Bruce picked up the broken satellite and sighed heavily.

"THE SEASON PREMIERE!" Clint yelled out, pulling his hair with both of his hands.

"Clint, stop that," Steve scolded. He looked over at Tony, whose eyes were glazed over, still holding Natasha's hand.

"UGGHH!" he dramatically moaned in response.

"Everything is still intact; it's just the silicon backboard that snapped," Bruce said as he gave it a closer look.

"Dr. Banner, you are also a man of science," Thor calmly pointed out. "Surely you will be able to repair this invention." Clint looked at him, and gave him two enthusiastic thumbs up. Thor returned the gesture with a macho, toothy smile.

"Well I can fuse the circuit board back together, but it won't do anything until it's powered up," Bruce clarified.

"Well get to it doc," Clint hustled him, snapping his fingers repeatedly.

Separating some of the wires, Bruce carefully soldered the two pieces together. He raised his head to find the others caught in their own thoughts. Thor stared at the fire, mindlessly rubbing his fingers with his thumb. Similarly, Steve was pensive and rested his elbows on his knees and his head onto his hand. Clint leaned back onto the trunk of a tree and began to flick small rocks at Bruce's shoes.

Natasha sat while Tony's head still rested on her lap, waiting for Bruce to say something. Her attention quickly shifted as the grip on her hand tightened, and Tony began to slowly squirm. "Hey, you alright?" she said, patting him on the chest with her other hand.

Natasha's comment made Bruce look up. He set the device down and hurried over, nearly running through the bonfire. Tony blinked sluggishly, trying to make out what was happening. "Huhh?" he said, his voice came out raspy. He was helped by Bruce and Natasha into a sitting position, and rubbed his eyes with his hands.

"How're you feeling?" Bruce asked, and waiting patiently for an answer, as usual. He soon grew a bit worried though, as Tony didn't even seem to hear him, despite being inches from his face.

Tony kept his face buried in his hands, trying to recollect his memories. He must have had temporary hearing loss, because when he peeked from his hands, Steve, Clint, and Thor were gathered around him. He glanced over at Bruce, who had that take your time; I can wait for an answer look which meant he had asked a question. He felt everyone's eyes on him, and knew they were expecting him to say something. He hung his head down. "I'm so sorry," he muttered.

They were all taken back by the reply. Nobody had expected an apology.

They formed a close circle around him. Clint sat down with Barry nestled in his lap, thoughtlessly petting her as he waited for the scene to unravel.

Being the team's main man and full time conversation initiator, Steve began. "Tony you had no choice, they were going to kill you."

Thor nodded solemnly in agreement. "The captain speaks of truth; it is not your wrongdoing, but that of your captors. Though in its light you have presented us with a means of escape," he pointed out the device. "I assure you that you have not angered us in the slightest," he said with his hand over his heart.

Natasha placed her hand on Tony's shoulder and gave a consoling squeeze when she saw that their speeches did nothing to rid him of his guilty state.

On a regular day, Tony knew better than to let Natasha lay a hand on him, because it usually meant that he'd be in one of her infamous thigh-chokes within the minute. Sure it was overtly sexual and he loved every minute of it, until he'd pass out. He'd never willingly let that assassin anywhere near his neck.

Today was an irregular day. He didn't shrug her hand off while his mind scrambled to form his words.

"No, you're wrong," he said quietly, refusing to make eye contact. He swallowed hard, and regrettably continued, "They didn't catch me to build them a portal…" he looked up at them hesitantly, "…they caught me because I already built one."

Clint held in a gasp. "What do you mean you already built one?!" Frankly, this was better than what that detective show's season premiere could have ever turned out to be. If he was anymore careless, he would have started picking at the chinchilla's fur and stuffing it into his mouth like he would popcorn.

Bruce waved off Clint's question. "Wait, j-just tell us what happened, first…from the beginning." His worried eyebrows scrunched upwards. Anger was something he needed to keep a very tight lid on, but showing concern? Not so much.

Tony let out a drawn out breath and fidgeted with the ends of his boxer shorts. "I was looking to find new power resources. I'm…I'm the biggest name in the industry; the reactor was a beacon of self-sustaining clean energy. Self-sustaining but not renewable, and pretty damn expensive, even for me."

He let his eyes wander unblinkingly, but never looking up far enough to meet anyone else's gaze. It was as if what he saw presently wasn't actually there, because he was reliving his flashback. "So, I built a portal for deep space exploration for new supplies." He let out a sigh of relief and looked up to his teammates, who sat around him, speechless. "That's it," he said, cueing the end of the story.

"How'd you build the portal?" Natasha asked without a hint of eagerness in her voice.

"SHIELD documented Selvig's work when they first found the Tesseract."

"That file has a level nine clearance," Clint notified the group.

"Yeah," was all that Tony said. He was too guilt-ridden to say anything otherwise.

Steve shook his head in confusion. "That doesn't make any sense, Tony. Why would they need to kidnap you when they could have just taken your machine?"

"Even with my security, I didn't want any mishaps. I deconstructed the portal and stripped it down into its necessary components and miniaturized it. I followed all the protocols; even had Jarvis wipe out all the data from the systems, but they must have overridden him from the start. They were tracking my progress, and when they couldn't find what they thought a portal should have looked like, took me instead."

"Those savages bargained with your life in exchange for a portal," Thor said, disgusted. "Some mortals, I do not understand."

"No," Tony clenched his eyes shut and opened them again, hoping that memories would fade. "They weren't going to kill me."

Right then, Clint turned slightly to look at his partner. Natasha subtly moved her eyes to meet his. Years of training have made them only somewhat numb to the vast methods of torture. For countless months on end they have been drilled to never, ever break. Between spilling information and death, they knew to choose the latter eleven out of ten times. But in instances as these, death didn't come easily, and Tony wasn't a highly trained assassin.

Again, Tony returned from his reminiscing, now conscious of his audience. Between the sympathetic looks of Clint and Natasha, Bruce's head that hung down, and the confused expressions of Steve and Thor, he had some more explaining to do. Two-out-of-five wasn't bad. He really didn't want to go into any more detail, but the pile of shit he was treading in was already to his neck. There really was no outcome that wouldn't make him any less guilty. "…might as well," he muttered. Damn, he really needed to work on distinguishing between his internal thoughts and vocal monologue. "They didn't threaten me with death –shit, I would have been much happier. No, I would have been stuck there for, God, I don't know, for forever." He paused a bit, rubbing his shirt to scratch the area around the reactor. "Well it worked," he continued. "I only lasted about two days."

Clint perked up. Two days was impressive for a civilian. Barry bounced from his lap and hopped over to Bruce, who welcomed her with gentle strokes behind the ear.

"Those guys knew what they were doing –well, they didn't really know or else they wouldn't have needed me. They had a shitload of models stored in the back, none of them successful."

"That's what all those prototypes and blueprints were," Bruce acknowledge, not allowing the chinchilla to distract him.

Tony nodded. "They were smart, all the materials were there, just not properly used. All I needed were some spare parts and a preexisting device, but I wanted to draw some time," he leaned forward to cough into his shirt. "Well that didn't go too well. After a while, they wanted to motivate me. I was sent back to be water boarded again. I'd have a session every hour until I finished. After I was done, they must have done a test run and brought you to their lab, and then transported all of us here."

"Look, none of this is your fault. You had no choice," Steve consoled.

"Plus, you're building that satellite thing," Clint added cheerfully. He scooted closer to Tony's ear before whispering, "If possible, I need to get back before nine o'clock on Friday for…work." By work he meant his show. "Seriously though, don't beat yourself up over it shell-head."

That turned a switch. It was the exact comment Tony had told Clint shortly after the whole mind-control fiasco –well, with shell-head being replaced with cockeye. Coincidently, it was also what he had told Bruce about his accident in Harlem. It wasn't to make them feel less guilty, even though they were feeling pretty guilty. He had meant it; he knew the team felt the same way too. They all had their off days.

It took a few minutes before he was sure his teammates weren't going to rip his head off. He wasn't great at reading faces, but they seemed to be more concerned than angry. "Okay…now that I've busted, there's no point in lying to you good looking folks any longer."

The confession made Natasha cringe. Although she had made a living by misleading people, being lied to was the very thing she hated the most. Nothing good had ever come from deceit, and so she braced herself for the news.

Tony reached over and picked up the device. "When I miniaturized my portal, I hid it so assholes like them wouldn't find it. And, well…I wanted it to get pass customs since I was thinking I'd give one to Pepper so she could transport back to the tower between international meetings to have sex with me." He made no attempt to mask that last bit, not that it surprised anyone.

"So you built it into a phone," Bruce connected the dots, grinning at the brilliance of it all.

"Exactly. I haven't gotten to the self-transforming module yet, but my manual work isn't terrible."

"A portable portal. Catchy." Clint grabbed Barry from Bruce's arms and cuddled it.

Bruce didn't show any resistance. He was interested in the mechanisms of the transporter, although Barry was indeed, very fluffy. "You already had it hooked up before, what happened?"

"I had it connected to an external outing but at that rate, it would've taken a week to fully charge," Tony explained.

Now that hype of the story was well past its peak, the rest of the team lost interest. Thor went back to eating his quail along with Clint and Steve who roasted some squirrel meat.

The suffocating ring of listening ears and gazing eyes dispersed, and Tony felt much more comfortable explaining the problem to his potential lab partner. "There's cable that's connected to the core of the reactor, but I can't attach the ends."

Bruce noticed Tony's trembling hands. "Eat something first, then we'll work on the power source."

Bruce was really hammering him on the whole eating thing. "You're the most stubborn person I know." The insult had no effect on the doctor.

After reluctantly eating what he had deemed to be a 'typical Neanderthal breakfast', Tony did feel better, but he would have taken that admittance to his grave before telling Bruce.

"SON OF STARK!" Thor hollered out, then readjusted after noticing the pained grimace on everyone's face. "When will your bifrost be ready for us to use?" he said gentler.

"After I can get this thing hooked up properly, two days at most."

"Wouldn't your reactor run out of battery by then?" Steve continued the press conference.

"It doesn't run on batteries, capsicle, and no, this core has self-sustaining capacity of over five thousand years. I think I can spare a few."*

Clint wiped his fingers on his shirt and stood up before his legs fell asleep. "If it had so much power, then how come it takes so long?" Clint said haughtily.

"The reactor has an energy-release threshold designed just for my heart, and unlike my suit, this thing doesn't have a relay switch to amp it up. We just have to wait until the reserve is filled up. And by the way, I wasn't planning on running it on the reactor in the first place, so give me a break." Why he felt he needed to defend himself was beyond him. Tony never cared about what others thought of him –mostly because those other people almost always turned out to be backstabbing sonsofbitches. Maybe they weren't so bad after all, especially if he cares enough about their…feels.

"Well make it snappy," the archer retorted before walking off.

"Where are you going?" Steve asked.

"Back to creek to wash up, I want to be beautiful again," he replied, dramatically whipping back his non-existent long hair. He blew Steve a kiss and made his way.

His reply reminded them all of their physical appearance. Their hair was greasy and matted and they all smelled like a combination of manure and sea salt. At the realization, they all followed Clint back to the old campsite. Bruce would have been happily following along had Tony not insisted him on staying to work on the portal.

"Time is of the essence, my dear Watson," he concluded.

"Fine. Uh, what…what do you need me to do?" Bruce sat down in front of Tony, crossed-legged.

He twisted the arc reactor open to reveal the open cavity. The reactor was connected directly to the electrical nodes of his heart through small wires. He took hold of the thicker red wire. "See this? It's the primary cable. You have to follow back to the junction cap," he pulled the reactor to the side to give Bruce a clearer view. "The cap's somewhere in there," he pointed at the general direction. "The problem is, I can't just pull the cable out because the cap will come out with it, and the rest of these connecting wires are hooked to that cap which is attached to my heart and I don't want to die or anything like that," he said in one breath.

"Uh, okay, I-I can't do that," Bruce shook his head.

"It's fine, just get in close enough to hold the cap down with a finger and detach the cable with your other fingers," he said reassuringly.

"Alright," he gave in, exhaling loudly. He took the red lead from Tony and inched his hand towards his exposed heart. "I can't," he changed his mind, handing it back.

"Come on, Banner. Grow a spine."

Bruce smiled nervously.

Tony kept the reactor out of the way, careful not to pull anything loose. If it was the first time he had someone's hand in his chest, it would have felt odd, to say the least. It wasn't odd.

"Whatever you do, please do not Hulk out on me."

Bruce ignored his small talk in order to concentrate. "Okay, um, I can feel the joint cap."

"You're literally touching my heart."

"Sit still," he cautioned. With his thumb and index finger gripping the wire, he held the cap down with his middle finger and cautiously disconnected the cable. "Got it," he said, pulling his hand out.

"Fantastic, start her up." Tony handed Bruce the phone and twisted the reactor back into place. The single red wire was suspended from the reactor and fused to the circuit board. Bruce grinned excitedly when the screen flicked on. He instantly regretted rejecting so many offers to collaborate down in the lab. Tony clicked to show the power reserve level, which was currently at a steady 2%. The connection was successful, and all that was left to do was sit back and bask in pride.

"You okay?" Bruce finally said after he had had too much basking.

Tony scoffed at the question. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You just had a hypoxia-induced seizure."

"I'm Iron Man."

*the average lifespan is 72 years, in an issue of the Invincible Ironman, Jarvis mentioned that the mark three reactor could run for seventy lifetimes…therefore, um. Math.