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 Stark had originally made a whole floor for each of his superhero buddies, which hadn't really been renovated at all even in the multiple years the Avengers had been toast, so now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

[makingitworse]

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.

[musicdied]

"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.

[makingitworse]

Being unmoored isn't fun. Bob managed by never staying anywhere long enough for it to really be obvious, but Yelena does have a place... she said so. Was it not somewhere she felt secure? So he asks, "Not even in Ohio?"

[musicdied]

"No," Yelena says. She hesitates for a moment before admitting, "I lived there for a few years, when I was little. With Alexei and Melina, and Natalia. I was...looking to recapture something, I think, when I got a place there after the Blip. But I couldn't, and maybe it was something that never existed anyway."

She shrugs slightly, and pops the rest of her cookie into her mouth, chewing and swallowing before she adds, "But it was somewhere to keep my things, and there's enough room for Fanny to not get too stir crazy."

[makingitworse]

He nods to that a little. He can't think of a time he'd want to recapture. Maybe those few years in France. Those were kind of nice. "I'm sorry," he says after a moment. And then, because talking about dogs is probably always going to be better than talking about the past, he suggests, "Some of that budget you talked about should go to making one of the floors here into a dog park for Fanny."

[musicdied]

That startles a laugh out of her, though her expression turns considering after a moment. "Maybe I'll do that," she says. "The look on Valentina's face would be priceless. Have you ever had any pets?"

[makingitworse]

"Oh, no. I've never had a good home for a pet," Bob says, shaking his head. "I did have a dog follow me across part of Romania though. He ran off near the border." He'd run out of food by then, and scavenging hadn't been great, plus he'd been out of drugs by that point and wasn't doing great emotionally. It was for the best.

[musicdied]

"Maybe you could get one here, if you wanted," Yelena suggests. "There is definitely plenty of room."

More room by far than she can really imagine them using. The original Avengers might have, but the original Avengers had included two scientists who must have had their own lab space in addition to their quarters, to say nothing of any training space they might have needed for multiple people with very flashy superpowers.

[makingitworse]

Bob is not sure how long this situation is going to last, reassurances aside, so it doesn't seem like a great idea right now. He shrugs a little and doesn't address the idea directly. "It is pretty big. Are you going to make a lot of changes here?" Like getting rid of that weird bedroom-trailer down in the labs. He'd like that change.

[musicdied]

"Probably," Yelena says. "The first round is mostly going to be making sure we're comfortable and have what we need, and stripping out anything Valentina can use for surveillance or to pin shit on us. Then we can start getting creative."

She gives him a lopsided smile. "Do you have any suggestions? Aside from a dog park."

[makingitworse]

He considers mentioning the bedroom-trailer, but he can't explain why he doesn't like it beyond it being just generally creepy, and honestly he thinks she'd probably do that anyway. There's no purpose for it, for them, unless someone wanted for some reason to sleep in there.

So he just shakes his head a little. "There's already an actual mini-theater. That's the best idea I could come up with."

[musicdied]

"Well, if you think of anything, let me know." She stretches one leg out, and nudges his ankle gently with her foot. "And I meant it about redecorating in here, if you want."

[makingitworse]

"If I'm supposed to stay in here, I'm going to have to," he said, only a little reluctantly. "Put some posters on the wall instead of the weird paint-swatch paintings." They're expensive post-modern dual-color pieces. Bob does not get them at all. " ... Maybe a different couch." That's more expensive than posters, though.

He might keep the zen garden sand table thing. It's kind of neat to doodle in it. Just a little bit.

[musicdied]

"Posters and a different couch are definitely doable," Yelena assures. She considers him for a moment, as though contemplating trying to draw him out further, then decides to leave it. Given time, maybe he'll start to trust his welcome enough to personalize the space beyond wall art and a couch.

[makingitworse]

For someone who's been living out of hostels, people's living rooms, and alleyways for the past two decades or so, the idea of really taking ownership of a space is foreign. Maybe convince him he'll actually get to stay for longer than a couple months and he'll think about it.

He pulls out another cookie when she clearly decides not to ask whatever she was going to ask, and fills the silence with, "Have you talked to anybody else since this morning?"

[musicdied]

"Everyone in the tower, and a few extra people outside." She gives him a crooked little smile. "But mostly Bucky and Ava, trying to piece together just what Val has been up to. It's been a busy day. How about you?"

[makingitworse]

His day was definitely not busy. He feels a little bad about that, but really, how could he have helped? He definitely doesn't know what Valentina has been up to.

"I looked around some," he says. "Had breakfast. Your, uh, your dad banged on my door a little but I pretended I wasn't here." He's pretty sure Alexei is her dad, anyway. "I didn't really feel up to dealing with him on my own. He's very... loud."

[musicdied]

Yelena grimaces a little in sympathy. She may love Alexei, but she's very much aware of his flaws, and being loud is a factor in at least 50% of them.

"I am pretty sure he decided somewhere along the line that inside voices are a decadent Western conspiracy," she says, tone a little wry. "But probably he was just thinking you might need company, with the rest of us digging into the systems or...whatever Walker was doing. I think he said something about looking into repairs for the bar."

[makingitworse]

That might have been nice of him, he guesses, but... "He doesn't even know me," Bob says after a moment. He wants to add "does he?" but that would invite her telling him if he actually does.

[musicdied]

"No," she allows, because 'well, he sort of does, but only really as a psychic construct' might be leaping into the deep end a little too fast. "But he's a very social person. He already knows the names of all the children of the man who runs the coffee cart down the street, and we have not even been here for 24 hours."

She pauses for a moment, considering. "Of course, that might also be because he spent some time as a spy."

[makingitworse]

Bob can't help the skeptical look over at Yelena. Alexei, what little he's admittedly seen of him, did not make him think "spy". Unless his job as a spy was to act like a bumbling, overly cheerful Russian grandpa.

Then again, maybe it was. It would certainly not make you think "spy" at all.

"Maybe I can talk to him... not in here," he offers instead of doubt for the man's former profession.

[musicdied]

Even without him voicing his doubts, she doesn't miss that skepticism. She shifts one shoulder in a little shrug. "It was about thirty years ago," she says. "Before he spent a couple decades in a maximum security prison."

She's wondered more than once if that prison stay had also involved a traumatic brain injury or two.

"It's okay if you need a buffer. He's a lot sometimes."

[makingitworse]

Bob has the pessimistic thought that he might need a buffer for all of them, for a while. It's annoying, because he knows he's usually more social than this, but it doesn't feel-- right.

Well, at least Alexei doesn't seem to actively be an asshole like Walker. Or his own dad. He settles for just saying, "Thanks. I'll probably need it." And then he offers her another cookie.

[musicdied]

Yelena takes the offered cookie, takes a bite of it, and admits to herself that she's stalling. She knows the conversation is necessary, for all the reasons she discussed with Bucky, for all the reasons she'd laid out in her head each time she went over it.

She just doesn't want to hurt Bob, and that's not a good enough reason to keep him in the dark.

"Have you remembered anything else?" she asks after a moment. "About what happened after we escaped the vault?"

[makingitworse]

Shaking his head a little, Bob says, "I usually don't, when these things happen." It's not his first amnesia rodeo, here. Just his worst one, he thinks. Maybe worse than the one for the medical study that landed him in the vault. Hell, he doesn't normally have them this close together, either... that's a little troubling. He's been trying not to think too hard about it, that maybe they're going to keep happening more and more often, and he'll always be waking up in strange places with the feeling something terrible happened.

In the spirit of honesty, and trying not to sound like he's too worried about it, he adds, "There's... a few places in here that I don't really like, in the tower? But I couldn't tell you why. Just that something bad happened there."