Speedy Eagle

Clint's Home

Back at the farm, Natasha sits in a room, waiting to use the shower. She has flashes of her vision and the Hulk's destruction.

Bruce steps out of the bathroom. "I didn't realize you were waiting."

"I would've joined you, but uh, it didn't seem like the right time."

"They used up all the hot water."

"I should've joined you."

"Missed our window."

"Did we?"

"The world just saw the Hulk. The real Hulk, for the first time. You know I have to leave."

"But you assume that I have to stay? I had this, um, dream. The kind that seems normal at the time. But when you wake."

"What did you dream?"

"That I was an Avenger. That I was anything more than the assassin they made me."

"I think you're being hard on yourself."

"Here I was hoping that was your job." Natasha gets closer to Bruce, ready to kiss him.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm running with it. With you. If running's the plan, as far as you want."

"Are you out of your mind?" Bruce walks away.

"I want you to understand that I'm."

"Natasha. Where can I go? Where in the world am I not a threat?"

"You're not a threat to me."

"You sure? Even if I didn't just- There's no future with me." Bruce gestures around the room to the childish toys. "I can't ever, I can't have this, kids, do the math, I physically can't."

"Neither can I." Bruce looks confused. "In the Red Room, where I was trained, where I was raised, um, they have a graduation ceremony. They sterilize you. It's efficient. One less thing to worry about. The one thing that might matter more than a mission. It makes everything easier. Even killing. You still think you're the only monster on the team?"

"What, so we disappear?"

Tony smashes an axe down on a piece of tree, cutting it into fire wood. "Thor didn't say where he was going for answers?" Tony asks.

"Sometimes my teammates don't tell me things," Steve says. He looks over at the porch where Clint is teaching Copper some things about the deck and handy work. "I was kind of hoping Thor would be the exception."

"In time. We don't know what the Maximoff kid showed him."

"Earth's mightiest heroes. Pulled us apart like cotton candy."

"Seems like you walked away alright."

"Is that a problem?"

"I don't trust a guy without a dark side. Call me old fashioned."

"Well let's just say you haven't seen it yet."

"You know Ultron is trying to tear us apart, right?"

"Well I guess you'd know. Whether you tell us is a bit of a question."

"Banner and I were doing research."

"That would have affected the team."

"That would end the team. Isn't that the mission? Isn't that the why we fight, so we can end the fight, so we get to go home?"

Steve tears apart a log with his bare hands, releasing anger. "Every time someone tries to win a war before it starts, innocent people die. Every time."