Once upon a time and long ago, Steve Rogers had thought he'd understood the science, if not the art, of war. There were the good guys and the bad guys, and it was the bad guys' job to provide the good guys with work, and the good guys' job to make their investment worth everyone's time and effort. Rogers, of course, had been one of the good guys – the Good Guy for awhile – but times had changed, and the world had changed, and the definitions of good and evil had changed along with them, and once he'd woken up (metaphorically and literally) and processed that America no longer truly believed in either good or evil, but only it what was convenient and expedient, he had very nearly decided to put in for a transfer to Canada. Fortunately or unfortunately, common sense prevailed. He'd spent the last seventy years on ice, and was in no real hurry when it came right down to it to live in a land which mass-produced the stuff.
'You're standing in my light,' the man sprawled at his feet observed. "D'you mind?'
'Sorry?' Rogers looked down. Bruce Banner didn't return the favor, just continued to lie peacefully on his back on one of the few steel-plated platforms still left at the top of Stark Tower. Above them, the Milky Way stretched as a vivid, ancient scar across the burnt-out, blackened skyline of Manhattan. Below them, the city leaked blood, and the Hudson River, dirty, dazed streams of tears.
"You're standing in my light,' Banner said again. "Or rather, theirs.' He nodded up to the unaccustomed stars. Rogers followed his gaze. He eased himself down to a sitting position, covered his mouth with a fist, and burped lightly and discreetly. Every inch of his body ached, particularly his stomach, uncomfortably stuffed and distended as it was with one too many orders of shawarma.
'Why are we still here?' he asked. Banner actually turned his head at that.
'You got somewhere else to be?' he asked.
'Yes,' Rogers said. 'I had a date.'
'Ah.' He looked back up at the sky. 'Yes. Man or woman?"
Rogers rolled his eyes at him. Banner's mouth tilted in a sweet, close-lipped smile.
'As opposed to destiny,' he elaborated.
Rogers said nothing. The smile flicked again.
'Does it hurt?' Rogers asked finally. "When you change?'
"What kind of question is that?'
'It hurt when I changed.'
"I imagine it did.' Banner rolled on his side, tucking his arm under his head. 'No. Or rather… Yes, but it beats the alternative.'
'Huh?' Rogers gave him a most peculiar look. "I thought you hated him.'
"Which 'him' are we talking on?'
'Which…' The bemused look deepened. A small chuckle rang out, quiet and sweet again.
"Don't mind me,' Banner said, and flexing his own stomach, sat up fluidly and gracefully, and with no sign whatsoever that he'd spent the last few hours smashing evil space aliens and their neo-deific nominal overlord. ''Little known fact: large quantities of gamma radiation do really strange things to your sense of humor.'
'I don't think mine's quite thawed yet.'
'Give it time. Then again, you have to consider what you have to work with in the first place.' He peered, not up, but down this time. Way, way down, and winced rather at the view. 'Something I obviously need to keep in mind when I'm considering my own handicaps. And I thought I left Harlem a mess.'
'I'll clean it up,' Captain America said unenthusiastically. "It's what they pay me for, after all.' He burped again, rather more loudly this time, and looked distinctly embarrassed. Banner laughed outright.
"The garlic gets you every time,' he said. 'Something to keep in mind if you're ever dining with Stark in the future. His girlfriend loves Italian, so he feels no reason to exercise restraint there.'
'I got that, yes.' He lay back this time, easing his protesting gut. 'What do you mean, it beats the alternative?'
"Did you like being puny and undersized and essentially defenseless? No. Don't bother. You obviously didn't, or you'd never have undergone the experimental treatment. And you never knew your father.'
'My… I'm missing something here, aren't I?'
"What are they teaching at these schools these days,' Banner muttered ironically, and then… "Don't you ever sneak a peek at the classified files, Rogers? Just for fun? It's not as if we're tame lions.'
"… Lewis Carroll?'
"Close, but no cigar. C.S. Lewis. Narnia. Look him up. Variations on your relevant theme: My Personal Wardrobe.'
Rogers was now not only feeling the effects of pained indigestion, but pained irritation. 'I may be a tame lion,' he said. "Though I do prefer the term law-abiding, but I'm still literate. The fact remains however, that however enhanced I may be, I can still only read so fast.'
Banner lay back beside him.
'To answer your question… My father was not a hero,' he said. 'He could, in fact, have given Loki lessons in essential villainy. He might not have had the scope of a god to work with, but he had something just as good in his book – me.'
'Oh,' Rogers said. Then… "Oh. No. That wasn't in the file they gave me.'
"The truly interesting bits never are.'
"So…' The hero beside him digested that, around another bout of reproachful garlic. 'You're compensating now? You. Erhm. Take your chronic anger at your father and your own violent tendencies, inherited and endowed, and channel them productively? When possible, anyway, in some sort of conscious and deliberate reversal of subconscious priority?
'Why Cap, I'm touched. You make it – and me - sound positively rational.'
'I don't think it's rational. I think it's your real secret.'
"Sorry?'
'You're angry all the time. Of course you are. So am I. Of all people, I understand that. Of course I do; how can I not? We were meant to be brothers of a sort, after all, and now… What have we got to show for it? Or rather… What do we have that will compensate for the fact?'
'Lots of pretty girls out there who'd love to date you. I'd have a bit of a harder time, yeah?'
Rogers snorted. "Uh huh. Just for the record… They didn't leave all the interesting bits out of that file, Banner.'
In the starlight, Bruce Banner actually blushed. The undertone was definitely green.
"Anyway,' Rogers said, taking prudent pity on him. "I'm just saying. You got, as the saying goes, thoroughly gypped in your deal. We both did. And if rationalization can only come into that deal after the fact… If it gives us a little peace, and the ability to cope and to control ourselves, if not the hand Destiny dealt us, the filthy, faithless whore…'
"Captain America! Your language!'
'I missed my date. I'm entitled to be a little petulant, I think, if only in private.'
"Knock yourself out. Or… If you prefer… Hulk smash?'
'No, thank you.' Rogers burped a third time, painfully. "Ow. I don't think my digestion's thawed either.'
Banner reached out and patted his shoulder, then flexed again and rose to his feet, holding out a hand.
'Come on,' he said. "There's a nice tea-shop a couple of blocks down; I spotted it when I was diverting that last ship, and adjusted the trajectory specifically so that it'd miss. I'm sure they have something that'll settle your stomach.'
'You adjusted the trajectory specifically so… What?'
'I like tea. It's eminently civilized. And we're brothers of a sort, aren't we? That would make me, like you, an essentially civilized man.'
'If you say so.'
Bruce Banner grinned as they made their way to the edge of the steel platform. Even as they walked, his shoulders began to flex and ripple subtly under their cloak of night and starlight.
"I do,' he said. "Tame, again, being something else entirely.'
"I'll have to take your word for that,' Steve Rogers said. "For the moment at least, and until I've caught up on all my reading.'
'The tea-shop has a book store attached,' Banner said. 'We'll see if they have the original in stock, if not the sequels.'
'Sequels? Plural? How many sequels are we talking, exactly?'
Banner's reply was somewhat incoherent, lost as it was in the echo of the triumphant snarling roar of the lion unleashed…. Rogers took a moment to watch as the huge dark shadow burst forth from the mantle of starlight that poured out of the darkness above, emanating from the ancient, raised scar of an impossibly distant galaxy and an impossibly distant past.
"Sorry,' he said, as the stars scattered around him, flowing away and melding into the broken, tossed struts of the shattered city. "Didn't quite catch that?'
The answering lion's roar was again, incoherent, but the message was quite, quite clear. Catch me, if you can…
"Ooh,' Steve Rogers said, pleased. 'I got that one!' and with a neat, graceful leap - in the face of the garlic; he was, he reminded himself, after all, not just a soldier but a super soldier, and the forces of moral relativism were one thing, but he was Captain America, by the One True and Properly Christian God Who (he was pretty darned sure) Didn't Dress Like That –
Jumped.