Gone insane from the pain that they surely know. For whom the bell tolls.

Music blasted from the lab speakers and filled the entire floor with sound. The glass walls in the lab barely shook with the vibrations. Tony danced around a bit and swung his head from side-to-side with the beat of the instruments. His fingers tapped away at the blue screen he was at until he traded places with Bruce. Bruce's brow furrowed and swiped his fingers against the screen. He corrected Tony's mistakes and tapped his foot to the beat of the song.

I strolled into the lab and turned down the stereo. The music was so loud that I couldn't hear myself breathing. I could only imagine what was going on in the boys' heads, if anything was at all. They probably had music going in one ear and out the other.

"Hey! You can't touch my stuff," Tony became defensive, but didn't look up at me. He was too intrigued in whatever he was looking at on the screen.

I scoffed, "I just did." I pushed over the wrappers and dirty dinner dishes from the past few nights onto the side of the table to make room for them to eat. I set some boxes of Chinese food down with two bottles of water. I felt like a mother providing dinner to her children. Tony sure acted like a child sometimes. "You guys need to eat. You haven't eaten all day."

Both scientists sat down on stools and opened the steam-filled boxes. Bruce looked up at me and lifted one corner of his lips to form a slight smirk. "It's really nice of you to bring us food." He used the chopsticks to eat the chow mein in the box.

"Well, someone's got to look out for you two." Sometimes, we wouldn't see the dynamic duo for days on end. They were always cooped up in the lab working on something new or on Tony's suits to improve them. I took one of Tony's egg rolls and popped it into my mouth. I munched on it as I spoke, "Is there any new info on Hydra?"

Tony glared at me with the uttermost look of disgust. His eyebrow raised and his brown eyes narrowed. He almost scrunched up his nose until he replied, "No."

Bruce swallowed the food he had in his mouth. He licked his lips slowly in thought and tilted his head for a second. His eyebrows knit together slowly and his brown eyes narrowed. "We're trying to trace Loki's scepter, which shouldn't be too hard. There's something else I could try..."

He was about to stand up and I quickly said, "At least take the food with you and eat over there. You need something, Bruce." I knew he usually ate three times more food than that one tiny box full, but he had to leave the lab sometime. Food was an incentive.

He nodded and took his food to the console. Tony drank some water and exhaled loudly. "How did you guys not notice Loki was in Asgard?"

I shrugged. "It was very tense there. We didn't even see Thor's father." How could we, anyway? The King was said to be driven crazy by depression. I contemplated. I sat down on the counter next to Tony and looked off out of the window across from me. The only things that could be seen were the tops of a few sky scrapers and the blue sky. Not a cloud was in sight. It was peaceful being so high up.

Bruce tried to stay in the conversation while typing away at a keyboard. "How would he get control of the army if his father was there?" His fingers stretched a picture on the screen of Loki from the footage Coulson left. We watched him slowly change into his usual armored attire by using his powers of magic.

That's when the idea hit us.

Bruce backed away from the screen and turned to us. His eyes widened for a second in realization and locked onto ours. His mouth twitched with unspoken words because he didn't know what to say. He brushed back his dark curly hair in worry. He finally forced out, "You guys don't think..."

Tony hesitated and almost shrugged. He didn't know how to react to that information. Was it really possible? "It's the only way."

"Wouldn't Heimdall know that it wasn't Odin on the throne?" I questioned as I crossed my arms. Heimdall saw everything. It would take some high powered magic to deceive him. Or, at least I thought so.

Bruce took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He had been in the lab too long and was completely sleep deprived. "I don't know. Maybe Loki is hiding it very well. Otherwise Heimdall would have contacted Thor that Loki killed his father."

"How dare you people think that my brother would commit such an unspeakable act," Thor walked in on our conversation. His eye brows dove closer to his blue eyes like they would into a pool of water. He grasped Mjolnir in his hand and looked like he wanted to throw it at one of us. "No matter what he does, he is still my brother. I promised to protect him, and I failed somewhere along the way."

I jumped off of the counter and stepped towards him, "Thor, he kill-"

"I don't give a natskiom's ass how many people he killed. He only did it because he..." Thor stopped for a second and whispered to himself, "Because he couldn't have the throne..."

Tony glanced around at Bruce and I and raised an eyebrow. "Should we even ask what in the hell he meant by a natmi...natom..." He trailed off and threw his hands up in the air in defeat, "Look, I can't even say it."

Something clicked in Thor's mind. He sighed deeply and closed his eyes for a long second before rushing out of the room. His loud footsteps echoed through the quiet hall all the way to the elevator.

I ran to catch up to him and grabbed his arm. "How are you going to confront him, Thor? Rush up there without a plan and probably die in the process?" Having a plan like that was crazy. What was crazier was not having a back up just in case something went wrong.

"You don't understand. I'll do anything with the power of my free will to keep this world safe," Thor declared and pushed the button. The elevator stirred to life and started its destination onto the lab floor to retrieve him.

I tugged on his arm and made him look at me. There was a very strong anger in his expression that overshadowed what he was really feeling. Loss. Suffering.

Pain.

I don't think any word could ever amount to the emotion he felt. His father was probably dead and no one knows about it. He had lost his mother quite some time ago, and now, no one ruled Asgard. The throne was empty, taken by the shadow his brother had become to him. My expression softened and I let go of his arm. My voice became almost a whisper in an attempt to sound soothing, "Staying here will keep you safe. We need to find Loki first. Then we can go from there." We had a lead on Loki, but that didn't mean we were any closer to finding him. He could be on another planet by now and we would never know.

A soft grunt rose from Thor's throat. He shook his head slightly and frowned. The elevator dinged and the doors opened upon command. Thor stepped inside and rested one hand on the wall. "I need some air."

I watched as the metal doors closed in front of me. I couldn't imagine how he would cope with this new information. Finding out the possibility that your father is dead because of your adopted brother doesn't necessarily have a good impact. My heart ached for him and his pain. Of course I knew how it felt to lose everything and have a true weight on your shoulders right after. A bit of my soul was taken that day. Now, the only thing that sits there is a black hole waiting to once again be filled with love. I turned away and headed back to the lab.

"Is he okay?" Bruce asked right as I entered the room. He turned on his swivel chair to face me. A slight worry filled his brown eyes and the wrinkles on his forehead deepened.

I glanced around the room for Tony, but he wasn't in there. Must've gone out to call Pepper...I assumed. My hazel eyes flickered back to Banner, who sat patiently waiting for my reply. I leaned against the counter next to him and answered, "He's not having the best time right now. He needed some air."

"That's understandable. If I had a brother that was a complete psychopath, I wouldn't know how to compose myself either. He's not falling apart like I would." Banner finished up his food and set the box down. He pushed the fortune cookie away and rested his elbows on the counter top. The bags under his eyes sagged and his eyes were slowly turning red. He had been awake too long and overworked himself.

I grabbed the cookie and held it up in the air. "Are you not going to read it?"

He chuckled and shook his head. "I don't buy into things like that."

I rolled my eyes. "You don't need to believe it. Just look at what you get. These things are as fake as they come, but sometimes they might make your day."

"Then by all means, read it to me." He set his head on his propped up hand and watched me. Some strands of his curly hair got into his eyes, shadowing his glasses.

"Fine. I will." I unwrapped the cookie from the plastic and tore the small thing in half. I dropped the cookie in the process of gaining the tiny rolled up piece of paper. I adjusted my black rectangular framed glasses and cleared my throat before reading it out loud. "You love Chinese food." I snorted and set the small paper down. "Thank you, Captain Obvious. What a waste of a fortune."

"All of that built up excitement you set up and for what? A crappy fortune? Shame on you," he joked around, smiling shyly with a hand slightly covering his mouth.

I scoffed, "Whatever."

"It was funny. I'll admit that."

I stood there for a few seconds in silence. I didn't know what to talk about. My mind drew a blank. Here I was, standing in the same room as Bruce Banner, the Hulk, and I couldn't think of anything. I used to have tons of questions. I used to want to know everything. Where did those thoughts go? I scrubbed my mind of the confusion and said the first thing that came to mind, "Dr. Banner..."

He quickly cut me off, "Bruce. Just call me Bruce." The smile was still plastered to his face, but now he proudly showed it off.

I loved it when people got a boost in confidence around me. It warmed my heart to know we were almost completely comfortable around each other. I needed that if I wanted to stay here completely and become part of the team. "...Bruce, tell me about yourself."

Bruce scratched the back of his neck and scrunched his nose up in thought for a moment. His facial expression was so readable. I could almost see the gears grinding in his head. His lip twitched before he came to the conclusion of his thoughts. "Well, I'm a nuclear physicist, but I do study other things on the side. I have a load of free time on my hands, so I have taken a liking to learning about medicines and finding new ways to cure the sick." He nervously played with his hands and fixed his eyes on the counter top's chic black design. His smile faded and he licked his lips. "I always feel like I have to make up for all of the bad karma the big guy gives me."

I noticed him straying away from the conversation quickly because he mentioned the Hulk. Everyone on the team knew he didn't like talking about him, so we never brought it up. Sometimes we did, but mostly to check up on Bruce. Isolating the Hulk only made things worse for Banner to handle. I faced him fully and sat down on one of the small black stools. "I'd love to hear about what you do. I see you working with Tony in here all the time, but what do you really do?" I knew this wasn't going to end well. I barely understood high school science. How was I supposed to understand this?

Bruce's face lit up at the sound of it. His eyes sparkled with a joy I hadn't seen before and he sat up straight. "I usually double check the work Tony puts in before correcting his mistakes. Sometimes I add in things he hasn't thought of and make the projects even better." That was just the beginning. He went on for the next few minutes talking about science and his passion for it. The only unfortunate thing was I only understood the simple terms and not the fancy sciency ones he used. "I just use....because it actually is....which can make the best...and the greatest part about it is..."

By the time his tangent was over, he had shown me twenty different versions of software and creations he built in the lab. He glided across the floor like a broom sweeping the dust away. It seemed as if he was on cloud nine explaining all of it to me. I appeared interested, of course. I had nodded here and there to assure him I was paying attention, but in reality, I was lost the second he spoke at thirty miles an hour.

He could sense my confusion and put his glasses back on. Bruce's lips formed a sly smile and chuckled, "You didn't understand a word of that, did you?" I nodded ashamedly in agreement. His voice softened and he sat back down. "I'm sorry. I get too carried away sometimes."

I waved my hand. "No, it's completely fine! You love talking about it. I can see it in your eyes. It doesn't matter if I don't understand. You love explaining it to me."

Let me tell you...

Famous last words.

I spent the next few hours in the lab being lectured about all of the tech and how they formatted them, or something, by both Bruce and Tony. At that point, I wanted to rest from the headache. But, then I would remember that they had no one else to explain all of this to, so I stayed. The sheer excitement in their faces made me stay.