“Hey Bruce, do you know where Tony is? I can’t get Jarvis to locate him.” Kate asked, the lab coats on the wall rustling as she walked past them. The door slid shut behind her with a loud puff of air.
Bruce didn’t look up from his microscope, but the corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “Kate. Tony’s probably off sulking somewhere, Kamala got him back good after his last prank. Maybe try the hanger bay?”
Kate smirked, leaning against the wall and crossed her arms. “That sounds like Iron pants. Why’d he turn off Jarvis though?”
“He’s annoyed at the rest of us for helping Kamala, so he doesn’t want to talk to us.” Bruce explained, pausing for a moment as he thought. “Well, other than Steve- he’s more of a third party.”
“Cap doesn’t approve?”
“He thinks it’s childish. But he doesn’t want to align with either side, avoid hurt feelings and all that.”
“Were he and Tony ever actually a thing? Or did they just want to be?” Kate asked, grinning.
Bruce immediately looked uncomfortable, eyes widening at the microscope, fumbling over his words as he tried to form a sentence. “Uhh- erm- I don’t…“
Kate laughed, pushing herself off the wall and turning towards the door. “Don’t worry about it Doc, I’ll just get Tony to divulge all his dirty secrets himself. Thanks.”
“Kate, wait a second.” Bruce called.
Kate stopped her pursuit of the door and turned to face him; confusion written on her face. “Yeah?”
Bruce had finally looked up from his microscope, leaning back in his chair as he scanned her, his eyes landing on her face with a peculiar intensity. His mouth twisted with- was that concern? “How are you doing?”
“Me? I’m fine.” Kate said, probably a little too quickly if the disbelieving expression on Bruce’s face said anything about it.
“Right.” Bruce’s voice dripped with skepticism. “Well, if you ever want to talk about anything I’m here-”
“Sorry but I don’t remember any of your PhD’s being in psychiatry, so unless you went back and got one while the rest of us were living in hell the last five years I don’t know if you’re qualified to be a therapist.” Kate interrupted defensively, and immediately regretted it, wincing. She knew exactly what Bruce had been doing the past five years and couldn’t even imagine the guilt he must feel about it. So why did she say that?
Before she even had a chance to apologize Bruce held up a hand, stopping her. Then, to her surprise, he started laughing.
Kate was at a loss for words. “What- how- why are you laughing at me?”
“Sorry, I just thought it would be a lot more difficult to get you to open up.” Bruce explained, sitting forward in his seat as he took a few deep breaths. Then he looked up at her. “You know that’s the most like yourself that you’ve acted since Clint went down.”
“What?” Kate didn’t know what to say. She was shocked by not only Bruce’s outburst, but by how directly he talked about Clint’s… condition? She didn’t even know what to call it.
Ever since Clint collapsed during his briefing and was moved into her room, Kate’s pretty much been one of two places: the shooting range at Shield or sitting by his bedside. Whenever they were around her the others have been skirting around the topic of Clint, or even her mission, but she’d heard the whispers around the ship. It’d made her alternate between wanting to scream at them for treating her like she’s fragile and going to break and wanting to cry because she’s just so lost. To have Bruce just bring it up like that was shocking, but honestly, a bit comforting in a way.
Thinking back on it, Bruce had never been one to pull punches in either of his personalities. Hulk’s was obviously physical punches, but even Bruce, behind his nervous nerdy demeanor, was very direct with what he wanted to say.
Bruce motioned for her to sit on his bed and she did. He scooted his chair out from behind the table to its side.
“Five years ago, you were a cocky but caring kid determined to be an Avenger. You were basically a mini-Clint, with a bit more common sense and less of the coolness that comes with loss and experience.” Bruce said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. He smiled. “And you had a temper rivaling my own with the stubbornness to back it up.”
Kate felt her face heat up as she blushed, smiling slightly. “And what about now?”
Bruce’s easy smile was replaced by a more contemplative frown, his eyes still filled with warmth but mixed with some sadness as he studied her. “A slightly older kid that’s been through too much alone, only to come back to what she always wanted while her best friend is in limbo and she can’t do anything about it.”
It was like she was just a book Bruce had read, all her feelings, hopes, dreams, he knew it all. Kate caved in on herself, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. “It’s just so hard. I’m living the life I’ve always dreamed of, I’m actually an Avenger! But this isn’t how I wanted it to happen.”
She looked up at Bruce who nodded, encouraging her to continue. “I love it here, I really do. Everyone is great and I belong here. But I don’t feel like I belong here. Deep down I feel betrayed… betrayed that you all disappeared for five years and left me alone. Alone with Clint, sure, but once he disappeared, I just felt so alone. For three whole years my one and only mission was to locate Clint and Fury, I devoted all my time and effort to it, I just had to get them back. Everything depended on it. Then you guys came back, and we rescued Clint and everything’s as it’s supposed to be. I should be happy.”
“But you’re not.” Bruce finished.
Kate stared at the ground. “No. I guess I’m not. I’m so grateful for everything that everyone’s done, and I’m trying to act happy, trying to be, well, myself, but I feel like I failed my mission. My mission was to bring Clint back and I succeeded, but he’s not really back. He’s stuck in some weird time vortex thing that I don’t even understand, and I don’t know how to help him. I don’t even know where Lucky is either, and he’s practically a part of Clint. And a part of me. Honestly, I’m- I’m scared. I’m scared Clint won’t ever be back to normal. I’m scared Monica will kill everyone I love. I’m scared that I’ll be left alone again. I’m just scared.”
Kate realized belatedly that at some point while she poured her heart out, tears had begun to stream down her face. She sniffed and smiled slightly at Bruce in thanks as he passed her a tissue.
“I know what that feels like.” Bruce said once she was finished. Kate forced her eyes up to meet his and was surprised at the compassion that burned through his gaze. “That feeling? The feeling that everything’s too good to be true? We’ve all been there. We’ve all felt it. Waking up here after five years to find a teenager passed out on the deck with AIM bots around her was a shock, but the bigger shock was when we actually brought the Avengers back together. It’s like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop but there isn’t one.”
Kate laughed wetly, sniffling. “Was that really how you met Kamala?”
Bruce winced. “Sort of, first she met Hulk when he chased her through the whole Helicarrier for Cap’s shield. Then we officially met when I took a sample of her blood without asking.”
“You’re really good at first impressions.” Kate noted, thinking back to some of her own first experiences with Bruce when he yelled at her for being in the lab.
He shrugged, moving on. “How much of the story about how the Avengers came back together do you know?”
“I know the things that the Shield reports said, plus what people have told me.”
“Do you know the story of how the Helicarrier got back online? How it was able to fly again?”
Kate shook her head. She’d heard rumors, despite the secrecy that revolved around everything Shield, it was a hotbed for rumors, but she didn’t know the full story.
Bruce shifted in his seat, resting his elbow on his worktable. “Kamala and I were in the badlands looking for some energy cores and we came up empty. She had a bit of a breakdown, a lot like you just did, and we had a conversation a lot like the one we’re having right now. Pym found us and brought us to the Anthill. While we were there Kamala caught wind of a prison where AIM was holding Inhumans and wanted to go break them out. I told her no, she wasn’t ready, we weren’t ready, but she ran off in the night anyways and got herself captured. I only found out because Nat texted Pym and we were still catching up in his lab.”
Kate smirked slightly. “Catching up?”
“We were talking.” Bruce clarified, narrowing his eyes at her slightly before running a hand down his face. “When Hank told me that Kamala had been captured by AIM it was like my world had been taken out from under me. I wanted to hulk out right there, go and get her back, but I knew I couldn’t. I knew she’d be in greater danger if I did that, if I did anything. I was completely helpless, there wasn’t anything I could do except trust that tinydancer, that Nat, would bring her back safely. I don’t think I truly breathed until I saw her safe and whole walking with Natasha out of that AIM building. I was just so relieved that she was ok.”
Bruce looked at her meaningfully. “It might take a while and you might be scared it will never come, but Clint will get better. You will have your friend back and we will fix whatever terrible thing you saw in the future. Because if I know one thing about the Avengers, its that we don’t lose easily, and when we do there’s always someone to pick up the pieces. Even if that person is a teenage girl from Jersey City who should be anywhere but the battlefield.”
Kate smiled at him “You know, for the most socially awkward person I know, that was a really good heart to heart.”
Bruce laughed. “Kamala’s given me a lot of practice.”
“I can imagine.” Kate said, wiping her eyes one last time. She got up at tossed her tissues in the trash can. She paused in the hallway to the door, turning around to face him again. “Thank you, Bruce. This- this really helped.”
“Anytime.” He replied, wheeling himself back to his microscope. “The doors always open if you want to talk again.”
Kate smiled, walking to the door, something nagging at the back of her mind. The door hissed open when she remembered, poking her head back around the corner. “Hey Doc, you never mentioned what the prank you all helped Kamala with was. It must have been really good to make Tony sulk.”
Bruce didn’t look up from his microscope, but he grinned widely. “We covered every flat surface in his room with plastic cups of water. The floor, the worktables, everything. Even the guitar amp. He couldn’t step on the floor without soaking everything in his room.”
Kate walked out of his room, laughing all the way down to the hanger bay.