Voluntary Procedure

*

Tony says something that Bruce doesn't hear. He doesn't ask what it was, figuring Tony will repeat it if it's important.

Then something pops, something shatters, and beyond an involuntary flinch at the sound, Bruce doesn’t react at all, just keeps measuring and pouring, waiting for the inevitable heh heh heh of Tony’s wry laughter.

Once upon a time having a lab mate who regularly caused fires and small explosions would be a thing of great concern, but Bruce is used to it now, expects it even. Humans can adapt to anything, if given enough exposure, can normalize anything. Bruce is no longer fascinated by Thor being an actual alien or in awe of Steve’s accelerated healing factor. 

These are the things that are an Avenger’s normal.

“They’re at SHIELD, I said.” Tony appears suddenly at Bruce's elbow holding a Starkpad, his voice amused and irritated, obviously not the first time he's said the words, trying to pierce Bruce’s focus. "Been back about four hours, it looks like."

“What? Oh. Good.”

Of course they’re back. After years together Bruce no longer wrings his hands when Clint and Natasha suit up and disappear on SHIELD business. He no longer worries that they won’t come back, because they will, they always do.

“They’re in Medical now.” 

Bruce hmmms in response. A stop by Medical is a normal part of the debrief process.

Tony keeps hovering and reading, close but not close enough to be obnoxious, fiddling with the Starkpad. That’s another thing that has normalized—how deeply Tony has his hooks sunk into SHIELD’s systems. Snooping, Steve calls it, though he’s happy enough to exploit that bad habit whenever the team is in trouble, but disapproving of it the rest of the time. But Bruce understands; when granted a group of friends it’s natural to weave a net of safety around them, to want to watch and keep track.

Tony snickers and when Bruce raises a questioning eyebrow, says, “The Black Widow is slightly dehyrated.”

“Shocking!” Bruce deadpans, grinning.

 Natasha comes away from every medical debrief labeled slightly dehydrated. Again, so normal and so standard as to barely warrant comment, and Bruce is already anticipating the inevitable report of Hawkeye’s sprained ankle. It’s always his left one and it keeps happening again and again and again—Clint’s supposed to get surgery on that ankle but keeps putting it off for one reason or another, and the whole thing has gone on so long that even Steve's stopped scolding about it. Bruce’s smile widens, still so sure that the announcement is coming that its takes him a few beats to catch up that Tony hasn’t moved on to Clint’s chart at all, that he’s still skimming Natasha’s.

“Her blood pressure is—” Tony shakes his head a little and looks up quizzically at Bruce. “I thought her blood pressure was always low. That’s Nat, right? She's the one with the super low blood pressure?”

Indeed she is. Many times Bruce has taken her blood pressure and gaped at the result, astounded that the woman is conscious at all, much less walking and talking and kicking everyone’s ass. But Natasha always laughs at his reaction and says that she feels fine, because that’s her normal. But this number isn’t, this blood pressure reading number would be high for anyone, which means that it's sky high for Natasha Romanov. Bruce’s grin vanishes as he plucks the Starkpad from Tony’s hands, swiping through data.

Too much data, far too much for a standard medical debrief—EEG, MRI, every sort of bloodwork imaginable. Bruce sweeps Natasha’s data away to look at Clint’s, and it’s more of the same. Too much testing, a doctor looking to find something wrong, perhaps, or to rule something out. And aside from the mild dehydration and that high blood pressure, all the results all appear perfectly normal, but alarm bells are ringing and there’s a cold finger of dread down Bruce’s back, the Hulk stirring slightly.

*

The team gets there too late.

And that’s another normal for the Avengers—they’re always reacting to a disaster, arriving at a crisis already in process, after buildings have already been torn down, after people have been terrorized. They always thwart a global crisis but never prevent a local one. Today the available Avengers consist of two superhumans and two team members that fly and they still get there late, too late.

When they arrive Director Fury is glowering but suspiciously silent, and that’s how Bruce knows it’s going to be bad. Fury never looks sorry or guilty about anything.

“You can’t be here.” The charge nurse goes for an authoritative tone, hands on her hips, toe to toe with Captain America and completely unphased by Thor’s vaguely menacing proximity. “There are sick people that need their rest.”

 “Show us where they are, and we won’t be here anymore," Steve says reasonably enough, but Bruce can't make himself wait, can't stand there and listen to everyone argue when he knows exactly where his friends will be. He walks past Steve and the nurse, past Fury and Thor and Tony, almost dreamlike, and through that door because his friends are there and almost certainly suffering on the other side.

SHIELD Medical is an odd marriage of intensive care and walk-in clinic, with only one door separating the agents recovering from gunshot wounds from the ones getting flu shots. And then there's another door, and beyond it a place that Bruce knows all too well, a place that is both a hospital and a laboratory. A few steps and two sets of doors and the lively sounds of the clinic disappear abruptly, replaced by silence and the artificial chill that rings more facility than hospital. This is the place where SHIELD puts all the things it’s ashamed of.

Bruce Banner has been on both sides of a door like that—another horrible thing that’s somehow become normal.

*

They find Natasha first, bound to a hospital bed by her forearms and ankles, another strap velcroed around her middle. And that's bad enough but the tear tracks are worse, because they're not right. Natasha doesn't cry, there should never be tears on her face and SHIELD should never be the cause. 

Thor opens the restraints while calling to Bruce, who pays no attention as he turns mechanically on his heel and walks facefirst into Tony, who’s also paused, aghast, in the doorway. Bruce pushes him aside none too gently and returns to the hallway where Steve is still shouting, his “—force people to be complicit in their own—” almost drowning out Fury’s “—no idea what I’ve had to do to keep them—”. 

Clint is in the next room and isn’t tied to the bed by anything but IV lines, a blood pressure cuff, an oxygen meter. He’s all writhing motion in counterpoint to Natasha’s stillness, making a low keening noise as he presses his palms against his forehead, doubled over so far in the bed that his face rests against his drawn-up knees. There’s a nurse in this room too, and she must recognize Bruce, because she immediately bursts into terrified tears and runs from the room.

Good. She should be afraid; a monster is coming. The Hulk wants to tear Medical apart and Bruce wants to let him, but not just yet. He crosses the room in stiff, halting steps, the body not wholly his anymore, reaching for to Clint, wanting to examine him for injury, wanting to see his face, his eyes. Clint groans, his fingers fisted into his short hair, his elbow knocking away Bruce’s questing hand, maybe on accident, maybe on purpose.

 “I found Barton!” Tony calls over his shoulder from the doorway, and in a moment he’s right up close and practically sitting in the hospital bed with Clint, his head swinging back and forth almost comically between his two teammates.

“Don’t.” It’s both a plea and a warning as Tony pats awkwardly at Clint's hunched back with one hand and at Bruce’s chest with the other—Tony's put his hand where Bruce’s shoulder should be, but suddenly that’s chest height now as everything expands slightly, bones straining, muscles screaming. “Don't do it; we need you. Calm down, huh? Bruce. Bruce.”

It’s almost a rebuke, an irritated admonishment. We need to be taking care of Nat and Clint instead of dealing with your Hulkout. Tut tut, so selfish.

“My head,” Clint moans through gritted teeth, reaching back toward Tony and then lashing out the moment Tony hovers close enough. The blow lands clumsily and weakly, glancing off Tony’s collarbone and probably hurting not at all. 

 “We’re going to get you out of here,” Tony promises. Clint swings again and Tony catches his hand as the dangling IV line gets caught against the bedrail. “Bruce? Can we just…start unplugging things? Bruce? Bruce. Come on, help; I don’t know what the fuck any of this stuff is!”

Clint isn't right, he isn't acting like himself at all; his normal in Medical is to alternate between sulking and joking before declaring himself suddenly cured and attempting to leave. His thrashing and moaning is as foreign and horrible as the tears on Natasha's face. Bruce rests one hand against Clint’s back, presses the other against his chest, easing the archer up into a sitting position, and then gripping both sides of his face. Clint’s hands beat instinctively against Bruce’s but weakly, something easily ignored. He wants to make sure that there's no head injury, wants to confirm that Clint's pupils are the same size, but the man just won't hold still, squirming and writhing as Bruce firms his grip, his friend's head feeling too fragile between his hands. 

Thor appears briefly in the doorway then, Natasha in his arms, swathed in blankets. He takes in the scene and immediately leaves again, shouting for Steve.

“Shh, you’re okay, it’s alright.” Bruce tries to make it sound soothing, but his voice is too deep and gritted out from between clenched teeth.  “Let me look at you."

“Bruce, forget it, Jesus, just pull all that shit out of him and let’s go!"

 “I can’t see,” Clint wails suddenly, his voice ragged. He digs at his eyes with clumsy, clawed fingers, leaving thin red lines along his cheeks. “I can’t see anything!”

Bruce grabs Clint’s hands and holding them out to the sides. “Stop it, look at me. Clint. Look at me!”

“I can’t, I can’t open my eyes!” 

Clint’s frantic, but his eyes are open, and Bruce can see them dart toward and focus very obviously on Tony before moving back to Bruce's face, but the Hulk doesn’t see working eyes, only the way blood drips from the end of one of those scratch marks like a bloody tears. He's just panicked, Bruce tries to soothe, but the Hulk doesn’t hear him, only hears the way Clint gasps and Cap yelling in the hallway, only hears Tony plead Just get him up, let's go. Everything is going to fall apart any moment because that's what always happens, that's the Avengers' normal, that Bruce can't hold his shit together and keep the Hulk under wraps when things go to hell.

And sure enough, Bruce sees Clint’s eyes narrow too late, doesn't have time to react and duck away before Clint suddenly slams his head forward with surprising strength, his forehead colliding impacting Bruce's with a loud crunch and a burst of light. Bruce reels back and is replaced by the Hulk in the same moment, grabbing up Clint’s hands back up in his too-large ones.

 “Oh shit,” Tony exclaims almost conversationally from behind. “Oh shit shit shit.”

The Hulk is the one that finally pulls Clint Barton off the bed, two IVs ripping free in a spattering of blood droplets as some monitor starts shrieking in protest. He pulls Clint close, still trying to look into his eyes the way Bruce had wanted, though the reasons for that are vague and unclear and beyond the Hulk's understanding.

Clint glares right back and raises his chin as he snarls, “Fuck. You.” directly into the Hulk’s face.

And Tony gasps in horror, but somewhere inside Bruce Banner sighs in relief, because that's just right, that's their normal, too—the defiance and ragged sort of dignity that is common to all the Avengers in the face of pain and terror. The Hulk just blinks in surprise and then clutches Clint carefully against his chest as he sets about tearing SHIELD Medical apart.