Chapter Text
“What the hell? You idiot!” Tony yelled after Bruce as the latter jumped out of the vehicle. “Happy, stop the car.”
“But Tony--”
“Now!” The humvee screeched to a halt. In his peripheral vision, Tony could see Bruce’s transformation beginning, but he did not have time to watch.
“Tony--” Pepper tried to say.
“Pepper, give me your phone.” When Pepper handed it to him, he looked straight at the camera. “JARVIS, record this.”
“Recording, sir.”
Tony started dictating, quickly and without taking a breath. “My name is Anthony E. Stark. It is November 14, 2009. Obadiah Stane faked my death last year and imprisoned me at Fort Lannister. I am changing my will to declare Virginia Potts to be my successor as CEO of Stark Industries in the event of my death. I don’t have an attorney with me, but since Obadiah Stane is still trying to kill me right now, this will have to do.”
The explosions started while he was speaking, but he just spoke louder to be heard over them; this wasn’t the part Tony was worried about, he knew the Hulk could more than handle normal UAVs, even if they were cutting edge. When he finished his dictation, Tony opened the door.
“What are you doing, Tony?” Pepper shouted. “We need to get out of here!”
“I’m not leaving without that idiot,” Tony said . “Happy, take Pepper to--”
“Then I’m not leaving without my idiot, either,” Pepper interrupted.
Right then, the Hulk jumped up and smashed the wing of a plane, knocking it down. It skidded to a halt a few meters from where Tony had a foot on the ground.
Tony looked from the broken plane to Pepper to the Hulk, who was jumping and swatting at the remaining UAVs. When the Hulk saw Tony watching, he turned to roar at him, but made no move towards him. Instead, without looking back, he jumped up just in time to use his massive back to block a blast that was aimed at Tony, before twisting around in the air to punch the plane that fired it.
He seemed to have this part covered, but Tony knew that he would need help when the Hulkbusters came into play. Tony turned to Pepper.
“I need your help,” Tony shouted to her over the din of explosions. “I have back doors to most of this, but I need more powerful tech than we have here to access the satellite, so I’m going to need you at a radio tower. There’s one about eighteen miles down the road. Find it, open the utility box and I’ll walk you through from there, okay?”
Pepper nodded and squeezed his shoulder before letting him go.
Tony closed the door and bolted towards the fallen plane as the humvee sped off. The fall and crash had nearly broken the plane in two, but thankfully, the Ku-band satellite and communications processor seemed to be intact.
He was about to take them out of the plane when he was distracted by a loud roar behind him. He jumped up, turned around, and saw the Hulk glaring from him to the humvee.
The planes regrouped behind him, but the Hulk paid them no mind as he lifted a hand and poked Tony with one massive finger.
“Puny,” the Hulk growled, and whoa, Tony hadn’t known he could talk.
“Stupid,” the Hulk added, looking pointedly at the receding humvee.
“That’s what people say about me,” Tony smirked, turning back to continue extracting the plane’s satellite. “Before they see my digital magic. Now go back to that thing you were doing.” Tony waved a hand to emphasise the last part, without turning back to see the Hulk’s reaction.
The Hulk growled again, but then the planes started their next round of attack and he went back to fighting them.
Tony dove in to hacking the processor, tuning out the noise, the explosions, and the crisp November air.
*~*~*~*~*~*
“Jared turned into the Hulk, and Tony got sentimental about it,” Pepper replied, with her let’s deal with how messed up this is later expression.
“Right, but why are we going to a radio tower?” Happy asked.
“Tony said he needed help getting to his back doors. I think he said it was to talk to the satellite?”
Happy slowed down the vehicle.
“What?” Pepper asked.
“Military satellites run on Ku-band--that’s 10 to 18 gigahertz--when communicating with UAVs.”
Pepper’s eyes went wide. “...And radio towers broadcast at under 30 megahertz.”
Happy nodded. “It’s unlikely that a radio tower will even have the hardware to broadcast at over 100 megahertz.”
“He played us. Damn it!” Pepper swore as Happy turned the vehicle around. Pepper took Happy’s phone out of his pocket to call Tony and figure out what was going on, but right as she started to make the call, the phone rang. A voice started speaking as soon as Pepper connected the call.
“This is Agent Coulson from the Strategic--”
“We’re kinda busy right now. Can this wait?”
“It’s about Tony Stark and the Hulk.”
*~*~*~*~*~*
“And now I have a fleet,” Tony smiled, sending the command for all the planes to disengage their weapons and start ascending.
Tony glanced up to see the Hulk trying to jump to hit the planes. When they were safely out of his reach, he turned to Tony in confusion.
“Sorry, buddy, I can’t let you have them,” Tony shouted to him, letting the planes fly circles over their heads.
“Smash!” Hulk roared.
“No,” Tony said. “I’m going to need those when--”
Tony stopped talking when the Hulk suddenly went still, lifting one ear as if listening for something. Then he turned sharply to Tony.
“No follow,” he said. With that, he bolted.
That was when the Hulkbusters appeared. At first they were coming towards Tony, but they made a quick turn as soon as the Hulk started running. All too soon, they were on to the Hulk, shooting at him and cutting him off when he tried to hit them. They predicted his movements based on recorded data, but they also learned from him, moved with him, and could even recognise where and how he was injured. They were hitting his weakest spots with perfect precision. It was the first time Tony saw this brutally magnificent work of engineering in action, and it was horrifying.
Tony checked for signals going to or from the Hulkbusters, but was not surprised to find none--the planes were coming from the military base and were being flown by actual pilots running the scripts locally. Hacking would be pointless.
Tony focused instead on the Hulkbusters’ one main weakness: they weren’t designed to fight anything except the Hulk. Tailored to predict the Hulk’s movements, they would not know how to respond if the Hulk had an ally who happened to be commanding more than a dozen UAVs.
And Tony could command those UAVs. All those late nights and weekends back in college playing flight simulation games with Rhodey did not go to waste as he manoeuvred the planes with dexterity, firing at the Hulkbusters and sometimes just ramming his planes into them as needed. He wondered briefly whether he should feel guilty about the real human lives he was playing with when he knocked two of the Hulkbusters right into the ground far too quickly for the pilots to escape. Before he could could muster up any feelings, however, the rest of the Hulkbusters were starting a new assault and another wave was arriving. The Hulk could hardly stand at that point, but he still fought with rabid determination, even as he roared in pain.
For a while, Tony blocked out all the distractions, his razor sharp focus fixed on the Hulkbusters, their weaknesses, and their movements. He didn’t notice that something was off until his own UAVs stopped responding correctly. It was subtle at first--he told one plane to dive and another dove instead--but soon all his planes were veering off course.
That was when Tony looked around and saw them: Prowlers. The army must have realised that the UAVs were being manipulated locally and responded by jamming the signals and searching for the hacker. It took them all of a few seconds to find Tony and less than that to launch an attack.
Tony ran and ducked behind a fallen plane as they fired at him, but it didn’t provide nearly enough cover, so despite the fact that the prowlers were only lightly armed, the momentum of the shots slammed the plane into his body and he found himself drowning in pain and dizziness. He wondered if he was hallucinating when he looked up to see one Prowler slam against another, but then the world tilted and he saw nothing.
*~*~*~*~*~*
“Tony,” a woman’s voice cried. Tony opened his eyes. When they came into focus, he saw Pepper looking down at him. She looked immaculate as ever, but her eyes were red and scrunched in worry.
He tried to think of something witty to say to chase away her concern, but stopped short when he glanced behind her. On the other side of the glass wall, masked men with guns were patrolling the hallway.
Suddenly, it all came back to him. They had been taken down by a military base, and they were in a military facility.
“Hulk,” he whispered. Did they get the Hulk? Was he alive? What were they going to do with him?
Tony bolted upright, pulled the IVs out of his arm and scrambled to get off the bed.
“Whoa, Tony.” Pepper’s gentle but unyielding hands pushed him back down.
“No,” Tony protested. “You don’t understand. They’ve been trying to find him for years, they’re going to--”
“We aren’t the army, Mr. Stark,” a voice said. Tony looked over Pepper’s shoulder to see a man dressed in a suit step into the room. He looked tired and bored and oddly familiar, but Tony couldn't quite figure out where he had seen him before.
“And if we wanted the Hulk for any of the nefarious reasons you were about to suggest,” the man continued. “We could have found better ways to get him than negotiating with the US army in the middle of a firefight.”
Tony stared at him.
“Agent Coulson,” the man introduced himself, extending a hand. “Of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Espionage and Logistics Division, which is where we are right now.”
Tony glanced down at Coulson’s hand, but did not take it. Instead, he looked back up at Coulson, and then at Pepper.
“JARVIS checked their databases and confirmed that they’ve protected him from the army several times,” Pepper explained.
“I did not hear that,” Coulson said, raising an eyebrow.
“They seem to be on our side, at least for the moment,” Pepper continued.
“Where is he?” Tony asked.
“The end of the hall,” Coulson replied, inclining his head in the presumed direction of the Hulk’s room. “Trauma ward.”
Tony made to get up again.
“He’s sleeping,” Coulson stopped him. “As should you be.”
“Is he--”
“He’s fine. He’s been fine for more than a day. Oh, and it’s 3:27AM on the 17th of November, in case you were wondering.”
“Right. What happened?”
“We were watching Dr. Banner from a distance when he was in China,” Coulson started. Tony tensed at that, but did not interrupt. “We lost him when Ms. Potts brought him back to America. It took us awhile to figure out what had happened, and we got on the scene just after the army sent the Prowlers in. Not a minute too soon--you were nearly dead when we got to you.”
“And Stane?” Tony asked.
Coulson’s gaze dropped at that. “We don’t know. His signal was coming from his residence one minute, and the next minute his house had exploded and we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since. But we’re very good at finding people. I’m sure he’ll turn up.”
Tony took a moment to process that.
“What do I owe you?” he asked.
Coulson smiled. “Director Fury will come by in the morning--the real morning. He’s going to want to talk to you about it himself.”
*~*~*~*~*~*
Still, he wasn’t going to leave without seeing that Tony was okay. He had gone to see Tony as soon as he was able to stand. There, he watched Tony’s unconscious form as Pepper explained to him what had happened.
“But why did he stay?” Bruce asked uncomprehendingly. “I told him I could handle the Hulkbusters.”
“You were out for two days. The Hulk was out when we got there.” Pepper reminded him, as they stood side by side watching Tony breathe.
“He could have gone and got help.”
“They might have been too late. Like I said, you were out when we got there, and that was with Tony backing you up with the UAVs.”
“But why would he do this? He had an out. We hardly even know each other.”
Pepper turned to face Bruce and sensing the movement, Bruce turned to see her raised eyebrow. Fair enough, he thought to himself. They had all taken so many risks in the past two weeks.
“He’s an idiot,” Bruce said out loud.
“We all are,” Pepper replied.
*~*~*~*~*~*
Tony smiled as Bruce peeked into the doorway.
“Meeting go well?” Bruce asked, letting himself in.
“It’s good to see you, too,” Tony laughed. “And yes, I think I just got invited to some super-secret boy band.”
“I see,” Bruce shifted awkwardly.
“You should join, too--I could ask Fury about solving the two-body problem.”
Two-body problem? Bruce was puzzled at that. The two-body problem was what scientist couples faced when trying to accommodate both of their careers. The sort of problem Bruce would never have again, so what did Tony mean? Unless...
“We do not have a two-body problem,” Bruce said.
Tony looked away, disappointed. “You were serious about disappearing again.”
“I can’t stay in New York,” Bruce said. He did not mention how much he wanted to, how he had missed having someone who could communicate with him on both an intellectual and an emotional level, how he had wished for someone who could see the Hulk and not run away in fear.
He did not mention any of that. “It’s not safe,” he said, instead.
“We got rid of Huber, Stane’s gone to ground, and as it happens, Fury’s as good as asked me to go antagonise Ross. Once I get back Stark Industries and all my resources, he’s not even going to know what hit him.”
Bruce smiled. “That sounds terrifying. But I actually meant ‘not safe’ as in ‘not safe for everyone else’.”
“And Guiyang is safe? Is there some sort of population threshold? Four million is okay but eight million isn’t? What’s the cutoff?”
“It’s not--hang on, did you look that up in preparation for this argument?”
“What was I supposed to do while Fury yammered on about heroes and shit?” Tony shrugged, waving his mobile phone. “Anyway, I wasn’t kidding about the particle accelerator, you know.” Tony said, eyes sparkling.
Bruce sighed. “You have things to sort out. There’s going to be a lot of press with you pulling the phoenix act again, not to mention all the legal wrangling to take back Stark Industries, which, by the way, is going to take a double whammy from losing its CEO and pulling out of the weapons industry at the same time. Assuming you’re pulling out of the weapons industry.”
“Of course I am,” Tony snapped. Then his expression softened. “But yeah, you’re probably right.”
“I don’t want to be around when you deal with the press. People will get suspicious. And besides, you need some time with your family. Pepper and Happy have been missing you for more than a year.”
“Where will you go?” Tony asked.
“Somewhere,” Bruce shrugged. “There’s always some village somewhere that could use an English teacher who can also teach math, physics, and chemistry.”
“But you’ll come back to visit when things have cooled down? The media hype will die down by the end of the year. I can have all your shiny new toys ready for you, then, too. And you can have your own floor in Stark Tower, or we could get a place out in New Jersey to be closer to the particle accelerator--”
“For me to visit, right?” Bruce cut in, heading Tony off before his promises became ridiculous. Because honestly, after all that they had been through together in just two weeks, if Tony had asked him to move in at that point, Bruce would probably have said ‘yes’, and that would have been a disaster.
“Right. To visit. So, is that a yes? How does New Year’s sound? I can come pick you up from wherever.”
Bruce chuckled. “It’s a date.”