Radioactive
Natasha
Tony shrugged on a fresh t-shirt. The arc reactor glowed faintly through the dark cotton. “You all washed up?”
I nodded numbly. The sweatpants and tank I'd grabbed from Tony's stash of clothes weren't my usual style, but they were clean, and I could deal with that. As it was, I kept expecting to see blood every time I looked down at myself. I closed my eyes against that image.
“Good. As it is, you’d probably show up as a hot spot on a Geiger counter right now.” Tony's compulsion to live with any difficult emotions stifled behind a mask of humor had returned in full force.
My mind was in turmoil. I rubbed my hands against each other again thoughtlessly, still feeling the slickness of Bruce’s blood playing back through my senses despite the dozens of times I had washed my hands since coming on board.
“Natasha? Nat? Romanoff?”
I jolted back into focus. “Sorry, Tony, you were saying?”
“I was joking about the Geiger counter,” he said, almost apologetically. “Short term exposure to his blood isn’t going to…”
“I know.”
Silence filled the cabin for several long moments.
“He sent me a phone.” Tony finally put the words he’d been chewing on out in the open.
“What? Who did?”
“In case… well, I guess in case something like this ever happened. Thanos.”
“Steve?”
In response, Tony pulled a flip phone from his jacket pocket, looking it over briefly before tossing it to me.
I shook my head. “This isn’t my phone call to make, Tony.”
He looked away. “Yeah. I know.”
“This isn’t about you and Steve anymore. It’s about everyone out there.” I jerked my head toward the window. “You heard Thor. Billions of lives are in danger, and we need all the help we can get. Especially…” I let the words trail off, unspoken.
Tony’s mind had gone to the same teammate. “You should head back and see how he’s doing.” He paused, then added, as if trying to be casual despite the tension in his voice, "Don't--don't hand it to me. Just set it down. I don't--"
"You don't like it when people hand you things. I know." Tony nodded.
Even as I rose gracefully from my seat in the front cabin, I could Tony’s thoughts were divided between our several predicaments. From the doorway, I glanced back. Tony was turning the flip phone over and over in his hands, torn. “You’ll be all right?”
Tony shook himself. “What? Yeah, yeah… of course.”
~
Bruce was seated on the bed, leaning against the wall and staring out the dark window. The redness around his eyes stood out from the paler-than-normal skin of his face.
“Mind if I join you?” I queried gently.
To my surprise, Bruce let me turn him from the window and take him into my arms. I held him tightly, trying to replace the pressure of gauze on lifeless flesh with the sensation of two living bodies pressed against each other for comfort.
His voice was muffled against my hair. “I’m so sorry, Nat,” he choked out. “I am so, so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I whispered, holding him as he wept. I ached inside in recognition of the deep hopelessness emanating from him. I hesitated, but after a moment I felt the need to press further. “Bruce, do you have any plans of trying again?”
He shook his head mutely.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Promise me, if you ever get to that place again, talk to someone first. Please?”
Bruce looked up and met my eyes for the first time. “I don’t know what you see in me, Nat,” he said softly, brushing a strand of hair out of my face. “But if it means that much to you, I promise.” Blinking as if seeing the space around us for the first time, he added, “Where’s Tony?”
“Hopefully? Calling Steve.”
Bruce frowned. “I thought they weren’t on speaking terms.”
“They aren’t. But with what Thor said…”
“Thor?”
A twinge of guilt. “I think you may have missed his call.”
“May have?” He looked confused.
I sucked in a breath. “You had a panic attack earlier when Tony raised his voice at you.”
Bruce winced and averted his gaze. “Sorry about that,” he mumbled. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”
“While you were out of it, Thor called, saying something about infinity stones and the end of the universe and a being called Thanos.”
“Thanos?” Bruce whipped his head up, eyes wide. “Oh, this is bad. This is very bad. Where’s Loki? Does Thor know how bad that is?”
“You’ve heard of him?” The urgency of Bruce’s voice surprised me.
“Loki hasn’t told you? New York, the Chitauri, the scepter? That was all him, Nat.”
Bruce
Memories floated unbidden to the front of my consciousness. Loki, onboard the ship, bringing me back into myself...
“I take it you prefer this form.”
I nodded and startled as the cloak shifted around me into dark sweatpants, and purple flannel, and a tattered jacket I hadn’t seen since before my last code green on Earth. “Thanks.” He hadn’t said anything to that end, but I was beginning to suspect he had something to do with the other guy relinquishing his hold since no one else was to be seen, a task which must have been anything but pleasant. I was surprised he would have bothered.
Loki turned to leave, but paused in the doorway. “We all have a form we would prefer to forget, Banner,” he said softly, still turned away. “Dinner is in half an hour.”
Unsure what to say, I bumbled out, “I take it you prefer this form of me, too.”
To my surprise, Loki chuckled. “Yes, well... I hope not to be in need of the other fellow's cognitive recalibration services again any time soon.”
I furrowed my brow, a little bit dazed and lost. “What did he do now?”
“You don’t remember much from his time, do you.”
I shook my head. “Not usually. Emotions, sometimes. Are you all right? Has the Hulk hurt anyone?”
“Calm yourself, Banner.” Loki put his hands up in a placating--but perhaps also defensive, given the circumstances--gesture. “You have hurt no one but our enemies. No, the incident I referenced was years ago, and well-deserved, though served a touch aggressively.”
Nat shook her head. “Loki keeps his cards close to his chest. What’s the story?”
“Thanos was controlling Loki the whole time, just as Loki was controlling Clint and Erik. He wants to collect the infinity stones—like the tesseract, and the stone in the scepter—and destroy half the universe. If he’s coming here… that’s bad, Nat. Real bad.”
Natasha sank back against the headboard. “That would have been good to know,” she murmured.
Natasha
My mind was reeling from the new information.
“Nat?” Bruce said again. I was surprised to feel his hands curl hesitatingly around mine, making voluntary first contact. “I don’t know that this is a battle we can win.” I squeezed back. “But I’m not going to run away anymore. Even if Banner won’t be much use. I’m damn well going to go out fighting to save the people I love, Hulk or no.”
“Win or lose, we’re Avengers. Not just the Hulk. You. Me. If the past two years has taught me anything, it’s that we’re going to need to stand together no matter the outcome of this fight.”
Bruce smiled, a rare sight in recent weeks. “As Thor would say—that’s what heroes do.”
I looked toward the cabin door where beyond, Tony had retreated for his phone call. “I’m not sure the fight itself will be the most difficult battle ahead of us. We have a lot of healing to do.”
“Nat… I know I’m not in the best place medically, but if Dr. Cho can figure out a way to patch me up, I intend to be a part of our defense as soon as I can walk myself out of medical. And if she can’t… well, the other guy’s usually more use in a fight anyway.”
My heart pinched. “She will,” I said firmly.
“Okay.” We both knew I couldn’t know that, but Bruce didn’t challenge the statement.
I pulled a blanket up over us. “In that case, you better get some rest,” I teased gently. “I can’t have my favorite hero passing out from exhaustion when we get to Norway.”
He smiled, curling up against me and already starting to doze off. “Don’t let Tony hear you say that,” he murmured. “He’s got a pathological need to be everyone’s favorite.”
“Jokes on him,” I returned. “You’ve always been my favorite.” There was no response as Bruce’s breathing slowed and evened out. I smoothed out the dark curls and planted a soft, chaste kiss on his forehead before settling in for a nap of my own. I didn’t know what the future would hold, or how much time we might have together, but we had right now. And in the moment, that was enough.
~
Tony
I stared at the cellphone in my hands, turning it over and over while playing out a million different scenarios in my head. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t call him. Every time I opened the phone to dial, I heard the sickening crack of the shield in my chest, felt the icy cold of Siberia in my bones, watched my erstwhile friend walk away and leave me there, broken and alone, without so much as a look behind him. I closed the phone again as the hot tears burned at my eyes, threatening to spill out. Some fences couldn’t be mended.
"Breathe," FRIDAY coached, and I realized my lungs were burning.
I couldn't see. Darkness was pressing in on my vision, I was back in the wormhole... My hand went automatically to my chest, clinging to the housing as I gasped for air.
"You are in a safe place. I am here with you. What can you hear around you?" Slowly, calmly, the AI talked me down from my panic.
I sucked in grateful gulps of fresh air as my vision settled back out and feeling returned to my hands. This wasn't going to work. I couldn't make this phone call. I turned to leave the cockpit, but an image halted me in my tracks. Pepper. Faithful, beautiful, loving Pepper. I would do anything to protect her from this new threat, travel to the edges of the universe, build the most powerful armor I could, even call someone I had sworn never to speak to again.
This time, when I flipped open the phone, my fingers didn’t hesitate.
“Steve? It’s Tony. We need you.”
Bruce
I knew, immediately, that something was wrong. My vision was greying in and out, and for a wild moment I didn’t know where I was… where we were? Someone lay beside me. The burning sensation had spread across my body. I jolted upright, almost blacking out completely.
“Nat. Nat, please. Help,” I gasped the words out, but she was already awake, stirred by my sudden movement.
“Bruce, what’s wrong?”
“Something’s not right,” I mumbled out. My tongue lay heavy and thick in my mouth. Despite the mental fog and the disorienting, searing chill traveling up and down my body, my mind rushed ahead analyzing the situation. “Might be headed into shock.”
I was vaguely aware that she was paging Tony, but already I couldn’t process the jumbled, soupy sounds from the world around me. The blanket moved around my shoulders, and Nat was there, holding my hands in hers and trying to talk to me. “Bruce? Bruce, can you hear me?”
I tried to nod, but that made the sensation worse. “Banner is shutting down,” I managed. “I think my body has finished cooking the blood transfusion. Hulk doesn’t want out, but he won’t have a choice if—we need to get me off this plane and away from people, away from anything I might damage. I don’t know what else to do. I’m sorry, Nat. I’m so sorry.”
Natasha’s grounding, strong arms around me, holding me up, were the last thing I was fully aware of as my mind turned inward on itself, locking out everything around me.
Tony
At the page from Natasha, I rushed back into the main body of the plane to find Bruce grey and glassy-eyed, wrapped in a blanket. She filled me in succinctly.
“Hold on, big guy,” I tried to keep a positive tone in my voice as I scanned him. “We’re almost to Norway. If anyone can help…” My heart ached. I had already grieved Banner’s loss too many times; I couldn’t bear the thought of the possible outcomes of our predicament. With Hulk reclusive and unwilling to surface, the prognosis was grim; yet a Hulk-out on the plane would have been unlikely to end well. Even if we made it to New Asgard, the situation looked dark with Bruce’s unusual biology and the time constraints imposed by his sudden decline.
“Dammit,” I swore, dropping to the floor of the aisle and punching the leg of the seat next to me in frustration. “I thought he was doing better. I didn’t see this coming. And I should have, Natasha.”
Natasha
What Tony thought he should have seen coming hung unspoken in the air between us. Bruce’s suicide attempt? The sudden decline into shock, dissociation, and perhaps worse, faster than expected despite our attempts to keep his body going long enough to find Dr. Cho? An unexpected alien enemy?
“He’s going to make it,” I established firmly.
"We don't know that." Tony seemed more hopeless than I'd seen him in years.
“We’re seven minutes out," I pressed on, "and medical help will meet us at the runway. You can’t beat yourself up over what’s behind us. Not now. We have to focus on what we can do in the present—saving Bruce, stopping Thanos, saving the world.”
A puff of air escaped Tony’s lips as a short, humorless chuckle. “Saving the universe this time, Nat. Not just this world. It’s a tall order, even for us.”