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harborshoreTitle: Old World Made New
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gen, contains Tony/Pepper and Clint/Coulson.
Contains: Deals with grief and trauma.
Word Count: 2034
Summary: Four necessary reunions. Pepper and Tony, Steve and Bucky, Natasha and Bucky, and Clint and Phil.
Disclaimer: I don’t own the Avengers.
Author’s Notes: The title is from “St Stephen’s Cross” by Vienna Teng. Here on AO3.
1.
It takes five hours until Pepper can get the flight authorities at Newark to let her land, and even then they stick her in airport security until the only reason she isn’t screaming is that she knows it would only make things worse. They yell at her the first time she tries to get on her cellphone so she puts it down, despite the way it makes her shake because she has a missed call from Tony and she doesn’t know if he made it out. There were aliens in New York City and she saw him fighting and she doesn’t know if he made it out.
The minute she’s allowed to get out she’s on her phone again, and she finds herself talking to Jarvis even though he’s not responding, because she’s so used to his connections always being up and a dry “Hello, Miss Potts,” the second she picks up her phone or enters their home or her office. But his connections don’t seem to be up at the moment, and she hopes that doesn’t mean anything.
The highways are full of traffic and SHIELD aren’t picking up either. Pepper sits in the back of the cab and swears at her phone and the other cars and Jarvis and at Tony for not picking up, for being a hero without her again.
She doesn’t cry until her phone lights up with a call as they’re inching down the New Jersey Turnpike and it’s Tony’s stupid picture on her stupid screen.
“Hi,” she says through her tears.
“Hey, Pepper, hey, what’s that, don’t--don’t cry, Pepper, I hate it when you cry. Where are you? The plane? Can I come to you? Wait, no, apparently I’m staying put, I have new friends and they have opinions about seeing doctors after battles, fine, Pepper, but the trip to DC can wait, don’t you think?”
“I’m on the New Jersey Turnpike,” she manages, smiling into the phone. “Of course I’m not going to DC right now. Idiot.”
“You’re insulting me, great, I love it when you insult me.” His voice is so warm and she’s shaking in the back of a cab and she’s probably not going to see him for another three hours at least, but it’s okay.
“I can do it some more if you want,” she offers, and he’s laughing, delighted.
“Always,” he says. “Always.” His voice gets a little shaky on the last word and she wants so badly to hold him.
“Heroic asshat,” she says softly.
“Mmm, don’t stop,” he says.
“I can’t believe I’m in love with you,” she says, because sometimes these things need saying and when Manhattan was nearly taken over by aliens, well. It’s one of those times.
“I can’t believe you’re in love with me either,” he says, devastatingly honest like he always is.
“Well, I am,” she says. “I really am, Tony, but if you go and do something like that again without telling me first I’m going to kill you, okay?”
“Those are fair terms,” he says. “I can agree to those.”
“Well, good,” she says, and it’s possible she’s crying again but it’s okay, because he’s safe for the moment and so is New York and their home might be a little battered but they’ll rebuild. They always do.
2.
Steve finds Bucky three weeks and one day after they save New York. He’s running down a street in Krakow, turning left down a narrow alley to see if he can shake his very determined followers who seemed to take exception to the way he set fire to their underground lab. Suddenly someone yanks him into a doorway, grip bruisingly tight on his arm.
He finds himself face to face with—no.
”You’re dead,” he says blankly.
The man who looks like Bucky is pale and hasn’t let go of Steve’s arm yet.
”You died first, dammit,” he says, furious, and then he swallows. ”Steve? It’s really—I’m not hallucinating or something here?”
”I think that should be my question,” Steve says.
”I saw you on the news,” Bucky says, because it is Bucky, it must be, unless he’s some kind of robot or someone’s doing magic again (Steve really hates magic). But he sounds like Bucky. ”Couldn’t believe it was you, though. Even if the destruction had you written all over it.”
”I’ve never been subtle,” Steve says and he might break right open with the effort of having this conversation when he doesn’t even know what to ask.
”No,” Bucky says, voice softening. ”No, you never were. Fuck, Steve.”
There’s running in the alley and Bucky doesn’t look away from Steve’s face, but he pulls out a gun and shoots twice over Steve’s shoulder and Steve can hear the thuds of two bodies dropping behind them.
”Want to get out of here?” he asks, and yes, Steve does. He really does.
”Never going anywhere without you again,” he manages, and then they take off running. They get caught later, and Bucky takes a beating before Steve can get out of the chains and get him loose and Steve really, really will never let him out of his sight from now on. Never.
He tells Bucky that and Bucky laughs in the Polish hospital bed, wincing at how it hurts his jaw when he does.
”So you keep saying. You planning on coming along when I go off with a dame, too?”
”If that’s what it takes,” Steve says, ignoring the way he has to be blushing.
Something in Bucky’s eyes darken. ”Could get awkward,” he says lightly.
”I don’t care,” Steve says. I’m never leaving you behind again, he promises silently. Bucky touches his cheek before succumbing to the morphine-induced sleep again. He hasn’t told Steve anything about what happened after he fell off a train yet, but Steve can’t even find it in himself to care right now.
3.
Natasha is the one to knock on Steve's door. The rest of them are spread out in a half-circle behind her, and Tony's poking her in the back.
"Come on, get the lock open, I know you can do it, he probably doesn't have any kind of a security system anyway, I need to get him to come live in the tower instead of this dump--"
"Watch whose apartment you're calling a dump, there, Stark," Steve says and Natasha has a moment to think that his voice sounds warm, like something filled out or a wound that scabbed over at last, slow in healing but getting there, while Steve is letting them in. Then she sees him behind Steve, stretched out on a couch and she can't breathe at all.
"Natalya," he says, James says.
She doesn't cry, she absolutely doesn't, but Clint grips her arm anyway.
"This is Bucky," Steve says, looking slowly between them. "Did you, do you--"
"We've met," Natasha says, though that doesn't even begin to cover it.
"Yeah," James says, struggling to sit up, and now she can tell he's injured, seriously injured, broken-fingers-wrenched-shoulder-at-least-five-broken-ribs-probably-a-concussion-and-a-banged-up-knee, "yeah, we have, come the fuck here, Natasha, goddammit."
Clint pushes her a little, because he knows her too damn well, and then she's hugging James and they're both shaking.
"Aw, man, not you too," he says, voice warm and low, and maybe she is crying, a little bit. He wipes his thumb over her cheek.
"You too?" Clint says in the background, sounding amused.
"He bawled like a baby," James confirms, and Natasha glances up at Steve.
"I mourned you all my life," Steve says simply, and his eyes are too honest again, it almost hurts to look at. "It wasn't very long, not after you, well, didn't die, but I mourned you every day, Barnes."
4.
Days later, she’s still warm from the unexpected gift of finding James here, mind as whole as it can be under the circumstances. He’s forgotten a lot but he remembers her and he remembers Steve and he’s fully himself, complete with awful jokes and unerring accuracy with a gun. Clint tells her she’s ”freaking the junior agents out, Natasha, they’re not used to you smiling,” but his face is soft when he says it and she knows he’s happy for her. She doesn’t know what to do for him, though, because his haunted look isn’t going away.
Not that she expected it to. Being mindcontrolled is like a prolonged assault and putting yourself together afterwards takes months, at least.
Also, there’s Phil. She knows what they were to each other. To her, losing Phil is like a wound healing badly, festering and aching; for Clint, it must feel like he’s constantly bleeding out.
So she does what she can, offers him a shoulder, a hand up, metaphorical and literal. She can help him live until he figures out how to do it for himself again.
Which is why she’s standing next to him when Fury calls all the Avengers in for a meeting. He’s uncharacteristically late, which Tony points out right away and Steve looks disapproving of. She’s fairly sure Steve mostly doesn’t want to leave James alone for long.
But when Fury walks in she understands why he’s late, because he’s trailed by Phil who is walking very slowly, leaning on Anita. A man who nearly died can’t walk very fast, Natasha knows.
Clint makes a noise next to her and she automatically reaches for him, one hand on his wrist. He doesn’t shake her off, which is how she knows just how upset he is. He doesn’t mind her touching him, but he doesn’t like being vulnerable in public.
It’s very quiet in the room. Steve’s the first to break the silence. ”We’re all thrilled to see you’re alive, of course, Phil, but may I ask what the reason for the subterfuge was?” Ever polite, is Captain America, but he wields it like a knife.
”My fault,” Phil says. His voice is hoarse.
”Sit your ass down,” Fury says. ”I let you come without a wheelchair, you sit down right now.”
Phil sits down and gestures at Fury. Apparently he’s ceding the explanation to him for now.
”You needed the push,” Fury says quietly, looking at all of them. ”I thought Agent Coulson was dead. It wasn’t until I went down to sickbay to visit the other injured agents, that I realized our medical personnel had taken it upon themselves to test one of our confiscated alien devices on him, and that it appeared to have sent him into a deep sleep, a medical coma. I didn’t want to tell you about that because I didn’t know whether we would get him back or not.”
”I woke up today,” Phil says, interrupting Fury. ”I woke up today, and I—” he’s looking at Clint. Of course he is.
”Go,” she says quietly, nudging at him.
He swallows, looking at Phil. ”Could you hit me on the head again?”
Oh. ”He’s real,” Natasha says. ”I promise, dorogoy, Clint. I promise.” She tightens her grip on his wrist, then uses it to push him forward. Clint stumbles but he’s looking at Phil like he might not be a hallucination and he manages the three steps he needs to get him to Phil and then Natasha can’t look anymore because her eyes are burning. Steve looks like he might be feeling the same way. He meets her eyes, smiling helplessly, and Natasha finds herself echoing his smile. She’s going to yell at Phil later, for nearly getting himself killed without backup, and she’s going to let Fury and Anita know that they can’t keep secrets like that from them, but for now she’s just glad. Endlessly, boundlessly glad that they’re all alive and here and she gets another chance at keeping them safe, all the people she loves.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gen, contains Tony/Pepper and Clint/Coulson.
Contains: Deals with grief and trauma.
Word Count: 2034
Summary: Four necessary reunions. Pepper and Tony, Steve and Bucky, Natasha and Bucky, and Clint and Phil.
Disclaimer: I don’t own the Avengers.
Author’s Notes: The title is from “St Stephen’s Cross” by Vienna Teng. Here on AO3.
1.
It takes five hours until Pepper can get the flight authorities at Newark to let her land, and even then they stick her in airport security until the only reason she isn’t screaming is that she knows it would only make things worse. They yell at her the first time she tries to get on her cellphone so she puts it down, despite the way it makes her shake because she has a missed call from Tony and she doesn’t know if he made it out. There were aliens in New York City and she saw him fighting and she doesn’t know if he made it out.
The minute she’s allowed to get out she’s on her phone again, and she finds herself talking to Jarvis even though he’s not responding, because she’s so used to his connections always being up and a dry “Hello, Miss Potts,” the second she picks up her phone or enters their home or her office. But his connections don’t seem to be up at the moment, and she hopes that doesn’t mean anything.
The highways are full of traffic and SHIELD aren’t picking up either. Pepper sits in the back of the cab and swears at her phone and the other cars and Jarvis and at Tony for not picking up, for being a hero without her again.
She doesn’t cry until her phone lights up with a call as they’re inching down the New Jersey Turnpike and it’s Tony’s stupid picture on her stupid screen.
“Hi,” she says through her tears.
“Hey, Pepper, hey, what’s that, don’t--don’t cry, Pepper, I hate it when you cry. Where are you? The plane? Can I come to you? Wait, no, apparently I’m staying put, I have new friends and they have opinions about seeing doctors after battles, fine, Pepper, but the trip to DC can wait, don’t you think?”
“I’m on the New Jersey Turnpike,” she manages, smiling into the phone. “Of course I’m not going to DC right now. Idiot.”
“You’re insulting me, great, I love it when you insult me.” His voice is so warm and she’s shaking in the back of a cab and she’s probably not going to see him for another three hours at least, but it’s okay.
“I can do it some more if you want,” she offers, and he’s laughing, delighted.
“Always,” he says. “Always.” His voice gets a little shaky on the last word and she wants so badly to hold him.
“Heroic asshat,” she says softly.
“Mmm, don’t stop,” he says.
“I can’t believe I’m in love with you,” she says, because sometimes these things need saying and when Manhattan was nearly taken over by aliens, well. It’s one of those times.
“I can’t believe you’re in love with me either,” he says, devastatingly honest like he always is.
“Well, I am,” she says. “I really am, Tony, but if you go and do something like that again without telling me first I’m going to kill you, okay?”
“Those are fair terms,” he says. “I can agree to those.”
“Well, good,” she says, and it’s possible she’s crying again but it’s okay, because he’s safe for the moment and so is New York and their home might be a little battered but they’ll rebuild. They always do.
2.
Steve finds Bucky three weeks and one day after they save New York. He’s running down a street in Krakow, turning left down a narrow alley to see if he can shake his very determined followers who seemed to take exception to the way he set fire to their underground lab. Suddenly someone yanks him into a doorway, grip bruisingly tight on his arm.
He finds himself face to face with—no.
”You’re dead,” he says blankly.
The man who looks like Bucky is pale and hasn’t let go of Steve’s arm yet.
”You died first, dammit,” he says, furious, and then he swallows. ”Steve? It’s really—I’m not hallucinating or something here?”
”I think that should be my question,” Steve says.
”I saw you on the news,” Bucky says, because it is Bucky, it must be, unless he’s some kind of robot or someone’s doing magic again (Steve really hates magic). But he sounds like Bucky. ”Couldn’t believe it was you, though. Even if the destruction had you written all over it.”
”I’ve never been subtle,” Steve says and he might break right open with the effort of having this conversation when he doesn’t even know what to ask.
”No,” Bucky says, voice softening. ”No, you never were. Fuck, Steve.”
There’s running in the alley and Bucky doesn’t look away from Steve’s face, but he pulls out a gun and shoots twice over Steve’s shoulder and Steve can hear the thuds of two bodies dropping behind them.
”Want to get out of here?” he asks, and yes, Steve does. He really does.
”Never going anywhere without you again,” he manages, and then they take off running. They get caught later, and Bucky takes a beating before Steve can get out of the chains and get him loose and Steve really, really will never let him out of his sight from now on. Never.
He tells Bucky that and Bucky laughs in the Polish hospital bed, wincing at how it hurts his jaw when he does.
”So you keep saying. You planning on coming along when I go off with a dame, too?”
”If that’s what it takes,” Steve says, ignoring the way he has to be blushing.
Something in Bucky’s eyes darken. ”Could get awkward,” he says lightly.
”I don’t care,” Steve says. I’m never leaving you behind again, he promises silently. Bucky touches his cheek before succumbing to the morphine-induced sleep again. He hasn’t told Steve anything about what happened after he fell off a train yet, but Steve can’t even find it in himself to care right now.
3.
Natasha is the one to knock on Steve's door. The rest of them are spread out in a half-circle behind her, and Tony's poking her in the back.
"Come on, get the lock open, I know you can do it, he probably doesn't have any kind of a security system anyway, I need to get him to come live in the tower instead of this dump--"
"Watch whose apartment you're calling a dump, there, Stark," Steve says and Natasha has a moment to think that his voice sounds warm, like something filled out or a wound that scabbed over at last, slow in healing but getting there, while Steve is letting them in. Then she sees him behind Steve, stretched out on a couch and she can't breathe at all.
"Natalya," he says, James says.
She doesn't cry, she absolutely doesn't, but Clint grips her arm anyway.
"This is Bucky," Steve says, looking slowly between them. "Did you, do you--"
"We've met," Natasha says, though that doesn't even begin to cover it.
"Yeah," James says, struggling to sit up, and now she can tell he's injured, seriously injured, broken-fingers-wrenched-shoulder-at-least-five-broken-ribs-probably-a-concussion-and-a-banged-up-knee, "yeah, we have, come the fuck here, Natasha, goddammit."
Clint pushes her a little, because he knows her too damn well, and then she's hugging James and they're both shaking.
"Aw, man, not you too," he says, voice warm and low, and maybe she is crying, a little bit. He wipes his thumb over her cheek.
"You too?" Clint says in the background, sounding amused.
"He bawled like a baby," James confirms, and Natasha glances up at Steve.
"I mourned you all my life," Steve says simply, and his eyes are too honest again, it almost hurts to look at. "It wasn't very long, not after you, well, didn't die, but I mourned you every day, Barnes."
4.
Days later, she’s still warm from the unexpected gift of finding James here, mind as whole as it can be under the circumstances. He’s forgotten a lot but he remembers her and he remembers Steve and he’s fully himself, complete with awful jokes and unerring accuracy with a gun. Clint tells her she’s ”freaking the junior agents out, Natasha, they’re not used to you smiling,” but his face is soft when he says it and she knows he’s happy for her. She doesn’t know what to do for him, though, because his haunted look isn’t going away.
Not that she expected it to. Being mindcontrolled is like a prolonged assault and putting yourself together afterwards takes months, at least.
Also, there’s Phil. She knows what they were to each other. To her, losing Phil is like a wound healing badly, festering and aching; for Clint, it must feel like he’s constantly bleeding out.
So she does what she can, offers him a shoulder, a hand up, metaphorical and literal. She can help him live until he figures out how to do it for himself again.
Which is why she’s standing next to him when Fury calls all the Avengers in for a meeting. He’s uncharacteristically late, which Tony points out right away and Steve looks disapproving of. She’s fairly sure Steve mostly doesn’t want to leave James alone for long.
But when Fury walks in she understands why he’s late, because he’s trailed by Phil who is walking very slowly, leaning on Anita. A man who nearly died can’t walk very fast, Natasha knows.
Clint makes a noise next to her and she automatically reaches for him, one hand on his wrist. He doesn’t shake her off, which is how she knows just how upset he is. He doesn’t mind her touching him, but he doesn’t like being vulnerable in public.
It’s very quiet in the room. Steve’s the first to break the silence. ”We’re all thrilled to see you’re alive, of course, Phil, but may I ask what the reason for the subterfuge was?” Ever polite, is Captain America, but he wields it like a knife.
”My fault,” Phil says. His voice is hoarse.
”Sit your ass down,” Fury says. ”I let you come without a wheelchair, you sit down right now.”
Phil sits down and gestures at Fury. Apparently he’s ceding the explanation to him for now.
”You needed the push,” Fury says quietly, looking at all of them. ”I thought Agent Coulson was dead. It wasn’t until I went down to sickbay to visit the other injured agents, that I realized our medical personnel had taken it upon themselves to test one of our confiscated alien devices on him, and that it appeared to have sent him into a deep sleep, a medical coma. I didn’t want to tell you about that because I didn’t know whether we would get him back or not.”
”I woke up today,” Phil says, interrupting Fury. ”I woke up today, and I—” he’s looking at Clint. Of course he is.
”Go,” she says quietly, nudging at him.
He swallows, looking at Phil. ”Could you hit me on the head again?”
Oh. ”He’s real,” Natasha says. ”I promise, dorogoy, Clint. I promise.” She tightens her grip on his wrist, then uses it to push him forward. Clint stumbles but he’s looking at Phil like he might not be a hallucination and he manages the three steps he needs to get him to Phil and then Natasha can’t look anymore because her eyes are burning. Steve looks like he might be feeling the same way. He meets her eyes, smiling helplessly, and Natasha finds herself echoing his smile. She’s going to yell at Phil later, for nearly getting himself killed without backup, and she’s going to let Fury and Anita know that they can’t keep secrets like that from them, but for now she’s just glad. Endlessly, boundlessly glad that they’re all alive and here and she gets another chance at keeping them safe, all the people she loves.
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Date: 2012-10-22 03:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-10-23 08:24 am (UTC)