Fic: Avengers, Bruce/Tony
Title: Five Times Tony Almost Caught Bruce (and one time he did)
Summary: Bruce/Tony, AU where Tony chases Bruce all over the world to bring him back to SHIELD. Set post-IM2, pre-Avengers. For this prompt at avengerkink: I want Tony chasing Bruce in a high-tech manhunt around the world. Could be pre-Avengers, maybe the army asks Tony to help them hunt down the Hulk, maybe SHIELD does, or could be after the Avengers, when Bruce has run away yet again.
I just want Tony chasing Bruce, but I want the story really to be about all the Macgyvering and inventing they do in the process. In canon, Banner invented a wrist-watch teleporter and a electromagnetic shield, right, so he's clearly a pretty damn good engineer in addition to being a genius scientist.
Bruce invents devices to help him escape and remain hidden, and Tony invents devices to track him down and scope him out.
How it ends is up to author, but I don't really want something too sad. Also, I prefer Tony not to be too dark, which I know would be hard to swing, but if it's pre-Avengers, you could go with his pre-Afghanistan callousness, and if it's post-Avengers, they could really, really need his expertise to save the world.
1. “We need you to track this guy down,” Fury said. “You want to find rogue weapons, and this guy is the most dangerous weapon we know of.”
Tony was distracted by the data display in his lab. “Can’t you get Agent Agent to do it? Or Agent with the glasses?”
“We sent Agent Sitwell to retrieve the asset. He got away by sneaking into the SHIELD plane and using our own tech enhancements to put the entire plane and crew in a 20-minute temporal stasis.”
Tony looked away from his data. “He stopped time?”
Fury nodded.
“And no one was hurt?”
“That’s right,” Fury said.
“I know what you’re doing,” Tony said, waving his screwdriver around as he talked, “You’re dangling science in front of me to see if I bite.”
“And will you?”
“Well, obviously, you came to me. Who’s going to out-MacGyver a MacGyver?” Tony said as he looked over the file Fury had set down on his desk.
Tony whistled. “Bruce Banner? The guy who single-handedly discovered cellular neosolidification pathways?”
“You’re a fan?”
“Who wouldn’t be?”
“Make no mistake, Stark. He’s a genius scientist who has successfully evaded SHIELD and most of the military forces in the world for a year. And then there’s the other guy. We can presume he can release it at any time.”
“And what happens when he’s in SHIELD custody?”
“We treat him humanely.”
“Seriously.”
“We’re hoping that he’ll agree to work for our science department.”
“As a scientist or lab rat?”
“Both. But due to his condition, he’ll have to give permission for either.”
“So that’s why you’re capturing him alive. Because you’ve got no choice.”
“Stark, read the rest of the file. Banner isn’t just a man. He’s a killing machine. When we found out SI weapons have killed dozens of my agents, you promised to clean up rogue weapons wherever we found them.”
Tony’s lips thinned. “I know what I said. And Iron Man has blown up plenty of weapons caches.”
“We don’t need Iron Man for this one. We need the scientist, Tony Stark.”
Tony smirked. “I’m going to have JARVIS replay that for Romanov, you know.”
Fury said, “I’m taking that as a yes,” and walked out, leaving Banner’s file there.
Tony sat down and continued to read.
--
Tony, of course, had a better facial rec system than SHIELD did - though his wasn’t on the market yet. And while SHIELD’s satellites had to search for all threats, Tony had the luxury of being more focused.
Obviously, there are low tech ways to get around that. Like wearing a hoodie so the satellite can’t see your face. But everyone has to buy groceries once in a while, and Tony can get info from any space he wants, especially now that he’s provided cheap cell phones to most of the digitally underserved areas in the world (and he reminds himself to thank Pepper for coming up with that initiative, which had nothing to do with the Banner mission but was a nice idea anyway. He also reminds himself to never tell her about the privacy implications.)
Iron Man shows up outside a remote village in the Himalayas, announcing his presence and demanding that Banner come out.
He feels something strange then.
And then the impact of his suit hitting the ground.
Tony grits his teeth.
Underneath the tarp in the garden is, apparently, a giant magnet. A scientific achievement that a 3 year old could figure out. (Tony would have when he was three, anyway.)
He sees Bruce running away, a small backpack in his hands.
“Hey!” Tony shouts, and Bruce turns, wary.
“Don’t fight me,” Bruce shouts back. “It’ll get ugly. And I don’t want to hurt you.”
“How’d you know it’d be me?” Tony said.
Bruce shrugged. “I didn’t. I figured between weapons and vehicles, a magnet would come in handy.”
“So you’re just leaving me here?”
Bruce paused. “Magnet turns off automatically in an hour.” He turned and ran down the tiny dirt trail.
Tony sighed. The only good thing was that the magnetic field also took out his communications. The last thing he needed right now was to hear JARVIS mock.
2. A month later, and Tony is in Paris, running faster than he ever has. He’s finally pinpointed Banner’s radioactive signature - it fluctuates like nothing Tony has ever seen and he had to invent a new class of Latempe operators just to make the equations work - but he’s almost there. He’s dashing through the catacombs, through spaces the suit would never fit through, and he can feel his chest pounding, the blood pumping, but he can’t slow down.
He is this close to catching Banner.
He finally closes in on a sealed room, and JARVIS tells him over his phone that there is no way out. Tony pulls out his stun gun and pauses, catches his breath for a second, and then walks in.
Nobody’s there.
He holds up his phone so JARVIS can scan the room.
“Lower left corner is the source of the radiation signature, sir,” JARVIS said in a condescending tone.
That didn’t bode well.
Tony walked over.
There, in the corner, he saw a large rat with a device strapped to its back.
Banner had figured out how Tony had gotten so close to him so many times, then replicated his own radiation signature and taped it to a sewer rat.
“Brilliant,” Tony said, as he carefully freed the rat from the device and took a closer look.
“Director Fury will be disappointed,” JARVIS pointed out.
“Fury has finally given me a job that’s not boring,” Tony muttered, still staring at the device. “When I get back to the lab, we’re analyzing every machine this guy has ever built. Next time, we’ll know how he thinks.”
“Yes, sir. Perhaps you’d like to come out of the rat-infested catacomb now, sir.”
“Sure, whatever.”
--
3. Tony spent the next month trying to refine his techniques for finding Bruce. Even Fury said it was fine if he gave up, but Tony put his other projects on hold.
“This is hardest scientific problem I’ve ever solved and I am going to crush it,” Tony said definitively, and Fury nodded and Pepper rolled her eyes.
He came close several times, but each time, Bruce came up with some way to escape.
When he finally managed to detect him in Rio, Tony went in during Carnival, wearing a costume, pretending to be drunk (it was mostly pretend), acting like a tourist who had wandered into the bad side of town.
He stumbled around the sidewalk outside of Bruce’s apartment, pretending to sit on the stoop to catch his balance. He tried to detect any motion - he wasn’t sure which side of the building Bruce lived on - but he did his best to act inconspicuous.
A minute later, a small child gave him a bottle of water and a bag with some bread in it. There was a note: “Better luck next time. This will help your hangover.”
Tony sighed.
The kid was still looking at him with wide eyes.
“Iron Man?” the kid asked, making flying noises as he moved his hand around like a plane or a suit.
Tony smiled. “Yeah,” he said, and gave the kid a hundred dollar tip before heading home.
--
4. Tony had tried high tech and he had tried low tech. He decided to go deeper into Banner’s files, to figure out how he thought.
The things he found made him feel for Bruce. But Tony knew that most bad guys had a sob story and it didn’t make them something other than bad guys. And he could see why Banner keeping control of his temper might never be a sure thing.
The few appearances of the other guy was something Tony hadn’t studied much yet. Tony realized then that his plan to stun gun Bruce before he could turn would have actually gone very badly.
He also learned that a lot of the deaths attributed to Banner might actually be Blonsky.
But whatever conflicts he felt, he didn’t feel any desire to give up the search.
There had been so many times that Bruce was just out of his reach. Tony wanted to win - badly.
Eventually, he decided that he would invent nanobots to search for him - harmless to all life, but sending a message to Tony if Bruce’s DNA were detected. He put the bots in most of the world’s tea supply, knowing that it was one of Banner’s weaknesses, after proper safeguards that the nanobots wouldn’t evolve or reproduce.
“You’re going to neuter them?” JARVIS said.
“I’m preventing a nano takeover of the world,” Tony grumbled.
“Fine, sir,” JARVIS said, rather judgmentally.
A couple of months later, Bruce was located.
Tony didn’t call in for backup, despite the fact that after his last close miss, Fury had all but torn him a new one. But Tony wanted to do this himself.
He showed up at a tent in a rather touristy campground in Japan. He waited until Bruce stepped out and then stood in front of him.
“I’ve come to deal,” Tony said before Bruce could run.
“Not interested in a deal with SHIELD.”
“Not with SHIELD. With me. Come work for me.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow. “This is a recruitment?”
“It wasn’t. It could be.”
“It’s not safe for me to be near SHIELD. Or anyone else trying to put me in a cage.”
“What if you’re not in a cage?”
“They’ll always have a cage. And when I said ‘not safe,’ I also meant for them.”
“Look, Bruce, I’m a fan.”
“Excuse me?”
“Of your science. And your escape plans. And the giant green rage thing.”
Tony could see Bruce considering making a sprint for it.
Tony added quickly, “I just want to know how you did it. All those times you got away. Scientific curiosity.”
Bruce folded his arms. “You know I’m not going to give away the only thing keeping me out of a strapped down lab table.”
“Okay, it doesn’t have to be like that. We can work something out. I’ll make it worth your while,” Tony added, giving Bruce his best bedroom eyes. The bedroom eyes - or more precisely the ‘fuck me’ eyes - worked on just about everybody.
Not Bruce. “Sorry, Tony. I got to admit, no one’s made me step up my game like you have. But I need to go before your friends get here.” Bruce pulled a device out of his back pocket then.
“I didn’t invite any fr- wait, is that a phase transalternator? Is that a microwave button? Holy shit, Bruce, did you make a transalternator out of a kitchen microwave?” He stared at Bruce in awe.
He could see that Bruce wanted to just use it and run. But he answered, “A microwave, an adaptor, and a Starkphone. Thanks for putting half a supercomputer’s worth of processing power on a 50-dollar phone. Really helped.”
“That is so hot,” Tony said.
Bruce looked at him strangely. Tony could see him eyeing his exit then, but Bruce paused to ask, “And it was the tea, right? Chemical tracer in the tea?”
“Nanobots,” Tony said.
“Very impressive. Overly elaborate and possibly insane. But impressive.”
“Yeah, that’s generally how I roll.”
Bruce gave him a half smile. “It was interesting meeting you, Tony.” He held up the device.
“Wait, let’s just talk about science some more - just for tonight--”
Everything went fuzzy then, pale yellow waves, and Tony knew that by the time his reality settled back to normal, Bruce would be gone.
But it was the closest Tony had come yet.
--
5. “Taking advantage of natural disasters now, sir?” JARVIS asked.
“Don’t be judgmental. I didn’t cause the flood. But it’s only 100 miles from Banner’s last known hideout, and SHIELD just raided the place yesterday. And you know Bruce is going to want to help.”
“So that’s a yes, sir,” JARVIS noted. Tony ignored him and put on the suit to fly there, bringing a couple extra suits just in case the evacuations weren’t as complete as had been reported. It was rough going, since the storms that caused the flood were still at force, but he managed to find the cluster of people huddling against the elements in whatever shelter they could make from the scraps of their destroyed town.
SHIELD of course noticed that Tony had left for the same region as their raid and promised to send support (they knew that Stark was after Banner, naturally - Coulson had even written a memo suggesting that he was obsessed with the ‘target’).
The first thing Tony did on arriving was ask for the shelter for the injured. He was pointed there and walked into the tent. It was full of people screaming, moaning, bleeding.
It reminded Tony of all that news footage he’d seen of people displaced, helpless and hopeless. (It reminded Tony of what it felt like in Afghanistan.)
He saw Bruce holding down a wound on a young woman’s leg. She was bleeding profusely.
Bruce looked up and saw him.
They were silent for a moment.
“These people are going to die if you make me leave,” Bruce said. He stared at Tony, still pressing on the woman’s leg.
Tony could see that he was right. Bruce was the only one giving treatment (Bruce, who wasn’t even a real doctor, not that kind). But the UN hadn’t been able to get to this side of the river yet, and some of these people didn’t have the hour or two it would take.
Tony swallowed. “JARVIS,” he said, “Inform SHIELD that Banner has fled. I think he headed east. Also, tell the suits to transport medical personnel to my location.”
“Yes, sir,” JARVIS replied, note of approval in his voice.
Tony took off his suit, then walked over and placed his hands on Bruce’s, slowly. He smiled down at the woman.
“I got this,” Tony said to Bruce. “Go take care of the others.”
Bruce smiled at him, then left to do exactly that.
When the medical professionals got there - as many as the suits could carry - they quickly put the injured parties in order. Tony directed the suits to help where they could, modifying them to use their tools to cauterize wounds or set bones. When he looked up to find Bruce again, he was gone.
--
1. There was a lead on Bruce’s whereabouts and of course Tony had to follow.
But his habit of crossing borders into every nation’s airspace had not gone unnoticed.
He wasn’t sure how their government got anti-aircraft missiles better than his suit.
He would have to figure it out on the off chance that he lived through this.
Another shock then, as they put the electric prod onto his chest. He did his best not to scream.
This, he could handle. Better than the other thing, at any rate.
Tony figured he had been there about a day. He had gotten in the habit of encrypting all leads on Banner so that SHIELD couldn’t follow him, which meant that nobody would be able to track him here. His communicator wasn’t functioning, which meant even JARVIS wouldn't know what had happened.
They moved the electric prod near him again and Tony braced himself. They shocked him again, and he closed his eyes, gritted his teeth as hard as he could.
The lead soldier came near him again. He was smiling and Tony knew what that meant. He took out the arc reactor and watched, amused, as Tony struggled to breathe, to live.
It felt like forever before they put it back in.
The others nodded, as if they were enjoying the latest anatomy lesson. Tony made a mental note to get the reactor removed if he ever saw home again.
He was beginning to admit to himself that he might very well not.
He could see the man reaching for his chest again, and he tried to be stoic, to be strong, but he started screaming, he tried to kick his legs against the straps that held him to the table.
Then, everything went fuzzy. The light took on a yellow haze, familiar.
He came to, and he was outside of the facility, looking up at Bruce.
“I heard something small and red got shot down, and figured it was you. Sorry it took so long to get there,” Bruce said, then added, with a small smile, “You’re a hard man to find.”
Tony, still weak, tried to move. He knew he had broken ribs, maybe a shoulder.
“Shh, stay there,” Bruce said. “I called Pepper, who put me through to Colonel Rhodes. That helicopter is coming for you,” he added, standing up and gesturing to a dot in the harsh blue sky.
Tony thought he might pass out again. He wasn’t sure how many times they had played arc reactor games, but he knew it was too many.
Bruce started to move away, but Tony managed to whisper, “Please stay.”
He could see the conflict in Bruce’s face, his reluctance. But finally Bruce sat beside where Tony was lying on the ground and put his hand gently on Tony’s hair.
“Please don’t leave me here,” Tony repeated, eyes half open.
“I won’t. Tony, I’m here. I won’t go.” Tony’s eyes closed all the way then.
--
Tony woke up to a worried looking Rhodey.
“Hey,” he said. “How are you?”
“Horrible,” Tony said, wincing.
“Pepper’s berating the doctors right now to get the pain meds as soon as possible.”
Tony smiled, then suddenly remembered how he got there.
“Bruce?”
Rhodey’s lips thinned. “Dr. Banner is in military custody. We’re arguing with SHIELD about who gets to keep him.”
“He saved me.”
“I know. But he’s a threat. I can ensure humane treatment, but he has to stay with us.”
“Have you read the file? If he didn’t care about killing all of you, he could escape from pretty much anything if he wanted to.”
“We know about the green guy,” Rhodey said.
“I’m not talking about the green guy.”
Rhodey sighed and patted Tony lightly on his good arm. “Just focus on getting better.”
“Yeah,” Tony said, “Right.”
--
Once Tony convinced everyone to let him go home to ‘sleep,’ he got in contact with JARVIS and got into SHIELD’s files.
He was in no shape to go anywhere, but he sent one of his suits to where Bruce was being held.
The suit arrived in Bruce’s cell, and through the camera Tony could see Bruce quickly stand up.
“Tony, you should be in bed,” he said.
“This is just a suit,” Tony said through the speaker. “Don’t get antsy, I’m going to grab you, okay?”
He didn’t give Bruce a chance to answer before flying Bruce out of there.
They landed in Stark’s home lab a few minutes later.
“This isn’t the best hiding spot,” Bruce said as he moved awkwardly out of the suit’s arms.
“I just wanted to say, you know, thanks.”
“You’re going to get a lot of flak for this.”
“Please. I piss SHIELD off more than this every Tuesday.”
Bruce smiled. (It was a nice smile.)
“And I never got to thank you for that other time. In the flood,” Bruce said.
“That was just getting the job done.”
“Right.”
“So,” Tony said, feeling suddenly a bit awkward, “The suit will take you wherever you want. And it won’t tell anyone but me where you went. And I’m looking forward to some Vicodin and a marathon of sci fi reruns. So you’ll get your head start.”
“You’re really letting me go?” Bruce said.
“Yeah. But when I’m better, I’m hunting you down again.”
Bruce gave him a wry smile. “I guess the chase is too much fun for you to give up.”
“That’s not it at all,” Tony said with a grin.
“Then this was just returning a favor. You still believe that I should be the property of SHIELD,” Bruce said, looking closely at Tony.
“I thought you were supposed to be a genius,” Tony said. “SHIELD can screw itself. I’m going to look for you every time I have a new biochem idea I need to run by you.”
Bruce laughed. “You’re going to chase me all over the world so we can talk shop?”
“Totally. And so we can hang out. And so, eventually, I can convince you that I can protect you from SHIELD and whoever else. You can do research. You can live in one place for more than a month. You can have all those things you used to want.”
“What do you mean?”
Tony didn’t want to mention all the old emails of Banner he had access to - all the times he mentioned that he wanted a home, kids, a job where he got to really help people with his science.
Tony answered, “It’s just, I’m going to visit you once in a while, whether you like it or not. But we won’t come back here until you want to.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow. “You seem pretty sure I’ll eventually be convinced.”
“Once you get to know me, you’ll see: I can be extremely charming.”
Bruce smiled. “I think I may have picked up on that already.”
Tony grinned at him.
“How are you doing, Tony?” Bruce asked, gesturing at Tony’s chest.
“Doctors gave me an all clear. And a little torture’s just an inconvenience at this point,” he said with a smirk.
Tony realized then that Bruce, like Pepper and Rhodey, most definitely had a so-not-taking-your-crap face.
“I’ll be fine,” Tony said. “And you?”
Bruce shrugged. “I’ll be fine too.”
“I’ll see you in a little bit?” Tony said.
Bruce paused. “Yeah. I guess you will.” He stepped toward the door.
“How about a kiss good-bye?” Tony said quickly, moving in front of him. It was a bit more direct than Tony wanted, but he still hadn’t got to spend more than a few minutes alone and conscious with Bruce.
Bruce looked back at him. Then, he leaned toward Tony and kissed him, hot, forceful, long, slow motions pressing into Tony’s mouth.
They parted, and Tony said, breathless, “I meant a good bye fuck. How about a nice fuck good bye?”
Bruce laughed again. “I’ll see you in Canada, Tony,” he said with a smirk.
“Canada. In… a few weeks?” Tony said, eyes gleaming.
“In one month exactly. I’ll let you figure out what province.”
“You know that I will,” Tony said.
“I do know,” Bruce said, small smile on his face. He turned then and ran, right before Tony heard the sirens in the distance, moving toward the house.
They didn’t have a shot at catching Bruce.
Summary: Bruce/Tony, AU where Tony chases Bruce all over the world to bring him back to SHIELD. Set post-IM2, pre-Avengers. For this prompt at avengerkink: I want Tony chasing Bruce in a high-tech manhunt around the world. Could be pre-Avengers, maybe the army asks Tony to help them hunt down the Hulk, maybe SHIELD does, or could be after the Avengers, when Bruce has run away yet again.
I just want Tony chasing Bruce, but I want the story really to be about all the Macgyvering and inventing they do in the process. In canon, Banner invented a wrist-watch teleporter and a electromagnetic shield, right, so he's clearly a pretty damn good engineer in addition to being a genius scientist.
Bruce invents devices to help him escape and remain hidden, and Tony invents devices to track him down and scope him out.
How it ends is up to author, but I don't really want something too sad. Also, I prefer Tony not to be too dark, which I know would be hard to swing, but if it's pre-Avengers, you could go with his pre-Afghanistan callousness, and if it's post-Avengers, they could really, really need his expertise to save the world.
1. “We need you to track this guy down,” Fury said. “You want to find rogue weapons, and this guy is the most dangerous weapon we know of.”
Tony was distracted by the data display in his lab. “Can’t you get Agent Agent to do it? Or Agent with the glasses?”
“We sent Agent Sitwell to retrieve the asset. He got away by sneaking into the SHIELD plane and using our own tech enhancements to put the entire plane and crew in a 20-minute temporal stasis.”
Tony looked away from his data. “He stopped time?”
Fury nodded.
“And no one was hurt?”
“That’s right,” Fury said.
“I know what you’re doing,” Tony said, waving his screwdriver around as he talked, “You’re dangling science in front of me to see if I bite.”
“And will you?”
“Well, obviously, you came to me. Who’s going to out-MacGyver a MacGyver?” Tony said as he looked over the file Fury had set down on his desk.
Tony whistled. “Bruce Banner? The guy who single-handedly discovered cellular neosolidification pathways?”
“You’re a fan?”
“Who wouldn’t be?”
“Make no mistake, Stark. He’s a genius scientist who has successfully evaded SHIELD and most of the military forces in the world for a year. And then there’s the other guy. We can presume he can release it at any time.”
“And what happens when he’s in SHIELD custody?”
“We treat him humanely.”
“Seriously.”
“We’re hoping that he’ll agree to work for our science department.”
“As a scientist or lab rat?”
“Both. But due to his condition, he’ll have to give permission for either.”
“So that’s why you’re capturing him alive. Because you’ve got no choice.”
“Stark, read the rest of the file. Banner isn’t just a man. He’s a killing machine. When we found out SI weapons have killed dozens of my agents, you promised to clean up rogue weapons wherever we found them.”
Tony’s lips thinned. “I know what I said. And Iron Man has blown up plenty of weapons caches.”
“We don’t need Iron Man for this one. We need the scientist, Tony Stark.”
Tony smirked. “I’m going to have JARVIS replay that for Romanov, you know.”
Fury said, “I’m taking that as a yes,” and walked out, leaving Banner’s file there.
Tony sat down and continued to read.
--
Tony, of course, had a better facial rec system than SHIELD did - though his wasn’t on the market yet. And while SHIELD’s satellites had to search for all threats, Tony had the luxury of being more focused.
Obviously, there are low tech ways to get around that. Like wearing a hoodie so the satellite can’t see your face. But everyone has to buy groceries once in a while, and Tony can get info from any space he wants, especially now that he’s provided cheap cell phones to most of the digitally underserved areas in the world (and he reminds himself to thank Pepper for coming up with that initiative, which had nothing to do with the Banner mission but was a nice idea anyway. He also reminds himself to never tell her about the privacy implications.)
Iron Man shows up outside a remote village in the Himalayas, announcing his presence and demanding that Banner come out.
He feels something strange then.
And then the impact of his suit hitting the ground.
Tony grits his teeth.
Underneath the tarp in the garden is, apparently, a giant magnet. A scientific achievement that a 3 year old could figure out. (Tony would have when he was three, anyway.)
He sees Bruce running away, a small backpack in his hands.
“Hey!” Tony shouts, and Bruce turns, wary.
“Don’t fight me,” Bruce shouts back. “It’ll get ugly. And I don’t want to hurt you.”
“How’d you know it’d be me?” Tony said.
Bruce shrugged. “I didn’t. I figured between weapons and vehicles, a magnet would come in handy.”
“So you’re just leaving me here?”
Bruce paused. “Magnet turns off automatically in an hour.” He turned and ran down the tiny dirt trail.
Tony sighed. The only good thing was that the magnetic field also took out his communications. The last thing he needed right now was to hear JARVIS mock.
2. A month later, and Tony is in Paris, running faster than he ever has. He’s finally pinpointed Banner’s radioactive signature - it fluctuates like nothing Tony has ever seen and he had to invent a new class of Latempe operators just to make the equations work - but he’s almost there. He’s dashing through the catacombs, through spaces the suit would never fit through, and he can feel his chest pounding, the blood pumping, but he can’t slow down.
He is this close to catching Banner.
He finally closes in on a sealed room, and JARVIS tells him over his phone that there is no way out. Tony pulls out his stun gun and pauses, catches his breath for a second, and then walks in.
Nobody’s there.
He holds up his phone so JARVIS can scan the room.
“Lower left corner is the source of the radiation signature, sir,” JARVIS said in a condescending tone.
That didn’t bode well.
Tony walked over.
There, in the corner, he saw a large rat with a device strapped to its back.
Banner had figured out how Tony had gotten so close to him so many times, then replicated his own radiation signature and taped it to a sewer rat.
“Brilliant,” Tony said, as he carefully freed the rat from the device and took a closer look.
“Director Fury will be disappointed,” JARVIS pointed out.
“Fury has finally given me a job that’s not boring,” Tony muttered, still staring at the device. “When I get back to the lab, we’re analyzing every machine this guy has ever built. Next time, we’ll know how he thinks.”
“Yes, sir. Perhaps you’d like to come out of the rat-infested catacomb now, sir.”
“Sure, whatever.”
--
3. Tony spent the next month trying to refine his techniques for finding Bruce. Even Fury said it was fine if he gave up, but Tony put his other projects on hold.
“This is hardest scientific problem I’ve ever solved and I am going to crush it,” Tony said definitively, and Fury nodded and Pepper rolled her eyes.
He came close several times, but each time, Bruce came up with some way to escape.
When he finally managed to detect him in Rio, Tony went in during Carnival, wearing a costume, pretending to be drunk (it was mostly pretend), acting like a tourist who had wandered into the bad side of town.
He stumbled around the sidewalk outside of Bruce’s apartment, pretending to sit on the stoop to catch his balance. He tried to detect any motion - he wasn’t sure which side of the building Bruce lived on - but he did his best to act inconspicuous.
A minute later, a small child gave him a bottle of water and a bag with some bread in it. There was a note: “Better luck next time. This will help your hangover.”
Tony sighed.
The kid was still looking at him with wide eyes.
“Iron Man?” the kid asked, making flying noises as he moved his hand around like a plane or a suit.
Tony smiled. “Yeah,” he said, and gave the kid a hundred dollar tip before heading home.
--
4. Tony had tried high tech and he had tried low tech. He decided to go deeper into Banner’s files, to figure out how he thought.
The things he found made him feel for Bruce. But Tony knew that most bad guys had a sob story and it didn’t make them something other than bad guys. And he could see why Banner keeping control of his temper might never be a sure thing.
The few appearances of the other guy was something Tony hadn’t studied much yet. Tony realized then that his plan to stun gun Bruce before he could turn would have actually gone very badly.
He also learned that a lot of the deaths attributed to Banner might actually be Blonsky.
But whatever conflicts he felt, he didn’t feel any desire to give up the search.
There had been so many times that Bruce was just out of his reach. Tony wanted to win - badly.
Eventually, he decided that he would invent nanobots to search for him - harmless to all life, but sending a message to Tony if Bruce’s DNA were detected. He put the bots in most of the world’s tea supply, knowing that it was one of Banner’s weaknesses, after proper safeguards that the nanobots wouldn’t evolve or reproduce.
“You’re going to neuter them?” JARVIS said.
“I’m preventing a nano takeover of the world,” Tony grumbled.
“Fine, sir,” JARVIS said, rather judgmentally.
A couple of months later, Bruce was located.
Tony didn’t call in for backup, despite the fact that after his last close miss, Fury had all but torn him a new one. But Tony wanted to do this himself.
He showed up at a tent in a rather touristy campground in Japan. He waited until Bruce stepped out and then stood in front of him.
“I’ve come to deal,” Tony said before Bruce could run.
“Not interested in a deal with SHIELD.”
“Not with SHIELD. With me. Come work for me.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow. “This is a recruitment?”
“It wasn’t. It could be.”
“It’s not safe for me to be near SHIELD. Or anyone else trying to put me in a cage.”
“What if you’re not in a cage?”
“They’ll always have a cage. And when I said ‘not safe,’ I also meant for them.”
“Look, Bruce, I’m a fan.”
“Excuse me?”
“Of your science. And your escape plans. And the giant green rage thing.”
Tony could see Bruce considering making a sprint for it.
Tony added quickly, “I just want to know how you did it. All those times you got away. Scientific curiosity.”
Bruce folded his arms. “You know I’m not going to give away the only thing keeping me out of a strapped down lab table.”
“Okay, it doesn’t have to be like that. We can work something out. I’ll make it worth your while,” Tony added, giving Bruce his best bedroom eyes. The bedroom eyes - or more precisely the ‘fuck me’ eyes - worked on just about everybody.
Not Bruce. “Sorry, Tony. I got to admit, no one’s made me step up my game like you have. But I need to go before your friends get here.” Bruce pulled a device out of his back pocket then.
“I didn’t invite any fr- wait, is that a phase transalternator? Is that a microwave button? Holy shit, Bruce, did you make a transalternator out of a kitchen microwave?” He stared at Bruce in awe.
He could see that Bruce wanted to just use it and run. But he answered, “A microwave, an adaptor, and a Starkphone. Thanks for putting half a supercomputer’s worth of processing power on a 50-dollar phone. Really helped.”
“That is so hot,” Tony said.
Bruce looked at him strangely. Tony could see him eyeing his exit then, but Bruce paused to ask, “And it was the tea, right? Chemical tracer in the tea?”
“Nanobots,” Tony said.
“Very impressive. Overly elaborate and possibly insane. But impressive.”
“Yeah, that’s generally how I roll.”
Bruce gave him a half smile. “It was interesting meeting you, Tony.” He held up the device.
“Wait, let’s just talk about science some more - just for tonight--”
Everything went fuzzy then, pale yellow waves, and Tony knew that by the time his reality settled back to normal, Bruce would be gone.
But it was the closest Tony had come yet.
--
5. “Taking advantage of natural disasters now, sir?” JARVIS asked.
“Don’t be judgmental. I didn’t cause the flood. But it’s only 100 miles from Banner’s last known hideout, and SHIELD just raided the place yesterday. And you know Bruce is going to want to help.”
“So that’s a yes, sir,” JARVIS noted. Tony ignored him and put on the suit to fly there, bringing a couple extra suits just in case the evacuations weren’t as complete as had been reported. It was rough going, since the storms that caused the flood were still at force, but he managed to find the cluster of people huddling against the elements in whatever shelter they could make from the scraps of their destroyed town.
SHIELD of course noticed that Tony had left for the same region as their raid and promised to send support (they knew that Stark was after Banner, naturally - Coulson had even written a memo suggesting that he was obsessed with the ‘target’).
The first thing Tony did on arriving was ask for the shelter for the injured. He was pointed there and walked into the tent. It was full of people screaming, moaning, bleeding.
It reminded Tony of all that news footage he’d seen of people displaced, helpless and hopeless. (It reminded Tony of what it felt like in Afghanistan.)
He saw Bruce holding down a wound on a young woman’s leg. She was bleeding profusely.
Bruce looked up and saw him.
They were silent for a moment.
“These people are going to die if you make me leave,” Bruce said. He stared at Tony, still pressing on the woman’s leg.
Tony could see that he was right. Bruce was the only one giving treatment (Bruce, who wasn’t even a real doctor, not that kind). But the UN hadn’t been able to get to this side of the river yet, and some of these people didn’t have the hour or two it would take.
Tony swallowed. “JARVIS,” he said, “Inform SHIELD that Banner has fled. I think he headed east. Also, tell the suits to transport medical personnel to my location.”
“Yes, sir,” JARVIS replied, note of approval in his voice.
Tony took off his suit, then walked over and placed his hands on Bruce’s, slowly. He smiled down at the woman.
“I got this,” Tony said to Bruce. “Go take care of the others.”
Bruce smiled at him, then left to do exactly that.
When the medical professionals got there - as many as the suits could carry - they quickly put the injured parties in order. Tony directed the suits to help where they could, modifying them to use their tools to cauterize wounds or set bones. When he looked up to find Bruce again, he was gone.
--
1. There was a lead on Bruce’s whereabouts and of course Tony had to follow.
But his habit of crossing borders into every nation’s airspace had not gone unnoticed.
He wasn’t sure how their government got anti-aircraft missiles better than his suit.
He would have to figure it out on the off chance that he lived through this.
Another shock then, as they put the electric prod onto his chest. He did his best not to scream.
This, he could handle. Better than the other thing, at any rate.
Tony figured he had been there about a day. He had gotten in the habit of encrypting all leads on Banner so that SHIELD couldn’t follow him, which meant that nobody would be able to track him here. His communicator wasn’t functioning, which meant even JARVIS wouldn't know what had happened.
They moved the electric prod near him again and Tony braced himself. They shocked him again, and he closed his eyes, gritted his teeth as hard as he could.
The lead soldier came near him again. He was smiling and Tony knew what that meant. He took out the arc reactor and watched, amused, as Tony struggled to breathe, to live.
It felt like forever before they put it back in.
The others nodded, as if they were enjoying the latest anatomy lesson. Tony made a mental note to get the reactor removed if he ever saw home again.
He was beginning to admit to himself that he might very well not.
He could see the man reaching for his chest again, and he tried to be stoic, to be strong, but he started screaming, he tried to kick his legs against the straps that held him to the table.
Then, everything went fuzzy. The light took on a yellow haze, familiar.
He came to, and he was outside of the facility, looking up at Bruce.
“I heard something small and red got shot down, and figured it was you. Sorry it took so long to get there,” Bruce said, then added, with a small smile, “You’re a hard man to find.”
Tony, still weak, tried to move. He knew he had broken ribs, maybe a shoulder.
“Shh, stay there,” Bruce said. “I called Pepper, who put me through to Colonel Rhodes. That helicopter is coming for you,” he added, standing up and gesturing to a dot in the harsh blue sky.
Tony thought he might pass out again. He wasn’t sure how many times they had played arc reactor games, but he knew it was too many.
Bruce started to move away, but Tony managed to whisper, “Please stay.”
He could see the conflict in Bruce’s face, his reluctance. But finally Bruce sat beside where Tony was lying on the ground and put his hand gently on Tony’s hair.
“Please don’t leave me here,” Tony repeated, eyes half open.
“I won’t. Tony, I’m here. I won’t go.” Tony’s eyes closed all the way then.
--
Tony woke up to a worried looking Rhodey.
“Hey,” he said. “How are you?”
“Horrible,” Tony said, wincing.
“Pepper’s berating the doctors right now to get the pain meds as soon as possible.”
Tony smiled, then suddenly remembered how he got there.
“Bruce?”
Rhodey’s lips thinned. “Dr. Banner is in military custody. We’re arguing with SHIELD about who gets to keep him.”
“He saved me.”
“I know. But he’s a threat. I can ensure humane treatment, but he has to stay with us.”
“Have you read the file? If he didn’t care about killing all of you, he could escape from pretty much anything if he wanted to.”
“We know about the green guy,” Rhodey said.
“I’m not talking about the green guy.”
Rhodey sighed and patted Tony lightly on his good arm. “Just focus on getting better.”
“Yeah,” Tony said, “Right.”
--
Once Tony convinced everyone to let him go home to ‘sleep,’ he got in contact with JARVIS and got into SHIELD’s files.
He was in no shape to go anywhere, but he sent one of his suits to where Bruce was being held.
The suit arrived in Bruce’s cell, and through the camera Tony could see Bruce quickly stand up.
“Tony, you should be in bed,” he said.
“This is just a suit,” Tony said through the speaker. “Don’t get antsy, I’m going to grab you, okay?”
He didn’t give Bruce a chance to answer before flying Bruce out of there.
They landed in Stark’s home lab a few minutes later.
“This isn’t the best hiding spot,” Bruce said as he moved awkwardly out of the suit’s arms.
“I just wanted to say, you know, thanks.”
“You’re going to get a lot of flak for this.”
“Please. I piss SHIELD off more than this every Tuesday.”
Bruce smiled. (It was a nice smile.)
“And I never got to thank you for that other time. In the flood,” Bruce said.
“That was just getting the job done.”
“Right.”
“So,” Tony said, feeling suddenly a bit awkward, “The suit will take you wherever you want. And it won’t tell anyone but me where you went. And I’m looking forward to some Vicodin and a marathon of sci fi reruns. So you’ll get your head start.”
“You’re really letting me go?” Bruce said.
“Yeah. But when I’m better, I’m hunting you down again.”
Bruce gave him a wry smile. “I guess the chase is too much fun for you to give up.”
“That’s not it at all,” Tony said with a grin.
“Then this was just returning a favor. You still believe that I should be the property of SHIELD,” Bruce said, looking closely at Tony.
“I thought you were supposed to be a genius,” Tony said. “SHIELD can screw itself. I’m going to look for you every time I have a new biochem idea I need to run by you.”
Bruce laughed. “You’re going to chase me all over the world so we can talk shop?”
“Totally. And so we can hang out. And so, eventually, I can convince you that I can protect you from SHIELD and whoever else. You can do research. You can live in one place for more than a month. You can have all those things you used to want.”
“What do you mean?”
Tony didn’t want to mention all the old emails of Banner he had access to - all the times he mentioned that he wanted a home, kids, a job where he got to really help people with his science.
Tony answered, “It’s just, I’m going to visit you once in a while, whether you like it or not. But we won’t come back here until you want to.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow. “You seem pretty sure I’ll eventually be convinced.”
“Once you get to know me, you’ll see: I can be extremely charming.”
Bruce smiled. “I think I may have picked up on that already.”
Tony grinned at him.
“How are you doing, Tony?” Bruce asked, gesturing at Tony’s chest.
“Doctors gave me an all clear. And a little torture’s just an inconvenience at this point,” he said with a smirk.
Tony realized then that Bruce, like Pepper and Rhodey, most definitely had a so-not-taking-your-crap face.
“I’ll be fine,” Tony said. “And you?”
Bruce shrugged. “I’ll be fine too.”
“I’ll see you in a little bit?” Tony said.
Bruce paused. “Yeah. I guess you will.” He stepped toward the door.
“How about a kiss good-bye?” Tony said quickly, moving in front of him. It was a bit more direct than Tony wanted, but he still hadn’t got to spend more than a few minutes alone and conscious with Bruce.
Bruce looked back at him. Then, he leaned toward Tony and kissed him, hot, forceful, long, slow motions pressing into Tony’s mouth.
They parted, and Tony said, breathless, “I meant a good bye fuck. How about a nice fuck good bye?”
Bruce laughed again. “I’ll see you in Canada, Tony,” he said with a smirk.
“Canada. In… a few weeks?” Tony said, eyes gleaming.
“In one month exactly. I’ll let you figure out what province.”
“You know that I will,” Tony said.
“I do know,” Bruce said, small smile on his face. He turned then and ran, right before Tony heard the sirens in the distance, moving toward the house.
They didn’t have a shot at catching Bruce.