Chapter Text
If he was going to be honest (and frankly, if he couldn't be honest with himself, who could he?) Bruce had seen the Chitauri as a way out. The last in a long line.
He'd always been a bit of a fatalist, and chaotically thrown together supposed 'superheroes' with personality problems were never going to be a solution to a problem as big as an alien invasion of Manhattan. Not when the alien leader could reach out and possess their people at will, and then use them against their friends.
He was relying on the staff not being strong enough to control the big guy, and on him doing enough damage before he was killed to make a difference to the good guys.
But he'd honestly expected to die.
It was a bit of a shock, then, to wake with bone deep aches and a head full of triumphant roaring. The other guy settled fairly quickly as Bruce's consciousness took over, and he opened his eyes to find himself propped between a wall and what appeared to be someone's shoulder.
He was looking out over a destroyed penthouse, all glass and stone and marble. The glass was broken and the wind at this height whistling through the opening. There wasn't much glass on the floor, which suggested someone had been thrown *out* of here before Hulk had crashed in. He hoped it wasn't someone he knew. Or Thor at least - he was likely to have survived it. The flooring was scuffed and bashed and - in one place - dented in the outline of a man. He hoped that was Loki - there wasn't enough blood around for it to be human. His stomach turned sharply at the thought.
The ugly twist in his core snapped him out of the post-Hulk fugue, and he moved quickly against the aches in every limb to find out who he was leaning against. He wasn't sure who he was most afraid to find, but the until-recently missing Agent Barton was a surprise. He was slumped bonelessly against the wall, his eyes panda-ing in a way that spoke of a skull fracture and a messy streak of blood smearing the wall behind one shoulder.
He had the circulation to bruise, at least, but he was definitely unconscious and in a bad state. Loki hadn't seemed insane enough to send a human SHIELD Agent up against the Hulk, but then maybe he'd just been stalling. The marks in the stone flooring hadn't been made by a man, so Hulk had obviously gotten to him eventually.
Bruce remembered Agent Romanoff's insistence that Agent Barton would be found, the stiff way she'd held herself when she mentioned his capture by Loki's force. She'd made it quite clear he was someone important to her, and Bruce really hoped he hadn't killed her friend on top of threatening her life.
She'd seemed... nice. At the very least, straight forward - unpretentious. He could appreciate that in a Secret Agent.
He found himself wondering how far the team and Loki were now, whether he could disappear before they got back. Outside the broken window, the city was still full of flames, flashing lights and distant sirens as dusk fell. All familiar fallout from Hulk's rampage. Letting him loose in such a populated place had been nothing but a mistake, he'd just released more damage on a city already under attack.
The Agent made a strangled noise and opened his eyes, hand clenching around the limb of a bow that had been tucked in next to his leg. His quiver was against the wall at his elbow, devoid of arrows. Bruce let himself breathe a sigh of relief as the Agent's eyes opened to a natural colour, instead of the vivid Tesseract blue the cameras in Germany had caught.
Fractured images of Hulk's adventures were slowly making themselves known - Bruce always got more back from the exchange when he let the other guy loose instead of being dragged out. He didn't remember getting the Agent back, that must have happened while he was away from the bulk of the fighting, but the archer had been there with the others when Bruce had arrived in Manhattan, and during the battle Hulk had seen his arrows and been tickled by small-stinger-make-smash.
Bruce shook off the thought not his own, moving back so he wasn't looming, and waited for the other man to scan his surroundings carefully as he shifted into a slightly more upright position. His brief window for escape was closing, but it looked like Agent Barton wouldn't be up for much of a chase if he decided to bolt now.
"Doctor Banner?" The agent's voice was far from the clipped military tones Bruce had been expecting, and it took a couple of minutes of worry over a potentially very serious head injury before he noticed the discrete behind-the-ear hearing aids the agent was wearing. He wasn't going to dismiss a possible symptom, not on top of the visible bruising, but for now the agent's gaze was sharp and clear, and he wasn't going to jump to conclusions when he hadn't heard the man speak before.
"Agent Barton?" he replied, putting aside the idea of running for a minute, and sitting so that he was facing the agent in case he needed to lip read. "I'm assuming Agent Romanoff managed to free you from Loki's influence?"
"She hit me over the head a couple of times," he shrugged inelegantly, smearing the blood from his shoulder. "Seemed to work."
Bruce couldn't help but grin at that. "Well... congratulations," he said. "Where did the others go?"
"They're taking Loki and the... cube?"
"Tesseract," Bruce offered.
Barton shrugged, then nodded. "Yeah, the cube back to SHIELD."
"You didn't want to join them?" Bruce pressed, still not sure what to make of the strange way he'd woken up. Had Barton passed out leaning on Hulk, or had he been normal-sized by then?
"Cap told me to watch you. But you're... you," Barton gestured vaguely with his free hand - the other still white-knuckled around his bow. "I think Natasha wanted me to stay away from SHIELD, in case Fury wants to put me in a box."
"You do look like you could do with a rest," Bruce couldn't help but agree, taking in his position still heavily leaning on the wall. He didn't look like he could have moved if he wanted to.
"You don't look roses yourself," he retorted, but didn't move from his slump. Bruce found himself quickly inventorying his clothes, reassured that he was still covered enough for company, and wondered if Barton could see from his posture how much he was aching. He glanced past Bruce, nodding towards the divot-marked floor. "I wanted to thank you for that."
"Loki?" Bruce guessed, taking another look at the marks.
"Yeah. I didn't get to watch, but the look on his face when he crawled out of his hole... it was enough." Clint nodded, eyes half-mast as if he was thinking of passing out again. Bruce wondered if maybe that wasn't the best idea, given his injuries.
"Barton..." he started, but was interrupted.
"I could recall that video for you, sirs, if you wished to review it?" Bruce was too tired to really react to a disembodied voice, but he looked up to try and find the speakers. Realisation came a moment later, with the recollection of a glossy magazine piece on Stark's Malibu mansion.
"Are you Stark's AI?" he asked the room at large.
"I'm fine," Barton replied distractedly, establishing more firmly in Bruce's mind that he was lip-reading more than he was hearing.
The archer was in the process of pushing himself more upright, smearing more blood on the walls as he did so, when the AI replied; "Yes, Dr. Banner. I am JARVIS." There was a brief pause. "Sir suggested that my observation, in addition to that provided by Agent Barton, may be prudent, given your respective conditions at his time of departure."
Barton had his eyes tightly shut, his lips white and thin against whatever pain the shift in position had caused. "I think that was probably a good idea," Bruce agreed. "Thank you."
"Sorry, Banner. I'm out again," Barton said, promptly passing out. Bruce caught hold of his arm before he toppled and moved to provide a shoulder in support, effectively putting them back in the position he'd woken to.
"I apologise for not being of more use, Dr. Banner," JARVIS offered apologetically. "I'm afraid much of my processing power is currently being taken up by maintaining building security and structural integrity, and in monitoring the Iron Man suit. My mechanical and production systems are currently in some disrepair after their overly-hasty production of the Mark VII." A door at the end of the room opened to display a slightly smoking engineering rig which looked vaguely like a red and gold explosion had gone off in the back of it - oil or some other viscous material was dripping from one edge and bare wires hanging loose, occasionally sparking. As if in embarrassment, the door slowly shut again, hiding the unit.
"What happened there?" Bruce asked, feeling vaguely bemused at the conversational tone this exchange had taken.
"Sir demanded the use of his most advanced Iron Man suit. It was not quite at a functional level of manufacture, as his focus has been on the Tower itself, which was only just completed to previously published deadlines. Fortunately I was able to ensure full functionality just as Sir exited the building, and was able to catch him as he fell. Sir has been... easily distracted, of late."
"So you tore yourself apart to have a half made suit of armour ready in time for Stark to jump out of a window? I hope he appreciates you, JARVIS." Bruce leant his head back against the wall, chuckling at the image of Stark returning home to dote on his caring, if disapproving AI.
"To be honest, Dr. Banner, it was somewhat of a relief to register the chaos outside the tower defences. Sir has been known to throw himself from high places with less reason." JARVIS had taken on a rather scathing tone, but after a hesitation, he added; "Although on this occasion I feel it only fair to note that he was thrown."
Bruce glanced at the shattered windows, and wondered how on Earth an empty Iron Man suit had managed to catch a thrown man with a head start. "Aren't you in his suit?" he asked, thinking back on what JARVIS had just said. "Why didn't you know about what was going on out there already?"
"A separate operating system, sir. Memory storage units are only synchronised upon return to a base module unless otherwise requested. Given the emerging threat, and the unexpected draw of Arc Reactor power, priorities have been elsewhere, and the suit which returned from the initial action has considerable damage to the data exchange hardware."
"So I wouldn't be able to ask you exactly what happened out there?" Bruce asked hopefully.
"I'm afraid not first hand, sir." There was a long pause, and Bruce thought maybe that was that, JARVIS would go back to its... his? priorities. "Although," he continued unexpectedly, loading a video screen on a piece of glass which was still intact. "National news networks are mentioning a missile, directed by Sir into the portal at approximately the time of the collapse of the alien force. That was followed by your other self catching Sir, which has been well documented by amateur photographers and social media sites, and the subsequent deactivation of the portal by Dr. Selvig and Agent Romanoff. At that time, you all returned here to monitor Mr. Loki until he regained consciousness."
Bruce let the videos cycling on the screens that JARVIS had loaded sink in, watching again and again as Hulk slammed Iron Man out of the air and took him to the ground. He walked away, Bruce reminded himself, as that image played again. Tony Stark walked away from that. "Well..." he coughed as the lump in his throat caught. "That's a hell of a lot more than I knew. Thank you, JARVIS."
"You're welcome, sir. I believe Agent Barton is regaining consciousness, and the rest of the Avengers Initiative are on their way in."
"The what?" Bruce mumbled, but was distracted by Tony's voice in the hall outside.
Barton had pulled away, so Bruce stood to meet the others - not sure whether Loki would be with them, whether Hulk would be needed again. He was just stepping away from the wall when Thor strode in. He bit down on his startle response, harder because he was so tired, and made himself stand still.
Even the demigod looked a little battered, his cloak tattered and a bandage wrapped messily around his midsection - over the top of his armour, as if he hadn't even bothered to move it out of the way long enough for medical attention. Bruce glanced back at Barton and found him standing, if still leaning heavily on the wall, Agent Romanoff was limping heavily as she crossed the room to stand beside him, blood still marking her face. This team were going to be a nightmare of medical hangups, he could tell already.
"Good friends!" Thor boomed, his tone subdued even if his volume wasn't. "My brother has been again detained by the might of your world, his staff taken from him and the Tesseract secured. Heimdall assures me that he can use the Tesseract and three of our most powerful mages to transmit us to Asguard, where Loki will be imprisoned, but this will need to take place at the point of our two worlds' closest daily convergence."
"Three pm, tomorrow," Stark put in, reading from a tablet. "According to Dr. Foster." The faceplate on his armour was up, and looking closely Bruce could see where a couple of the chest plates were misaligned, and the paint job was slapdash - with dribbles of paint in some places and patches missing in others. The fact that JARVIS had considered the paint essential for function struck him as very funny.
"My dearest Jane - you have her here?" Thor demanded, turning on Stark.
As the crowd devolved into a quest to explain the communications technology of their world - Midguard, apparently - and Thor took the tablet in careful hands to Skype with his girlfriend on the other end, Bruce sidled away from the middle of the room where he'd been uncomfortably pinned under Thor's impressive gaze.
Captain Rogers was peering over Tony's shoulder with curiosity at the mobile device, and Stark was filling them all in on the details they really didn't need to know.
This was his chance, his moment to disappear. Possibly his last chance before SHIELD or the Army or some other group swarmed in and tried to lay claim to him. The Agents might notice, and that might be a problem... Or it might not, he thought, meeting Barton's gaze briefly and getting an accepting nod.
With no further conversation, the two Agents turned to face one another, casual and discrete, putting him out of their direct line of sight.
It was a hell of an act of faith on their parts, given Agent Romanoff hadn't let him out of her sight willingly in all the time he'd known her - and then he'd attacked her, which pretty much justified her distrust.
Stark's attention was too sharp, though - and he looked up at Bruce and announced; "So! Shwarma! 'We survived' celebration and all that. Brucie - you're coming, right? All that smashing and grabbing - you must be starving!"
It wasn't really a question, but to his own surprise and maybe Stark's too, he found himself agreeing. He was hungry - oddly so, when a day like today would usually have him sick to his stomach - and he knew in a way he never had before, against all odds, today he had allies. Today the *Hulk* had allies.
And who knows, maybe one of them would be able to tell him what the hell had just happened.