pennysheets | New Avengers Tower

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New Avengers Tower

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 Stark had originally made a whole floor for each of his superhero buddies, which hadn't really been renovated at all even in the multiple years the Avengers had been toast, so now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.

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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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

Getting out of this tower sounds like a great idea, to him, but he's not sure she'd really want him along for that long, either. She doesn't really know him, still, he thinks. ... even if they did have a nice time watching movies last night.

"Where are you going?" he asks, not agreeing or disagreeing yet. Instead, he drifts back to the couch, eying the sleeve of cookies and realizing he's actually kind of hungry.

"Ohio," she says, following in his wake as he heads back to the couch. And because her choice merits some explanation, she adds, "I have a place there. I can have most of my things shipped, but there are a few I want to pick up myself. And I need to get my dog. Her sitter is very patient, but she doesn't want to drive all the way to New York."

He looks up at her at that, surprised and curious. "You have a dog?" He's always liked dogs. Somehow, thinking about it, Yelena does kind of seem like a dog person. But the idea that she'd been a super-spy and black ops agent and... whatever she actually was, and had a dog, seems like it must have been difficult. "What's her name?"

Yelena nods slightly. "An Akita mix," she says. "Her name is Fanny. Here, take these--"

She holds the cookies out to him, and pulls her phone from her pocket, scrolling through to bring up a picture of a dog rolling in a pile of leaves. "See? She has the fluff, but not so much the temperament. Which is probably a good thing."

He accepts the cookies readily, drops down onto the couch properly at last, and opens the bag to peek inside while she searches through her phone. He hasn't had time to eat any when she holds it over to him, and he leans over first.

"Wow, she's beautiful," he says, and does at least sound like he means it. He doesn't even comment on the "funny" choice for a name. "How long have you had her?"

"Four years," Yelena says as she drops down next to him, not touching but companionably close. "I adopted her a few months after I...came back. I'd always wanted a dog, since I was a little girl, and someone I knew was looking for homes for rescues. I fell in love with her furry little face almost as soon as I met her."

"I can see why. I probably would have, too." And then been unable to do anything about it, because he hasn't had a stable home since he was sixteen. He pauses, hand in the bag to pull out the first cookie, does the math to calculate the year, and asks, "Came back from the Blip?"

"I still can't believe that's what we all went with," she grumbles jokingly, because facing the collective trauma of the entire planet head on isn't something she's ever going to be equipped for. She slips her phone back into her pocket and looks back up at him. "From the Blip, yes."

"Yeah, it's kind of dumb." But it also makes it seem somehow less awful, to give it a dumb name. Then they can complain about the dumb name instead of disappearing for five years. He can't even imagine how the people left behind cope. For him, it hardly seemed like anything. It's not like anyone missed him, or he had anyone to miss.

"I did that, too," he says, though. "The blipped thing. Came back to a hostel room with two other people in it, who were really surprised when I formed back up at the foot of the bed."

"That would be very startling," she agrees. "Like seeing a ghost."

She pauses a moment, then leans in to confide, "I was in a bathroom. Luckily, there was no one else there when I came back, or it would have been very awkward."

It had been horrible. Disorienting and distressing and difficult to believe, even before she'd learned about her sister's death, the sacrifice she'd made to save the world. But there's still something a little bit funny about the thought of potentially being resurrected right next to someone who was just trying to pee.

"Oh, that would've been really awkward," Bob agrees sympathetically. He offers her the first of the cookies. "It was the middle of the night in the part of the world I was in, so there was, uh, some screaming when they woke up." He's just lucky they'd only been asleep and not having sex or something.

He pulls out his own cookie, remembering, "There screaming in the whole hostel, actually. Four other people just appeared in people's rooms, too."

She takes the offered cookie with a little smile of thanks.

"I'll bet. That must have been very disorienting for everyone." She gives him a thoughtful look, then asks, "Did they at least have space for all of you to stay the night and get your bearings a little?"

"Two people had to double up, and one guy left immediately even though it was the middle of the night, and I slept on the floor of one room, but the couple who ran the hostel didn't kick us out," Bob assures her. He tries the cookie, and wow, is that sweet. Not bad, though.

Yelena takes a bite of her own cookie, and it tastes just like she remembers, sugar a faint burn at the back of her throat.

"That's good," she says. "I remember it was chaos, with so many people displaced, no one knowing how ownership worked when four billion people just came back to life. The motels and short-term rentals here were packed for months. Which brings me back around to my question - do you want to come with me on a road trip? Keep me from falling asleep and driving into a ditch."

"Okay," Bob says with a little nod. Maybe she'll get sick of him on the drive, but he can at least keep her awake, and having two people to entertain a dog on the drive back will be a good thing. "I'll go. Do you have a car here? I guess we can rent one." He knows that's an option. He has absolutely never done it before.

"No," Yelena says. "This is actually only my third time even being in New York City. We'll have to rent." She pauses, then gives him an impish little grin. "Or see if there's a garage here we can borrow something from."

The big truck they all crashed through the front door might still be there. Probably not any of Tony's fancy cars, though. "I didn't get all the way down to the garage before I gave up exploring," Bob admits. "There might be something there."

Tony's cars are certainly long gone, auctioned off or kept by his wife. But she's not above borrowing anything that belongs to one of the scientists, or to building security, to tweak the noses of Val's people.

"We'll check it out later," she decides. "--How are you feeling? Settling in any better?"

He finishes off the cookie, so his mouth is occupied and he can get away with a shrug for a moment while he tries to decide how to answer. In the end, he winds up with the equally non-committal, "I don't know." He tries to to up with something more, and all he can think of is the true but inadequate, "I don't know if I'll ever really be settled anywhere. I haven't had an actual place of my own for a really long time."

And that place was only for a few months, a studio apartment in America, before he'd even moved off the continent. It certainly hadn't been anything like a fancy tower full of corners that resonate uncomfortably with things he doesn't remember.

"Believe it or not, I know the feeling," she says. "At least a little."

The Red Room's brutal training had conferred a number of very useful skills. One thing it hadn't built, in any of its operatives, was a solid sense of home.

After some intel

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