Chapter Text
“What the hell! What just happened?” Tony demanded from his prone position on the rubble-strewn street. “Please tell me nobody kissed me.”
Hulk actually almost seemed to laugh.
Natasha’s voice crackled over the comms from her position atop Stark Tower. “Clint? Mind explaining why I know you pulled your shoulder doing some ridiculous stunt?”
“Uh…cause I did?”
“Romanoff?” Steve asked, blinking. “Do you have burns on your hands?”
Tony stared up at Hulk. “Oh my god. Guysguysguys. Lookit!” He pointed a gauntleted hand at the Hulk’s bare left arm, where black ink marched in a neat column up the inside of his wrist, spelling out all their names and what could only be assumed to be Thor’s, written as it was in runes. “We’re fucking soulmates.”
Steve didn’t even register the language, he was so shocked. Hulk scratched at the words idly then shrugged when they didn’t come off.
Thor’s face lit into a fluorescent grin.
“We’ll talk about this later, boys,” Natasha promised. “First we have a rampaging god to capture.”
“Right, right,” Tony muttered. He lifted his arms. “Hand up, anyone?”
Steve took one hand, Thor the other, and together they hauled Iron Man to his feet. The group waited for Clint to limp over to the Tower before taking the elevator up as Natasha took one down, holding the scepter like it was a symbol of office.
Clint gave her a wide berth.
Loki was flippant at them but, strangely, perfectly willing to cooperate. They handed him off to SHIELD at the helipad as soon as the agents showed up and retreated back to Tony’s trashed living room before anything else could be demanded of them. Tony paused by the elevator, hands on hips, staring morosely at the shattered window, cratered floor, and assorted debris.
“This place was only just finished last Tuesday. I only got to use that bar twice. And I didn’t get to finish either of those drinks!”
“We bleed for you, Tony,” Natasha said as she flopped onto the couch, rotating a shoulder, the fledgling soulbond tinting with her exhaustion. “We really do.”
Tony threw her a look, then stepped out of the suit and clapped his hands together, striding purposefully toward the bar that had—thankfully—remained untouched. “Alright, who wants a cocktail? I myself will be drinking scotch. Neat. In large quantities and with great abandon.”
“I believe I will as well,” Thor said, taking a seat at the bar, setting Mjolnir down on it with a slight thump. “I look forward to trying your Midgardian alcohol. I’m curious how it compares to that of Asgard.”
Tony looked up at him from where he was gathering glasses. “Ooh, is that a challenge, big guy?”
Thor just grinned at him. Tony cackled gleefully and started gathering bottles.
“Bloody Mary,” Natasha ordered, resting her head on the back of the couch and closing her eyes.
“Nothing for me, thanks,” Bruce said as he slipped into the room; he had stayed behind in the hallway when he’d started to transition back. Tying ragged ends of his pants together in lieu of the belt he had lost somewhere, he collapsed onto the stool beside Thor.
“You sure? I have cranberry juice, pomegranate. Meant for cocktails, really, but perfectly”—Tony shuddered—“healthy on their own, I’m sure.”
Bruce nodded once in pensive agreement.
Clint flopped down beside Natasha on the couch. “Just a beer for me, something dark and bitter as your heart, Tony.”
“Hey! I resent that remark. I’ll have you know my heart is full of light and little bunnies, just look at my chest. It’s glowing with purity.”
“And cold,” Clint added, slouching bonelessly. “Warm beer is blasphemy.”
A cough drew all their attention to Steve, who shuffled slightly in place. He glanced up at them with a short, shy smile. “So…soulmates?”
His warmth and quiet joy radiated down the bonds to them all like sunlight, making them blink. Understanding flashed across Natasha’s face. “Your first?”
He blushed. Captain America actually blushed, ducking his head a little, shuffling even more in place.
“Aw, Capislce,” Tony said, pushing a very full glass toward Thor, “that’s almost adorable.”
Clint snorted. “Almost?”
“Adorable is not in my personal lexicon. ‘Gorgeous’, sure. ‘Bodacious’, yes. ‘Rocking hot’, of course—”
Clint cut him off with another derisive snort.
Thor downed the glass in one go and sat for a moment, considering. A smile broke across his face. “This is most excellent. A--!” He thought the better of whatever he had been about to do and simply pushed his glass in a silent request back to Tony, who frowned at it like it had misbehaved. Thor turned to Steve. “I do not understand. How can such a competent and honorable warrior come to be without bonded shield-mates?”
Steve shrugged as he sat down at the last bar stool. “Not many empathize with a skinny kid constantly in and out of hospitals. Sure, they feel bad for you, but it’s just a vague pity. It’s not real understanding, the kind that gets you a soulbond.”
“The Howling Commandos?” Clint asked, catching the cold bottle of Russian Imperial stout Tony threw at him.
Natasha opened her eyes to glare at Tony.
“Come over here and get it yourself, Itsy Bitsy. I’m not your nanny.”
She huffed but levered herself off the couch to slink over to the bar, snagging the glass Tony slid down to her with eager fingers.
Steve shrugged again, accepting a glass of cranberry juice similar to the one before Bruce. “We never quite clicked that way.” Something dark and sad slithered on the bonds for a moment, but no one pushed. He glanced at the other team members curiously. “How many do you all have?”
“I myself boast four,” Thor said proudly, his bond practically shining. He snapped open his vambrace to display the names inscribed at the top of his wrist, right above their names—which none of the Avengers could read as the four names were all written in runes. Tony rolled his eyes, muttering about Space Vikings. “They are my bonded shield-mates. I have known them nearly all my life, though I have only been bonded to them for four centuries.”
Tony’s muttering got louder. Bruce looked slightly pained as he squinted at Thor.
“I’ve got two,” Clint volunteered. “Nat and—” He broke off abruptly. Bleak sorrow shocked through the bonds before he clamped down on it. Natasha laid a hand on Clint’s shoulder while he took a large pull on his beer.
“Same,” she said, meeting their eyes.
Steve nodded, looking away. He had liked the agent, would have liked the chance to get to know him better—even if it had been a little weird at first with the whole watching-him-sleep thing.
He glanced at Bruce speculatively. The scientist gave him a weary smile and shook his head. “One. A childhood friend. They died in a car crash a year before…” His eyes took on a haunted look as the memories swam back up: blood on the cement, the prickling pain as parts of his soul suddenly asphyxiated, “My condolences, Dr. Banner. My name is Henry and I’m here to help”—he took his glasses off his nose and studiously cleaned them. “Well, you’re all the first I’ve had since.”
“While I would love to join the pity party here—I’m all about parties, I’m the life of them—I have to say I have had the fortune of having two, pains in the asses though they are.” Tony splashed a very, very generous serving of scotch into his glass. His bond swirled with half-defined emotion. “Now I’m just two shy of a baseball team, with all you nuttos.”
“God help us all,” Natasha muttered into her drink.
Clint clinked his bottle to her glass. “Amen.”
“Snits.” Tony took a gulp of scotch. He swirled the amber liquid around the glass for a moment. “So. This is awkward.” At the rest of their looks, he gestured at the group with his glass. “Not to paraphrase the Cap or anything, but, soulmates? I’ve known you all for what, two days? I didn’t even meet you, raptor boy, till a few hours ago.”
Bruce ran a hand through his hair. “That’s true. Trauma-born bonds usually take a few weeks to a month to form, depending on the situation. The shortest bond period I personally know of was a kidnap case, and they were in captivity for nine days.”
“If it makes you happier, not even SHIELD thought it would happen this fast,” Natasha offered, chewing in a disturbing manner on her celery stick.
“So what makes us different?” Tony asked. He made grabby motions with his fingers. “Give me data, people. I can’t work without all the variables. Gives me hives. Thor, is this bond period normal for you?”
“In my travels, I have found that the period a bond takes to form depends on the lifespan of the beings forming it. On Asgard, it is no difficulty to live to five thousand, so soulbonds tend to need many centuries to form. It is much the same for Alfheim and Svartalfheim, though I have heard that bonds on Muspelheim can take merely a few days. I do not pretend to be a scholar, so I have little knowledge or understanding of why this is so.”
Steve was impressed. Thor had actually managed to make Tony—genius billionaire playboy philanthropist—speechless with a dazed, wonderfully bewildered look on his face. Even his bond couldn’t quite decide what to think. Little spurts of emotion would flare only to die under the next one, vacillating between a hundred points.
“Okay,” the engineer finally said after several minutes of silence in which each Avenger watched in fascinated amusement. “Okay. Right. The big guy is not the new data point. Right. Any other ideas? The supersoldier serum?”
“Even if that is the catalyst, there’s no way to test that hypothesis,” Bruce replied.
Tony grimaced. “Ridiculous amount of combat adrenaline?”
“The average bond period in the military is half a service tour, with exceptions for the more active postings. There’s no data on any bonds in the more specialized combat teams as they’re all classified.”
“I could hack the Pentagon,” Tony offered.
His bond was deadly serious.
Clint pointed at him with his beer bottle. “You are the weirdest motherfucker. I think I like you.”
Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. “Tony, please, let’s…I know we dug through SHIELD’s files, but, just…let’s try to stay on the side of the law this time? Please? I’d rather not antagonize the military anymore.”
“Fine, fine.” Tony took another swig of scotch. “Magical space portal interference?”
“Again, Tony, there’s no data and there’s no way to acquire any.”
“Look,” Steve said, stepping in before Tony and Bruce could get into a real huff, “the way I understood it was that you became soulmates with people you got to know very well. I know that’s supposed to take a lot of time, but during the War, sometimes the only people who understood you were other soldiers, even if they were complete strangers. Could it be something like that?”
The two scientists looked at him, Bruce with a speculative eye, Tony with an incredulous one.
“That…would actually make sense,” Bruce said, resettling his glasses.
“What, because we fought the first aliens Earth has had contact with?” Tony demanded, wry amusement ruffling across his bond. “Then why aren’t we soulmates with all those normal, everyday police officers and National Guardsmen? Jesus Christ, why isn’t the whole city soulmates then?”
“Look, Tony, soulology is hardly a perfect science. We know no more about how bonds work than we do about dark matter—”
“Another thing I hate,” Tony muttered into his scotch.
“—so how about we turn to the stuff we can measure, like the type of bond we have and its properties. We hardly have a normal one.”
Thor frowned thoughtfully. “What is a ‘normal’ bond for mortals?”
“General surface mind-link,” Natasha replied. “Capable of basic empathy, general location sensing, the ability to determine physical condition if the bond’s concentrated on for an appropriate time interval.”
“Whereas ours are distressingly clear,” Bruce added. “We knew of each others’ injuries without even having to think about it.”
“Which brings up another important question.” Clint tossed his empty bottle into the trash with perfect aim. “Nat and I have bond training courtesy of SHIELD, but do any of you?”
Steve furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
“Like, could you block your bond if you needed to? Can you push the other bonds to the back of your awareness? This is kinda important. We’ve all got five or more now, and we’re going to be on the same missions for the most part. That’s a lot of information to have to process constantly or even ignore outright if we’re going covert. Obviously, Cap, I know you don’t, but Thor, I have no idea how bonds work in Viking-land.”
“They are not too dissimilar from your own, friend Clint. Worry not, I know how to rein them in should the need arise.”
“Pep and Rhodey forced me,” Tony admitted with a shrug. “They didn’t want any ‘leakage’, to use Pepper’s exact phrasing. Apparently they disapprove of some of my activities.”
Natasha fiddled with one of her knives. “I trust you’ll continue to block your ‘activities’, Mr. Stark.”
Tony saluted her.
“Bruce?” Clint asked.
The scientist shook his head. “Never needed to.”
“We can teach you and Cap the basics then,” Natasha said. “It’s not too different from the meditation techniques you’ve been utilizing.” She eyed him speculatively. “Dr. Banner, what would you say the chances are of the bond being able to calm the big guy down?”
Bruce’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “Again, I have no data, and I’m very behind on bond theory—hard to acquire the literature while still keeping a low profile—so there’s not much I can say besides that being a good idea to look into.”
“Actually,” Steve said, “I can see this coming in very handy on missions. It’s much easier to keep track of you all this way.”
“Excuse you, Capsicle, it’s not like we’re a bunch of kids in Wonka’s factory here.”
Steve blinked at him.
Tony pointed a finger at him. “Movie nights. We are so doing movie nights. Know what? Let’s start now. JARVIS, order up some shawarma from that place down the street. It’s not wrecked, I checked.”
“At once, sir,” JARVIS said. “And may I add that Director Fury is on the line.”
“I’d praise you for stalling him, but you also haven’t gotten rid of him so I’m kinda on the fence here.”
“He says the matter is urgent.”
“We just saved the city from an alien invasion with a nuke. What could possibly be urgent right now?”
“It appears to concern your soulbonds, sir.”
Tony glared at the two super spies. “You told him? Already?”
Natasha shrugged, while Clint snorted. “Doesn’t take a genius to figure it out, tin head,” he said.
“Put him on,” Steve said.
“Ah come on, Cap,” Tony whined. He finished off his scotch as JARVIS connected the line.
“I’m looking for Agent Barton,” Fury’s voice boomed out of the speakers. Clint groaned and sat up.
“Here, boss.”
“Agent Barton…” All the Avengers straightened at his tone. Fury sounded almost…concerned. Apprehensive even. Unease started to trickle through the bonds from all sides. “Agent Barton, have you created any new soulbonds?”
Clint furrowed his brow, glanced around the room before responding. “Yeah? All the Avengers. I thought SHIELD was prepared for that.”
“Agent Barton, Loki has your name on his wrist.”
No one said a word as horror bloomed across Clint’s face and his bond. Swearing a blue streak, he scrambled for his arm guard, fingers fumbling with the buckles. The list of the Avengers’ names spilled out from underneath it, so he hadn’t bothered to actually check. Natasha batted his hands away and undid it for him. He stared at his wrist, then his bond went cold and blank as he threw up blocks.
Steve shifted in his stool. “Clint?”
He mutely flashed them his wrist. There were two names written in runes on it, one down below with all of their names, and one at the top beneath Natasha’s.
“Well shit,” Tony said.
“I don’t understand,” Steve said. “I thought the forced soulbonds were supposed to disappear with the end of the mind-control. That’s what happened to Dr. Selvig and all the other people Loki took.”
“Well, this one didn’t. Agent Barton, you’re staying after the debrief to get re-examined. Tomorrow, 0800.”
Clint mumbled a “Yes, sir,” and the line went dead.
Natasha shifted her weight. “I can kill him for you.”
Thor took care to keep his bond silent. It had taken time, yes, but he now knew when to press and when to hold his peace. He knew these warriors; they were fighters but they were not cruel nor hardened after centuries of violence and pain like some from the other realms. They would make no rash decision this night.
Clint jumped up from the couch and paced around the living room, muttering. “Shit. Shit shitshit. How the hell, how the fuck did this happen? I thought the bastard was—” He halted abruptly before the window. “Oh my god.”
When he said nothing further, Natasha shifted again. “Clint.”
He turned toward them without seeing them, too focused in his own head for anything else. “I could feel him. During the battle, but I thought it was just echoes, what with…with Coulson…Nat, I don’t want to be soulmates with that—!” The very idea made him want to vomit.
Tony, Steve, and Bruce glanced at Thor. He shook his head slightly at them, though he was happy for their concern. Steve nodded while the scientists looked vaguely impressed.
“Not to sound too much like a broken record here, but what we need is data,” Tony said.
“Why?” Natasha asked.
“Well, we can’t just come up on a plan without knowing the field, can we, Miss Super Spy?”
That stopped Clint for a second. “We?”
“Yeah. We.” Tony returned the stare. “We’re the Avengers, who happen to be soulmates—however ridiculous that event is—and one of us happens to be non-consensually bonded to our first supervillain. That kinda makes it our business.”
Both Natasha and Steve raised an eyebrow at him for that.
“Shut up. I perform when I feel like it, not when Fury tells me to. Especially when he rejected me before it turned out I was necessary to world salvation. Besides, you’re all mine now, like it or not. Nobody touches my stuff.”
Natasha wondered if she should feel offense at that remark—Steve certainly had tinges on his bond, and Bruce wasn’t particularly happy with the sentiment, while Thor just seemed to think it was amusing—but at the moment, she couldn’t quite muster up the energy to care. Clint took priority, and if Tony Stark was willing to throw his resources at them, she wasn’t going to argue.
“We’ll need to interrogate him,” she said. “You, Clint, will obviously have to talk to him, but not until I’m done.”
“Nat—”
She gave him her best unimpressed stare. He let it drop. She let a spark of affection run down their bond. Clint blinked at her, then his shoulders slumped with a sigh as he let most of the tension go.
“I’ll have JARVIS record everything. I don’t trust SHIELD to do it properly.”
Bruce shook his head. “I’d almost call you paranoid, Tony.”
Tony raised an eyebrow. “Really, kettle? Really?”
“I said almost.”
At that moment, JARVIS informed them that the shawarma had been delivered to the lobby and how did sir want to deal with getting it to the penthouse as most of the employees had fled the building? Clint ignored the rest of the team’s rock, paper, scissors to see who would play gopher, rubbing his hands over his face until he thought he could manage his spy mask. This was not what he had had planned when he had settled into his nest another world ago. That bastard had a lot to answer for.
Tomorrow, he promised himself, grasping at the fleeting normalcy of his teammates’ bonds. Tomorrow.