Chapter Text
Why assemble the Avengers for HYDRA?
Tony stared at the people in front of him, completely baffled. He could sense Bruce’s disbelief beside him as well and he knew that if he took a peek, the billionaire would be laughing to the point of pain.
Too bad he was still incredulous to properly enjoy the ridiculousness of the situation.
“Let me see if I am getting this right. You want to assemble the team again…to find and destroy HYDRA.”
“Yes.” Natasha sighed as if she was already tired of looking at his face. Probably true enough.
Since Pepper would have a nerve attack if Tony involved SI even more with Iron Man or Avengers business, Tony insisted on meeting the team in a coffee shop a few blocks from Stark Tower.
“Because they got Loki’s scepter… after you guys sank SHIELD. Because you guys sank SHIELD, actually.”
“Not exactly.” Steve backtracked but Tony only looked at him.
“Then how exactly?”
“HYDRA would have gotten their hands on the scepter sooner or later, we just…”
“Accelerated the process?” Bruce deadpanned.
When they only got grimaces for their troubles, the two geniuses sighed.
“Look, I understand that HYDRA is no small problem, but you do know that US does have a pretty big deal counter terrorism units, right? I mean, most of our alliance with Germany is based on the war against terror. It doesn’t need the Avengers for it, it certainly doesn’t need this much overkill. You’re asking for the Hulk, Iron Man and Thor being involved in business we really don’t have anything to do with.” Bruce finished with a shrug.
“Not even two weeks ago, HYDRA almost killed more than 700 million people, including the two of you. They are not a threat normal people can contain.” Natasha pointed out.
“Via SHIELD tech, what happened then was a bogus. If SHIELD have been infiltrated since the very beginning, why do it then and not before? If they had access to all that firepower to take out all potential threats to HYDRA why only then use it? If they were waiting for some kind of cue, what was it? There are way too many questions for us to just decide to look for them willy-nilly. Even if they have been a threat for the last seven decades, so far they have yet to truly do anything to warrant attention so the most likely scenario is that they are masking their actions trough other terrorist groups. If that’s the case, then counter terrorism is already doing something about it. It hardly needs us, any of us.” Bruce finished and took another sip from his tea, not being the least bit inclined to re-join the Avengers.
“HYDRA has always been more than normal units could handle. Natasha is right. I know that none of you has experience dealing with HYDRA, but you have to see how dangerous they are, the normal proceedings would be useless.” Steve’s earnest speech gathered no more interest than the rest of the conversation.
“Why?” this time it was Tony that sighed.
“Why what?”
“Why is HYDRA something that no normal unit can handle?”
This made them quiet.
“Their leader was Red Skull.”
Bruce didn’t bother to lift his eyes from his journal anymore, “Dead.”
“They managed to infiltrate SHIELD, who knows what other intelligence agency they have their hands on?”
“That’s the name of the game espionage. They spy you, you spy them. Hardly something that the Avengers as a group would be very good at, sans you and perhaps Barton.”
“Why don’t you want to do this?” it seemed that Natasha got tired of whatever game she was trying to play.
This time Bruce paid attention, “Excuse me?”
“Bruce.” Tony cautioned.
“No!” he turned towards the spy, “Whatever makes you think that I wanted in, in the first place? I didn’t want to go with you to the Hellicarrier, I didn’t want to be a member of the Avengers and I still maintain that this group is a horrible idea. Not only there is no trust among the members, but we clash too horribly, there was no time to team-bonding exercises, no time to know each other, we were thrown together and expected to play nice with people that we never met! Whoever had the idea to put us together was a moron! And now you want us to band again? The last time we saw each other was two fucking years ago, you guys are strangers to me and to be honest I don’t want to get to know you.”
Natasha didn’t know what to say to that and it seemed that neither did Steve, when Tony sighed again, he was massaging his temples.
“There are good reasons why I never tried to change my status to consultant to full member of the Avengers. I need to remind you that I created Iron Man for the sole reason of cleaning up what my negligence helped create: SI tech in the hands of terrorists. This has the potential to clash with the Avengers Initiative and that hasn’t changed just because SHIELD is out of the picture. I agreed to participate in Avengers missions in a need-to basis because I agreed with the idea behind it: to do what no normal people can’t do. But that’s not what you guys are asking, we will be nosing in stuff that is none of our business, perhaps it will be different if it was only Captain America and two former SHIELD agents that want to help clean up what SHIELD created, considering what my career as Iron Man is all based on, I don’t think anyone will say anything but me? Bruce? Thor? We can’t be seen doing this stuff. I give it two months before there are riots on the streets.”
“No one will say anything if Captain America’s teammates help him defeat his oldest enemy.” Natasha’s voice lowered, more persuasive.
“Actually I am pretty sure they would. As they would say stuff if the Avengers helped me destroy SI stuff overseas.”
“But this is why the Avengers were created in the first place! For us to defeat foes that we would not be able to otherwise.” Steve was frustrated with how the conversation was going and it was beginning to show.
Tony gawked a little before rubbing his eyes, his voice was for once absent of sarcasm but not the snark, “Alright, listen to me. The Chitauri? That was Avengers business. No one would be able to defeat that by themselves. Not the Hulk and not Thor and certainly not the army, any army from any country. That was truly an ‘end of the world’ situation if we weren’t together. The Ten Rings? I can manage. AIM? I did manage. That robot thing in Mexico? Thor blew it sky high. Abomination? Perhaps Thor with backup but aside from Hulk, the rest of us would become road kill before really doing anything useful. When HYDRA hijacked the Hellicarriers? You both and that Wilson guy managed it. We get together just for anything and I really, really doubt that there won’t be anyone saying that what we are doing borders on fascism and there will be people that will listen to it because if you strip away everything down to our actions…it will be kinda hard to deny that we are a small group of people deciding who to save and who to kill…because we would be just that.”
“Like Tony said, if it is an ‘end of the world’ situation, I won’t be happy, but I will assist as the Other Guy. The Avengers shouldn’t be something to be treated so lightly. It should be an ace in the hole not a Joker card.”
Tony turned to them, “So, yeah. In case it treads in the ‘overwhelming odds’ waters, I guess we can assemble the team, but terrorists? There are people qualified, legalized and trained for just that because say we step in, do we kill everyone in HYDRA strongholds? Arrest everyone there? On what authority? And where do we hold them? Or to whom we deliver them? We wouldn’t even begin to know what to do.”
“I cannot believe you would just ignore HYDRA like that. Don’t you know what they are capable of? I thought you were heroes, Avengers.” for the first time, both geniuses glared at the soldier.
“I think we are more intimately familiar with terrorism that you seem to think.” Bruce gritted out.
“I kinda don’t think being an Avenger makes us heroes, but ‘ok’.” Natasha and Steve boggled at Tony but Bruce got pensive before a look of bored realization took its place.
Natasha narrowed her eyes, “What? Did you forget New York? Aliens raining down on us?”
Tony’s unimpressed expression was all she got, “I’m not saying that what we did wasn’t heroic or impressive. But ‘saving the world’ we already live in is not exactly proof of any altruistic character trait because we either save the world or die alongside it. Or in this particular case, be conquered. If the Avengers were created to ‘save the world’, that doesn’t make the Avengers heroes.”
“Really? Not even your very selfless sacrifice play?” the spy deadpanned against Tony’s equally bland face, not willing to show how much that affected her, her belief that being part of the Avengers was doing for her and the red in her ledger.
“Most of my stuff is in Manhattan. If anything, I think the only hero in that fight was Thor. Dr. Foster notwithstanding, he did not have to be in that fight.”
“What about Thor? It is his brother’s scepter.” The redhead replied and the inventor had the urge to slam his head against the table. He was pretty sure that everything he just said was ignored.
“Well, if you want to talk about it with him, then sure. But seriously, count me out.” The billionaire gulped down the rest of his coffee and slapped a bill on the table, ready to go back to his lab.
“Count me out too. When I agreed to be on the team, it was in a case by case. A ‘call of arms’ every time one of us finds something weird is not what had in mind for the Avengers. Especially when it’s other people’s job to take care of it, people who are better trained and actually have the legal permission to go around arresting or killing other people.” Bruce shrugged and got up from his seat.