Chapter 103: Stop, You Two, Please Stop Fighting
The betting pool had reached approximately eight hundred dollars.
"Cap's shield, man — I'm telling you, nothing touches that thing. Lasers, bullets, missiles — it just eats all of it."
"That's because it's vibranium. It's the only sample on the planet. Tony's got repulsors but he doesn't have that."
"He's got missiles."
"Cap dodges missiles."
"Nobody dodges missiles."
"Cap dodges missiles."
A third agent had opened a notebook and was recording the odds with the focused energy of a man who had identified an opportunity. "Okay, listen up — Iron Man to win, two to one. Cap, even money. First person to go down, side bet—"
Someone coughed.
The agent looked up.
Clint Barton stood at the building's entrance with the expression of a man who had come downstairs to stop a fight and found something else entirely.
He looked at the notebook. Looked at the money changing hands. Looked at the growing crowd of SHIELD agents who were all finding extremely creative reasons to be standing in the entrance plaza on a Tuesday morning.
"Training," he said, with the particular authority of someone who had once supervised twenty junior agents and had not fully recovered from the experience. "All of you. Now. I don't want to see a single person standing here in ten seconds."
The crowd evaporated with impressive speed.
Clint looked at the notebook. Looked at the cash.
Confiscated it.
He tucked the money into his jacket with the smooth efficiency of a man who had made a disciplinary decision and was also having a good morning. The agent who had started the pool opened his mouth.
Clint's expression closed it for him.
"Go train," Clint said.
He turned toward the fight.
Natasha had already reached it.
She'd come out of the building and stopped, taking in the scope of the damage: pavement cracked in two locations, a parked car that was no longer rectangular, Tony's armor showing significant cosmetic damage across the left shoulder assembly, Steve's uniform in the condition of something that had been through a moderate amount of punishment and was approaching its limits.
Both of them were still completely focused on each other, which meant neither of them had noticed her yet.
This is about the body, she thought. Tony wants something that Steve won't give. And they've both decided that fighting is simpler than explaining.
She stepped between them.
"Stop."
Steve froze. Tony hovered, right hand pointed at Steve's position, attention redirecting toward Natasha with the particular caution of a man who had learned that Natasha Romanoff between him and his target was a different problem than most obstacles.
"I can stop," Tony said, "as soon as someone gives me what I came for."
Natasha looked at him. "Bucky's body."
"Yes."
She filed this. A man she'd surveilled for months, who had never expressed any particular relationship with James Barnes, now willing to fight three-to-one odds over his remains.
There's something I don't know yet, she thought. And that's the problem.
"Steve," she said.
Steve's expression was doing several things, none of them simple. The fight had taken the edge off the initial grief-shock, which meant the more complicated version of it was settling in — the one that had to hold both Bucky was alive and Bucky is gone simultaneously, without the numbness that acute shock provides.
"Nobody takes him," Steve said.
"Give us a minute to—"
"Nobody."
Natasha started to say something else.
Tony fired.
It wasn't aimed at her — it was aimed at Steve, and she moved, because she always moved, and the blast went past her shoulder and hit the car that was already ruined. Steve was already countering, the shield coming around in the arc she'd seen him practice for hours, and the fight resumed at a higher intensity than before.
She got clear and watched and thought.
Her earpiece crackled.
"Natasha." Fury's voice. "Help Rogers. Get Barton. I need Stark contained before this becomes a press event."
She paused for exactly the half-second it took to decide that this was a containment problem, not a who's right problem.
"Copy," she said.
Clint appeared at her shoulder, money still faintly visible in his jacket pocket.
"Help Steve?" he said.
"Help Steve."
Tony saw them coming and thought: of course.
He was handling Steve fine — the armor made the physics work in his favor, and Steve's reflexes were extraordinary but they were still reflexes, patterned and predictable after enough iterations. He had the upper hand. He was probably going to get the body through attrition.
And then Natasha hit him from the left at the exact moment Clint's arrow found a joint in the armor's right knee assembly, and Steve drove the shield into his chest before he could reorient.
He went down.
"Call it," Fury said, from the entrance.
Tony looked up at three people standing over him and thought several things, in sequence, and arrived at the calculation that he was not winning this particular fight and that continuing it would be expensive in ways he hadn't budgeted for.
He let the armor stand down.
"Twelve hours," Fury said. "Custody. Forensic access. You return the body after."
Tony looked at him from the ground.
"You heard my conversation with Steve."
"I hear most conversations."
"And you're offering twelve hours."
"I'm offering twelve hours," Fury confirmed. "Because whatever you find in that body, I want to be the second person to know about it. Not the third."
Tony sat up. Looked at Steve. Looked at Natasha, who was watching him with the expression of someone who had decided she didn't have enough information yet and was reserving judgment.
"Twelve hours," Tony said.
"Starting now," Fury said.
Tony got to his feet, the armor's joints protesting mildly, and found Steve still standing there with the expression of someone who hadn't quite arrived at a decision.
"You said you'd explain," Steve said.
"I will," Tony said. "Come with me."
Steve looked at Fury. Fury looked at Steve.
"Go," Fury said. "I'll know what you find when you find it."
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