New Avengers Tower

[worthallthis]

The press meeting takes way too long. Then they're all taken to a hospital, because most of them are injured in some way. Then Mel takes them back to that stupid tower. Avengers Tower. Watchtower. New Avengers Tower. Nobody knows what they're calling it.

They get a tour, even though they're exhausted and grouchy, and even though half the tower is clearly in some state of construction and clearly not ready to be shown off. The labs are complete, hastily so, but none of them are going to be going anywhere near those. The rooftop bar is still in shambles, and none of them want to linger there. The kitchen and restaurant-like eating areas spiraled out around it seem intact, and well-stocked, at least.

They each have their own floor. Stark had originally made a whole floor for each of his superhero buddies, which hadn't really been renovated at all even in the multiple years the Avengers had been toast, so now they're the cleanest and least disturbed of the whole tower.

Bucky gets Steve's, Walker gets Thor's, Ava gets Clint's.

Yelena gets the one meant for Natasha. Of course.

And Bob gets Banner's, with its combination of calming decor and Hulk-proof walls.

Then they're left alone to "rest" with the promise that Mel and Valentina will be in touch over the next few days, which sounds more like a threat than anything else.

Comments

Bob's floor

[makingitworse]

Bob doesn't remember much since the vault. But there are some rooms in this building that are... familiar. In an uncomfortable way. He's glad the tour in those rooms are brief, because he feels himself hunching in on himself even more the longer they linger in the labs, the room with the container dressed up as a bedroom, the ruined open space with the bar. No one says anything about what happened in those rooms when they pass them, but everyone else seems to know, from their expressions and their own tension.

Then they leave him in a whole suite of rooms. Really fancy rooms, with nice paintings and expensive sheets on the bed and a table full of sand that Bob wasn't sure if it was supposed to be more art or something else.

It all feels wrong. Bob walks around in it and feels out of place, like a thief sneaking into this rich person's house. He has no idea what he's doing here. Yelena and Ava want him here. Bucky and Alexei had agreed, and helped argue against Mel who wanted him... somewhere else. Walker had just looked like he wanted to hit something, but then, he usually looks like that.

He'll do what they want, because he doesn't know what else to do yet, but it doesn't feel right. He sits gingerly on one of the super-soft, minimalist-looking sofas and it feels wrong.

[musicdied]

Yelena rattles around her suite for a little while, restless, feeling like she's in a haunted house, seeing flashes of her sister in the decor and the media centre, and pieces that don't fit the image she has of the woman, unable to pick out which were really Natasha's and which were things Stark - or, more likley, some hireling - had obtained thinking they'd suit her.

Eventually, she hits on going to look in on some of the others instead of making her fifth circuit of the rooms, and looking in on the others really means looking in on Bob, because Ava had disappeared into the city, and she can hear Alexei's snores from the elevator, and she's pretty sure Walker's at least tried to corner Bucky somewhere, out of an assumption of camaraderie she'd almost find puppyish if it weren't being expressed by a man who'd all but beheaded a civilian on live tv.

So she turns up on Bob's floor, carrying a tray of masala chai because that's what she'd found in one of the kitchenettes and she actually knows how to make it properly, and raps lightly on the door.

[makingitworse]

The sound makes him twitch in surprise, blinking blankly at the door. But then he scrambles to his feet and goes to see who it is.

"Oh," he says. "Hi. Yelena. Uh, come in. Is that dinner?" A pause. Maybe there had been some group thing and he hadn't known about it, and Yelena is bringing him a plate. That's nice of her. "Did I miss dinner?"

[musicdied]

"Tea," Yelena says, shifting the tray a little so he can see the latte bowls and the little container of honey more clearly. "Chai. We probably are going to just fend for ourselves for dinner tonight, and figure out the whole chore wheel thing tomorrow."

[makingitworse]

"Tea. Okay. Thanks." He somewhat belatedly steps back a little, giving her room to come in. At least he didn't miss something important that he should have been at.

Or get left out of something intentionally, because it's not like he's a New Avenger or anything. Not like these guys.

Chores, though. Those he might be able to handle. "Do you think Walker will even follow a chore list?" He pulls up half a smile. "I can't imagine him washing dishes. Can you?"

Outside the media room, the morning after

[worthallthis]

Yelena isn't on her floor. She's not on any other floor, either. Bucky knows she's here, because he found the pizza out in the common floor the night before and assumed she had left it there-- he ate several slices while he worked. But now it's morning, and she still hasn't turned up. Had she left at some point during the night...?

He thinks he would have noticed. He didn't sleep all night, spending most of it in the security floor putting the system back together and piecing patchy and scattered footage into something coherent. The cameras on the exits showed no activity all night.

He hadn't been telling the truth when he told Alexei he doesn't get tired, but when he's on mission he can keep going even if he's tired. That's where he's at. There had been too much he didn't know, when the little "team" split up last night, so he set about filling in the holes with a more thorough search of the tower, then retiring to the security floor for an internet research and the cameras. It also had the added bonus of keeping him hidden from Walker, who absolutely tried to corner him early in the evening and Bucky just had no patience for dealing with him right now.

Finally, this morning, he feels better about the holes in his intel, but not about much of anything else. Yelena seems like a good person to start with to talk about it, but he can't fucking find her. He's about to give up and take a nap while he waits for her to surface when there's motion on the sole security camera in the hallway outside... the theater.

Huh.

He starts climbing stairs to intercept, hoping to reach her before she leaves the floor entirely.

[musicdied]

Yelena sleeps later than she'd intended, and wakes stiff and sore and momentarily deeply disoriented. It isn't until she spies Bob sprawled out beside her, apparently dead to the world, that she recalls where she is - the media room, in what was once upon a time Avengers Tower. For a moment, she's tempted to roll over and go back to sleep, but while the previous night had been a necessary indulgence, she has work to do.

She crawls carefully out of the blanket fort they'd constructed, and levers herself upright using the edge of the nearby table, which would be very embarrassing if anyone was awake to see it, and turns off the TV, which is open to an endlessly-cycling Netflix ad. After a moment's contemplation, she limps off toward the kitchen, which does at least put her still on the same floor.

[worthallthis]

The sound of the stairwell door opening once she reaches the kitchen is audible in the otherwise silent building. And the sound of Yelena opening a cabinet or fridge or something is equally audible to the supersoldier, so he angles that direction.

"Morning," he says as he comes in. And he realizes he hasn't eaten or drank anything since that pizza the evening before, when he sees the room he's entered. "Please tell me there's some coffee in this kitchen somewhere." It won't really do anything for him unless he drinks the whole pot, but it's still a comfort, he's found.

[musicdied]

They have, as it happens, similar priorities. Yelena is at the counter when he enters, poking at a coffee machine, modern and overbuilt. She starts to look over her shoulder, then stops and turns to face him, leaning back against the counter like it's nonchalance and not pain, though the ugly purple bruising that's just visible above the neckline of her shirt is hard to miss.

"Not yet. But either there will be in a couple minutes, or this is secretly an evil robot that will come to life and kill us all. I would put it 50/50 odds either way."

[worthallthis]

"This was Stark's place before Valentina bought it, so you might not be wrong in those odds," Bucky says. "He was notorious for weird robots, if Steve and Sam weren't pulling my leg."

He, of course, isn't bruised. A little achy in the shoulders, and there's some burn around the arm socket, but bruises fade too quickly. He eyes hers briefly, but makes no comment, because there's not a damn thing he can do for her that she probably hasn't thought of already.

"I put the security system back together overnight," he says. "I've got more of the story of what happened to your guy. Bob."

After some intel

[musicdied]

Yelena brings coffee and orange juice by the media room in which she and Bob had set their little camp up the night before, and lets him know there's cereal in the kitchen. She doesn't want to ambush him with horrors first thing in the morning, so after helping tidy up, she leaves him be to explore, and goes off on her own to shower and start working some of her contacts.

And then Ava returns, and they spend a few hours digging through the systems in the lab - only partially scrubbed, so they're chasing digital ghosts, which makes them both snicker. They break mid-afternoon, and apparently Alexei has gone shopping in the interim, which is a mildly terrifying prospect, but he has bought cookies, the little puffy marshmallow ones with jam and a thin chocolate shell that she'd loved when she was six years old and a hit of sugar could cure just about anything.

And maybe the curative properties of sweet treats aren't quite what she'd thought when she was six, but there's still something to be said for having cookies to offset bad news, so she snags a sleeve of the overly-sugared monstrosities, and sets off to find Bob.

[makingitworse]

Bob makes an attempt at watching another movie by himself, but he doesn't pick a good one, or it isn't as enjoyable without another person in the room, or he just isn't in the mood anymore. He stops halfway through and drifts out to see what else there is in the tower that he didn't pay attention to on the tour.

There's a lot, actually, but most of it makes him feel twitchy and unhappy, so he winds up retreating to the too-clean suite of rooms assigned to him. This time it's not quite as bad, since the bed is stripped, he leaves his shoes in the middle of the room, and hangs a towel over the back of a chair after a shower of his own. Now it's not quite so clean and neat, and it's a bit more bearable.

When Yelena finds him, he's in new clothes, still ill-fitting but slightly neater than his sweater and corderouy from the day before, borrowed from Bruce Banner's closet. He was doodling in the zen garden with a finger, a book from Banner's bookshelf sitting on the table, but he gets up with relief at the sound of a knock. It's probably Yelena. Alexei already tried knocking once, and he sounded much different, plus he yelled through the door, so Bob could pretend he wasn't there so he didn't have to deal with the strange, big, loud man. And he doesn't think anyone else really wants to deal with him yet.

[musicdied]

Yelena looks up at him when he opens the door, noting the change of clothes, and the fact that they still don't quite fit. Not a surprise, given they're borrowed - as are hers, though she's closer in size to Natasha than he is to Banner - and she wouldn't be surprised if he mostly lived in what he could borrow or scrounge second or third hand. But the analytical part of her brain pegs it as possible camouflage, something to make him looks smaller, more unobtrusive, the sort of person who won't attract attention, who can just disappear.

"Hey," she says with a little smile. "Can I come in? I brought cookies this time."

[makingitworse]

She's not even wrong. It's not entirely conscious, his preference for over-sized clothes, but there's definitely an element of "hiding" to it. It's safer when they can't see how big you really are, where your clothes end and you begin.

He mirrors her little smile. "Yeah, of course. You don't even need to bribe me with cookies." Though he will eat them. He had his cereal for breakfast, dutifully, but he hasn't eaten since. He opens the door wider so she can come in.

One of the cushions is on the coffee table between the sand and the book, too, where at one point he'd propped up his once again bare feet.

[musicdied]

She steps inside, glancing swiftly over the room and marking those little changes. A good sign, she hopes, though she intends to make good on her word from the previous night, and budget for a few things to make him feel a little more at home, or at least a little more like the space is truly his to do with as he pleases.

"I have to go away for a couple of days," she says. "Not right now, not until we have a few things sorted out here, but soon. And I was wondering if you would maybe like to come with me. Just a little road trip."

It has nothing to do with the reason she's sought him out, but she wants to ask now, so he doesn't assume it's pity after she's told him what she's come to tell him.

Alexei for Yelena

[worthallthis]

Yelena spends the afternoon with Bob, and Alexei decides to leave the two of them be. The one time he went looking, they were at the newly refilled pool on the training floor, and they looked like they were having a nice time. He wouldn't interrupt.

Especially since he had noticed Bob had pretended he wasn't home when he came looking. He will have to find out what that's about, and if there is something he should be doing differently. Perhaps Yelena will know.

He looks for her that evening, instead, tracking her down in the big empty building.

Re: Alexei for Yelena

[musicdied]

When he finds her, she's up at the top of the tower, on what was almost certainly a landing platform for the Quinjet and for those Avengers who could fly. She's sitting near the edge - not the sort of dangerous proximity that might result in a fall from breathtaking height, but a spot that affords a good view of the city's skyline backlit by the setting sun.

Re: Alexei for Yelena

[worthallthis]

"This not where I expected to find you," Alexei comments, coming up behind her with loud enough footsteps to not startle. "You like being up high?"

Of course his little girl would feel fine about heights, he thinks. She is, after all, very brave. (The idea that the Red Room would have perhaps conditioned fear of such things out of her crosses his mind briefly, but is dismissed. He cannot think about that mistake right now.)

Re: Alexei for Yelena

[musicdied]

Yelena turns to look at him, bracing herself with one hand on the concrete. It's rough beneath her hand, and solid in a way the more polished parts of the tower aren't.

"Ever since I was a little girl," she says. "But I guess this is a lot higher than the roof of our house was."

She can see the thread now. She knows why Melina had brought her up there, shown her how to climb the trellis at the side of the house under the guise of seeing the stars more clearly. It's still a fond memory, and the love of climbing and high places has remained, even after the Red Room stole so many other things from her.

Re: Alexei for Yelena

[worthallthis]

"By many, many stories," Alexei agrees, coming over to join her and dropping to sit at her side. He doesn't ask permission. She'd make it clear if she didn't want him here, he's sure. He doesn't hug her, yet, though that thought crosses his mind, too.

First he asks: "Are you up here thinking dark things, or only enjoying the view?"

Ava for Bob

[shieldreject]

Ava's found the robotics lab, several floors below the makeshift - and much creepier - lab Valentina and her cronies had set up to do whatever it is they were planning to do once they realized their little science experiment had worked. It's long since been stripped of any truly interesting tech. There are no prototypes she can tinker with, or maybe sell to fund an exit plan for when things inevitably go tits up.

But there's still an impressive amount of computing power, and she thinks she might be in love with the design table's holographic interface. The sound system is also killer, and the most immediate sign of life on this floor is probably the music leaking out into the hall from the door she's left cracked open.

The song of the moment is Take Me Out.

Re: Ava for Bob

[makingitworse]

Bob actually knows that song. It's not his favorite, but it's not bad.

He's kind of wandering around idly, unable to sit still in his suite but also not really wanting to bother Yelena again. He skipped the floor with the other lab on it entirely, but this floor he hasn't seen yet.

He nudges the door a little further open to see who's inside playing the music.

Re: Ava for Bob

[shieldreject]

Ava's currently bent over the holographic table, with what looks like a pair of heavy shackles set in the middle of it. She's scowling a little at a part of the display not quite visible from the door, and doesn't seem to have noticed him peeking in yet.

"What do you mean, access denied?" she grumbles, sounding personally offended by whatever the system isn't allowing her to do.

Re: Ava for Bob

[makingitworse]

The heavy shackles are what Bob focuses in on, and he knows it's probably paranoia that makes him immediately think they might be for him, but the idea is still there. It's not like anyone knows what might be able to hold him, and he did kind of beat all of them up just... yesterday, apparently.

He starts to step back and away, afraid to ask, but the door creaks open further on accident to alert her that she's being watched.

Re: Ava for Bob

[shieldreject]

She jerks up straight at the sound, attention snapping toward the door. The fact that she relaxes slightly when she sees Bob might suggest that she's not, in fact, working on a trap for him - or maybe just that the sight of a familiar face reminds her that she is, in fact, supposed to be here, and doesn't have to fight or drop through the floor to escape.

"You can come in," she says. "I'm pretty sure these don't give off any dangerous radiation. Though 'dangerous' might be relative for the both of us."