Avengers Tower
January 1, 2017Tony was watching the New Years Ball Drop from his Penthouse Window. He used to love New Years. The parties, the women, the drinks. He'd slowly brought his partying level down a few levels over the past few years. He liked to think he'd left that playboy lifestyle behind after he and Pepper got together. But New Years Parties were still his favorite. Celebrating new beginnings always seemed like a good idea, and to celebrate this year, he'd planned on proposing to the love of his life. But as he toyed with the ring box in his pocket, celebration felt worlds away.
"Your back." He turned to Pepper's soft voice, admiring her tall slim frame before turning back to the view. She came up behind him resting her head on his shoulder and wrapping her arms around his waist.
"You look like you haven't slept in days. You need to rest."
He sighed, leaning into her warm body. "I still don't know what's happening, Pep. We went to Germany first. Nothing. By then Friday's algorithm had found missile residue in Kiev, Ukraine. But we were too late. They'd scrubbed the place, and there was no sign of either Cap or Widow except for a very Steve shaped hole in one of the walls." He groaned into his hands. "What am I supposed to do Pepper." He turned around in her arms so he could face her and hold her. "I can't forgive him. I don't want to help him. But something isn't right here. I can't help but feel like it's all connected somehow. The answer is right in front of me, but I can't reach it."
Her hands ran up and down his spine, gently soothing him. "No one's asking you to forgive him for hiding what happened to your parents. But the Sokovia Accords…Have you tried to think of it from his perspective?"
"You mean good, and honorable, and fight for freedom. Yeah. But good people still ended up dead in every algorithm I ran."
"That's not what I meant, Tony. He's a hundred years old. He's seen things you and I will never really understand."
"He's only actually seen thirty of those years. And FYI, I've seen things he will never understand either."
"Wasn't that the point of this team? Each person has experienced something different. Their knowledge and wisdom is different from one another. Not a single one of them is better than the other. That's what allows you guys to save lives."
"Yeah, well what a five star team we made, huh?"
"I'm just saying that you accused him of not caring about the collateral damage. He has a photographic memory. Something tells me every bad guy he's killed, every innocent man, woman and child that he couldn't save is burned in his mind. Do you still think he doesn't care about that poor volunteer boy in Sokovia?"
"You're taking his side now?"
"I recall never taking a side in the first place," she smiled. He smiled back as she pulled him into a hug.
"You really need to shower, and then meet us down in the med wing." She said, releasing him and turning away.
"Right," he said to himself as she disappeared. He'd never thought of it that way before. Maybe Pepper was right. At least just a teensy little bit. "Shower first. Think later."After he finished his shower he made his way to the med wing as told. What he found was the Barton kids playing quietly on the cafeteria floor, Happy, Pepper, Bruce, and Laura sitting at the table quietly discussing something, and Clint, unchanged. The sad thing was, seeing Clint unchanged was the best news he'd seen in days. No worse, but sadly no better.
After he checked on Clint, he joined the small group at the table. "Pizza?" Hap offered, regarding the mostly eaten large on the table.
"I'm good, but thanks. So nothing's changed, huh?"
Bruce sighed. "At the moment, but he's not exactly stable. He's on life support, and with no idea what the problem actually is…" He turned to Laura. "The final decision is left to you, but my official prognosis is that he's not waking up."
Laura nodded. "We already kind of knew that though didn't we," she said. Then she turned to Tony.
"I want to know everything you found out about Nat."
"That's a short list," he answered. "But for the most part, I'm convinced she was framed. By who, I don't know. She called with Cap's burner phone so we know he found her. Seems like they were both captured, and if Natasha was telling the truth, HYDRA's still in play.
"Ross is on my ass for going to Europe without permission. Thankfully I didn't cause any trouble. Though he didn't even mention the unauthorized missile firing in Ukraine. Odd."
"If HYDRA's out there, and they captured Steve, doesn't that mean for the first time in history, they successfully captured and detained Captain America and now have access to the super soldier serum?" Pepper pointed out.
"If they have him it won't do them any good," Bruce said. "It's impossible to harvest the Erskine serum from Steve. They've tried before."
"But HYDRA's brainwashed a supersoldier before." Laura said.
"The serum used on Barns was weaker and rudimentary compared to the Erskine serum. Much like the one used on the Red Skull."
"So the brainwashing won't work on Steve?" Pepper asked.
"Uhhh, no."
"No, it won't? Or no, it will?" Laura asked.
"No, it will," Bruce clarified, quite calmly I might add.
The group stared at him before the two women turned to Tony and said at the same time, "Well go get him!"
Tony opened his mouth but didn't get a chance to speak as they continued, their sentences fast and cutting over each other's.
"I saw what he did to that log outside my house!"
"He drank 1,000 year old Asgardian liquor and it didn't even affect him while Thor himself got a bit tipsy!"
"He destroyed your suit!"
"We can't let them turn him into a weapon!"
"Remember when he…"
"Stop!" Tony yelled, his hands raised. "Alright, I know this isn't ideal, but let's not panic here. Cap and Nat most likely escaped and are on their way to a new safe house if they aren't there already. And even if they aren't, like you said, it's not going to be easy for them to bring him down. So let's not…"
"No, let's," Pepper said firmly. "We've all seen what Captain America is capable of. But he's always had these morals and codes that he lives by. He may be a fugitive, and he's made wrong calls in the past, but I think we can all agree that he's a good man. So what happens when those morals and values are stripped away? Huh? What happens when the man that has fought by your side, taking out the common enemy, pulling his punches, is turned on you with no memory or recollection, no morals, no values, no more pulling punches? What's the algorithm for the loss then, huh?"
Tony and Bruce glanced at each other. This was a fair point. Tony opened his mouth to speak, but Friday cut him off.
"According to my calculations, if Captain Rogers were to be brainwashed and turned against you, the results would be catastrophic. If you try to preserve his life your chances of survival in a fight would be 19.351%. If you go into the fight with the intent of termination, your chances of survival raise to 60.76%, but that is only if you stay out of his range. Get too close and your chances drop to 38.3%."
"Thank you Friday," he said sarcastically, but she continued.
"Dr. Banner's chances are much higher at 89.625%. Unless of course Captain Rogers retains his high intelligence level and battle knowledge in which case your chances drop substantially to 66.89%. And if we include..."
"Alright, we get it. Stop."
"Yes Boss."
"Point taken. HYDRA having Cap is bad."
Pepper gave him a pointed look that, to him, translated, "Duh."
"I don't know about you," Bruce started. "But I feel like we're flying blind here. Our theories haven't panned out, HYDRA seems to be back and seems to have something to do with the FBI. Last we heard, Cap was fighting both HYDRA and the Red Room. There's unknown monsters on the loose, a monster that somehow drained Clint of, well... basically his life energy, and we have no idea how that's possible. Heck, we still don't know why they were after Natasha in the first place."
Tony thought. Flying blind was quite accurate. They had no idea what was really going on, no clue where to go to find out. No leads. Just tossed out theories. Unreasonable, Irrational, unprovable theories. Like Black Widow and Captain America, sittin in a tree. k. i. s. s. i. n. g. (So he might have gotten side tracked. The group of adults sitting around him couldn't help but stare confusedly as their eccentric billionaire friend bobbed his head to a beat no one else could hear.) First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes the baby in a baby carriage. Wait. Backtrack. He froze and the group around him watched as his eyebrows suddenly knitted in thought.
"Bruce?"
"Yeah?" The doctor asked cautiously.
"Do you remember that one theory we had?"
"Could you be a bit more specific? We had quite a few."
"You know, that one where Natasha may or may not have a very valuable...small... package? Inside her?"
Bruce's face twisted in confusion as he tried to understand what was happening here. Tony, like any good friend, tried to help with another subtle clue. "The package that included… bread," he sounded it out, a little unsure of his own metaphor.
"Bread?" Happy asked incredulously.
"I got it the first time," Banner said but his face was still twisted in confusion. Probably because: "That was your theory and I thought we threw that out a long time ago."
"We'll I'm bringing it back."
"It's impossible!"
"No, no. You said 47% chance."
Bruce guffawed as he searched for words. "Just because you...ship...them, doesn't mean there's a super soldier baby out there!"
"Wait, what?" Someone said.
"That's not what I'm saying." He pulled Bruce closer so he could whisper to him. "I'm saying, what if we injected Clint."
"It won't do anything. Clint won't get powers and magically heal."
"But I'm not asking you for powers. You said there was a 47% chance that the Erskine serum could heal Natasha. We can give Clint a blood transfusion."
"Of whose blood? We don't have any samples of Steve's, and even if we did, going through with a blood transfusion would most certainly kill him. Steve's cells are radioactive, which means if we put them in Clint's body, it would be like flooding him with chemotherapy."
Tony didn't need further explanation. Chemotherapy cures cancer by killing the cancerous cells. But it doesn't pinpoint which cells are cancerous, it kills both the good and the bad which is what causes the loss of hair, and nails. Clint didn't have enough energy or life force left to survive a single treatment.
"So why would it work on Natasha?" He asked.
"Well it needs a buffer."
"A buffer?"
"Yeah. Natasha has a form of the Super Soldier serum. It was derived from the serum that was given the Red Skull. It's not nearly as potent as Cap's but it's stable."
"They're the same...but opposite. So for it to work on Clint, he'd have to have a stable form of the Super Soldier Serum to buffer the effects of the radioactive Erskine serum. Wait, why is the one radioactive and the other not?"
"Why is Steve Captain America and I'm the Hulk?"
"So we're back to square one."
"Yep. Unless the monster that drained him is a Super Soldier with stable cells and left his own residual cells inside of Clint whilst sucking his life out." Tony head snapped to Bruce, staring at him. Bruce, noticing, stared back as they both came to a realization. The group started a bit when Tony and Bruce suddenly bolted for Clint's room, leaving a mess of flying medical papers in their wake. Oh, and three confused adults on their tail.____________________________________________
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- A.L. Rune
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