one things I never hear earth’s mightiest heroes talk about is the character design. Like yes, the team dynamics are interesting, yes the villains are so much more interesting then MCU, yes the world building makes way more sense, but how can anyone focus on that when Loki looks like this!!!
Boldly disrespectful to a person of higher standing.
Also on AO3.
Hulk watches him from the corner of his eye during battles, Bruce quietly analyzing the man’s death-defying acrobatics and god-defying quips from somewhere behind radioactive green irises.
He doesn’t need a serum, a genius intellect, a gift from a god, or a nuclear explosion that rewrote his DNA to stand among superhumans and fight against impossible odds.
He seems to run entirely on stubbornness, coffee, and audacity alone.
He—
Concrete turns to sand beneath Hulk’s fists as he catches sight of a purple-clad figure across the battlefield making a leap that cannot—will not—end with him intact.
Hulk moves before thought.
In the space of a breath and one explosive launch of powerful legs, he is there.
For one stomach-lurching moment, Barton is falling.
The next, tree-trunk arms close around his body and wrench him out of gravity’s grasp, his leap of faith answered.
Hawkeye rolls easily from Hulk’s arms onto his shoulder, nocks an arrow, and begins shouting obscenities at the God of War and his subjects before raining fire down on them from his new vantage point.
Then, as thanks for saving his life—and apparently deciding that being rescued has afforded him insufficient height—he plants one boot squarely on Hulk’s head and uses him as a stepping stone to the nearest rooftop.
Something curls low in his gut beneath the thrumming background rage that permeates his entire existence—something warm and fond, anxious and fiercely protective—as he watches the archer land in a rolling crouch.
For one moment, green eyes stay fixed on him as he watches the archer point an arrow directly at his face.
Hulk turns just in time to see one of the enemy crumple behind him, struck before its raised weapon could come down across his unguarded back, then roars and launches himself back into the frey with renewed vigor.
He keeps the blonde acrobat in the corner of his eye as he goes, as always.
Fragile.
Puny.
Still, the archer keeps standing against gods and monsters as though someone forgot to tell him he was just a man.
Dangerously, furiously irreverent.
Hulk grins as their enemies come apart beneath his hands like wet paper while the very human, very breakable creature beside him rages against the world with him.
“Keep up, Jade Jaws! I’ve already taken out thirty-two of these freaks! You’re falling behind!” he crows before sharp eyes catch a spear as it whistles towards his chest.
He twists aside barely in time, the grin never leaving his face.
The fondness in Hulk’s stomach tightens abruptly into a thrum of anxiety as Bruce watches the spear almost end his very fragile, very mortal existence in an instant.
Bruce frets, as he always does—about blood on the concrete and the impossible fragility of people. About how easily things break and how badly Hulk is built to hold them.
A half-remembered quotation stirs somewhere in the back of their shared mind.
How terrible it is, to love something—
Hulk snarls and buries Bruce’s fear beneath the one thing that has always been louder.
“SMASH!”
———
Later that afternoon, Barton returns—or, more likely, escapes—from medical with one arm in a sling and a white bandage wrapped around his head.
A concussion, Bruce murmurs from somewhere behind Hulk’s ear. We were too rough catching him.
Hulk tries to ignore him and is momentarily stunned as a remote control bounces harmlessly off the side of his head.
“Move over, Jade Jaws. You’re hogging the couch and it’s time for Dog Cops.”
Hulk turns slowly, staring at him with a look bordering on incredulity that is mostly hidden under his heavy brow.
Barton gestures toward the television with his injured arm, wincing almost imperceptibly, then slows his speech and over-enunciates each word as though Hulk is a particularly dim child—something he knows perfectly well will piss him off.
“Dog. Cops.”
Hulk bares his teeth.
“Could crush you.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re very scary.” Clint waves him off and begins shoving his way between Hulk and the corner of the couch. “Scoot over. You can smash me to death after Dog Cops.”
Hulk snarls reflexively at the physical contact and invasion of his space but is stunned into silence as he is shushed by the blond.
For a moment he considers picking the archer up by the scruff and tossing him back out the door he came from.
Instead, he grumbles discontentedly and shifts over a few inches.
Clint claims the space immediately then he reaches his good arm into Hulk’s popcorn, ignoring the warning growl that has already lost its heat.
“Shh. This is the best part.”
The hulking monster—feared by soldiers, villains, civilians, and occasionally his own teammates—is shushed in his own living room by a concussed man stealing his food.
Hulk stares down at him.
Clint’s eyes are glued to the television, singing loudly and off-key along with the theme song.
No fear. Not even the brittle courage people wear around Hulk when they are trying very hard to pretend they aren’t intimidated by the behemoth. Hulk and Bruce quietly marvel at the novelty of someone treating Hulk like a person instead of a bomb about to go off.
It’s a foreign concept for the both of them. They think they might like it.
In the middle of Hulk’s rumination, Clint begins explaining the latest canine-related betrayal occurring onscreen with all the grave intensity of an intelligence briefing and Hulk finds himself nodding along.
Bruce quietly wonders in the background when exactly they became friends.
———
Clint bosses Bruce around relentlessly.
He criticizes his clothes, his taste in food, his preferred vacation spots, and, inevitably, his hair.
Which is how Bruce somehow ends up sitting on a kitchen chair while Clint Barton stands behind him holding a pair of shears.
“Quit moving.”
“I’m not moving,” Bruce says, anxiously shifting beneath the impromptu towel-cape.
“You are literally moving right now.”
Bruce sighs heavily and forces himself to settle as the shears resume their soft snick, snick, snick beside his ears.
Somewhere between the insults and the quiet scrape of metal against comb, he listens to Clint talk about everything and nothing.
The constant chatter usually irritates Hulk—or eventually becomes enough background noise that he simply tunes it out—but Bruce’s perpetually restless mind catches on the little slivers of something real threaded through Clint’s endless stream of words.
With the retired SHIELD agent, the truth is rarely offered outright.
Instead, it’s smuggled between complaints, bad jokes, and observations no one asked for.
A carnie from Iowa who somehow ended up here.
Fighting gods, monsters, and secret organizations beside super-soldiers, thunder gods, kings, men in iron suits—and Hulk.
Bruce often feels out of place among the Avengers despite being one of the smartest men in the world. Clint, on the other hand, carries himself with enough confidence to border on arrogance.
It probably would be arrogance if he didn’t keep living up to his own hype.
Clint Barton has, on multiple occasions, saved nearly every superhuman on the team with nothing more than a bow, a handful of trick arrows, and his own impossible nerve.
Bruce wants to ask him:
How the hell did you get here?
Why choose this when you could have had something normal?
Why keep throwing yourself at things that could kill you?
Why the hell are you like this?
…
Why aren’t you scared of me?
Questions Bruce cannot imagine asking aloud pile uselessly behind his teeth.
Lost in thought, he barely registers Clint’s hand until the rough pad of his thumb grazes the skin at the nape of his neck, brushing away loose hair.
Bruce startles, his body jerking.
“Shit—”
The shears slip as Clint hisses and pulls his hand back.
Bruce jumps out of the chair and stutters an apology as a thin red line opens across Clint’s finger. Clint brings the injured appendage to his mouth to soothe the sting.
Suddenly Bruce feels very far away from his own body.
Paper.
Paper-thin.
He remembers bones and concrete giving way beneath enormous green hands.
Missiles exploding against thick green skin leaving nothing but a mild burn.
He remembers a gun in his own hand— the taste of copper and gunpowder and the horror of the revelation that what he is could never be undone as the big guy spits out the bullet.
Bruce looks at Clint, at the bright smear of blood.
The insignificant cut will close on its own before the end of the day, and yet.
“I can’t die,” he blurts.
Silence.
Clint slowly takes his injured finger out of his mouth, both of them staring at each other equally perplexed by his outburst.
Finally, Clint squints.
“You are so fucking weird.”
He gestures Bruce back towards the chair with the shears.
This is A:EMH’s depiction of Steve and Bucky’s doomed final mission.
The most important comic book depictions of that event to compare this to are the original:
The Avengers (1963) #4
And the Winter Soldier storyline’s revisiting of it:
Captain America (2005) #6
A:EMH obviously changed a lot. The idea of Bucky getting stuck on the plane, rather than just failing to let go before it exploded, originated with the Winter Soldier storyline. But in that depiction it’s specifically Bucky’s left arm that got stuck, which explained why he lost it and needed a mechanical replacement as the Winter Soldier. And in the comics Steve doesn’t ever fully make it onto the plane to have that extended dramatic moment, it’s specifically a conversation (and life and relationship) cut short.
That Bucky kicked Steve off the rocket because he believed “the world needs Captain America more than Bucky,” as opposed to Steve losing his grip, really changes the tragedy of the event. It’s not a change I think was absolutely necessary, and not one that I think actually changes the core of the character, because it’s ultimately not significant going forward in the show to emphasis Steve’s guilt over that being Bucky’s belief and choice over “with all my power- all my strength- I couldn’t save him!” But the new scene is itself really compelling, and it’s bringing something unique to a really well-treaded part of the character, which is really significant. And Bucky’s final salute is a great touch.
Also, that the cartoon’s depiction is so different (and specifically what it emphasizes) reminds me of this warped portrayal of the event:
