All Along - Steve Rogers {1}

Chapter 20: Is Everything Really A Joke To You?

"They're the same." Nellie burst out, a touch of excitement in her voice. Tony and Bruce paused what they were doing and looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to elaborate. "The sceptre and the Tesseract; their energy levels are exactly the same." She explained as she analysed two of the three graphs laid out on the screen before her, depicting the energy level that both the Tesseract and the sceptre could emit. The third graph held an analysis of Nellie's own energy, the differences between Nellie and the Tesseract were far and few between, the Tesseract was just more potent in its strength. "The signature is different to my make up and that of the Tesseract though, it seems Fury was wrong, the sceptre is powered by something else entirely."

Nellie looked away from the screen to take in the reactions of the two men standing before her. Bruce seemed almost proud of her, elated that she had taken to the technology so quickly and was able to decipher it without fault. He smiled a winning smile and Nellie reciprocated it as she placed the tablet down on the table before her. Tony did look impressed, that was something she had not expected, but they had hardly said a word to each other since they left the bridge two hours ago.

Nellie had originally taken a small detour from the lab and headed towards her quarters instead when she left the bridge. There, she had been able to wash her face, brush her hair out from the tangled mess both battles had created, and cleaned down the leg of her suit that she had wiped her bloodied hand on. She felt fresher and was ready to jump back into the science world, despite Tony being there putting a dampener on things.

"The gamma readings are also definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take weeks to process." Bruce explained, taking a look at the screen of the tablet Nellie had been holding. He gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder as he saw her look of dismay. They did not have weeks.

Tony huffed as he cast his own eyes back down to the monitor in front of him. His hands working on something elaborate that Nellie could not see from her place beside Bruce on the opposite side of the lab. "If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this in around six hundred teraflops."

Nellie blinked at her nephew blankly as he stepped away from his station and moved towards them. "I'm sorry, what?" She asked with a small amount of embarrassment, she did not mean to patronise Steve, but she now knew how he felt regarding scientific jargon.

To the brunette's surprise, Tony did not roll his eyes and actually began to explain what he said in simpler terms. "The Helicarrier and Shield's computer mainframe, the Homer Cluster relates to all their servers that they have in the world and a teraflop is a speed at which a computer can work." He finished with a quick tight lipped smile as he stopped on the opposite side of the table. Nellie eyed him unsurely. Where's the dig? The sarcastic comment? "It may take you a while to understand things, you can leave this to us." He waved her off nonchalantly. There it is.

Nellie scoffed, feeling her blood began to boil. Her tolerance for Tony's behaviour reaching its limit. "Wow, your father could be a right ass sometimes but you really are on a whole other level." She snapped, her jaw clenching as she glared at him.

Tony moved around the table, stopping inches away from Nellie, their eyes level with one another standing at the same height. Nellie couldn't help it, but she immediately compared his stature to Bucky - and Arty before he shrank with old age - it seemed Tony hadn't taken after Howard in height but the Barnes family instead. Immediately she softened.

"Don't talk about my dad." Tony's voice was icy, a new ring of anger to it that Tony had not spoken to Nellie with before. She didn't want a fight, she didn't want to damage the relationship anymore than it already was, so she being the bigger person she relaxed her shoulders and took a minute step back.