Hey, there. So, obviously, NaNoWriMo fell through. Incidentally, most of my life has fallen through for the last three months. I've been busy applying to (and BEING ACCEPTED TO!) pharmacy school, and I've been in (and am still am in, tbh) a pretty serious funk. This chapter went through round 1 of editing three months ago, and then it just sat there 'til yesterday. Sorry about that, to the 4 people who actually care.

I don't know if I'm ever going to finish this story, but it seemed stupid to never post this chapter.

What else...I deleted my account over at Archive of Our Own at the beginning of December, so don't look for me over there anymore.

I think that's about it.

Oh! Thanks, as always, to my a-ma-zing beta, bequirk!

Tony Stark (genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist) never missed an opportunity to make money.

Well, not never. Just not often. He'd missed investing in Apple back in the day and now he had to compete with them instead. Not a big deal, just an inconvenience. A minor one. One that he rued a couple times a...day.

Anyway. Tony liked to think it was because he was enterprising, not because he was heartless, that he saw the Manhattan disaster as a prime opportunity to cash in.

Sure, all the dead people sucked. And yeah, he'd been lucky that the destruction hadn't spread to his own little corner of the world, Stark Tower, located centrally in New York City. He wasn't unaware of these facts. They were just secondary to the fact that, well, the opportunity was ripe for the picking.

Before he'd even seen the newscast loop more than twice, he was already thinking. By the third loop, he'd come up with an idea. By the fourth, he'd roughed out a design. By the fifth, he'd hit a snag.

The snag was the power supply.

His idea was this: right now, the best protection that search and rescue had available was hazmat suits. Those were bulky, uncomfortable, and severely limited the kinds of activities they could engage in. They needed something better. Something that could protect them from the nanites—

"JARVIS, new folder. Pull all research relating to Dr. Bruce Banner. Also known as Robert Bruce Banner. Get everything you can about him and what he was working on."

"Of course, sir," the AI replied. "Shall I also index private government servers?"

"Duh," Tony replied. Obviously.

Then he went back to his train of thought.

Search and rescue needed something that could both protect them from the nanites and from the hazards of working in and around the crumbled ruins of what had once been a building. Ideally, they could have something that would let them shift heavy debris without the use of bulky, awkward equipment.

They needed something that Tony, and only Tony, could sell them.

Tony's idea, then, was to construct a wearable prosthetic suit that insulated its wearer from the external environment. Throw in an air filtering system, it wouldn't be too hard. The suit had to be strong enough to protect its wearer from damage, light enough to be mobile, and imbue its wearer with enough extra physical strength that someone could shift heavy pieces of concrete and rebar.

The design was simple enough. The power supply, though...

Tony exited his penthouse and went down to his workshop. First, he sifted through all the designs he had for power supplies. He needed something self-contained, something small, something powerful.

Unfortunately, none of his options were especially promising. He had some that were small and powerful, but not self-contained. He had some that were self-contained and small, but not powerful. And he had one that was powerful and self-contained, but not small.

Not small at all.

The arc reactor. His dad had designed it, and in theory it could provide almost endless power. The problem was that it was huge—nearly the size of a small house.

Tony sighed, frustrated. WHY did he always have to invent new tech to do what he wanted?

He twirled around in his computer chair, thinking. The arc reactor was his best option. He just...had to make it...smaller.

Many hours later, the door to his workshop opened and Pepper Potts, Tony's PA-turned-CEO-turned-girlfriend walked in, heels clicking authoritatively against the stone floor.

"Tony," she said. Enthralled in his work, it barely registered to Tony.

"TONY!"

That got his attention. "What? Oh, crap." Tony glanced at the time. "Did I miss dinner? Did we have plans?"

"We did," Pepper said patiently. "But they were canceled by the massive disaster. You know, Dr. Banner? Terrorism?"

"It seems familiar," Tony said, stretching, working out a kink in his back. At Pepper's dismayed look, he added, "I'm kidding, Pep, I know what happened. Look, I'm working on something—"

"How can you work right now?" she interrupted. "Haven't you been watching—"

"I was watching the news," Tony interrupted her this time, "And it got me thinking about something..." he trailed off, looking at his specs.

After a moment, Pepper prodded, "And?"

"And what? Oh. I'm working on a, uh, prosthetic for the search and rescue teams. Something that'll help them do their thing. You know I'm a philanthropist."

Pepper gave a wry smile. "And I'm sure you're motivated just by a desire to help."

"Well, yeah. If I happen to make a boatload of money by revolutionizing disaster response, that's just a nice bonus." Tony grinned in what he felt was a roguish manner.

Pepper shook her head and sighed. "Tony."

"What?"

She looked over his design, studying his work so far. "You can't sell these things to the Fire Department and everyone else, it's immoral."

"Obviously," Tony said. "I'm going to donate them."

Pepper raised an eyebrow.

"And then," Tony went on, "Every other city is going to see how cool they are and want their own." He was going to make a fortune.

"Uh huh," Pepper said dryly. "You're planning to profit off terrorism."

Tony saw no problem with this. "I've been profiting off war for my whole career."

She sighed but didn't press. "I was going to go over our stock reports, see what our losses are going to be once the market tanks tomorrow."

At that, Tony grinned. "I'm not the only one with money on my mind then!"

Pepper reached over and punched him. "I'm just doing my job, mister. Want to grab dinner with me and we can go over it?"

"Sounds good," Tony agreed. "What's open?"

"Our kitchen," Pepper replied. "Everything in the city is closed. Hope you're ready to cook."

Tony wasn't.

Later, after he'd managed to convince his favorite Thai restaurant to open just for him and he'd shared a few dishes with Pepper, Tony managed to escape back to his lab.

Unfortunately, his earlier concentration had been broken, and since he knew better than to try and force genius, Tony decided to turn his attention to the file he'd had JARVIS pull together for him regarding Dr. Banner.

The name sounded familiar, and after a few short moments of perusing, Tony knew why. Banner had published prolifically in the field of nuclear physics, though, interestingly, he hadn't published anything for a couple of years. It looked liked he'd been working on a series of high profile projects at Culver, focusing primarily on nanotechnology, before he'd fallen completely off the map.

That was strange and it piqued Tony's curiosity. He went back scrolled through the surface-level stuff, mostly a glorified Google search, and verified. Yup, all kinds of publications and then...nothing, not even a conference appearance in years. His CV hadn't been updated since his last publication, and that had been over 2 years ago.

Tony dug a little deeper, looking for background information. As far as he could tell, Banner had been a pretty regular guy before he'd decided to become Public Enemy #1. Nothing strange in his past, except for his apparent intelligence—he'd graduated from college at 17—and—

Oh. Wait.

There was an old article from some small town newspaper. The headline read, "Brian Banner Pleads Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity."

That didn't sound good. Tony clicked on it.

Brian Banner, 42, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the charge of murder in the first degree. Banner is accused of killing his wife, Rebecca, at their home last March. Prosecutors say that Banner bludgeoned his wife to death in front of their young son, Robert, before turning on the boy as well.

Robert remains in the custody of his grandmother after his release from the hospital. The trial is set for October 14th.

There was nothing else regarding the case. Either the newspaper hadn't put their full archives online, or nothing else had ever been published about it. Could be either; small towns weren't renowned for either their reporting or their technology.

Tony sighed in frustration and leaned back in his chair. He suspected it wouldn't be long until the media got ahold of that story, probably only three or four days, and then maybe something else would shake loose.

He hated waiting.

As a distraction, Tony delved into the stuff JARVIS had pulled from the government. It basically explained where Banner had been for the last few years: pulled into top-secret government research. It looked like it had been related to his previous work in nanotechnology, except he was supposed to be working on more biological applications.

From there, it was easy to see what had happened; Banner's work had gone south, he'd stopped making progress, probably got angry about it. He'd had his funding cut and then, wham, explosion. Made perfect sense.

Except...his funding hadn't been cut, Tony saw, perusing a memo. At least, not until after the explosion. The memo, sent from "the desk of General Ross" only to the highest ranking administrators in Banner's department and marked Top Secret, was only a few hours old, had been sent well after the attack.

Curious. Very, very curious.

"JARVIS, make a note," Tony said. "Banner's funding wasn't cut until after his attack. See what else you can find from the Department of Defense that might relate to him at all."

"Certainly, sir," JARVIS replied. "In the interim, might I suggest looking at page K-95 of Dr. Banner's research notes. I feel it may be pertinent to your current research objectives."

"Thanks, J," Tony replied as JARVIS opened the pertinent page. As usual, the AI was right—the information was incredibly useful and could probably solve at least one of the major problems he'd been having with getting the arc reactor down to useful size.

Momentarily, Tony felt guilty, since he was basically stealing this guy's research. It passed quickly, though; probably, he would have worked out the solution on his own eventually. And if it led to the kind of money Tony thought it could—he'd be revolutionizing renewable energy as well as disaster response—he could send Banner a cut while he was chilling on death row.

Fat lot of good it would do him there.

New insights in mind, Tony got down to work.

Within a day, he'd designed a new, miniature arc reactor.

Two days, and he'd knocked together a search and rescue prosthetic suit. Then he'd knocked together 2 more.

Three days, and he was being hailed as a genius and life saver. He took the attention in stride and his company vetted something like 400 orders for similar suits in one day. He started to work out the details for mass production efforts to start ASAP.

Early on day four, Tony finally got around to looking at what JARVIS had compiled from the Department of Defense regarding Banner. By noon, he'd noticed some serious irregularities between what he had and what the media was reporting. In addition to the timeline for the funding cut being off, Tony found several performance reviews that indicated no one was at all unhappy with how Banner's research was going. Finally, security logs of the building showed that Banner had been there at the time of the explosion, despite the ongoing reports that Banner had detonated a bomb remotely. If that was true, then Banner was probably dead.

That led Tony to the conclusion that General Ross, who'd been the first to publicly blame Banner, was full of shit. Someone had blown up that building, but it probably hadn't been Banner.

Late that night, though, the news revealed that Banner had been brought into custody and was awaiting questioning. They did not, it was interesting to note, say who had captured him, though they did have a very short video of a thin, miserable looking man being led at gunpoint off a helicopter and into an unmarked black car.

Definitely Banner. JARVIS confirmed with facial recognition.

Not dead, then.

He'd survived the explosion, unlike every other person in the area. He'd survived the nanites somehow, when no one else had. That made him very, very interesting.

The next morning, Tony chartered a flight to Washington.

He needed to get some answers.

Damn his curiosity.

"JARVIS, find Dr. Banner," Tony said to his phone, throwing his suitcase on the hotel bed and pulling out his tablet. "Find out who has him and where."

"Of course, sir," JARVIS replied.

"Could you also find me a decent Italian restaurant? I'm in the mood for carbs."

"Yes, sir," JARVIS said dutifully. A moment later, a map popped up on Tony's tablet. "Internal memos indicate that Dr. Banner is being held at SHIELD's facility. I've marked the location here. There is an Italian restaurant within walking distance."

"Great," Tony said, rifling through his suitcase for a more authoritative looking tie. He was thinking red, maybe, or gold. "And what's SHIELD?"

"They are an international organization, sir, who deal primarily with threats deemed too significant for other agencies. Their current director is one Nicholas Fury. Would you like his file?"

Tony waved it off. "Nah, thanks though." He glanced down at the map while he slid a red tie on in place of the blue one he'd been wearing. "Send the address to the car and call Pepper, would you?"

"Of course."

A moment later, Tony was out the door and Pepper was on the phone.

"Tony? Did you make it to Washington okay?"

"Yup, no problems," he assured her, heading towards the parking garage—he wasn't a big fan of valet. Then, before she asked, he continued, "So, I'm going to go demand entry to some super secret government clubhouse, just wanted to let you know in case I'm arrested or something."

Several seconds of silence. Then, "Tony."

No yelling. That was good. "I'm like, 53% joking."

Pepper sighed. "Tony."

"Maybe even, like, 65%."

"Whenever you get arrested, our stocks drop."

Like he didn't know. "Come on. I haven't been arrested since that thing in 2009—"

"Oh, are you forgetting about 2011?"

"That doesn't count," he retorted. "I was never charged." They'd been over this. "I just wanted to let you know so you didn't worry."

"Right," Pepper replied. "I'll worry so much less now that I know you're, what, breaking into the FBI?"

"Something like that. Look, I'll be home tomorrow morning. Maybe even later tonight if I feel like driving." He unlocked the rental car's door and slid behind the wheel, tossing his briefcase onto the passenger's seat. "Promise."

"Okay," Pepper said. "Try not to cause an international incident or something?"

"I will," Tony agreed, walking around to his side of the car. "Bye, Pep."

"Be good," she said, then hung up.

Tony checked the GPS, pleased to see that JARVIS had already overridden the default system, then headed out of the parking garage.

The drive to SHIELD or whatever was fairly short as his hotel was centrally located, and within a few moments, he pulled up in front of a nondescript office building. There was no sign or other indication that he was in the right place, but JARVIS was never wrong. With a shrug, Tony parked in a no parking zone, grabbed his briefcase, and lopped up to the front door. The faster he got this done, the faster he could have his pasta primavera.

The lobby inside was clean and open, lots of straight lines and glass. People in various outfits—suits, strange looking uniforms, casual wear—walked through, to and from the elevators. They all ignored Tony, and so he walked up to what he assumed was the reception desk.

"Can I help you?" asked the woman seated there, politely, blankly.

"Yeah," Tony replied. "I'm here to see Dr. Banner."

"And you are?" the woman asked, politely, blankly.

Tony pulled his sunglasses up and rested them on top of his head. "Tony Stark."

"I see," she said, politely and blankly, completely without inflection. She typed something into her computer. "I'm sorry, you're not authorized."

Not surprising, he hardly ever was. Tony didn't usually let that stop him, though. "That's okay. If you could just tell me where you're keeping him...?"

"No," the woman replied, politely and blankly. With that, she looked back at her computer, ignoring Tony completely.

"Ooookay," he said, mostly to himself. He stepped back. It looked like this was going to be annoying. Frowning, he turned and walked back out of the lobby and stepped out into the late afternoon sun.

His car was gone.

"Are you kidding me?" Tony said, looking up and down the street. There was no sign of a tow truck or anything. He'd been inside for less than two minutes.

Thoroughly annoyed, now, he pulled out his phone. "JARVIS, get me this 'Nicholas Fury' on the phone."

"Of course, sir."

A moment later, a man's voice answered, "This is Fury."

"Hi, Nick," Tony said. "Tony Stark."

"Mr. Stark. What can I do for you?"

Tony was disappointed. No 'how did you get this number,' no irritation at the familiarity, no indignation at all. At least this Fury guy seemed to know who he was. He hated it when people didn't.

He was kind of a big deal.

"Well," Tony replied, "I tried to get in to see Dr. Banner, but your receptionist down here wasn't being very helpful. You might want to have a talk with her."

"Lisa gets excellent performance reviews, Mr. Stark, I assure you. How did you know we had Banner?"

Ah, finally, the curiosity. "It wasn't hard." He wasn't going to cop to hacking the government, not just yet. It was, as far as he knew, still a felony.

"I see. And what do you want with him?"

"Mostly to know how he's still alive after being exposed to his nanites during the explosion," Tony said casually.

"Banner wasn't on site during the explosion," Fury replied, calmly. "Everyone knows that, or he'd be dead. Like all the people he killed."

"Right, yeah, obviously," Tony said. "Except there's security logs that show he was in the building at the time of the explosion, soooo..."

Fury did not sigh, though Tony got the distinct impression he wanted to. "Stark. What do you want?"

"I just told you. He should be dead. He's not." Tony paused, then added, "Banner didn't blow up that building, did he? He's being framed."

It was a hunch, but evidently a good one. Fury sighed. "I'll have someone escort you upstairs." He paused, then added, "Hacking a government agency is a felony."

Good to know.

"How's your face?" Natasha asked, handing Clint a sweatshirt.

"Hurts," he muttered, pulling the garment on over his head, carefully avoiding his face. He'd been cleared to leave medical, finally, and he was looking forward to getting something to eat before Natasha drove him home.

Something soft.

Since he wasn't supposed to do much chewing.

Then he was going to sleep for about 12 hours, barring any other catastrophes.

He sighed, adjusting his sleeves and trying to find a mirror. There was none.. "How's it look?"

"Awful," Natasha replied. "Kind of like a raccoon, kind of like you got thrown face first into a tree."

Clint frowned.

"Sorry," she said. "Was I supposed to lie?"

"Yes." Clint tucked his phone into his jeans pocket and his wallet into a different one. He grabbed his keys off the table, and together, Clint and Natasha headed towards the cafeteria.

It was late afternoon, not quite dinner time, and the place was pretty much empty. Clint got himself the biggest bowl of ice cream he could manage, making a face at Natasha's judgmental frown.

"I can't chew," he reminded her.

"There's soup," she said.

Clint shrugged. After the day he'd been having, he thought he deserved ice cream.

With a sigh, Natasha grabbed her own bowl of ice cream.

"Hypocrite," Clint mumbled.

"I'm not going to let you make bad life choices on your own," she replied.

Most of the tables were empty, and Clint migrated to his favorite. It was in the corner and offered a good vantage point on the rest of the room. Also, it was close to the ice cream machine, and that was of the utmost importance.

Together, they tucked into what was standing in for a meal. After a few minutes of eating, Natasha asked in a low voice, "Who's that guy with Dr. Ross? I don't think I've seen him around here before."

Clint looked up from his bowl and glanced in the direction Natasha was looking. Then, he closed his left eye, as it was mostly hindering him anyway. Finally, a few tables away, he saw the guy she was talking about, sitting at a table with Dr. Ross, who was in biomedical research, and several plates of food. He seemed to have finished a few of them and showed no signs of stopping.

"Dunno," Clint said. "Whoever he is, looks like he's never had food before." He took a bite of ice cream, then added, "I didn't know anyone could be that enthusiastic about cafeteria food."

Natasha chuckled. "New scientist, maybe?"

"No," she answered her own question. "No ID badge. Whoever he is, he doesn't work here."

Honestly, Clint wasn't all that invested, more interested in finishing his food and getting some rest. "Visitor, then?"

"No visitor badge, either," she said. "Maybe he's—"

Clint never got to hear her next theory, as she was interrupted by her phone chirping in her pocket. She frowned, pulling it out, and glanced at the screen, then at her mostly-eaten bowl of ice cream.

"Fury needs me to escort someone from the lobby. Shouldn't take long, then I can come back, grab you, and drive you home."

Clint looked at his own mostly-finished bowl and shrugged. "I can just come with you now." He knew better than to suggest he just drive himself home—after the pain meds, he wasn't that stupid. Besides, with one eye seriously screwed up, his depth perception was way off. He just wanted to get to his bed ASAP.

The pair stood and headed for the exit; on the way past Dr. Ross's table, Clint could hear her mystery visitor listing off what sounded like a random list of diseases. "...anemia, asthma, arrhythmia, ulcers..."

On their way to the elevator, four different people stopped Clint to comment on his face; unfortunately, as what had happened with Banner was classified (and since no one really knew what had happened with Banner), he had to lie about the origin of his injuries, and he wasn't feeling very creative. By the fourth comment, he just barked out, "It's classified!" and kept walking.

"Geez," Natasha commented, pressing the "down" button on the elevator. "Someone's testy."

"Someone got thrown into a tree and had his face broken," Clint muttered. "Did Fury say who we're escorting?"

Natasha shook her head. "No, he just said that there was someone in the lobby waiting for an escort."

Clint wanted to say something else, mostly snarky, but the elevator door opened and he found himself face-to-face with Tony Stark.

Clint knew who Tony Stark was, of course. Like many other people in the world, he owned a piece of Stark technology. In his case, he had an mp3 player that Natasha had given him for Christmas two years ago. It functioned, so Clint didn't really think about it or Stark that often, if ever. He had no strong feelings about the man one way or the other.

That changed quickly.

"Oh, hey, wow, looking a little rough there, bad day at the office?" Stark said, surveying Clint's face. "Geez."

Clint's frown deepened. He opened his mouth to retort, but Natasha cut him off. "Mr. Stark. I'm Agent Natasha Romanoff, I'm here to escort you to Director Fury's office. This is my partner, Agent Clint Barton. He's one of the best marksmen in the world and is trained in three martial arts, and he is having a bad day; I suggest you don't antagonize him."

Stark stepped onto the elevator. "Absolutely, didn't mean to offend." The doors shut behind him and he turned around to face front as Natasha pressed the "up" button and punched in an access code. "I'm just curious, though, what hit you in the face hard enough to break your cheekbone and...you must have been working outside, yeah? Wearing some kind of goggles." He shrugged.

Clint rolled his eyes and immediately regretted doing so; it hurt. "It's classified," he ground out.

"That's interesting," Stark said. Then, very, very casually, he asked, "Did it have anything to do with Dr. Banner, or...?"

At least semi-high on pain meds, and also in pain, Clint wasn't on his game. He shot Natasha a look.

Most people would have missed it, but Stark was very perceptive, apparently. "Ah, it did," he said. "That's interesting, too."

Clint resisted the urge to growl. Natasha sighed. Rather than deny anything, though, she just asked, "What do you know about Banner?"

Stark countered, "What do you know about Banner?"

The elevator opened, framing Nick Fury, towering and impressive as always in his black trench coat. He addressed the elevator at large, "You people don't appreciate the meaning of 'classified,' do you?" He stepped aside, letting the three of them enter his office.

Clint frowned. He understood "classified." It wasn't his fault no one else did. It wasn't his fault Tony Stark was an asshole.

Clint's frown deepened a moment later, when he got a look at the other occupants of Fury's office.

Phil Coulson was standing next to the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. A few feet away, Bruce Banner was sitting in one of the chairs facing the desk, looking rumpled and miserable and (thankfully) much less green than the last time Clint had seen him.

Fury made his way to his chair and sat, resting his elbows on the desk and steepling his fingers. "Okay, let's get this party started," he said.

As if on cue, an alarm began to blare, complete with flashing red lights.

Clint groaned.

He should have known better than to think that he was actually going to get to go to bed.

Thanks for reading!