slightly. He tried not to look at the way Carrie’s expression fell.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice quiet. He could almost hear the thick swallow as Carrie’s throat bobbed in reaction to his subtle confirmation of what she had feared. She reached out tentatively, and tugged the menu back from where his tight grip had begun to warp its shape. Bruce let go, surprised at his body’s reaction to the twisting in his gut which he hadn’t even realized he had been displaying. It had been a while since he’d felt out of control, and though it wasn’t the angry wash of the Hulk he had once been used to, it still wasn’t pleasant .

“You like pepperoni?” she asked, her tone wavering in a weak attempt at being light-hearted. All Bruce could do was nod, and she mimicked the motion in reply. “I’ll come back in a few,” she promised, and then she whisked away. 

In her absence, Bruce fiddled with his phone for a moment. Now that he was half-hulk half-Bruce always, it had been rough adjusting to oversized fingers on finicky tablet screens, but he was starting to get the hang of it.

BRUCE: This feels wrong. Whatever she’s up to, I doubt she has malicious intentions. She helped us once, remember?

Natasha’s response comes in almost immediately, which Bruce is half grateful for. The other half… Well, maybe it’s annoying. Maybe frustration, and he doesn’t know quite where it should be aimed. At Nat? Himself? Or maybe Carrie, for creating this awkward situation, which feels so morally gray. 

NAT: She helped us as a favor, and it wasn’t even a favor for us, necessarily. Someone else asked her to be there- we have no idea what she might be capable of. 

NAT: Her power is way too dangerous, and she’s obviously capable of organizing enough for a long-term undercover operation. She had a fully-decked shell identity she was using to work at the tower, and her background check is coming up almost too clean. 

Bruce sighed, scrubbing one large, green hand over his face. He glanced at the corner you had disappeared around, but no-one was coming. There was no sound of your return, at least not yet. 

BRUCE: It was Spider-man, remember? She said something about him then. She just confirmed it again. 

BRUCE: Not exactly a threatening figure. Seems like they were friends.

NAT: What did she say?

BRUCE: I thanked her for helping us then. She said we should say thank you to him, not her. Seemed like she was trying to get me to tell her if he was okay more than anything else. 

BRUCE: I don’t know, Nat. I don’t feel good about bringing her in, at least not forcefully. She doesn’t even seem that suspicious of me. If she were out to get us somehow, she’d have run. 

BRUCE: She didn’t even have any training, back then, remember? 

He stared almost desperately at his screen as he waited for the response. When it came in, a resigned sigh blew out from his lips. 

NAT: She could have trained since then. 

Bruce’s phone was long stashed away by the time Carrie returned almost fifteen minutes later. In one hand, she balanced a metal tray with a simple pepperoni pizza steaming on top of it. In her other hand, she carried two cheap beers, the necks of the bottles secured in the spaces between her fingers. She set those down first- one in front of Bruce, and the other at the opposite end of the table, before depositing the tray of pizza in front of him. She hadn’t bothered with plates- it seemed she had no intention of eating any of it, only drinking as they talked. She sat down in the chair opposite him, picking up her beer and easily popping the cap off on the edge of the table. 

“Nobody will bother us for a while,” she said simply. She gestured toward his own beer, a silent offer to open it for him, but he waved her off. He picked it up, his oversized fist practically dwarfing the bottle. Carefully, he pinched the thumb and index finger of his other hand around the edges of the cap, prying it off with ease. Carrie couldn’t help the small smile that crossed her face at the sight- a reaction which only made the guilt in Bruce’s stomach writhe harder. He took a long sip, then took a couple bites of pizza, hoping it might help to quell the feeling. 

Carrie didn’t say much else. She watched him eat for a minute, but after the first slice was gone, he paused, simply observing her. 

“How have you been?” he finally asked, his voice much softer than it had been before. She took her own, long sip of beer. 

“Alright,” she answered, after a beat had passed. “Life goes on. Didn’t lose many, myself.” 

Bruce hummed, contemplating her answer. “Small circle?”

“Something like that,” she said, the small smile returning to her face. She glanced up at him for a moment as if hesitating, before she added. “And most of it is… well, just me.” 

He didn’t miss the implication of those words. He was sure he was referencing her power, which he had caught a momentary glimpse of a few months ago when she had helped them out. It was almost a little sad, to think about that- most of her company just being copies of herself. She seemed to catch his minute reaction, her own smile falling away as her eyebrow knit closer together. He schooled her expression back to neutrality- he didn’t want to scare her off by making her feel too exposed right away. 

“What’s it like to never be alone?” he asked, after a moment. She barked a soft laugh. 

“That’s a funny way to put it. Hm… it’s nice,” she replied, and he was grateful to note that she seemed to relax slightly in her seat. This time, when she took another sip of her beer, it looked more casual. “I never really thought I’d see you again- or any of your other friends,” she mused. 

“I’d say we didn’t think we’d see you either, but, honestly, I don’t think you’ve been on the forefront of anyone’s mind,” he admitted. She just smiled, shaking her head slightly. 

“It’d be strange if I had been,” she said, as if to assure him. “You have bigger things to think about now, right?”

Bruce sighed. His posture slumped slightly where he sat- it was comical, seeing his hulking green figure look almost pouty. 

“I guess we do.” If he deluded himself enough, Bruce could make himself feel like he really had just wandered into the place by chance- like he was curious who Carrie was for no reason other than having seen her through the window. Like he wasn’t here to take her into custody, being extra careful not to arouse her suspicion. How could he, after Tony had warned him in a dark, quiet voice, shoveling off the information on her workplace and the task of retrieving her, that she might die before she let him drag her off?

Carrie seemed almost too easygoing in comparison with the mental war Bruce was waging as he sat across from her. She was still smiling. 

“Heard you guys have had a big hand in all the relief efforts. It’s really kind.”

Bruce was feeling really guilty now. “Uhm- yeah. Yeah, we have,” he mumbled. “What have you been doing?”

It was a harsh transition, and he almost winced as he realized how accusatory or judgemental it could have sounded, but Carrie didn’t seem to take it that way. 

“Just working,” she replied. He noted her voice seemed slightly more careful than before. “Helping Will reorganize the place- Antonio was, you know,” she mumbled, waving a hand next to her hand. 

“Right,” his voice was slightly strangled as he nodded along. 

“But it’s been fine. Will was already going to take over eventually, the legal stuff is slow going, but there’s no battle, at least. We’ve worked here together ten years, if you’d believe it,” she laughed, continuing with seemingly no suspicion over Bruce’s weary and clipped reactions. “He’s been living with me since it all went down. Nice to have something like family after all that, even if neither of us even really had one before.” 

Bruce had always been a bit more gentle and weak-hearted than the other Avengers, and he’s feeling the kick of it now. His heart clenched as Carrie casually explained how she was dealing with the fallout of the snap. It seemed so simple, so honest. He blinked as he looked at her, and suddenly he was seeing all those bodies… the thudding of her fist in yet another game of rock-paper-scissors as the clones regrouped to just one, sole survivor. 

He stood up suddenly. The chair scraped back with an unpleasant sound, and the table rattled as his legs shoved up on the edge of it in his hasty movement. Carrie sucked in a short breath, startled, and her muscles tensed where she sat. His phone buzzed, in his pocket. 

“Sorry,” he breathed, wide eyes fixated on her. He looked just as surprised as she did. “Sorry, I just… let me…”

His hand fumbled in his pocket. He fished out his phone, his eyes trained on Carrie up until the moment he unlocked it, holding it up so he could read the notification. Behind the screen, Carrie waited, tensed as if to spring up at any slight movement. 

NAT: This is getting complicated. You need to bring her in, you understand? 

Bruce peered at her over the top of the screen. He pressed his lips together in a thin line. Carried seemed to understand, suddenly, that there was more to his appearance than coincidence. Her eyes flickered toward the corner, her potential escape. In the end though, she seemed to know better than to run. 

Bruce pocketed his phone. He stepped around the table. Carrie put up no resistance as he gently dragged her to standing, one large fist enclosed around both her wrists behind her. She let her head lull slightly forward, turning her chin up to peer at him over her shoulder. 

“Fuck, alright” she grumbled. Her easygoing attitude had been quickly replaced by a bitter sort of acceptance. Bruce sighed, scanning over her expression for a moment with a knitted brow. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled- and, at the very least, he did sound genuine. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just… we have no way of knowing if you’re a threat, if you don’t talk.” 

One of Carrie’s eyebrows shot up at that, and she seemed to consider the implications of it for a moment. Obviously, someone had already been compromised- and not talking implied either escape or some other kind of non-compliance. She was sure it had probably been the Stark Towers copy, unless some other insane coincidence had occurred in another part of the city. But running into her by chance wouldn’t have roused this much suspicion, so she could rule that out. 

Well, Carrie at least knew herself well enough to reach a conclusion. She smiled bitterly, her pupil straining in the corner of her eye to meet Bruce’s gaze behind her. 

“I suppose the mighty Hulk won’t have a gun.” She joked, and watched his expression pinch with obvious discomfort. His reaction all but confirmed her suspicion on how the other copy might have handled being caught. 

Bruce’s grip on her wrists tightened- though not enough to hurt. “No,” he replied, his voice pinched. “He doesn’t.”

If she’d really wanted to, Carrie could have crossed her fingers and sent a copy running- he wasn’t obstructing the movement of her hands, just restraining her. But, in the end, there could have been any other Avenger waiting on the street for her to flee. It was better right now to comply and just hope the compromised representative had found a way to warn the others before lighting herself up. She sighed, slumping forward slightly as she let her muscles go slack in Bruce’s hold.

“At least tell Will I won’t be here for the second shift,” she grumbled out, no longer facing him, and resigned herself to being dragged away.