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 Stark had originally made a whole floor for each of his superhero buddies, which hadn't really been renovated at all even in the multiple years the Avengers had been toast, so now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

[musicdied]

"The labs and the bar?" she guesses. "Are there any other places in the tower that give you that feeling?"

[makingitworse]

He has a sinking feeling that she named them first. "Yeah, those places. I mean, the labs are pretty creepy anyway, with the weird bedroom in a trailer and the plastic hanging everywhere, and the bar room was really trashed...." So it's perfectly natural to be unsettled by them. Right?

[musicdied]

"The labs are very creepy," she agrees, though she suspects they might have been perfectly nice robotics labs when Stark and Banner were in the tower. Maybe.

"We've put together a bit more about what happened after you crashed in the desert. Not everything yet, but I think we need to talk about what we do know. --The two of us, I mean, not a whole team meeting or any bullshit like that."

That would just be cruel, subjecting him to that much attention, that much scrutiny.

[makingitworse]

There is in fact a moment of wide-eyed panic before she clarifies. Right in time with it, the coffee table gives a rattle like an earthquake just shook it, vibrating the sand into smoothness and knocking the cushion off.

The combination of reassurance and distraction, bending down to collect the pillow again, makes the shaking stop. Bob either doesn't notice or willfully doesn't see. He hugs the pillow to his chest instead, visibly braces himself, and says, "Okay."

[musicdied]

Yelena definitely notices, and tenses a little until the shaking stops, and she's reasonably certain the coffee table isn't going to launch itself across the room. Or at them.

"I am guessing you have figured out that the medical trial you signed up for was a lot more than just a medical trial," she says. He'd survived a hail of bullets, and crash landing after flying up above the cloud line - it's not a hard line to draw from there.

[makingitworse]

"The... making us better part," Bob agrees guardedly. "It would have to be why I didn't die, back there." Because yeah, he does at least remember that much. And the memory thing, which he is, at this point, not 100% sure was real anymore. No one's mentioned it. ... though no one has held hands with him since then vault, either.

[musicdied]

Yelena nods slightly. "O.X.E. decided they wanted to make their own superhero. The study they recruited you for, and others like it in other parts of the world, was their way of recruiting test subjects for their methods. They scrapped the project as a failure, and sent us in to clean up any traces. I don't think Valentina even knew it worked on you until you got shot about a hundred times and didn't die."

Or maybe he had died. She'd seen the footage Bucky had pulled from the surveillance system; he'd been down long enough for Mel and Valentina to walk away. Resurrection isn't out of the question.

"She brought you here after you crashed, to the lab. To pick up where she'd left off with her Sentry project."

[makingitworse]

He listens. He looks... skeptical. Worriedly skeptical, maybe. Not that he doesn't believe Yelena, but... it just sounds like such a stupid idea. "She wanted to turn me into a superhero?" He is not superhero material. He knows that. Everyone knows that. The medical study definitely hadn't said anything about superheroes. He wanted to be better, but he likes to think he wouldn't be that arrogant, even on the highest of upswings.

Except he does remember a handful of his up-days, and he has a sinking feeling that that's exactly what happened.

[musicdied]

"I don't think she saw you at all," Yelena replies quietly. "I know that's probably a shitty thing to hear, but that is how Valentina works. She sees opportunity and resources, not people. In this case, the opportunity to slither out from under an impeachment hearing and shore up the power base that's been eroding out from under her. And the opportunity to control someone powerful enough that no one else would be willing to take a swing at her, unless she pissed off the Asgardians."

She stretches out one leg to nudge his ankle lightly with her foot. "It might not have looked like it would be a hard sell to a man who was willing to get himself killed giving three strangers just the chance to escape."

[makingitworse]

Learning that Valentina was in some kind of trouble, trying to scramble some kind of plan together, does fill in a few holes in his own understanding. Why she'd blindsided the rest of the team with the New Avengers thing. Why the tower doesn't look finished.

It might be reassuring, her little touch and her belief that he might have something good inside him, if not for the tangle of dread in the pit of his stomach. Valentina made him a superhero. And then he did something terrible with whatever power she gave him. Something that caused the absolute mess that is the city outside. That's why everyone acts afraid of him, except for Yelena-- and the other New Avengers, really. Had they stopped him? Is that why? They're confident that they can take him out of he does something else terrible?

He doesn't want to know. Knowing will make everything worse. But she's going to tell him whether he wants to know, or not. So he stares at her toe against his ankle and asks reluctantly, "What did I do?"

[musicdied]

"Completely wiped the floor with us, for starters," Yelena says, a little bit wryly. "You argued with Valentina, after we retreated. I don't know what about, because there wasn't any audio along with the footage, but she apparently decided she didn't have as much control as she thought she would. One of the things the O.X.E scientists did was implant something in your head that would let them take you down if the trials did work - and if you can stomach being in the labs long enough to run some scans, we should really check to make sure it was a one-use thing and didn't have any redundancies before you get in the same room with her or any of her people."

She pauses a moment, weighing whether or not to try to catch his gaze, and opts to let him keep that little bit of distance. "Do you remember what happened in the vault, when you touched my hand?"