Chapter Text
Natasha
Tony struggled up: “You shot me in the chest!”
She half smiled. “I’ve always secretly wanted to, ever since met. Darcy?” she said into her earpiece. “Did you get the footage?”
“Oh, yeah, baby. Poker night is about to get really interesting.”
“But-” Tony poked a finger through the hole in his shirt. “There’s a dent in my arc reactor...”
When she went to Clint, his face was shuttered, but his eyebrows were miserable. Damn Hill. She was never going to be able to look at him the same way again. She thwapped him upside the head. “You idiot, Barton. Of course I wasn’t going to walk out on you. You’re my person.”
Coulson found her later, curled up on a window sill on an outer ledge with Clint’s arms wrapped around her, both of them watching the sun rise. He leaned on the ledge companionably. “Well,” he said, “the deconditioning worked okay.”
She laughed shakily. “I didn’t really think it would.”
He ruffled her hair and kissed her forehead. “That’s my girl.”
Steve
Steve stood in the open doorway watching his friends crowd in around Natasha. He leaned his head against the doorframe. It had been seventy years and change since he had someone to go to, without thought or question. And now they were gone again.
“Captain America?” Darcy Lewis was standing a few feet away. “So…” she said, “is there any chance of a hug? It’s, uh, been a very traumatic night.”
He smiled, and reached out a long arm to wrap around her shoulders. “Traumatic, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” she sighed happily as she buried her head into his shoulder. “Let me tell you what Stacey was wearing…”
Coulson
The shouting was over, the dust was almost settled, and Coulson was back to his old job – cleanup. He adjusted his leather jacket regretfully, already, he could feel a metaphorical suit settling down upon his shoulders.
“Alright, people. The moral of this story is that we were never here. The survivors are knocked out out back – the video footage is gone, and the environment was dark, any claims they make as witnesses can be taken as strictly hearsay and wishful thinking. Captain Rogers, Natasha –” they looked up from the various corners they’d settled in, “I need you to leave in the next five minutes if you’re going to make the 10am briefing without comment – drive safely. Clint,” Hawkeye looked up from the wall he’d been holding up next to Natasha, “as agreed, you’ve been on a bender in Mexico for the last week. Which brings me to the two extras in our little rodeo. Mr Stark, Agent Lewis, I’d be obliged if you found yourselves a hotel in Virginia to be conspicuously discovered in – I’ll make it right with Miss Potts later.”
Tony smiled, slow, sure, and with malice aforethought. Lewis’ eyes narrowed balefully. “But what about you?”
Coulson glanced over his shoulder at the supine form of the Soldier, packed in ice for all it could do. “There’s something - someone - I need to take care of. And then,” a faint smile wreathed his face, and he adjusted the collar of his brightly coloured shirt, “I have a vacation to get to. I hear Vancouver is lovely this time of year.”
Bruce
In Port Moresby, the surgery was crowded, and they were doing consults right there in front of the other people waiting. The new kid was just a little bit freaked out by this. Bruce ignored his fidgets, took the baby from her mother with a smile, and showed New Kid the kinds of tests you did when you couldn’t just shove the kid in a CAT scan and have a machine tell you all the answers.
A shadow stood in front of him, a young woman in a white t-shirt and a bright flower-patterned skirt, a vivid bloom in her hair. “I was promised toilets,” she said.
He smiled at her.