fossilised | it's a new plot!

Bruce didn't give out a whole lot of details because he didn't want to outright lie or give false information. He just told Steve that he hadn't actually spoken to the other man, but that he'd looked a healthy weight, clean, and he had been in a safe environment when Bruce had passed through. That had to be enough to go on.

Natasha looked thoughtful and unconvinced, but she was smart enough to keep her mouth shut for now. She would, however, be investigating this in her own time.

But then the subject got changed and this was also something that Bruce was the authority on, so he found himself holding forth again, which wasn't a natural state for him. He usually preferred to stay quiet, to let other people speak, and to pretend he wasn't actually there.

"A war happened on Asgard and the whole realm was destroyed, the people that are left are all the survivors, they've come to Earth with Thor as their King to find safety for a while before they start to look for a new home. At least, that's what I understand it as."

“How... Many...?” Wanda asked, her voice guarded as FRIDAY helpfully projected an image of the ship onto the far wall (to which Peter ‘wow’ed and nearly spilled Tony’s drink on him).

“A few thousand,” Tony answered, pushing the cup away from the excitable teen. “Oh. And Loki.”

He wasn’t sure why he said the name. It made his head pulse with longing and he paled slightly before he turned in the chair back to the ship.

“It’s complicated. They all got hair cuts and everyone is friends again. Like us.”

“They’re not like us, Stark,” Clint offered.

"Alright, there's no need to turn this into a fight. As long as Thor is keeping them all in check, then we can coexist for a while, but we're going to have to deal with the logistics of an alien species that have come to take residence on Earth for a while. That means negotiating with the government, and we need to get that ship out of sight before it gets worse than this."

That was all Steve, already taking charge and having people listen to him. "Rhodey, you and I will negotiate with the government on this. Tony; you, Bruce, and Peter can run interference on the Asgardians. Find somewhere incognito for them to stay, make sure they don't cause international incidents, find a new place for them to go. Vision, Wanda, Natasha, Clint, you four handle the mess that's still happening with the Accords and the leaked information. Find a way to make things right again, I know you're the best people for the job. Any questions? Objections?"

“Can I get assigned something,” Scott asked, only to have Sam tell him that they were on HQ duty. Not everyone got to have the fun tasks and whoever was left over had to mind the shop. Lang looked disappointed. “Man. Even the kid gets to go and meet aliens.”

“Because the kid’s parents are going to meet the aliens. He’s coming for supervision.” Tony hadn’t slipped. He’d been seeing Peter, at least a little bit, like the son he hadn’t ever had. Or wanted. And with Bruce back, he was feeling oddly paternal.

Like they’d done this kid thing before.

He wandered across the screen, telling FRIDAY to relay to Thor that he should take the ship above the clouds, and that they’d be coming to dinner. “Have him set three spots,” Tony said before he glanced at Rogers. “We should catch dinner. Soon. There’s probably a lot to talk about.”

Steve glanced gratefully at Sam. He knew that he could trust the other man to look out for HQ while he was gone, and that he really did understand the importance of always having people at base. Next time, he would make sure it was a different two people left behind, but there should always be someone on reserve in case of an emergency.

He nodded to Tony, accepting the invitation for a nebulous future dinner, before turning away to start on his own task, leaving Tony with Bruce and Peter for company. Given that Tony was concentrating on communicating with Thor, Bruce decided to try and look out for the new teenager in their party.

"So-- Peter, right? Do you have any questions for me?"

That was the stupidest thing that Bruce Banner, short of maybe experimenting on himself, had ever done. Peter did not stop talking from the moment that Bruce gave him the go ahead until they all piled into the back of the car waiting for them and were on their way back to the Tower. Tony just sat there, arm stretched across the back of the seat, legs crossed, and watched Bruce and Peter, who were seated across from him, interact. He was glad Happy brought the limo. This gave them a good amount of time not to be all cramped up together and gave Tony quite the vantage point for this interaction.

“I mean what else are the side effects? Are you radioactive?” Peter asked at one point. “Because I had Aunt May take me the hospital but they didn’t find anything wrong. Which is good. Because cancer would be a real bummer even if I can walk on walls—“

Technically, these were all questions but Bruce didn’t get a moment to break in with a reply.

Peter could talk.

“Do you like Star Wars? My best friend Ned and I are really excited about the new movie. What was it like in high school for you? I mean, you’re probably the smartest guy in the world, right?”

“Hey,” Tony protested but Peter didn’t hear him.

“You have like ten doctorates right? Amazing!”

Wow.

Bruce thought that Tony had the gift of the gab, but this was a whole other level and he found himself almost breathless by the onslaught of questions. He was a little sad that apparently Peter already knew that he was the Hulk, but also comforted by the fact that he didn't seem to be afraid of it. Again, quite like Tony, he could see why his friend had taken this superhero teen under his wing.

When he finally had a moment to get a word in edgewise, he opened his mouth and...

...the world exploded in pain.

Something hit the car side on right where Bruce was sat and buckled the metal, slicing right through his abdomen and left thigh. He felt the sudden dull roar of fury in his head and moaned aloud, more scared by that than any of his injuries. He could vaguely hear Happy swearing up front as he got the car back under control, but that was about it.

Though Peter scrambled over Bruce to try and keep the car from being completely buckled, the damage was already done. His injuries weren’t just life threatening, they were fatal. And as Peter pushed the metal back, whatever was holding Bruce’s abdomen together was removed and a mess of blood spurted out, hot and sticky, across the jaggedly smashed window. Where Tony sat, he was a lot safer. There was bullet and impact resistant glass on his side of the car and the panels were thicker and built in with plenty of impact safe plastics inside the door itself. That didn’t mean that the crash forced him out of his seat, but at least he wasn’t too injured.

He laid on the floor of the limo as they swerved and Happy came to a stop at the junction. The other car was just as ruined but it was trying to limp away, sideways. That didn’t matter.

From his vantage point, the spray of blood across the sidewalk of the car and Peter himself, and the glassy look in Banner’s open eyes all painted one picture.

This was bad.

The Hulk didn’t take too kindly to being unleashed when Banner had died, not from Tony’s perspective, and he’d only briefly met the chatty, somewhat less destructive Hulk through a video call.

“Pete— Pete I need you to get yourself and Happy away from here. Snag that bastard that hit us too. Don’t argue, just go.”

He’d stay behind to deal with the Hulk... the one who was just starting to force a corpse back to life.

Thankfully, Peter didn’t argue. In his suit, he spun a web to get Happy up into one of the nearby trees and snagged the retreating van too. Easy peasy.

Bruce had no idea if the person that hit them had done it on purpose, a deliberate attack on a limo that had Stark license plates, or whether it was one of those random accidents that could happen to anyone. It sucked that it was happening to him. Not because of the pain and the blood, he didn't care about that, but because he felt himself dying and he knew it wouldn't be the end.

Despite how far he had come, just for a moment there was a part of him that wept that this wouldn't be the final death.

And then he was gone.

The Hulk didn't come out in a controlled and slow sort of growth, he exploded outwards in such fierce ferocity that the top of the car peeled off as easily as a can opening, and he sprang out at once. He snorted, threw his head back, and bellowed a challenge at the world that would dare to kill Banner. Puny he might be, but he was still the Hulk's, and killing him wasn't allowed.

He charged wildly, viciously, at the nearest person in sight. Which would be Peter as he held onto the retreating van.

Not good. So much in this life was never as planned and yet Tony so often managed to get the people he cared about in terrible situations and though he did he best to guard against it, sometimes he just couldn’t protect them. Today was not going to be that day.

As the Hulk charged, Tony used his fingers to make a high pitch whistle, hopefully stopping the beast.

“Hulk! Buddy, you came back! We never got to have our reunion!” Tony, of course, was the Hulk’s biggest fan on earth. He didn’t mind being the big guy’s cheerleader. He liked absolutely every aspect about the scientist... and he was more than just a puny doctor. “Are you gonna tell me about that girl you were with? Cute. Asgardian? Lucky asshole. Come here, I have something I need smashed.”

He’d just use the limousine bait. But from what he had seen of the Hulk lately, he wasn’t all mindless. There was a person in there. A real person and not just a rage monster.

Tony sort of loved that.

There was more to him than a mindless creature, but not right now. He had been given months... years... to find his voice when he had been fighting in the arena, but this wasn't a controlled situation. He was a creature of impulse and anger at his core, and Banner dying was a pretty big trigger button.

He slammed directly into a truck that had stopped because of Peter catching the car that had crashed into them, literally breaking it in half and spilling the contents all over the road. People started screaming and running, which was just a red rag to a bull when it came to the Hulk.

Unfortunately, he ignored Tony for now, he wasn't quite at the point for logical conversation and being helpful. Someone killed Banner, and that meant someone had to pay.

Tony hated to be ignored. He had a lot of things on his plate right now and he really just wanted one to work out. He supposed that the thing with Steve and getting the old gang back together counted as things working out, though. Sure. Okay, but he didn’t want to face the Hulk without his armor.

“FRIDAY—“

“It’s already en route from the quintet, Boss. Forty-two seconds until arrival,” FRIDAY said, top of her game, but it would still be too late.

Peter mostly just blinked at the Hulk and tried to shuffle the people in the van to safety. Hard to do without tall buildings though. Just lots of trees. Trees about Hulk-height. No good.

He exhaled and tried to do what Tony had done. “Mister Hulk—. Weird question. Can I get an autograph?” He didn’t know that the Hulk was used to being the big cheese and a star. “Or would later be better? So cool to meet you!”

Peter was about to learn that having the strength of a spider, which was enough to stop a super soldier arm in its tracks and bring down a giant man, would be nothing compared to the Hulk. A huge green fist connected with him hard and sent him flying, but beyond that his attention wasn't on Peter. If he killed the human, so be it, his prey was in this van that had been stopped.

This was the one that killed Banner. This was the one that he needed to revenge himself on. Tony was right that he was smart, to an extent, he knew who his prey was and he was just going through everyone else necessary to get to it.

He bellowed as he ripped the top of the van clean off to reveal a man, silent with petrified fear, and a woman who was screaming at the top of her lungs. They were both college aged and, if the redness to the man's eyes were any indicator, he probably wasn't exactly in a fit condition to have been driving at all.

Three seconds after Peter landed, unmoving, the armor scooped Tony up where he stood. He knew better than to engage the Hulk. They were in the middle of no where, the Hulk could hopefully come to his senses before anyone else showed up. This van if kids had probably come from a college a few miles away and had t-boned them because they hadn’t expected any traffic on the road. Simple as that. That didn’t mean that they deserved to die. Even if they had just killed Banner.

Iron Man dropped out of the sky and grabbed the remaining kids from the sardine can that was currently their poor car. Up and out he went, all right with the Hulk roaring behind him.

He’d be back.

Once the two were safe, Tony returned for anyone else that the Hulk was menacing. Peter was no longer a threat, still not moving, and so he was more or less ignored. Even by Tony. Iron Man couldn’t risk drawing attention to him right now.

“Hulk! What happened?! I thought we were friends!”

The Hulk hadn't gone far from where he had been initially, eerily still when Tony returned without those college kids that had been his objective. He simply watched as Tony landed, though if he were paying attention then Tony might notice the way he shifted his weight ever so slightly like a predator preparing for the sprint towards prey.

"Where did you take them?"

Far from the one or two grunted words of before, the Hulk had a much larger vocabulary and understanding now. He had goals and plans, he wasn't so mindless as people might believe.

"Kill him, so kill them. Smash them. Where?"

“As fair as that seems, I don’t think it’s a good idea. I don’t know what you’ve been used to but eye for an eye doesn’t fly.” This was a dangerous situation. Tony had never been able to talk the Hulk down before and as much as Tony wanted to hang out with his friend’s alter ego, right now he wasn’t being anything more than the beast people claimed him to be.

And Tony didn’t have time for this either. Peter could be dying in that little rolled up spider ball he was currently laying in. Happy and the people he had rescued were still too close by if the Hulk attacked.

“I took them away. They’re going to be punished but not by us. How about we have a chat about what’s been going on? Tell me about where you’ve been?”

No, that wasn't going to be good enough.

The Hulk was already angry about being back here where people screamed at the sight of him rather than cheered for his strength, where people hated him and loved Banner and he was mostly relegated to being trapped for most of his life behind boring and puny glasses covered eyes. Now this supposed ally had stolen victims that were rightfully his and was trying to argue him down.

No.

He would and could make Tony tell him where those kids had gone. So he ran, full tilt and viciously, to slam into Tony and start ripping the armour off him in chunks.

"TELL HULK WHERE!"

The armor was a lot more resilient than the last time he’d fought through Hulk, but he wasn’t wearing the Hulkbuster supplement and he had never gotten around to sending the refurbished armor back to Veronica. This was going to be an issue, and fast.

Tony couldn’t stop what was happening. He blasted the Hulk with his chest beam but it didn’t do more than send the beast back a few feet so that Tony could get away with at least his limbs intact.

“You can’t go around killing people and I know that you know that!”

There was a rumble nearby. They were only fifteen minutes from HQ. The Calvary has heard and it was arriving, Steve leading the charge in his bike.

Not leading the charge, though he couldn't know it, Steve thought that he was definitely in pole position and he could see the Hulk and Tony facing off against each other not too far away. He was still too far to do anything when the Hulk rushed at Tony again, but someone else was nearby.

Out of nowhere, the Winter Soldier slammed into the side of Tony to knock him out of the way. He looked exactly as he had above Washington DC, all in black leather with a mask over his face and a dead level look in his eyes. Several guns came out and emptied their clip above the Hulk in quick succession, not aiming pointlessly at the monster itself, but at the trees around to send them falling in debris on top of the Hulk.

He knew that he couldn't do much other than distract and slow down the Hulk, but he was here all the same.

It was insanity. With all of the Avengers there, the Hulk was surrounded. Not that it mattered. He’d had many opponents thrown at him at the arena, mostly as an attempt to try to equalize a match. It wasn’t always a success, and most of the people that faced him ended up smeared on the dirt and sand floor of the coliseum, but it had always been great fun.

Maybe not so much for the challengers though.

Wanda scooped up Peter to bring him to some semblance of safety as Natasha climbed out of the armored SUV that she and Clint had been riding in. Vision and Sam landed just in front of them, but Steve didn’t bother to give any commands. The others weren’t important, not with Bucky right there.

He threw his shield to knock off a branch that had been loosened with bullets, eyes on his friend the entire time. He knew better than to speak. Or to question.

One moment later a crack of thunder signaled the last Avenger’s arrival. Thor dropped Valkyrie before he landed, grinning and shorn and single eyed.

“Friends! I had not know this was to be a gathering of such magnitude. Hulk! You’ve joined us as well! What is this showering of foliage? Your customs are always elaborate!”

It was the arrival of Valkyrie that turned the tide of the battle. Not because she was any more fearsome than the rest of them, but because she was the first friend that Hulk had made that was all his. She had helped him find something other than anger, become more complex.

He stayed in place and snorted through his nose, a gladiator who knew that he could win but was considering standing down all the same. He suddenly sat down on the ground, still towering over all of them.

"Bring Hulk the killers."

It was more petulance than fury now.

Valkyrie had no idea what was going on. She glanced around at the others gathered in their loose circle, some attending to the wounded, others hardly paying attention to the situation at all, and strode up to Hulk. “I think we’re done for today. Looks like you did all right.” She needed a drink. She always needed a drink. Being here or with friends or even with a purpose didn’t make her feel less like drinking. It sort of made it worse.

They called her by a title. She didn’t have a name. She preferred it that way since the last person to have ever said her name was her wife and now she was dead. It still ate her up.

“We don’t have a big cheering section today, looks like, but not to worry, you were impressive. Hungry? I am.”

Tony felt like the tin man, trying to get himself back together again. He hadn’t expected the Hulk to rage like that at him. He hadn’t expected his teammate to turn. And he hadn’t expected some girl to tame him either. Tony was feeling some sort of way about that. And that he’d gotten Peter potentially killed. And that Rogers was coming over here like in some dream to talk to Bucky.

It had been awhile. He’d not gotten a chance to talk to him at all, not since the hellicarrier. He’d seen him in captivity before Zola caused him to break out, triggered, and then nothing since. Steve was breathing hard. He’d always been so emotional, and now knowing the things that Bucky had endured, it made it always harder now to do this. All he wanted to do was embrace him, but he knew he couldn’t.

“Hey... Hey it’s been awhile...”

Tony hated every ounce of goodness in Steve Rogers all over again. Just like he hated that girl. They were taking his friends from him, the whispers said. Hundreds of memories of past lives in dead universes couldn’t all be wrong.

Bucky hadn't come here for the Hulk or for Steve or for any of them except Tony. He had seen the armour leave the Tower at top speed, he had been in the room with it when it had suddenly powered up, and he had made FRIDAY tell him what was going on. It had probably been a really stupid idea to tool up and go after him, he knew that he wasn't stable when it came to fighting, but he still went.

Now that the fight was over, he felt like the real him was buried. Like he was hurting and yet everything was muted behind the Soldier. His expression was blank even as Steve approached him, his voice a low rasp of Russian, again the most comfortable language for him when he couldn't think properly.

"Stop. Don't."

No, this was wrong, he needed to move. His eyes slid to Tony, a desperate plea in there to somehow make this stop. He had come out of his safe space to try and save a friend, and now everything was crumbling.

With Peter hurt, and Bucky losing himself, Tony was torn. He couldn’t exactly help the kid he was mentoring right now, though. His best bet was back at HQ where Helen Cho, on staff, would be able to fix him up. If he wasn’t dead. Tony’s face showed his horror but it was covered by the faceplate of his beaten up suit.

The quintet that Bucky would have had to take, the experimental one that flew almost as fast as his armor, had to be nearby. His armor could still fly. They could get away. Tony, limping, stood in front of James and lifted a hand towards Steve. It wasn’t a threat. It was a gesture to stop him from coming closure.

“I’ve got this, Rogers. Handle Parker. I’ll be back to check on him.” Everything was a mess. He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. To James, and in Russian, which made Natasha’s ears perk up, Tony muttered for James to retreat. He’d cover him. “I’m sorry, Cap.”

It was the first time he’d said that, incidentally. He just couldn’t do anything more right now.

Even with Tony covering his retreat, Bucky knew that this was the end of his little bubble of safety. It had hardly lasted any time at all, and now Steve would know for sure that Tony had something to do with hiding him and it wouldn't be long before the real world intruded on him.

He swallowed hard and then took off running in the direction of the trees. He heard Steve call out after him, voice broken and desperate, but he didn't follow. Instead, he just faced Tony with an expression that looked more beaten down than he had ever looked before in his life.

"You-- His safe space is with you?"

That hurt so much.

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