Chapter 58
Avengers Tower
August 2011
“We have no way to calculate the quantum displacement,” Bruce argued. “Electron trace mapping will never work.”
“It would work if we could get the de Leyer formula fixed,” Tony countered.
Bruce shook his head. “It’s a fantasy. De Leyer’s formula’s missing way too many pieces.”
“If only he hadn’t gone nuts before he finished the thing,” Tony said irritably.
Bruce shot his (colleague? teammate?) friend a look. Tony was doing better, marginally, but Bruce still had a sneaking suspicion that it wouldn’t take much to send Tony into a tailspin. The more they stalled out on the scepter, the grouchier Tony got.
“You do know it was cocaine, right? Not insanity,” Bruce said.
“Damn the Dutch and their coffeehouses. Pepper found me in one of those one time,” Tony said absently. “Apparently I shouted something about llamas on waterslides and hit her in the face with a syrup waffle.”
“Why am I not surprised,” Bruce muttered. This was a good sign. Tony could at least talk about Pepper without having a meltdown. Improvement.
They lapsed into silence as the elevator dropped down to their private lab floor. Jane was sleeping (Darcy had discovered that Jane had been up for thirty-four hours and force-marched the astrophysicist up to bed) so Tony and Bruce had the space to themselves at the moment.
The elevator slid to a stop. Bruce stepped out and frowned. “What if we-”
He broke off very abruptly.
Bruce’s pulse tripped and accelerated. He very deliberately sucked in a deep breath. “Tony.”
“Wh-” Tony’s eyes fell on the table by the windows and he froze.
Natasha hopped down off the counter. “Hey, Tony. Miss me?”
“Get away from the window,” Tony snapped, glancing outside. “JARVIS, gimme a tint to that glass. What are you doing here?”
“Fury’s after you,” Bruce said as the windows slowly darkened. “He came to see us a few weeks ago–if he finds out you’re here…”
“We didn’t have a choice.” Now that Bruce was closer, he saw that Natasha was as tense as he’d ever seen her–more so even than when he arrived at New York in the middle of the battle, and the Avengers were outgunned and outnumbered in the middle of a half-wrecked city.
“We?” Tony asked.
Movement to the left made Bruce whip around.
A tall man with haunted eyes and a guarded face stepped out from behind the shadows of one of Jane’s massive pieces of machinery. He held up his left arm, a mobile prosthesis of gleaming silver far beyond anything Bruce had ever seen, marred by a massive gouge to the posterior surface of the bicep. It spat a lazy spark.
“I can’t fix it myself,” the man said quietly.
Tony was the first to speak. “You’re the Winter Soldier.”
The man nodded once.
Bruce glanced at Natasha.
She nodded once.
The exchange didn’t escape Tony or the impossibly dangerous (but interesting) person standing in their lab.
Tony heaved a sigh. “If you’re not going to kill me for having seen you here.”
“I wouldn’t,” Natasha said.
“Not even for him?” Bruce asked.
She didn’t respond.
“Good thing I don’t plan to put you in danger, then,” Tony said to the Soldier, and grabbed a pair of rubber gloves. “Is it causing you pain?”
“Some,” the Soldier said. “It was damaged in Moscow.”
“When you trounced the combined security of half the Ministers of the Russian government and vanished with a room full of mysteriously dead men behind?” Bruce asked, a touch of sarcasm coloring his voice. True, Natasha was part of the team, but she had walked away. Vanished. And only returned when she didn’t have anywhere else to go. Bruce was settling into the first place that had felt like home in years, and now here was this new problem threatening the fragile equilibrium he had made. He knew exactly what the consequences would be for all of them if this was discovered.
Natasha looked away.
“We need to bring the rest of the team in on this,” Bruce said. “You can’t just unilaterally decide to harbor a wanted criminal. Two wanted criminals. Loki was a group decision.”
Natasha flinched. “Loki?”
“We’ll explain later,” Bruce said.
“Long story short, I’m apparently running a halfway house for supercriminals,” Tony said, but he didn’t seem upset about that fact. “Here–”
He grabbed a length of grayish canvas from a nearby worktable (Tony’s section of the lab was a disorganized mess, much like his mind) and sliced it down the middle until he had a long chunk of fabric. Bruce had to admire the man’s ingenuity as he deftly fashioned a usable sling out of the canvas and tied the Soldier’s arm up to his ribcage.
“What do you think, doc?” Tony asked, gesturing.
Bruce stepped closer and bent down a bit, examining the elbow angle and the security of the sling. “Hard to tell, since this isn’t exactly… normal human anatomy,” he said. “But it should be fine.”
“Excellent.” Tony grinned in a way that said he was strongly looking forward to the chaos this was about to cause. “Time to face the music.”