The Tragedy of Living

13

INT. HELICARRIER PORT SIDE - DAY

Steve and Tony listened in as well.

"They called it," Fury said.

INT. HELICARRIER BRIDGE ­- LATER

Fury gathered Tony and Steve back into the briefing room; everyone there had a look as if in a daze. A look of numb shock was on their devastated faces.

"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket," Fury said. "Guess he never did get you to sign them." Fury threw Coulson's Captain America trading cards on the table towards Steve. Steve picked up the bloodstained cards.

Fury continued. "We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming." He paused a beat."Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea, Stark knows this, called The Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes." Tony got up and walked off, not wanting to hear any more. "Well, it's an old-fashioned notion."

EXT. MEADOW

Thor walked out far into the meadow. He looked down to see Mjölnir.

INT. ABANDONED BUILDING

Bruce woke up, in human form. He looked around and saw he was in a pile of rubble and looked up at the open ceiling he crashed in. He was completely naked. A security guard stood there, amazed.

"You fell out of the sky," the security guard said.

Bruce, coming to, asked, "Did I hurt anybody?"

"There's nobody around here to get hurt. You did scare the hell out of some pigeons though."

"Lucky."

"Or just good aim. You were awake when you fell."

"You saw?"

"The whole thing, right through the ceiling. Big and green and buck ass nude. Here..." He threw Bruce a pair of big pants. Bruce pulled on his pants. "I didn't think those would fit you until you shrunk down to a regular size fella."

"Thank you."

"Are you an alien?"

"What?"

"From outer space, an alien?"

"No."

"Well then, son, you've got a condition."

INT. HELICARRIER MEDICAL ROOM

Clint was strapped down. Natasha watched over him as Clint tried to shake off Loki's mind control.

"Clint, you're gonna be all right," Natasha told him.

"You know that?" Clint asked. "Is that what you know? I got... I gotta go in though. I gotta flush him out."

"We don't have that long, it's gonna take time."

"I don't understand. Have you ever had someone take your brain and play? Pull you out and send something else in? Do you know what it's like to be unmade?"

"You know that I do."

"Why am I back? How did you get him out?"

"Cognitive recalibration. I hit you really hard in the head."

"Thanks." Natasha unfastened the restraints. "Tasha, how many agents?"

"Don't. Don't do that to yourself, Clint. This is Loki. This is monsters and magic and nothing we were ever trained for."