Hostages to Fortune 5/7

[seanchai.livejournal.com]

Title: Hostages to Fortune 5/7
Authors: seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan.
Warnings: No much, really. Some swearing and violence.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: The sequel to Readjustment. Things are finally settling down, and the Avengers are settling in. It's time for disaster to strike again.
X-posted to Marvel Slash.

And again, our thanks to tavella for the great beta job.


Hostages to Fortune





"And then I told Clint that he was just jealous because he was still single, and he said that if he wanted to, he could get a woman more easily than I could."

Tony didn't respond, as he hadn't responded to anything Steve had said over the past half hour. Steve had been talking since Peter left, telling Tony what had happened while he had been in DC. He wasn't sure if it was doing any good, but he could tell from the rhythm of the heart monitor that Tony could hear him -- it changed when Steve fell silent. At least it was a reaction.

"And did you know Pepper is afraid that I don't have enough experience for you?" Steve went on, trying to sound normal, as if this were a real conversation. "I wasn't about to say anything to her, but, well..." Steve trailed off. He was fairly sure he had managed to make up for any lack of experience in other areas. Tony certainly hadn't had any complaints. And then there was time that he had accidentally cracked the bed frame...

"She said she'd kill me if I hurt you," Steve finished quietly. He might not be responsible for any of this, but that didn't change the fact that Tony was very definitely hurt. What was taking Hank and Peter so long? At this rate, the effects of the drug might wear off before they came up with an antidote. And they would wear off, or Hank and Peter would come through with the antidote; Steve refused to contemplate any other options.

There was a tentative knock on the door. Steve glanced up, and found Carol and Rhodey hovering in the doorway. Carol was still in her Ms. Marvel costume, but Rhodey had lost the War Machine armor. The hospital personnel probably frowned on visitors who wore shoulder canons.

"Have they figured out what this is yet?" Carol asked, taking a short step into the room.

"No," Steve said, staring down at his hands. He was still wearing his gloves, and in the bright fluorescent hospital lights, he could see shiny spots across the knuckles and palm where the leather was starting to wear. "Hank's working on it. Spiderman's here; he's helping him."

"It's a good thing you got the armor off when you did," Rhodey said. He was still in the doorway, looking mildly uncomfortable. "The way some of those people were losing it... There was a kid with cybernetic enhancements at Camp Hammond who was exposed to something similar. She accidentally blasted another student and killed him." He grimaced. "That would have killed Tony."

Steve flinched, his eyes returning to Tony's haunted face. Even though Tony hadn't hurt anyone, Steve was pretty sure he thought he had, and that was what mattered right now. "Tony doesn't handle guilt well," Steve admitted. He didn't handle things that weren't under his control well, either, which was probably connected. If Tony felt guilt over something, punished himself for it, made it his fault, then it meant that whatever it was had been caused by his own actions or failures, and was therefore still under his control.

He'd sworn once that he wasn't going to lose Tony again, not to the Mandarin or some other villain, and not to the inside of his own head. But now, Steve was helpless to do anything to stop that, not when he wasn't even sure Tony could hear him.

Carol shook her head. "You can say that again." She paused and looked at Tony, head cocked to one side. "Can he hear us?"

Steve sighed. "I don't know. He's awake, and he spoke to Peter before, but I don't know that he's really hearing anything we're saying."

Rhodey frowned. He wasn't making any move to come further into the room, as if he felt he didn't have any place intruding. "I'm so tired of doing this," he muttered.

"You don't have to stay," Steve said, more abruptly than he'd meant to. "I don't think it will do any good. I'm not sure I'm doing any good."

"At least he didn't do this one on purpose. Not that it will matter much in the long run." Rhodey shrugged one shoulder. "I should... someone should go handle the media. One of the nurses was doing a good job of it when I came in, but I'm sure she's got better things to do."

Carol half-raised one hand. "I'll do it. Why don't you find the labs and check on Hank and Spiderman?"

"You sure?"

"I'm a published novelist, and I've spent the past month leading a superhero team in LA. Trust me, if there's one thing I've got experience with, it's talking to the press."

The press. Steve resisted the impulse to groan, rubbing at his forehead. The media had been kind to them in the wake of the incident with the venom clones, the Avengers' first major fight as a re-unified team. They were not going to be kind about this. The prospect of wealthy businessman Tony Stark and almost as wealthy fashion designer and heiress Janet Van Dyne hospitalized and possibly crazy was too good a story not to have reporters fasten themselves on it like leeches.

The one thing that could make this worse for Tony when he woke up -- and he going to wake up, he was -- would be having pictures of it plastered all over the front page of the Daily Bugle.

Rhodey hesitated for a second, glancing at Tony, an unreadable expression on his face. Then he left.

Carol dropped into the room's sole remaining chair, stretching her long legs out in front of her, bootheels scrapping slightly on the scuffed linoleum. "Don't worry," she said. "Tony's gone through this kind of thing before. I'm sure he'll be fine."

Tony's eyes remained fixed on Steve, not even glancing at Carol despite the fact that she had just sat down next to him. It was starting to get more than a little disconcerting; Tony wouldn't talk to him, but neither would he take his eyes off him. Weeks ago, after they'd gotten back from Washington, Tony had admitted that when he woke up alone, he had trouble believing that anything that had happened over the past months -- their relationship, Steve coming back -- was real.

"I mean, he got over the drinking on his own, which is more than I managed, and he survived that mess with the Extremis. And if trying to run SHIELD didn't do him in, then nothing can."

Tony hadn't stopped drinking until he was on the verge of killing himself, had actually wanted to kill himself then, which really wasn't a comforting thought at the moment.

"I'm not helping, am I?" Carol asked. She sighed. "This sounds awful under the circumstances, but it's been nice being back in New York. The LAPD isn't really sure how to deal with superheroes, and all those riots didn't help. Plus, half the people on the street see superheroes and SHIELD as some sort of auxiliary to the cops after all that riot control Jen and Ares did, so they're not disposed to look on us kindly."

Steve made a humming noise to indicate that he was listening, though probably not more than half of what Carol was saying was penetrating. Most of his attention was entirely taken up by Tony. A piece of hair had fallen over Tony's forehead. Steve curled his right hand around the metal bar on the side of the bed, to keep himself from reaching out and brushing it back. It might make him feel better, but he wasn't sure how it would affect Tony.

"I'm working on a sequel to my book," Carol went on. "I was hoping to show some of it to Tony; he likes science fiction."

"He still hasn't let me see the other three Star Wars movies," Steve said absently. The New Avengers had argued about that once, Tony and Peter insisting repeatedly that there were only three real Star Wars movies, and watching any of the others would be sacrilege.

"Clint wants me to kill the Marcus character off in a really bloody way. You know, he's got something he needs to talk to you about, and you should probably go easy on him when he tells you."

"What?" He was supposed to talk to someone? Steve looked up at Carol, dragging his eyes away from Tony with an almost physical effort. "Who?"

"Clint," Carol said patiently. "When he brought me in from the airport, we were talking about my book, and mistakes all of us have made, like me and the jetliner incident, and Clint and Natasha, and that time Rhodey beat Tony up, and he told me a little about what he was doing right after he came back from the dead."

"That time Rhodey did what?" The surge of protective anger Steve felt probably had more to do with the fact that Tony was currently in a hospital bed than anything else, and finding Hank's temporary lab in order to punch Rhodey a few times wouldn't help anything. It might make him feel better, but it wouldn't help Tony or do anything to the AIM operatives who were really the people that Steve wanted to pound into oblivion.

"It was ages ago, and they're apparently both over it." Carol waved a hand dismissively. "Look, Clint found out a few things before he met up with us in DC, and you really need to ask him about them."

"What's this about Rhodey beating Tony up?" Steve repeated. "I've never heard about it." Tony's friendship with Rhodey had occasionally been strained, especially recently, and Steve had never really understood why. He'd assumed, after overhearing Tony come out to him last month, that it was because Rhodey was straight and Tony obviously wasn't. If Rhodey had taken a swing at Tony over it... And he was angry with AIM, he reminded himself, not Rhodey. Tony was a grown man and could take care of himself in a fight. He'd proved that today -- he'd handled himself well in that restaurant even while drugged.

"Ask Tony once he comes out of this," Carol said. "I wasn't there, I just heard about it from Clint." She glanced at Tony, her eyes lingering on him for a long moment, then looked back at Steve. "He is going to come out of this, Steve."

He would, Steve told himself. He had to. For now, he just had to have faith, trust in the fact that Tony was strong enough not to be broken by this. Steve sighed, and let his shoulders sag. He barely even noticed when Carol left the room.

He'd never even told Tony that he loved him.


***


St. Vincent's lab facilities were not as nice as the Avengers' lab. At least they had an entire section to themselves, since Hank had scared all of the hospital employees away. Peter was currently performing what was probably the fifth test of their unknown toxin with St. Vincent's gas chromatograph, while Hank examined yet another blood sample.

"It massively stimulates adrenaline production," Hank was saying, "There's a whole cocktail of endocrine and hormonal chemicals in this thing. The symptoms are familiar, but I don't-- whatever AIM's done with it, it's so complicated that I can't place it. I hate being so damned useless!"

"If it helps," Peter offered, squinting at his new print-out of test results, "one of the ingredients is some kind of benzilate."

"3-quinuclidinyl benzilate!" Hank snapped his fingers. "I'm stupid. Tachycardia, hallucinations, increased temperature... this is some kind of modified derivative of BZ."

"Which is what, exactly?" On the one hand, it was very flattering and affirming that Hank and Reed had followed Tony's lead and treated Peter like an equal in all matters scientific. On the other hand, it meant he ended up asking more questions than he had since Dr. Connors' class.

"It's a chemical compound the Army used during Vietnam."

"Ah." Peter nodded sagely. "And like all things the government produced during Vietnam, it's evil and poisonous."

"It's evil and poisonous and has an antidote," Hank crowed. "Of course," his face fell almost immediately, "I don't know how physostigmine will interact with the other elements in this."

"I have a list of them." Peter held up print-out number five.

"Good," Hank pointed at the nearest computer terminal. "Pull up the medical database and start cross-checking them to make sure none of them are contraindicted against physostigmine."

"How do you spell that?" Peter asked, but he was already typing, pulling up the search interface.

"You guys got something?" a tall, muscular black guy edged around the file cabinet that divided Hank and Peter's section of the lab from the hiding doctors and labs techs. His voice was vaguely familiar, and Peter had a hazy memory of seeing him in a suit, talking to Tony, during the Registration hearings.

"It's some kind of Vietnam, chemical warfare, Agent Orange thing," Peter told him.

Hank ignored the newcomer; he was bent over a computer screen, typing furiously and muttering to himself. "Some kind of pheromone component, that's how they tweaked this to ensure the response would be fear and not something else... Pheromones are good, I can do pheromones, it's no different than talking to ants... Almost instantaneous onset, how did they do that?"

"They probably got it from the Russians; they've got stockpiles of just about any kind of dated chemical weapon you could want." The newcomer shook his head, looking disgusted, then added. "I'm Jim Rhodes, War Machine. Everybody calls me Rhodey. I guess you're Spiderman?"

'Don't say you thought I'd be taller,' Peter begged inwardly. "Yes," he sighed. "I'm Spiderman."

"I thought you'd be older. I mean, damn, you've been in this business longer than I have." It was said with certain amount of respect, which surprised Peter a little.

If Rhodey was War Machine, that meant he was Tony's friend, and was probably a scientist of some kind, so... "Did you come down to help?" Peter asked. Then he turned to Hank. "There's a whole list of things that react badly with physostigmine, but none of the toxin's other components are on it. You'll have to check that none of the victims are on heart medication, though."

Hank swore. "Because it can cause cardiorespiratory complications. I hate my life and I hate my friends."

Rhodey sighed, making a wry face. "I'm not a scientist," he said. "I'm a pilot. I'm just... I passed my limit for seeing Tony hooked up to heart monitors a long time ago."

Peter couldn't really think of anything to say to that. All of the various Avengers and former Avengers he'd been thrown in amongst over the course of the past year had years of history together that he was only peripherally involved in, and often not even really aware of.

"I know why some victims are more strongly affected than others," Hank announced, not looking up from what he was doing. "One of the compounds that causes the endocrine reaction bonds with serotonin in the brain and becomes inert. They can't have meant it to do that; it must be an oversight."

"And in English, that would mean..."

Hank looked up from the computer and blinked at Rhodey, as if just noticing that he was there. "There are chemicals in your brain that keep you from getting sad. They block the poison from working. The more of them you have, the less effective it is. Which is why Tony is a twitching, hallucinating ball and Jan," he looked away, "is at least partially lucid."

"I was wondering about that," Rhodey said. He frowned. "There was this little kid there who stopped crying pretty much as soon as his dad showed up, while other people were still screaming. I'd have thought somebody that little would've been much worse off."

"I can't say for sure, but my guess is that the main worry for small children would be less the psychological effects and more the toxicity; they've got so much less mass, and..." Hank trailed off, suddenly wearing a look Peter knew he'd had on his own face more than a few times. It was the look of a man who'd just been struck by the blindingly obvious.

Hank turned to Rhodey. "Go find Clint. Tell him he needs to get Jan to grow to at least ten feet. Tell him Goliath-sized, he'll know what I mean. She'll increase her mass exponentially, and have a fraction of the amount of the toxin in her system."

"I can do it," Peter volunteered. "I should check in with Aunt May and MJ, anyway. They've got no idea where I've been for the past two hours." He knew they'd understand, but that didn't mean that they weren't worrying, and that he didn't owe them a heads-up.

Hank turned back to his blood samples, and started muttering to himself. Peter guessed that meant he was dismissed.

"I'll keep an eye on things here," Rhodey said as Peter passed him.

"Right," Peter nodded. "Um. Nice to meet you."

Peter managed to make it back upstairs without encountering the slightly intimidating nurse. The hallway was empty now, Hawkeye and the Falcon nowhere in sight. Peter belatedly realized that he had no idea how was he supposed to find Hawkeye. Everyone had been acting as if he were still an Avenger, but he didn't have a communicator anymore, and he wasn't exactly part of the gossip circuit, either. He supposed he could go try and find that duty nurse from before and ask her if she'd seen a guy in a pointy mask and purple leather, but...

Ms. Marvel was coming out of Tony's room. She was staring off into the distance with a worried expression, not seeming to see Peter. She'd been an Avenger for years, Peter thought. She probably knew Jan Van Dyne at least as well as Hawkeye did.

"Ms. Marvel!" Peter said, before she could walk past him.

She turned to him, looking startled for a moment, before her expression smoothed. "Spiderman. Does Hank know anything yet?"

Peter shifted his weight from one foot to the other, feeling awkward. He didn't really feel comfortable speaking for Hank about this, not when Hank's solution was still a work in progress. "Maybe," he said, noncommittally. "He did think of something that we can do now, though. Somebody needs to get the Wasp to grow, because if she doubles her size-"

"She'll be half as poisoned," Ms. Marvel interrupted, smacking her forehead with the palm of her hand. "Why didn't anyone think of that?"

"I didn't even know she could grow." Peter shrugged. "I always thought she just shrunk down and had wings."

"The growing is new. I think Jan forgets about it herself half the time."

"So, can you-" Peter started.

"I'd be glad to," she interrupted. "It’ll be a relief to actually do something. Tony wouldn't even look at me."

"He looked at me," Peter said. "He told me to leave before I died. Then he went back to staring at Cap in a really creepy way." It was disturbing to think of Tony so out of it; in Peter's experience, Tony Stark had always been in control of every situation, or, if not actually in control, trying to be. The only person more together and self-confident was Cap, who was also a wreck right now, and the whole thing was just wrong.

"Right," Ms. Marvel said, looking away. "I'll go deal with Jan." She turned back to Peter for a moment. "Thanks for helping out. You didn't have to."

She vanished into one of the other rooms, which Peter assumed was where the Wasp was being treated.

Okay, message delivered. Now it was time to find MJ and Aunt May, apologize for disappearing on them, and then get back to the lab.

Peter didn't have to go as far as he expected to locate MJ. She was at the nurses' station, arguing with the nurse Peter had talked to earlier. "Look, I promise I'm not a reporter."

"So did the last person claiming to be one of Mr. Stark's relatives, and he had a camera around his neck."

"Cute, brown hair, not very tall?" MJ asked. When the nurse nodded, MJ added, "He's my husband."

"So you're, ah, Mrs. Spiderman?" the nurse raised her eyebrows skeptically.

"Actually, it's Mrs. Watson-Parker," MJ's voice was dry. Then she looked up, her eyes meeting Peter's. "Peter! There you are. Is everyone all right?"

"Um, not exactly, no," he admitted.

"Oh," she frowned. "Speaking of which, where have you been? May and I have been biting our fingernails for the past hour."

"I've been helping Hank Pym look for an antidote. It's some kind of modified Vietnam-era chemical warfare. It makes people hallucinate."

"You mean, like LSD, the walls are melting?"

"No," Peter said, "More like hallucinating that your friends are dead and you killed them." He thought of Gwen again, who would still be alive if it wasn't for him. It wasn't just that his webline had broken her neck -- if it weren't for him, she would never have been anywhere near the top of the Brooklyn Bridge in the first place. The Green Goblin had kidnapped her because she had been Peter's friend. Like the Kingpin's hired assassin shooting Aunt May because she had the bad luck to be related to Spiderman.

MJ's eyes widened slightly, and she took Peter by the arm and pulled him away from the nurses' station, out of earshot. "How bad is it?" she asked, voice low.

"The Wasp is apparently hysterical, and Tony isn't responding to anyone, not even Cap. It's really freaky, MJ. When I went in to see him, he told me to get out before I died, too, but I don't think he actually heard anything I said, and Cap is really scared. He's never scared!" Hank was obviously scared, too, which wasn't as frightening as Cap losing it, but still wasn't exactly reassuring. Peter couldn’t be sure, since there’d been no way he was going to ask, but from the way Cap had been watching Tony with a gaze almost as fixed and unwavering as the one Tony had on him, Peter thought he might be worried that Tony wasn't going to come out of it.

Which was unlikely, since Hank already had an antidote, but the way Tony had been staring at Cap, somehow both horrified and hungry, as if he were both afraid to look at him and afraid to look away... It was just creepy, was all. Tony wasn't exactly one of Peter's favorite people anymore, but he wouldn't wish the kind of suffering he must be undergoing on anyone.

"Of course he's scared," MJ said, that tiny worried, line she sometime got between her eyebrows forming. "He and Tony are... I get the impression they're pretty much married these days."

"I know it's silly," Peter admitted, "but, well... He was actually worried about me. I mean, when he was trying to get me to leave, he sounded really scared, like I was his responsibility or something." Peter gestured expansively, trying to convey the depth of the weirdness this had caused. "Things aren't supposed to be like that anymore." He shook his head and folded his arms across his chest, looking down. "I think I liked it better when I could pretend that I hated him."

"Peter," MJ's voice was sympathetic, but Peter thought he detected a hint of amusement there, too, "you don't hate people."

"I hate the Kingpin," he said. Because he did, he really did, with a kind of dark intensity that was especially scary for the fact that he'd never felt it before. No matter how much he wanted to hate Norman Osborn -- for Gwen's sake, and maybe especially for Harry's sake -- he was and always would Harry's father, and as much of a psychopathic bastard as he was, Harry had loved him, and Peter could never quite bring himself forget that.

"He's not really people," she pointed out.

"No, he's more like five people." Okay, it was a cheap shot, but he was so definitely not above it.

MJ's lips twitched. Then, "Wait a minute," her eyebrows went up. "You're not thinking that Tony got poisoned because you were mad him, are you? The world doesn't revolve around you, Peter."

"I know that," Peter mumbled, "but... I have been mad at him, and he is poisoned, and..." he trailed off, because that sounded exactly as stupid as it was.

"You don't have to forgive him just because he's hurt, either, you know. If you're still mad at him, you're still mad at him."

"Don't let Aunt May hear you say that," Peter cautioned. "It's rude to speak ill of people who are in hospital beds." The thing was, thinking about it, maybe he wasn't as mad as he thought he'd been. Or at the very least, wasn't as angry as he'd been a month ago. He'd never been very good at holding grudges, and now that Registration was mostly gone, he was having trouble holding on to his righteous indignation. With the source of his righteous indignation over and done with, he was finding it harder to come up with reasons to stay mad, he'd found himself resorting to petty things like, "His cat doesn't like me."

Tony had lied to him, manipulated him, but deep down, he had the uncomfortable feeling that he might be secretly grateful for it, at least a little. He hadn't had to make the kind of choices Tony had, and even though he'd deserved the right to make them... he couldn't help but be a little glad that, in the end, he hadn't had to. He hadn't knowingly supported the things SHIELD and the House Unregistered Superhuman Activities Committee had been doing in secret. He'd only had to sell out a little, not sell out all the way, and he certainly hadn't been made to pay for it the way some people had. His family had paid, Aunt May had paid, but it could have been so much worse.

"I think I'm kind of mad at myself, mostly," Peter admitted. "Because, yeah, Tony didn't tell me stuff, but a lot of it was stuff I didn't want to know, stuff I was happier not knowing. And I could probably have found it out sooner if I'd been looking harder. I'm kind of," he hesitated, gesturing vaguely with one hand, "glad I didn't know everything he and Reed knew when I had to pick sides." He swallowed hard, looking away. It all came back to Gwen again; if he had known, while she was falling, that stopping someone at terminal velocity could be as fatal as impact... Knowing that he'd deliberately chosen a course of action that he'd known would kill her -- because either option, catching her or letting her fall, would have killed her, he knew that now -- was the only thing that could have made the guilt worse. "What kind of man does that make me?"

MJ was silent for a moment, regarding him seriously. "No one should have to make those kind of decisions," she said finally. "I'd be worried if you wanted to."

"Maybe I should have," Peter said. "Maybe I was just being a wuss and ignoring my responsibilities. Reed and Tony didn't hesitate."

"And look where that got us." MJ shook her head, frowning. "You know, I may not be a spandex-wearing hero myself, but I'm pretty sure wanting that kind of control is the path to supervillainy."

"Mostly, insanity, unfortunate science experiments, and bad fashion sense are the path to supervillainy, but I know what you mean."

There was a long moment of silence, and then MJ said,

"You said you and Hank Pym found an antidote?"

"A partial one, anyway. He's getting it ready now."

"Good. May and I saw some footage of the building evacuation on the news, and it was pretty gruesome. There were a lot of people in that restaurant."

"Speaking of which, I should get back to the lab." Peter cast a guilty glance over his shoulder in the direction of Hank's commandeered lab facilities. "I don't know how much good I'm doing, but I'd like to think I'm helping some."

"I'll walk you there," MJ said. She slipped one hand around his arm, and fell into step beside him. "Then I'll go tell May where you are."

It was silly, but just like that, Peter felt better prepared to tackle whatever work needed to be done on Hank's antidote. No matter how crazy his life had been lately, at least he still had his family, and as long as he had them, nothing could be that bad.


***


People were just coming back from the dead all over the place these days, Clint reflected, grinning to himself. Even if Thor, or, well, Don Blake, was being kind of a jerk about things -- okay, with reason, but still -- it was great that he was back.

Clint had followed Steve's orders down to the letter, and even gotten the stupid tetanus shot, which meant he was free to go back upstairs. As he left the emergency clinic, he passed Sam, who was being ushered toward one of the examination areas by a student nurse.

She was pretty, extremely petite -- especially standing next to Sam's six-foot-plus height -- and was really obviously flirting with Sam. "It was so nice of you to help us handle those two patients," she said, fluttering her eyelashes up at Sam. "Whatever those poor people were drugged with makes them so violent."

Sam looked torn between amusement and deep discomfort. "It was the, um, least I could do," he said.

"Oh, but you should have told us that your arm was hurt." And there went the eyelashes again.

Sam had four tiny punctures on his shoulder, identical to the four tiny punctures on Clint's arm that Don Blake had rolled his eyes at and doused with hydrogen peroxide. "Don't forget to give him a tetanus shot," Clint called after them. "You have to take these sorts of things seriously."

Sam, being more mature than Cap, did not whinily protest this or make faces at Clint.

Clint had planned to go and see Jan again, but when he found himself in the hall outside her room, he couldn't make himself enter. She wasn't going to be any better, and there wasn't anything he could do, and the last time he'd been in there, she had sent him away.

Cap probably needed someone to talk to, anyway, since Sam was downstairs getting his fork-wounds bandaged.

Tony was curled into a ball in the middle of the bed, just like Jan had been. He wasn't crying. He wasn't really doing much of anything.

Cap was sitting by the side of the bed, in one of those uncomfortable hospital chairs, shoulders slumped, and Clint knew right away that things had to be bad, because he didn't even look up when Clint came in.

"I guess he hasn't come out of it yet, huh?" Clint said.

"No," Cap said, sounding tired. "He talked to Peter, but none of it made any sense. He won't talk to me."

Clint tried to think of something comforting to say. "Well, at least we know this stuff isn't poisonous, or not very poisonous, anyway, because if it were, he and Jan would be dead."

Cap didn't look comforted. "Carol said you had something to tell me?" he asked, voice still dull.

There was probably never going to be a good time to utter the phrase, "I slept with Wanda, but I swear it's not my fault. Carol thinks I was mind-controlled; what do you think?" but right now seemed like an especially poor time.

"Thor is back," Clint blurted out.

Cap stared at him blankly. "What?" he said, after a long moment.

"Yeah, he's downstairs playing doctor. Well, being a doctor, I guess. He stitched up my leg."

Cap blinked. "Thor stitched up your leg."

"No, Don Blake did, but I mean, so what? It's the same thing." Clint felt his face flushing. Only about ten minutes ago, he'd been promising Don Blake that he wouldn't tell anyone he'd seen him. But Cap really needed some good news right now, and hey, he didn't look lost and defeated anymore, so clearly Clint had made the right decision.

Cap stood up, taking a single step away from the bed. "Where is he? Is he still down there? Why hasn't he come up?"

And they were back to "Things Clint really didn't want to have to tell Cap right now."

"Because Hank and Tony built an evil, murderous clone of him. I've lost count of the times I've asked what the hell you people were doing while I was dead, but I'm going to say it again." Though cloning Thor wasn't really that far out there for either of them, Hank especially. There were times when Clint suspected that if it weren't for Jan, Hank would have become a mad-scientist-style supervillain years ago.

Cap's eyes narrowed. "You know they weren't given a choice." He sounded defensive, glancing back down at Tony as he spoke.

"Yeah, well Thor doesn't know that. Or Don Blake doesn't, which is the same thing."

"Did you tell him?"

"I don't know if you've forgotten, but Thor isn't very good at listening to people."

"Is he still down there?" Cap glanced at the doorway, indecision plain on his face, then back to where Tony lay motionless, heart hooked up to heart monitors and IV lines.

"He didn't want to see anybody," Clint admitted. "He said he needed a little while to finish getting his head together."

Cap's face fell. "Oh," he said, quietly. "But it was really Don Blake? And he's okay?"

"It was really Don Blake, and he looked fine to me." Clint thought for a moment. "I think he's gotten bitchier, though. I guess being dead changes you."

There was a moment of silence while to two of them looked at each other. Clint didn't feel any different, but then, how could he be sure? Cap didn't seem all that different, either, but a few years ago, he would never have started sleeping with Tony. Or maybe he would have. Clint preferred not to think about it that hard.

"I don't think I've changed," Cap said after a minute.

"Me neither," Clint admitted. "Maybe he's just sulking." He shrugged. Then he turned to look at Tony, really seeing him for the first time. His eyes were open, fixed unwaveringly on Cap, so he had to be at least partially aware of what was going on. Jan had been, and she was a lot smaller than Tony, and hadn't had armor to protect her from the toxin.

"You said he talked to Peter? How come he's not talking now?"

"I don't know. I don't think he really knows what's going on right now."

"He looks bad," Clint agreed. Tony's face was flushed, his hair was sticking to his forehead, and from the expression on his face, whatever he was actually seeing wasn't very nice. "But hey," Clint went on, trying to sound encouraging, "Hank's working on an antidote, and he's almost as good at that kind of thing as he is at creating things that turn out to be evil."

Cap gave him a look that he mentally translated as "Clint, that wasn't very nice." He sighed, looking down at Tony once more; he looked almost afraid, or maybe like he wanted to cry, neither or which were looks Clint was used to seeing on Cap. "I don't know what I'm going to do," he said, voice low.

Clint froze, unsure what to say. Cap always knew what to do, and usually had no problem telling everyone else what they should do, as well. Maybe this was a good time to tell him about Wanda; at least it would distract him. To be honest, Clint had expected the news about Thor to distract Cap for more than just a couple of minutes. "I was talking to Carol a couple days ago," he began.

"Right. That." Cap frowned. "What's this about Rhodey hitting Tony?"

And he was saved once more. "It was ages ago, when Tony was on the west coast after the drinking, back when Rhodey was wearing the armor." Hank had been out there too, in his first attempt at hanging up the costume and just being a scientist, and Tigra. And Bobbi. "Tony and Rhodey got into an argument while Rhodey was fighting some supervillain, and Rhodey socked him one. Or anyway, that's what the Witch told me; she's the one who tried to break them up."

"Wait, Rhodes was in the armor?" Cap stood up straighter, making it very obvious that he was four inches taller than Clint, his voice taking on that dangerous note it sometimes got when he was talking to supervillains. "I thought they'd just gotten into a fistfight or something. Why have I never heard about this?"

Clint felt himself automatically standing up straighter, not that it would do much good. "Because by the time I heard about it, the two of them had put it behind them, and you beating Rhodey up wouldn't have done anyone any good." Clint shrugged. "Look, if I'd known about it at the time, I would have kicked him off the team for endangering civilians, but by then he'd already left. I mean, you were a horrible leader, but I did learn that much from you."

"I was not a horrible leader."

"Okay, not horrible. Just annoying." When all else failed, Clint could always make Cap irritated with him. He liked to think of it as a finely honed skill.

"You started it," Cap pointed out, somewhat inaccurately.

"You were older," Clint returned. "You should have been more mature; you should have been above all of that."

"I was twenty-six, and I was trying to lead the team on my own for the first time." He was staring at Tony again, one hand resting on the back of the chair he'd been sitting in when Clint came in. "And you were this obnoxious little punk," Cap went on, turning back to Clint, a sad little smile on his face. He reached down and, without looking, brushed Tony's hair out of his face.

Tony flinched, and closed his eyes, scooting back several inches so that he was sitting up against the back of the bed. "I didn't mean to," he whispered, voice hoarse. "I don't know what happened. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

Didn't mean to do what, Clint wondered. As far as he knew, Tony had kept his cool and hadn't hurt anyone at the restaurant. He and Jan both had. Was he apologizing for the Registration mess? That time he'd been mind-controlled by Kang the Conqueror? The time he'd gone crazy and hunted down and attacked everyone who'd stolen his armor technology? The drinking? When it came to Tony, there was a lot to choose from. It was a toss up which was worse; his occasional spectacular losses of control, or his control-freak attempts to fix things afterwards.

"Nothing happened." Steve said it very gently, but the expression on his face was raw. "You didn't do anything."

"I didn't mean to," Tony whispered again, eyes still closed. "I'm sorry. I didn't-"

"Pym's got a cure!" Rhodey came skidding around the doorframe and burst into the room, nearly yelling with enthusiasm and obvious relief. Tony flinched at the noise, and Cap turned to glare viciously at Rhodey.

"Hey, don't shout," Clint hissed. "We're in a hospital. The nurses will eat you." Then the import of Rhodey's words caught up with him. "A cure? That's great!" Jan was going to be okay. And Tony was going to be okay, which meant Cap would be okay.

Cap sat down abruptly, hands over his face. There was a sudden flutter outside the window as Redwing took off, probably to go fetch Sam.

"Oh God," Tony was staring at Rhodey now, that same blank, horrified look on his face. "Not you, too."

Rhodey blinked, looking appropriately creeped out. "I thought he was in some kind of coma."

"You're going to be all right," Cap told Tony, voice rough.

Tony closed his eyes again, sagging back against the bed and reverting to huddled-ball status. "Not without you," he said, the words barely audible.

Cap wrapped one hand around the metal bar that formed the side of Tony's bed, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles turned white. "I'm right here." He said it very quietly, and for the first time, Clint felt as if he were intruding on something. He and Rhodey probably weren't supposed to be hearing this.

Cap reached back and brushed the fingers of his free hand along the edge of his shield. "I'm right here," he repeated.


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Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven