Superfan
When Steve wakes up he's killing everyone.
He can't remember the exact details of what happened after they landed the jet, why the four of them landed on the outskirts of this town and hiked into it. There's just a vague memory of getting angry at Clint and Tony, who were arguing. Then the Hulk was there, but instead of worrying about him being near a civilian center, as he usually would, Steve had just gotten madder. Then everything was a blur of red tinged fury until the toxin they'd been exposed to started to burn out of his metabolism. Because of the serum, it leaves him first.
It starts to wane while he is still fighting--sitting on top of Clint and raising a fist to beat the life out of him. Tony pulls at Steve's shoulders ineffectually from behind, pleading, begging for Steve to stop, think, listen, stop. Clint is hurt, his left arm bent sickeningly at two different angles, but still fighting back and spitting curses. The last thing Steve does before his head clears entirely is to turn, lift Tony by his collar, and toss him away. He collides with a nearby building and hits the ground limply.
"Holy shit, he just killed that guy!" a woman shrieks, and a man with his cellphone out, recording everything, mutters "Oh my God. Oh my God." There are angry shouts and worried murmurs from the growing crowd and the sound of sirens.
And then Steve is back, all the way back, horrified at what he has done. People hover over Tony, who is unconscious at best and dead at worst. Clint is still rabid beneath Steve's restraining hands, covered in blood. Steve gapes at the sheer quantity of it and is searching for a wound when he realizes the blood is coming from himself, dripping from his face down onto Clint's in a steady red rainfall.
"Hands up! Get off of him!" a policeman shouts, his gun at Steve's eye level. "Now, right now!"
Steve raises his hands quickly, aware of more drawn guns, but doesn't move, keeping Clint pinned with his legs, his body weight. "He'll hurt someone," he tries to explain. "He's not himself." They yell some more until Steve finally complies, finally rolls off Clint, who leaps up immediately to attack again.
Steve lets himself be shoved to the ground and handcuffed, trying to keep an eye on Clint, who they finally bring down with a taser and cuff as well, paying no mind to his broken arm. Clint starts struggling again and Steve winces as they shock him twice more before chaining his legs, as well.
There's only one ambulance and Tony, being unconscious with a terrible head wound, is given priority. The EMS crew moves fast. Tony doesn't move at all.
I did that, Steve thinks sickly. I did that.
He's pulled to his feet roughly and one of the cops wraps a towel around the top of his head, looping it under his chin. "You're bleeding like a stuck pig," he remarks with obvious disgust. "Gonna ruin the back of my cruiser."
*******
Once in the emergency room the officer uncuffs Steve long enough to remove his jacket. He does a double take and laughs when he sees Steve's uniform. "Nice Captain America getup you have there, Superfan," he scoffs, throwing his head back and laughing again. "Jesus, you look like a goddamned goofball!"
Steve isn't really inclined to argue at the moment.
A frowning resident is taken aback by Steve's injuries. "What on earth happened to you?" Steve's face has nearly been sliced off, a ragged cut running from his eyebrows all the way down and around his jaw and halfway back up the other side. The resident cleans the area carefully and begins the first of many sutures. "You'll need to see a plastic surgeon," he advises, and Steve doesn't bother telling him that he really is Captain America, that the serum will heal him quickly.
There's a commotion from down the corridor--doctors and nurses yelling, security officers running past the curtain partition--and Steve's pretty sure he recognizes the voice screaming threats and obscenities. Clint. The toxin had worn away from Steve quickly, and he hopes that Clint won't be far behind in coming out of it, but things don't sound very promising.
The police officer gets up to peek out of the curtain when a very flustered doctor pushes in past him. "Where's the guy who--?" He focuses on Steve. "You. That guy you came in with--what is he on?" he demands angrily. "PCP? Bath salts?"
"What's going on out there?" the officer asks.
"He's actually trying to kill us. He's crazy as hell and also some sort of--I don't know--fucking karate expert or something. I'm still trying to decide if he needs Haldol or an exorcism!"
"He's not well," Steve urges, feeling sick himself, knowing it will be impossible to explain the toxin or how they had been exposed. He needs to contact SHIELD. Fury will fix everything--his people will take care of Clint until the effects wear off, and he can explain away Steve's behavior, everyone's behavior. They must all seem like madmen to people looking in from the outside. "He's really not like that at all. He's just sick."
"Suuuuure," the officer says, voiced laced with disbelief. "He's so sick that you decided to break his arm and beat him to death? How about the other guy, the one you tried to throw through a brick wall? I suppose you did that because he's sick too, has cancer or something."
"Is Tony here?" Steve asks desperately. "Is he okay?"
"His name is Tony?" The doctor takes out a notepad and starts writing. "What kind of drugs does Tony use? I need to know, right now."
Steve sighs in frustration. "His name is Clint Barton, and he doesn't do any drugs at all. Tony is someone else."
"Tony is the other buddy Superfan tried to kill," the officer interjects with mock helpfulness, snickering. "Not to be confused with the crazy bastard down the hall."
"I didn't mean to hurt them. Please just help them. Both of them."
"We'll punt Karate Guy to Psych after we set his arm. He can be their problem." The doctor glares at the police officer and jerks his chin to indicate Steve. "And this jackass can be yours."
********
A shocking number of stitches later--Steve still isn't sure exactly how he had come to be cut up that badly--he's loaded back into the squad car and taken to the police station. The intake officer sighs at Steve's bloodstained outfit, looking bored and decidedly unamused.
"Name?" she asks, eyebrows raised to her hairline and lips pursed in a don't-give-me-shit expression.
"Steven Rogers." He shrugs helplessly at her irritated disbelief. "That's my name. My name really is Steve Rogers."
"Yeah, of course it is. Date of birth?"
He wishes that he could answer literally any other question. "July 4th...1918."
"Uh huh." Her eye roll is a visual treatise on disdain, scorn, and utter contempt. "Every single full moon," she laments in a loud, long suffering voice, throwing up her hands, "all you crazy bastards just pour in like cockroaches. Dear Lord, deliver me from this bullshit!"
Steve doesn't say anything else as she fingerprints him and takes his picture. He holds up the intake number and hopes it covers the star on his uniform.
He is put in a cell with several other men. A couple of them snigger to one another, gesturing at Steve. When Steve raises his eyebrows in faint challenge one of them smirks and says "You must really love Captain America."
"Not today," Steve admits.
*******
It's boring, jail is boring, but Steve is too worried about Tony and Clint, as well as wondering where Bruce is, to be too concerned about himself. He lays on one of the bunk beds and examines his hands, which he used only a few hours ago to try to kill two teammates. There's dried blood under his fingernails. It's probably his, he had been bleeding everywhere, but he can't be positive that some is not Clint's. He almost wants it to be, wants his guilt to be that much more complete.
He thinks of the HYDRA base, of the men there killing one another, more like animals, like beasts, than men. Whatever had compelled those men toward violence had also infected him and Clint and Bruce somehow. He's not sure if Tony was affected as well, or if he had been spared by his Iron Man suit. Steve imagines that he had probably looked the same as those HYDRA operatives, hateful and snarling, as he fought his teammates. It's a mercy that the serum allowed him to metabolize the toxin so quickly; with his superior strength he could have killed them easily, could have gone on to rampage through that town to hurt many others.
He feels sick even imagining it.
*******
It's late the next day when the officer that drove him to the hospital opens the cell door and points at Steve. "Come on. You're being transferred."
"Where?" Steve asks.
The officer shrugs and grins. "That's your problem, Superfan. The feds are involved now. Maybe one of those guys you hurt died in the hospital. Maybe you're a murderer now." He looks a little gleeful at the thought.
Steve is considering that possibility with horror when he's shoved through the next door into a room where Nick Fury waits with Jasper Sitwell, looking angry as hell. "I'll take custody of the prisoner now," Fury says smoothly, cuffing him none too gently as Sitwell remains behind to take care of the paperwork.
Steve tries not to let the relief show in his face but his knees are a little wobbly as Fury marches him out to the waiting car. "I'm really sorry about all of this, Director."
"If I'd wanted to come drag someone's sorry ass out of jail for fighting, I'd have had kids of my own," Fury snaps. "You four assholes are on my permanent shit list!"
"Understood," Steve nods, and doesn't complain when he's left handcuffed the entire car ride.
*******
He is deposited at a hotel that sits glumly between a highway and a shopping mall. Natasha greets him with folded arms and a frown, which, in all honesty, is not significantly different than one of her usual welcomes.
"How is Tony?" Steve asks immediately. He hadn't dared to ask Fury, who had been dangerously silent. He'd stopped the car and thrown a hotel keycard and handcuff key at Steve as he got out, bouncing both off the back of his head, before peeling away to reclaim Sitwell.
"He's in rough shape, but Pepper says he'll be okay. I'm going over to see him tomorrow morning; you can ride along if you want." Natasha hands Steve a duffel bag which, blessedly, is full of his own clothing. She dutifully turns around so he can change, her eyes trained on a piece of bland wall art.
"And Bruce?" He strips quickly, never happier to take his uniform off.
She shrugs. "We haven't found him yet, and he hasn't contacted anyone. None of the civilians mentioned a Hulk, so he must've disappeared before you guys started all the slapping and hairpulling. My best guess is that he'll sulk for awhile and lay low, then finally decide to sack up and call home. When he does, we'll go get him."
"Clint?" He finishes dressing and touches her shoulder. Natasha turns back around, looks him over, nods curtly in approval.
"They stuck him in a psychiatric hospital and have an emergency court order to keep him there. The doctor won't allow visitors. Fury's trying to find a legal way to get him, but I'm sure Clint will break himself out before that happens; he's wily that way." Natasha reaches up and tilts Steve's head carefully from side to side, examining the stitches. "These will need to come out soon. Who did this, Clint or Tony?"
"I think maybe Clint did."
"An odd choice for him," she observes. "I wonder why--if he had a knife and wanted to murder you--he tried to peel your face off instead of just cutting your throat?"
"I have no idea. This is a nightmare," he moans, sinking down onto one of the beds.
She snorts and sits beside him, tracing the garish pattern of the bedspread with one finger. "Calm down, Steve. It's not the worst thing we've dealt with. No one is dead."
"That's not exactly a measurement of success," he points out dryly, and she shrugs again in mild disagreement. "How is the press handling it? People had phones out, were recording the whole thing."
"There's almost no coverage at all. The local paper of this town--St. Joseph Missouri, by the way, and what a shithole--did a piece on it. You'll want to read it for yourself, but I think my favorite part was 'A man dressed in a Captain America costume brutally beat two men before being subdued by police officers'."
"Oh, God."
"I've already picked up a few extra copies," she adds. "I know Tony will want one, and Clint will, too, as soon as he gets out of the loony bin." She smiles with dark humor, then sobers a little. "Now, if you've asked all your questions, I have some of my own."
Steve sighs. She'll probably demand to know why he broke Clint's arm, or what he'd been thinking when he'd attacked Tony. Why he hadn't stopped Bruce from taking off. Why they had landed the jet in Missouri in the first place, how they came to be here. All the questions that Steve has no answers for.
Natasha grabs his arm, her face fierce and cruelly beautiful. "Steve," she says seriously. "I need to know."
"Natasha, I--"
"What did you use to make your prison shiv, and which orifice did you hide it in?"
Steve can't help but laugh, and in his relief reaches out and pulls her close, surprised when she lets herself be moved, even more so when she hugs him back. "I suppose the jailbird jokes won't go away any time soon."
"Just wait till Tony finds out. It'll be like his personal Christmas."