#Sublte The Hulk Is Not

[tonystarktogo]

I just read your time travel au, and i gotta say its the most ive enjoyed myself when readjng in awhile!!! Are you considering adding onto it at all or is the fic the last of it? I dont wanna make you feel pressured to do anything you don't want to do but i would love to see more of this au!!!!!!

I'm glad you're having as much fun with that fic as I did! At the moment I don't plan to continue this 'verse beyond what I posted in As Subtle As Cognitive Recalibration on AO3.

But if there was a continuation, it would probably go something like this:

Team Conclusive Evidence That Any Moron Can Time Travel is at a loss.

Oh, sure, the overall plan is obvious: Get Earth ready for Thanos. With a strong focus on Priority 2: Burn HYDRA to the ground. But, well. How exactly are they supposed to do that? After they just gave SHIELD the middle finger and handed the scepter and mind stone to Asgard? How are they supposed to convince Natasha and Tony of the insane truth or — failing that — a credible lie?

Also what the fuck are they supposed to do with Loki— Easy, Thor, no one here has any sort of problem with your baby bro, not even a hint, not a a smidge, nope.

Thor wants to prepare his realm for the invasion of the Dark Elves which, fair enough. No one argues. (The deal is he takes that damn scepter off planet immediately, along with the tesseract and Loki, and comes back as soon as possible to give them an idea how Asgard's gonna handle things this time around.)

(The only one unhappy with that deal is Loki who has taken to staring at Thor with something disturbing like concern. Or wariness.)

In any case, the alien side of things is officially not their biggest immediate problem and how sad is that.

Clint and Steve agree that they need to deal with SHIELDRA ASAP. That doesn't tell them how. Last time they pretty much set SHIELD on fire and watched it burn.

(Steve got so much shit from Tony for that fiasco. So many "there were better ways to handle that"s. Which he used to counter with "there was no time". They both had a point back then — but this time around time is the one resource they don't lack. And Steve knows they need to do a better job. Tony would never stand for anything less and Steve won't let him down.)

There's also the matter of avoiding the entire Winder Soldier and Accords mess if at all possible but one logistic nightmare at a time.

Hulk sulks because no one lets him spend time with Tin Man.

On an unrelated note, Hulk is the worst secret keeper on the entire team and that includes a sleep-deprived, self-medicating Tony running on caffeine and spite.

Steve and Clint start the very complicated process of trying to identify HYDRA agents and missions that they remember, putting together charts and timelines and generally doing a great impression of two increasingly panicked and paranoid conspiracy theorists. If they're gonna do this, they'll do it right and proper this time around, with research, preparation and hopefully limited collateral damage.

So they plan. Natasha would Judge™ them if they didn't. (Right after she'd murder them for keeping this secret from her.)

Maybe they can hunt one or two bases down, infiltrate the network to get their hands on SHIELDRAs data without making it obvious that they're only targeting HYDRA (SHIELD, after all and despite the fact that it kills Clint to face up to it, isn't distinguishable from HYDRA). And hey, Clint thinks he vaguely remembers one or two contacts he could call about some hacking, so there's no need to pull Tony or JARVIS into this mess either. The mere thought that HYDRA might pay him more attention than they already do thanks to his innovations is...

Steve breaks five mugs and the coffee maschine. Clint just breaks his hand.

(They'll both sleep better knowing Tony is far away from any potentially life-threatening situation until they can look their team mate in the eye without seeing his bleeding and broken body on that fucking battle field, thanks.)

Meanwhile, Hulk — still sulking and angry about it — leaves the Tower to go smash any SHIELD agents he encounters. Which, considering the teams Fury has sent to reacquire the tesseract, are quite a lot.

Right in front of Tin Man's entrance door too.