part time soulmates, full time problem

Rotten Stick

"Anti-serum? Is that the official title?" You snickered.

"Luka, it's pretty serious." Bruce warned. "It can make you, Steve and Bucky completely powerless."

"Amazing."

"It's what made you sleep for so long. One of the tubes was cracked, and you were breathing in its vapour for the first 24 hours. It weakened your entire system, drained your body of all the serum's usual effects, metabolism, healing, everything. It's why you felt so low, overexerted and lost all that time."

"So these guys are making serum and anti-serum? What's the point? Make people super soldiers then make them normal again straight after?"

"We think that they could be making super soldiers of their own." Tony interrupted. "And then the anti-serum is to be used on us. Well, you, Steve and Bucky."

"To take down the biggest competition." You said as you realised. Bruce and Tony nodded. "Weaken us so their own Super Soldiers can beat us."

"Exactly. But it's not just returning you to 'normal'. It seems that when you fuse this serum with the Super Soldier Serum, it not only eradicates any remnant of the original serum within your blood, but it starts attacking the healthy genes as well. You would have no chance against them at all. Hell, you'd have no chance against DUM-E."

"Right. Yeah, that's pretty bad. Good job I smashed all the vials then, isn't it?"

"They still created it. Chances are they're just making more. But you gave them a hell of a step back." Tony explained.

"It also makes me think that you're not working at half serum level." Bruce explained. "If the anti-serum affected you that much, you could well be on the same level as Steve and Bucky. Which means we need to tread carefully."

"They might notice you suddenly breaking stuff without trying." Tony added.

Great, another reason to stay the hell away from the All-American boys. You didn't wanna get into a habit of breaking their spines by giving them a pat on the head or something.

"Also," Tony said.

"Really, there's more?" You scoffed.

"Yes there's more, get used to it." Tony smirked. "We're gonna start some recon missions in the next few days. Rumlow disappeared after he chucked us in the basement, and The 'Guy In Charge' was never mentioned while we were imprisoned, but we think we got some good information on where their next operation will be from the computer system on the Raft."

"I thought we didn't have their network?"

"I brought back the hard drive." Bruce commented, but he didn't look proud of it. He probably just stuck his hand into the console and ripped out whatever he could while he was rampaging.

"Great. One step closer and all that." You said.

"You sure you don't want me to sign you off?" Tony asked you. "You said you didn't want me to take you off missions, but a lot's happened-"

"I'm fine. Just...maybe give me a backseat role this time." You proposed, and he nodded knowingly.

"I'll put you on one of the stakeouts."

"Thanks. Well, if there's no more bad news, can we get to punching things?" You asked, making Tony smile, and chuck a punching pad to Bruce.

It wasn't until you got back to your room, showered, and sat down on your bed, that all the information seemed to finally process in your mind.

The enemy was making a serum to render you as powerful as a rotten stick. Ready to snap at the mercy of their newly minted, newly Serum-ed up Super Soldiers. The team weren't to know just yet. So the plan was to go on these recon missions to find this enemy, when nobody apart from you, Bruce and Tony knew the real situation. You couldn't even find solace in the one person you wanted to run to, because he had decided for whatever reason that he hated you again.