dark side of the moon ⋄ marvel

♦ chapter three ♦

"And yet you treat your champions with such distrust," Signy said.

"Are you really that naive?" Natasha condescended. "SHIELD monitors potential threats."

"Captain America's on threat watch?" Banner chimed in.

"We all are."

Signy grew bored of the conversation, her eyes wandering to the scepter which seemed to be thriving on all the negative emotions swirling around the room. Her gaze lingered back in the direction of Loki's cell. Banner was still his target, that much she was sure of. But was this part of his plan as well? Trigger arguments between the group which had previously been moving towards a comfortable partnership.

"You speak of control, yet your court chaos," Signy said, rejoining the argument. It was true, she thought. Their plans with the Tesseract had completely backfired. Now this "team" was falling apart before it had even begun whether that was loki's doing or not.

"That's his M.O., isn't it?" Banner agreed. "I mean, what are we? A team? No, we're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're a time bomb." Signy gestured to him in agreement.

"You need to step away," Fury ordered.

"Why shouldn't the guy let off a little steam?" Tony instigated, putting a hand on Steve's shoulder.

"You know damn well why! Back off!" Steve exclaimed, pushing Tony's hand away.

"I'm starting to want you to make me."

"There is so much testosterone in this space," Signy muttered with a roll of her eyes.

"Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?"

"Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist."

Steve scoffed. "I know guys with none of that worth ten of you. I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself." Signy's brows furrowed, her disagreement evident. Tony made mistakes and he used the power he had to fix them. That wasn't selfishness or arrogance. In fact, it was rather noble. "You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you."

"I think I would just cut the wire."

Steve chuckled. "Always a way out. You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero."

"A hero? Like you? You're a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle."

Signy finally saw the issue in front of her face: these people didn't know each other. Not well enough, at least. This group had only known each other for approximately a day and already, they'd each made huge judgements about the other.

Steve saw arrogance in Tony, so he formed his view of him around that. Tony was looking to Steve for the "special" about him that made his father speak so highly of the captain. The way Tony's father never spoke about him. When Tony couldn't find that thing he thought he was missing, his jealousy doubled, because the man his father seemed to like so much more than him was just as ordinary as the rest of them.

"Put on the suit. Let's go a few rounds," Steve continued his pursuit against Tony.

Thor's laughter cut off their grudge match. "You people are so petty... and tiny."

"Yeah this is a team," Bruce mocked.

Fury turned to Natasha. "Agent Romanoff, would you escort Dr. Banner back to his-"

"Where? You rented my room."

Signy winced. "Yikes. Gotcha there."

Fury glared at the child again. "The cell was just-"