Stark Contrasts
Tony
“What I wouldn’t give for a drink right now,” I mused, giving my chair a restless spin. But Rhodey and Pepper had been strictly monitoring my alcohol intake since the Accords fiasco, and I was pretty sure FRIDAY was on their side. They probably had a point—I could feel the alluring pull of alcoholism in the days after coming back from Siberia, why wouldn’t they just let me drown everything out, dammit—but that didn’t make me any less annoyed by it.
A rush of unwelcome feelings had thrust their way to the surface after settling Bruce into his quarters and filling in Rhodes and Selvig over dinner. This was the way it was supposed to be. I kept expecting to see other familiar faces in the gym and open areas. Natasha, punching the living daylights out of a sandbag, tossing out a curt greeting in between blows without so much as losing her rhythm. Clint, making fluffer-nutters in the kitchen and trying to convince Sam that no, it wasn’t weird to put peanut butter and marshmallow fluff together, really, you have to try it. Thor being scolded by Pepper when he left Mjolnir someplace particularly inconvenient. He always chalked it up to forgetfulness, but there was no way setting the hammer on top of a freshly baked canister of chocolate chip cookies was anything but intentional. Steve, flicking through options on Netflix with an air of serious contemplation as he continually tried to catch up on a culture that had left him behind decades ago. Rhodey…before the accident.
My chest tightened. You’re in a safe place, everything’s fine, I repeated to myself silently as I took deliberate, focused steps to slow my breathing. But it wasn’t fine, dammit. The world’s mightiest heroes, torn apart not by some unbeatable foe, but by themselves. Zemo had gotten what he wanted.
Even Bruce, wherever he’d been, seemed destroyed by the past few years. The dry humor, easy camaraderie, all had disappeared into a broken shell. He picked at his food throughout dinner, shrunk into himself when we filled the others in on the situation, and disappeared back to his rooms as quickly as he could after the meal.
I took an angry swig of the bitter black coffee that was the strongest thing I’d been allowed to drink unsupervised in months. Part of me wanted to be angry at Thor—he knew about Banner’s disappearing tendencies, and still let him run off and get himself kidnapped by who knows who—but that wasn’t fair.
Speaking of Thor… I pulled out my phone again, noting only briefly the series of unreturned messages before ringing up someone more reliable. “Hey, Pep.”
“Tony? Is everything okay there?” A warmth I didn’t realize I’d been missing returned to my chest.
“Hey,” I protested, “sometimes I just call to hear your voice, y’know. A man’s allowed to call his fiancee.”
Pepper laughed. “Okay, but you know I’m working, so I know something’s up. Spill, or I’ll call Colonel Rhodes and tell him to check on you.”
“Okay, okay. Our favorite jolly green giant is back and Thor won’t answer his phone. Also he’s not green or jolly at the moment.”
A touch of worry entered Pepper’s voice. “Bruce? Where has he been? Is he okay?”
“Still trying to figure that out, honey. He’s been pretty tight-lipped about whatever it was happened to him.” I filled her in briefly on what I knew, then added, “Can you let Thor know what’s going on? I know he’s pretty busy right now, but it might help to have him drop by and see Banner considering he’s the only one of us who’s had any contact in the past two years.”
“I’ll see what we can do. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if Loki were still here this would easier. He had the Asgardians off to a pretty good start on rebuilding before he took off. Right now, the defacto second in command is literally a talking pile of rocks. I’ll talk to Darcy and see if we can spare Thor for a couple of days.”
A knock at the door interrupted the conversation. “Thanks honey. Gotta go. Love ya!”
Vision glided through the wall. “Sir, you have unexpected visitors. No alarms have been triggered, but I question their intentions.”
“What? Who? Where?” Instinctively, I stuck a hand out for my suit, only to remember I had taken it off to shower. “Dammit.” Language, a painfully familiar voice echoed in my head, no matter how hard I tried to forget.
Bruce
Eating seemed so normal. That in itself seemed so uncomfortable, so out of place against the jarring background of everything that had happened. The cognitive dissonance of comfort food, and friends, and casual conversation against the tension of my mind continually preparing itself for something awful to happen, akin to the way my body had braced against pain, kept me from fully focusing on anything at the dinner table. It was all too overwhelming.
The only thing that did seem normal was the sting of cuts in my palm from the glass I had shattered earlier that day. I clung to that fresh pain as a grounding force. As soon as it was possible to escape, I fled the common area to the peaceful blue room and locked the door behind me.
The anxiety was still there.
I paced the room, fingers knotted in my hair, trying to stave it off, until the scabs on my feet had broken open again from the friction and burned in protest. Images and sensations that I couldn't quite piece together, but were still etched into my mind rushed over me—cold shackles of an unknown metal tight around my ankles, digging into my flesh as I fought against the restraints, anything to escape the interminable bastinado.
I choked out a sob for the first time in ages as my surroundings jolted back into focus, and I found myself on the floor. One hand was clenched deep into a small area rug; the other slowly relinquished its grip on my wrist where scarlet crescents of blood slipped up to fill the space left by my fingernails. I needed to take care of myself, to get the aftermath under control.
I padded gingerly into the attached bathroom and slipped off the ratty old slippers I had had the presence of mind to dig out of the trash somewhere along the way, and the bound-up, blood-stained rags under that. I winced as the fabric pulled away from the reopened wounds.
“FRIDAY?”
“Yes, Dr. Banner? How may I assist you?”
“Is there a first aid kit anywhere in this room?”
“There are basic medical supplies in the cupboard above the sink. Do you require medical assistance?”
“No, no,” I said hastily. “I’m—I am medical assistance. Don’t mention this to anyone, please.”
“Very well.” The voice in the ceiling went quiet.
Halfway through washing and re-bandaging the lesions, I was already perspiring. My cheek was raw from biting back the pain. I rested my head on my arms, one foot in and one out of the bathtub, trying to gather the strength to finish. If you don’t finish, you leave yourself vulnerable to infection, I reasoned with myself. Just do it, it’ll be over soon.
This time, I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. The torture wasn’t over. With every twinge of the battered nerves of my feet, I was back in that awful room, and I couldn’t stop it. I had broken past the point of trying to hold onto myself in that torture chamber of a lab and pleaded for his relief, but the Hulk wouldn’t—or couldn’t—save me. Nausea surged up inside me and I vomited into the toilet bowl, the violent hacking motion only exacerbating the pain in my lower back.
“Are you certain you do not require assistance?” FRIDAY queried.
“I’m fine,” I choked out. “Please, just leave me alone.”
Tears blurring my sight, I wrapped the gauze clumsily around the other foot and taped it into place. A sloppy and amateurish job, but finally I could escape that bathroom.
Exhausted both physically and mentally, I stumbled back into my bedroom and collapsed. The mattress was luxuriously soft, swallowing me into its comfort. I pulled the thick quilt at the foot around myself like a cocoon, allowing its weight to gradually slow my trembling. Thoroughly worn, I drifted into an uneasy sleep.
Next thing I knew, something had roused me from my slumber. The lights were still low, and I blinked, trying to figure out what brought me out of the haze of almost-dreams, when I saw it. A dark silhouette standing by the bed.
“Banner.”
Peter
The tingle of spider senses was my first clue that something was up. Closing my chemistry book carefully, I tiptoed to the door of my room and peered out the peephole. No sign of anyone, but I knew I had felt someone pass down that hallway.
“Hey Friday,” I whispered, “is Vision around?” Seconds later, the scarlet android melted through my bureau into the room.
“Peter, you asked after me?”
“I think somebody’s in the building.” I strapped on my web-shooters as I spoke. “Got anything?”
Vision frowned. “None of the alarms have gone off, nor have I seen anything. I shall contact Tony.” He was gone as quickly as he had come, and before I had the chance to ask any further questions.
“Okay, thanks,” I said to the blank wall. “Guess I’ll check it out myself then.”
I eased into the hallway and flipped up onto the ceiling, crawling along stealthily in the direction that the sensation had indicated.