Unseen, Not Untrue.

Chapter Six

Things pretty much went to shit after that. They worked for maybe another hour, before Fury came striding into the lab.

"What are you doing, Mr. Stark?" He demands. He's pissed, Tony doesn't have to use his empathy to know that. And the billionaire knows exactly what the Director talking about, so he sees no reason to try and evade the question.

"You know, I was kind of wondering the same thing about you." He responds dryly, continuing to speed read the files JARVIS flagged as most important.

"You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract."

"We're doing that," Bruce pipes up, flicking his eyes towards the engineer briefly before he looks back at Fury. "The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile."

"Then we'll have the Cube back, no problem." He pauses, expression darkening. "And what is phase two?"

Fury opens his mouth to answer when Rogers stomps his way into the room, slamming down some kind of blaster on the workbench, completely ignoring the things he just knocked off it.

"Phase two is SHIELD uses the cube to make weapons." He states, levelling a glare at Fury before turning it onto the billionaire. "Sorry," He says crisply, a condescending smile stretching his mouth. "Computer was moving a little slow for me."

"Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're..."

"I'm sorry Nick, what were you lying?"

"I was wrong, director. The world hasn't changed a bit." Steve accuses. It's also in that moment the lab becomes crowded as both Thor and Natasha enter.

"You want to think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor Banner?" It's not really a question, even if her tone of voice suggests so and Bruce knows it form the look he gives her in response.

"I was in Calcutta, I was pretty well removed." He replies evenly, cleaning his glasses with the hem of his shirt absently before replacing them on his face.

"Loki is manipulating you." Tony gave her an incredulous look. How the hell was Loki manipulating Bruce? Bruce's emotions were all his own, just edging towards irritation more than anything, but given the situation it was kind of expected.

"And you've all being trying to do what, exactly?"

"You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you."

He shakes his head. "No, I didn't. I came because you screwed up and needed the help only I could give. As you told me Ms Romanova, if there was anyone better, that's where you'd be." He smiled, but it was forced and fake, spreading his arms open a bit in a mocking fashion. "And now here we are. I'm not going to leave just because you all get a little twitchy and I want to know what SHIELD is doing making these sorts of weapons."

Fury points towards Thor. "Because of him."

Thor blinks in surprise, pointing to himself. "Me?"

"Yes. Last year earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that levelled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned."

"My people want nothing but peace with your planet." Thor defends.

"Come on Nick, there was a bit of property damage and a few non-life-altering injuries, but nobody died." Tony points out unabashedly admitting to more hacking of their files. Fury sent him a look that most men would wet themselves under, but the genius just met his gaze.