Avengers: Breathe (Avengers: Infinity War Major Spoilers)

Chapter 7

"You get any sleep?" Steve asked, entering the lab where Bruce was working. It was just after seven o'clock, and Stark Tower was still fairly quiet, everybody having been up late. The lab smelt faintly of coffee, and a couple of empty mugs were scattered about. Vision's body lay on a table in the middle of the space, covered by a sheet. It was strange to think just how real he had become, that they were providing him with that dignity. He deserved as much.

Bruce was pulling at cables on the wall, a screwdriver between his teeth, which he removed to talk to Steve. "Three hours or so? Pepper scared the crap out of me when she appeared from nowhere at about 3am. She gave me a big telling off, because Tony's got everything in the Tower linked through here, and whatever I was doing was, ah, upsetting the electricity in their suite."

"Fair enough," Steve said, glad they had a few very good engineers on the team and this wasn't up to him. He had been fairly good at repairing radios back in the day, but nothing at this level. He hadn't been the fastest, but he'd had the patience to check every wire, every lead, to find what was broken or bent or knocked out of place. Bucky had probably been better, but lacked patience. How long ago was that? Ten years? There abouts? More? Fewer? Around the early years of the war, before America joined, the war in which they all should have died and stayed dead. Or maybe now they could live, if Steve could figure out how to fix their second chance.

We don't trade lives.

Steve tried not to look at the sheet on the table and think about Vision's body below it. If they brought everyone back, would that fix Vision? Could Bruce fix Vision anyway? What about Rocket or Shuri or -

"Good thing Tony's kinda dooms-day prepped in terms of coffee," Bruce said, his words bringing Steve back to the present, and Steve wasn't entirely sure Bruce hadn't been speaking for a while. He noticed that there was a coffee machine in the lab, which didn't surprise him in the slightest. "There are bags and bags of the stuff. I mean, Thor'll probably make a fair dint in it, but there's enough to last us all about a fortnight."

"Yeah," Steve said, deciding he probably needed a coffee and wondering if there were any clean mugs around. He'd spent the past hour in the gym: half an hour on the treadmill, half an hour punching the living daylights out of a few boxing bags. Rhodes had arrived just as Steve was finishing up.

"I'll get breakfast when everyone else is up," Bruce said, then stopped and stepped back. "Is everyone else up?"

"I don't think so," Steve said, wondering if he should go and wake Natasha, just to have someone he could talk openly too. She was much more relaxed now that they were here, now that she had Clint and Matt around her. Plus she'd befriended Claire, had always got on well with Pepper, and loved Lila Barton to bits. Steve felt like an outsider, a plus-one who only half knew anyone at the party.

Bruce stretched. "I'm considering asking Rocket to come and give me a hand, but I can only imagine what Tony would say if he knew there'd been a racoon in his lab."

"There's a racoon sleeping in a queen-sized bed in the guest wing," Steve said, wondering how his life had become as such that he just accepted that his Norse God friend would show up literally out of the sky with a talking racoon. "A racoon who made an interstellar communication device out of bits of things he stole."

Bruce nodded and walked over to the main computer. "Come on, FRIDAY," he said, tapping away at the keys, "Let me take the reigns, just for a few minutes."

The screens flashed.

"Is that supposed to happen?" Steve asked.

"No," Bruce said, "Well, yes. That's the system kicking me out. The whole point of personal AI is that, well, it's personal. If Tony's at home, FRIDAY is at home, but when Tony's out - "

"FRIDAY goes with him."

"Yeah," Bruce said, fiddling with more cables. "Also Tony's paranoid, so this is extremely hard to hack. And he taught himself to code, so some of his strings are just awful. Look at that one. Ugh, come on Tony. His suits are so elegant, but some of his coding is just horrible. There will be a way to do this, I just need to find it."

"Oh hey, guys," Natasha said, entering the lab, mug of coffee in hand. "Thor's making breakfast. Watching him try to work an gas cooktop is a certain form of entertainment. I don't know where Pepper keeps all this food, but Thor's cooking up a quantity of bacon and eggs that would impress Ron Swanson."

"Who's Ron Swanson?" Bruce asked, returning to the screens.

"You've never watched Parks and Rec?" Natasha asked.

"Even I've watched it," Steve said, feeling oddly more relaxed now that Natasha was in the room. Imagine telling his former self that, 'oh, by the way, your future confident and very close friend is a former Russian assassin'. "Ron's pretty keen on breakfast foods," Steve continued, "And there's this one guy on that show who looks exactly like Scott. It's hilarious."

"Have you heard from Scott?" Natasha asked.

"Not since we got back here," Steve said, "I'll try him again in a few hours. Still a bit early on the west coast."

"Scott is...?" Bruce asked.

"Our guy in San Fran. He's an engineer too, same with his girlfriend. Don't know if we can get them over here though."

The computers pinged and the room buzzed with static.

"Does that mean the system kicked you out again?" Steve asked.

"Ah," Bruce said, tapping cautiously at the keypad, "No. No, I think that means it worked."

"It worked?"

"Please don't sound so surprised," Bruce said as Steve and Natasha moved around to look at the screens, but it was just a long series of code. Bruce continued typing. "Umm, Tony? Tony if you can hear me, it would be super great if you can respond. Or anyone else if Tony is, umm, gone, and you're there and - "

"-zzzst- Banner?"

"Tony!"

"Banner! What the - " The line was crackly, and Tony's voice sounded far away, but it was definitely Tony.

"Steve and Natasha are here too."

"Oh goodie. So the gang's all back together and you're launching a rescue mission, right?"

"I'll be right back," Steve whispered to Natasha and Bruce, and hurried out of the room.

"Tony, we - where are you?"

"On the planet Titan, apparently. Not to be confused with the moon of Saturn."

"Is anyone there with you?"

"A blue robot-alien called Nebula. Apparently she's the daughter of that purple dick known as Thanos, but also one of the good guys. I dunno. I'm tired and hungry and confused. Is - what is going on?"

"There's people who can come to get you," Natasha said, "Friend's of Thor."

"Thor's there. Great. Any one else in my house?"

"Like you said," Natasha said, deciding not to elaborate too much, "The gang's all here."

"Tony?!"

"PEPPER!"

Pepper ran into the lab, still in her dressing gown, and stood as close to the screen as possible, even though it was just lines and lines of code. "I'm right here, babe. I'm ok. We got enough people here to give everyone their own part in a remake of Lord of the Rings, and they're all super-people, and I am safe, and I love you so much."

"I love you too, Pep."

"Thor's will contact his people and they're gunna come to get you. Just - just hang tight, ok? We're gunna bring you home."