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WIP Amnesty: Avengers
Coulson fix-it
Phil sat there for a few moments and breathed. It was a habit he’d established for situations like this: the oxygen was beneficial, it didn’t take much time, and dead men didn’t breathe.
Then he got to work.
The scanners told him he was at the same coordinates above Stark Tower, but New York was sprawled out around him, beautiful and bright instead of partially vaporized, with the skeletons of buildings rising in the distance on the edge of ground zero. There was no residual radiation, no damage to the jet, and the portal device was still directly in front of him, though the Tesseract was gone.
He set the jet down on the roof, opened the rear hatch, and walked over to the portal device. The Tesseract was truly gone, along with the glow of the energy shield around it.
He was in New York, the sky clear above him, though there was rubble in the distance and a half-seen corpse of one of the Leviathans. Stark Tower was still standing; he was breathing real air. Either he was hallucinating, or something really strange had happened.
Really strange things happened to him a lot these days. Phil considered it a point of pride that he could roll with them, so there was really only one thing to do in this situation. He got a climbing line out of the jet, hooked it over the edge of the roof, and abseiled down to Stark’s penthouse. The balcony was really very convenient from above, and though he was sure that Stark had measures against unauthorized aircraft, the roof was still vulnerable via ziplines from the buildings opposite - he should point out the security flaw to Pepper.
Stark was at the bar with his back to Phil, pouring himself a drink. The floor was cratered and littered with rubble, and sheets of plastic draped around the room, covering still more damages.
“Stark, would you mind explaining what the hell is going on?” Phil said as he turned.
And Stark walked right past him.
“That’s not funny, Stark,” said Phil, following him. “Now is really not the time to explore your dedication to ignoring me.”
Stark set his drink down on the large holographic drafting table in the middle of the living room and with a few efficient gestures pulled up a schematic of Stark Tower. His expression was sharp and focused, free of the emotions Phil was used to seeing from him. He said, “Jarvis, lose the exterior, isolate the main structural elements and give me the over-under on the stress damage.”
“Stark,” Phil tried again, as a constellation of numbers appeared over the hologram.
“Calculations complete, sir. Shall I save these modifications on your shared server with Miss Potts?”
“Yeah, ‘course,” Stark mumbled, already deep in manipulating the blueprints.
“You can’t see me, can you,” Phil said, dread sinking into his stomach. “Or hear me.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, then. Let’s try this.” He reached across the table, and grabbed Tony’s hand as he spun a section of the blueprints.
Tony’s hand passed right through Phil’s, with a weird warm tingle. Tony flexed his fingers in an almost reflexive twitch, then flicked the hologram around and expanded a view of the balcony support struts.
Phil leaned back and closed his eyes. Okay, he’d seen this episode of Star Trek. He was out of phase, or something. He was standing in a building that shouldn’t exist anymore, after an attack that Stark hadn’t survived, which suggested he was also in an alternate dimension or timeline of some kind. The two were probably related.
An unpleasant thought occurred to him, and he reached across the table again, for Stark’s drink.
His fingers passed right through the glass. There was a sensation of drag this time, and the prickle was cold instead of warm, but he couldn’t move it. That was definitely bad. The jet had food and water supplies, which he should be able to use just like the rappelling line, but they were extremely limited. Three days, at most, then another two with water only.
timeloop (jossed)
[first round: no sniper support, fighting gunman when loop is triggered]
She cursed under her breath. The old library was all that was left, and it was an offensive nightmare: one entrance, reinforced walls, and no cover. Legend had it the original builder’s wife had lived through a siege by holing up in the room.
Only one entrance....but the roof had been replaced with a glass rotunda in the 1800s.
“Do we have a sniper in position on the west side of the building?”
[second round: takes out scientist with shuriken, Hawkeye arrives late and takes out gunman before he kills N, but delayed enough that dying scientist can trigger loop]
“Did you get that sniper I asked for?”
“Hawkeye here,” a male voice came over the channel, sounding out of breath. “Be in position in 30 seconds.”
A faint whine started up behind the door, and she cursed. “Not fast enough,” she said, and kicked the door in.
“Hawkeye,” she said, vaguely recognizing the voice on the radio as she smashed the fourth guard’s head into the wall, “the guy with the arrows, right?”
“The guy with...the arrows,” drawled the sniper. “Yeah, sure, that’s me. I have a bow, too - it’s great, makes the arrows go much further.”
“Your grasp of basic physics is staggering,” she snapped, twirling to kick the final guard halfway through a wooden door. “Do you have eyes on the central chamber?”
“Since the roof is entirely glass and the basic physical property of glass is to be transparent, yes,” he shot back. “One guy, unarmed except for a wrench, fiddling with a cylindrical machine, center of the floor, second guy, armed and moving clockwise around the perimeter, would be at your ten coming in the door.”
She matched the positions with her mental picture of the previous assault, and nodded to herself.
Natasha went straight from the infirmary to Fury’s office, and sat down across from him. He eyeballed her suspiciously - probably because she’d skipped past his admin by coming through the ceiling tiles. He really should have fixed that security gap already.
“If you insist on assigning me a regular partner,” she said, “I want Hawkeye.”
Fury leaned back in his chair and considered her. She met his gaze calmly. Somedays she was jealous of the way he could load an eye contact - she suspected it was like high heels: the same amount of force distributed over a smaller area (and, in the right hands, a weapon)
Finally, he said, “The last time we spoke, you expressed...shall we say, comprehensive doubts about the abilities of your fellow agents. Going by the preliminary report of your last mission, Hawkeye was useful, but not mission-critical. Overall, he’s an unknown quantity as an agent - talented, sure, but untested. We don’t have decent intel on most of his life because he was in the goddamn circus, and he’s already managed to piss off Coulson enough to make him have an expression. So why him?”
“First of all, the preliminary report is missing quite a lot of information,” Natasha said dryly. “I was stuck in a time loop, thanks to that moron’s doomsday device. A couple of the guy’s henchmen must have been caught with me, because they kept adapting to my attack. It took me almost nineteen tries to break the loop, and each time, Hawkeye made a completely different, completely impossible shot that saved my ass. That’s a good enough record for me.”
Fury rubbed a finger under his eyepatch strap and sighed. “Fucking time loops,” he muttered. “Fine, he’s all yours. You do know he has an attitude problem, right?”
Natasha let her smile turn sharkish, and said, “So did I, sir.”
Five times Clint and Coulson got caught in the precipitation
(draft titled 'shining down like water'; section titles are all lyrics from CCR's "Have You Ever Seen The Rain")
1. yesterday and days before (SNOW)
Clint really hated Latveria, and he’d only been there a week. Sure, the countryside was pretty, the people were wealthy, and there was cool tech around every corner.
It also had one of the lowest crime rates in the world, but that was just because all crimes had the same punishment: death.
Clint really hated Latveria.
The truck rattled its way over another series of bumps and Clint ground his teeth in frustration. “If your country’s so rich, why can’t you afford to fix the damn roads?” he asked goadingly.
The guard glared at him. “It’s winter, idiot. We fix the roads in the spring.”
Fantastic. Clint just needed a moment of smooth road, just a moment. He might be able to do it with the bumps, but he only had one shot at this. They bumped over another series of potholes, and the other prisoner, so tightly restrained that he couldn’t brace himself, nearly toppled forward on his face. Clint wasn’t really sure why they’d put all that shit on the other guy and only a pair of handcuffs on the convicted thief. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to find out.
Clint wrestled the guard out of his long coat and tried it on over his own threadbare jacket, but it was one layer too many. He shrugged out of the jacket and replaced it with the coat, his hands automatically checking the pockets for useful things. Nothing but lint, unfortunately.
Conscious of the other prisoner’s eyes on him, Clint hesitated, holding the jacket as he studied the unconscious guard. He’d already taken the guy’s coat and one of his eyes; Clint didn’t really want to leave him to freeze to death, but he didn’t want to look soft, either. Clint casually tossed his jacket at the guard in a way that made it billow open and land perfectly spread over his torso.
Next, he turned to the prisoner. The man was eerily still, watching him with a deliberately neutral expression on his face. Clint dropped the handcuff keys on the ground a few inches beyond where he thought the man could treach, and an almost-imperceptible wrinkle formed between his eyes. With his toes, Clint slid the keys closer, just past the imaginary line he’d drawn in his head for where the man could reach, and the wrinkle smoothed out again. Clint nodded at him, and the man inclined his head in response.
Satisfied, Clint hopped out of the truck - then stopped. He’d gotten turned around before they left the prison - he knew they were still travelling in a straight line away from the city, but not which direction they had gone. The mountains formed an unbroken ring of jagged peaks at the horizon, all he could see in all directions was forest, and the sun was directly overhead. Not helpful.
Metal rattled loudly in the truck behind Clint, and he whirled around. The prisoner was carefully peeling his wrists out of his manacles, and the rest of the chains lay in a pile under the bench. With a thrill of fear, Clint realized maybe there had been a good reason why the man had been in so many restraints, and unconsciously took a step back as the man rose to his feet.
“The pass is that way,” the man said, jerking his head in a vaguely sideways direction. “But the border guards will be on alert by the time we get there. I know a different way, if you’ll follow me.”
Clint pressed his lips together. Having a direction to go was a good thing, but company was entirely different. He didn’t think the guy was likely to attack him: leaving him unconscious or dead would just give their pursuers a trail to follow. If he stuck with the other guy, at least he’d be pretty sure they weren’t running into a Latverian trap.
“After you,” Clint said finally. The man stepped down from the truck like it was a limousine, buttoned his coat neatly, and set off without another word. Clint followed, stepping in the places where his boots had pushed down the snow, and hoped he wasn’t making another mistake.
Three hours later, the sleet started, and Clint discovered that his stolen coat was not waterproof.
Clint yanked the other man down behind the ridge and hissed, “What the hell are you doing?”
The man lifted an eyebrow at him, looking unperturbed at his abrupt transition to lying in the snow. Clint was so numb that he could barely feel the cold anyone. “Asking for help instead of freezing to death?”
“Didn’t you see their snowmobiles?” Okay, admittedly the tiny eagle logo was hard to see from this distance. “They’re SHIELD agents.”
“SHIELD?” the man asked neutrally.
“Spies - fucking weird ones. They show up all over, and all you hear afterwards are crazy stories about giant robotic squid and shit like that. People they get their hands on just...disappear. We don’t want to get tangled up with them,” Clint whispered, then added mostly to himself, “Why are they even here?”
The man was quiet for a long moment, then pushed himself off the ground. Clint grabbed for his legs to knock him flat again, but Clint’s reflexes were slow and his fingers were numb, and the man just slipped free and took a long step back. Turning, he waved to the agents at the bottom of the hill. “They’re here for me,” he said calmly.
A bubble of stillness settled over Clint. He’d stopped shivering, he noted absently, but mostly he was just surprised that he wasn’t surprised. Resigned; maybe a little numb. Maybe he just had ‘EASY TO FUCK OVER’ stamped on his forehead or something. It was getting to be kind of funny, and he started to laugh, pressing his face down into the snow to muffle the sound when he couldn’t stop.
“Of course you are,” he said between chuckles. “I am such a fucking moron.” Clint looked up to see the other man had knelt down again, frowning. He tugged off one of his gloves and tucked his fingers up against Clint’s neck, and fuck, the man’s skin was so warm that Clint had to stop himself from leaning into the touch. He started giggling again, because really, he was so fucking easy. Pathetic.
Drawing a shaky breath to stop the laughter, Clint said, “Can you at least disappear me somewhere warm?” Another giggle slipped out, and he closed his eyes and let his head fall back into the snow with a sigh. The stuff looked softer than it actually was, the ice crystals crunching under his skull and poking through his hair. He couldn’t feel the cold of it anymore.
2. sun is cold and rain is hard (HAIL/SLEET)
Coulson hail concussion? huddling for warmth?
3. calm before the storm (RAIN)
Thor interlude/ust
4. fast and slow (FROGS)
rain of frogs! first kiss!
It’s raining frogs in Atlanta, and Phil Coulson is not dead.
There’s some blond sorceress named Amora demanding single combat with the one who raised arms against Loki, and when she laughs at the Hulk and starts raising hell all over the country, Fury was forced to cough up the minor detail that he’d lied to Captain America.
Clint could care less, because Phil Coulson is not dead.
Only, small problem: now Phil is stuck in a one-on-one fight with an Asgardian. Clint can tell by the set of Phil’s shoulders and his shallow, controlled breathing that he’s still hurt, and Clint is stranded on a rooftop across the street, trying to watch through all the falling amphibians. Fear sits heavy on his chest, and he can’t even help if something goes wrong (more wrong).
But Phil is calm as he ends his whispered conversation with Thor and steps up to the helipad Amora chose as her combat ring. “As the challenged party, I believe I have the right to choose the weapons?”
Amora glares at Thor, but grudgingly nods. “Choose wisely, mortal.”
Phil smiles blandly and clasps his hands in front of him. Clint’s stomach settles a little. He only smiles like that when he has a plan. Of course he has a plan.
“I choose riddles.”
Amora looks stunned for a moment, then a calculating look steals over her face. “Then as the challenger, I claim my right to name a champion.” She turns and raises her hands to the sky. Acid green light flows from her fingers and a shape forms above the far edge of the roof, blurred and misty at first, until it abruptly solidifies into sharp-edged reality and drops with a thud.
Clint swears in disbelief. She summoned a fucking sphinx.
A muscle flickers in Phil’s cheek, but he otherwise doesn’t react.
“Mortals first,” Amora purrs, her smile as catlike as her champion, and as dangerous. Phil drops his hands to his sides and shakes them out minutely - just a flick, an unconscious tell that Clint has forgotten to miss. He has to close his eyes for a moment, because Phil is alive.
Across the roof, the sphinx tilts its head at a frog that landed too close. Lightning fast, she pins it under her massive paw, then carefully skewers the frog with one razor sharp claw and flicks it over the edge of the building.
[riddle where the answer is reality TV?]
Amora shrieks and stamps her foot. Green fire blossoms up from the concrete and in a blinding flash, she vanishes. Overhead, a final few frogs plop out of the sky; the clouds clear, and Clint says, “Iron Man, I need transport over there right goddamn now.”
By the time Tony flies in from the safe distance he’d been forced to retreat from Amora’s magic, Steve has already burst onto the rooftop, followed closely by Natasha. Across the gap, he see Thor clap Coulson on the shoulder - the uninjured side, to be fair, but Clint sees Coulson hide a wince and has to dig his nails into his bow to keep from screaming in sheer frustration. He’s so focused on the scene that Tony catches him by surprise, and Tony is not exactly stealthy even when he tries.
After the fourth time Tony had to pick him up by the scruff of his uniform like a damn kitten and his vest ripped mid-battle, they built a hidden harness into his suit and practiced, so Tony scoops him with no problem, but drops him from a bit higher than usual in his haste - not that Clint blames him, but he still stumbles the landing, falling to one knee.
Then a warm hand cups his elbow and pulls him up.
It’s Phil, and he’s smiling. Clint can’t breathe.
“Glad to see you back on your feet, Agent Barton,” he says with a tiny, impish smile.
“You, too,” Clint echoes automatically, distracted by how close they’re standing and all the things he’d wished he’d done when Phil was gone, then says, “Sorry, sir, I’m going to take advantage of your injury now,” and leans in and kisses the confused twist just starting to pull at Phil’s mouth.
His lips are chapped and a little cool, windblown but warming under Clint’s mouth. Clint slides a hand over Phil’s good shoulder, all smooth muscle under his suit, and threads his fingers into Phil’s tousled hair, trying not to count the seconds, and hoping....
And Phil kisses back.
Phil Coulson is alive, and Clint can’t wait to catch up on lost time.
5. been coming for some time (RAIN)
happy dancing in the rain, umbrellas and wet hugs
sketching in Central Park
[finishing a visit to June's granddaughter at Mt Sinai?]
Neal had a bad habit of looking over artist's shoulders. He knew it was annoying; he didn't mind so much, but Kate had nearly stabbed him with her paintbrush a few times before he learned better, and most people didn't like that vague tingling feeling of being watched (and possibly judged). But he couldn't help it.
The bad habit paid off unexpectedly one cloudy afternoon in Central Park. Neal was eating a pretzel, careful to keep the salt and crumbs off him for fear of being scolded by Mozzie for not buying an extra
As Neal sauntered over, he followed the artist's line of sight to the playground, where a tiny redheaded boy was sliding down a fireman's pole. The boy hit the gravel and immediately raced up to go again. He was too small to grab the pole while standing on the platform, but he threw himself across the gap without hesitation, over and over again.
Neal looked down at the artist's sketchpad, and blinked. Wow.
The sketch was rough, just a hint of the wood's edge and the boy outlined simply, but he had caught the perfect moment after the boy threw himself from the platform, reaching outward with the fearlessness of childhood. Without the pole in the drawing, he didn't look like he was about to fall; he looked like he was about to fly.
It was a gorgeous study in movement for being made in such a short amount of time - the kid couldn't have been on the pole very long, since he was already running off for the next playground attraction already, but the sketch was whole and complete. The artist slowed his pencil, adding a line here, some shading there, and finally came to a stop.
Neal startled when the man said, "So, what do you think?" He tilted the sketchpad and a wry smile up at Neal.
“Very nice,” Neal said honestly. “Sort of [comics artist?]. You've got a great eye for movement.”
“Thanks,” the man said, beaming. “I didn't think anyone knew [artist] these days.”
“Do you usually go for subjects that run off that quickly?” Neal said, nodding at the redhead, who had moved on to conquer the swingset.
“More habit than anything else,” the man said, absently rubbing a smudge of charcoal off his knuckles. “When I was... overseas, I didn't have a lot of time to sit and draw, so I learned to get it done fast.” He grinned self-deprecatingly. “So now I'm great at action, but terrible at still lifes. Or portraits.”
"I'm a consultant with the FBI." Neal hesitated - he could stop there, or tell a story, but he needed practice telling the truth.
Steve leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees. "Maybe you just haven't figured out your style yet," he said. "You sound like you're going through a lot of changes, and I know I didn't draw like this before I joined up. Part of that was learning to draw things fast before we had to move on, but mostly... I'm not the same person that I used to be. It makes a difference." He shrugged. "I don't worry about it much - art is a passion of mine, but it's not my life's work." He grinned at Neal, bright and sudden. "I'll change the world in other ways."
[They keep meeting randomly until Neal runs into him with Peter along (on a case?). Peter gets all flustered and calls him 'sir' and Neal's like... what? And Peter's like, "He's Captain America!"]
Neal couldn't look away. Peter was stuttering.
[And then, I dunno, they all go out for coffee and Steve and Diana start debating the DADT repeal or something.]
Nazi sub tied to Red Skull/old mission of Steve's somehow?
http://www.centralparknyc.org/visit/things-to-see/reservoir/east-96th-street-playground.html
Mt Sinai
Museum Row is along the straight shot down to the Avengers Mansion
Jones = descended from Gabriel Jones of the Howling Commandos, y/y/mfy?
“I bet he would start absentmindedly whistling it [Star-Spangled Man] on missions sometimes, and the Howling Commandos would all throw things at him to get him to stop.” - Lindsey
Spider-Man/Avengers crossover
[Spidey's sitting on Steve's balcony, Steve startles him but grabs his arm, except Peter also shot some webbing and accidentally hit Steve in the face instead]
The man grabbed for him, leaning down - just in time to catch Peter's frantic web directly in the face.
"Oh, man, sorry, that's...really hard to get off. I shot myself in the face with it back when I was making them...um. Not...that you needed to know that...."
Captain America winced. "Yeah, I hit myself in the face with the shield when I was starting out. Just once." He smiled warmly at Peter, who smiled hesitantly back - then realized Cap probably couldn't see that under the mask.
[Tony calls him a kid. Or “Arachnikid”]
“I’m not a kid!” Peter protested. “Just because I’m up here with Captain I-Fought-In-WWII....” [When-I’m-94?]
Iron Man laughed, which sounded really weird coming out of his voice synthesizer.
Phil sat there for a few moments and breathed. It was a habit he’d established for situations like this: the oxygen was beneficial, it didn’t take much time, and dead men didn’t breathe.
Then he got to work.
The scanners told him he was at the same coordinates above Stark Tower, but New York was sprawled out around him, beautiful and bright instead of partially vaporized, with the skeletons of buildings rising in the distance on the edge of ground zero. There was no residual radiation, no damage to the jet, and the portal device was still directly in front of him, though the Tesseract was gone.
He set the jet down on the roof, opened the rear hatch, and walked over to the portal device. The Tesseract was truly gone, along with the glow of the energy shield around it.
He was in New York, the sky clear above him, though there was rubble in the distance and a half-seen corpse of one of the Leviathans. Stark Tower was still standing; he was breathing real air. Either he was hallucinating, or something really strange had happened.
Really strange things happened to him a lot these days. Phil considered it a point of pride that he could roll with them, so there was really only one thing to do in this situation. He got a climbing line out of the jet, hooked it over the edge of the roof, and abseiled down to Stark’s penthouse. The balcony was really very convenient from above, and though he was sure that Stark had measures against unauthorized aircraft, the roof was still vulnerable via ziplines from the buildings opposite - he should point out the security flaw to Pepper.
Stark was at the bar with his back to Phil, pouring himself a drink. The floor was cratered and littered with rubble, and sheets of plastic draped around the room, covering still more damages.
“Stark, would you mind explaining what the hell is going on?” Phil said as he turned.
And Stark walked right past him.
“That’s not funny, Stark,” said Phil, following him. “Now is really not the time to explore your dedication to ignoring me.”
Stark set his drink down on the large holographic drafting table in the middle of the living room and with a few efficient gestures pulled up a schematic of Stark Tower. His expression was sharp and focused, free of the emotions Phil was used to seeing from him. He said, “Jarvis, lose the exterior, isolate the main structural elements and give me the over-under on the stress damage.”
“Stark,” Phil tried again, as a constellation of numbers appeared over the hologram.
“Calculations complete, sir. Shall I save these modifications on your shared server with Miss Potts?”
“Yeah, ‘course,” Stark mumbled, already deep in manipulating the blueprints.
“You can’t see me, can you,” Phil said, dread sinking into his stomach. “Or hear me.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, then. Let’s try this.” He reached across the table, and grabbed Tony’s hand as he spun a section of the blueprints.
Tony’s hand passed right through Phil’s, with a weird warm tingle. Tony flexed his fingers in an almost reflexive twitch, then flicked the hologram around and expanded a view of the balcony support struts.
Phil leaned back and closed his eyes. Okay, he’d seen this episode of Star Trek. He was out of phase, or something. He was standing in a building that shouldn’t exist anymore, after an attack that Stark hadn’t survived, which suggested he was also in an alternate dimension or timeline of some kind. The two were probably related.
An unpleasant thought occurred to him, and he reached across the table again, for Stark’s drink.
His fingers passed right through the glass. There was a sensation of drag this time, and the prickle was cold instead of warm, but he couldn’t move it. That was definitely bad. The jet had food and water supplies, which he should be able to use just like the rappelling line, but they were extremely limited. Three days, at most, then another two with water only.
timeloop (jossed)
[first round: no sniper support, fighting gunman when loop is triggered]
She cursed under her breath. The old library was all that was left, and it was an offensive nightmare: one entrance, reinforced walls, and no cover. Legend had it the original builder’s wife had lived through a siege by holing up in the room.
Only one entrance....but the roof had been replaced with a glass rotunda in the 1800s.
“Do we have a sniper in position on the west side of the building?”
[second round: takes out scientist with shuriken, Hawkeye arrives late and takes out gunman before he kills N, but delayed enough that dying scientist can trigger loop]
“Did you get that sniper I asked for?”
“Hawkeye here,” a male voice came over the channel, sounding out of breath. “Be in position in 30 seconds.”
A faint whine started up behind the door, and she cursed. “Not fast enough,” she said, and kicked the door in.
“Hawkeye,” she said, vaguely recognizing the voice on the radio as she smashed the fourth guard’s head into the wall, “the guy with the arrows, right?”
“The guy with...the arrows,” drawled the sniper. “Yeah, sure, that’s me. I have a bow, too - it’s great, makes the arrows go much further.”
“Your grasp of basic physics is staggering,” she snapped, twirling to kick the final guard halfway through a wooden door. “Do you have eyes on the central chamber?”
“Since the roof is entirely glass and the basic physical property of glass is to be transparent, yes,” he shot back. “One guy, unarmed except for a wrench, fiddling with a cylindrical machine, center of the floor, second guy, armed and moving clockwise around the perimeter, would be at your ten coming in the door.”
She matched the positions with her mental picture of the previous assault, and nodded to herself.
Natasha went straight from the infirmary to Fury’s office, and sat down across from him. He eyeballed her suspiciously - probably because she’d skipped past his admin by coming through the ceiling tiles. He really should have fixed that security gap already.
“If you insist on assigning me a regular partner,” she said, “I want Hawkeye.”
Fury leaned back in his chair and considered her. She met his gaze calmly. Somedays she was jealous of the way he could load an eye contact - she suspected it was like high heels: the same amount of force distributed over a smaller area (and, in the right hands, a weapon)
Finally, he said, “The last time we spoke, you expressed...shall we say, comprehensive doubts about the abilities of your fellow agents. Going by the preliminary report of your last mission, Hawkeye was useful, but not mission-critical. Overall, he’s an unknown quantity as an agent - talented, sure, but untested. We don’t have decent intel on most of his life because he was in the goddamn circus, and he’s already managed to piss off Coulson enough to make him have an expression. So why him?”
“First of all, the preliminary report is missing quite a lot of information,” Natasha said dryly. “I was stuck in a time loop, thanks to that moron’s doomsday device. A couple of the guy’s henchmen must have been caught with me, because they kept adapting to my attack. It took me almost nineteen tries to break the loop, and each time, Hawkeye made a completely different, completely impossible shot that saved my ass. That’s a good enough record for me.”
Fury rubbed a finger under his eyepatch strap and sighed. “Fucking time loops,” he muttered. “Fine, he’s all yours. You do know he has an attitude problem, right?”
Natasha let her smile turn sharkish, and said, “So did I, sir.”
Five times Clint and Coulson got caught in the precipitation
(draft titled 'shining down like water'; section titles are all lyrics from CCR's "Have You Ever Seen The Rain")
1. yesterday and days before (SNOW)
Clint really hated Latveria, and he’d only been there a week. Sure, the countryside was pretty, the people were wealthy, and there was cool tech around every corner.
It also had one of the lowest crime rates in the world, but that was just because all crimes had the same punishment: death.
Clint really hated Latveria.
The truck rattled its way over another series of bumps and Clint ground his teeth in frustration. “If your country’s so rich, why can’t you afford to fix the damn roads?” he asked goadingly.
The guard glared at him. “It’s winter, idiot. We fix the roads in the spring.”
Fantastic. Clint just needed a moment of smooth road, just a moment. He might be able to do it with the bumps, but he only had one shot at this. They bumped over another series of potholes, and the other prisoner, so tightly restrained that he couldn’t brace himself, nearly toppled forward on his face. Clint wasn’t really sure why they’d put all that shit on the other guy and only a pair of handcuffs on the convicted thief. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to find out.
Clint wrestled the guard out of his long coat and tried it on over his own threadbare jacket, but it was one layer too many. He shrugged out of the jacket and replaced it with the coat, his hands automatically checking the pockets for useful things. Nothing but lint, unfortunately.
Conscious of the other prisoner’s eyes on him, Clint hesitated, holding the jacket as he studied the unconscious guard. He’d already taken the guy’s coat and one of his eyes; Clint didn’t really want to leave him to freeze to death, but he didn’t want to look soft, either. Clint casually tossed his jacket at the guard in a way that made it billow open and land perfectly spread over his torso.
Next, he turned to the prisoner. The man was eerily still, watching him with a deliberately neutral expression on his face. Clint dropped the handcuff keys on the ground a few inches beyond where he thought the man could treach, and an almost-imperceptible wrinkle formed between his eyes. With his toes, Clint slid the keys closer, just past the imaginary line he’d drawn in his head for where the man could reach, and the wrinkle smoothed out again. Clint nodded at him, and the man inclined his head in response.
Satisfied, Clint hopped out of the truck - then stopped. He’d gotten turned around before they left the prison - he knew they were still travelling in a straight line away from the city, but not which direction they had gone. The mountains formed an unbroken ring of jagged peaks at the horizon, all he could see in all directions was forest, and the sun was directly overhead. Not helpful.
Metal rattled loudly in the truck behind Clint, and he whirled around. The prisoner was carefully peeling his wrists out of his manacles, and the rest of the chains lay in a pile under the bench. With a thrill of fear, Clint realized maybe there had been a good reason why the man had been in so many restraints, and unconsciously took a step back as the man rose to his feet.
“The pass is that way,” the man said, jerking his head in a vaguely sideways direction. “But the border guards will be on alert by the time we get there. I know a different way, if you’ll follow me.”
Clint pressed his lips together. Having a direction to go was a good thing, but company was entirely different. He didn’t think the guy was likely to attack him: leaving him unconscious or dead would just give their pursuers a trail to follow. If he stuck with the other guy, at least he’d be pretty sure they weren’t running into a Latverian trap.
“After you,” Clint said finally. The man stepped down from the truck like it was a limousine, buttoned his coat neatly, and set off without another word. Clint followed, stepping in the places where his boots had pushed down the snow, and hoped he wasn’t making another mistake.
Three hours later, the sleet started, and Clint discovered that his stolen coat was not waterproof.
Clint yanked the other man down behind the ridge and hissed, “What the hell are you doing?”
The man lifted an eyebrow at him, looking unperturbed at his abrupt transition to lying in the snow. Clint was so numb that he could barely feel the cold anyone. “Asking for help instead of freezing to death?”
“Didn’t you see their snowmobiles?” Okay, admittedly the tiny eagle logo was hard to see from this distance. “They’re SHIELD agents.”
“SHIELD?” the man asked neutrally.
“Spies - fucking weird ones. They show up all over, and all you hear afterwards are crazy stories about giant robotic squid and shit like that. People they get their hands on just...disappear. We don’t want to get tangled up with them,” Clint whispered, then added mostly to himself, “Why are they even here?”
The man was quiet for a long moment, then pushed himself off the ground. Clint grabbed for his legs to knock him flat again, but Clint’s reflexes were slow and his fingers were numb, and the man just slipped free and took a long step back. Turning, he waved to the agents at the bottom of the hill. “They’re here for me,” he said calmly.
A bubble of stillness settled over Clint. He’d stopped shivering, he noted absently, but mostly he was just surprised that he wasn’t surprised. Resigned; maybe a little numb. Maybe he just had ‘EASY TO FUCK OVER’ stamped on his forehead or something. It was getting to be kind of funny, and he started to laugh, pressing his face down into the snow to muffle the sound when he couldn’t stop.
“Of course you are,” he said between chuckles. “I am such a fucking moron.” Clint looked up to see the other man had knelt down again, frowning. He tugged off one of his gloves and tucked his fingers up against Clint’s neck, and fuck, the man’s skin was so warm that Clint had to stop himself from leaning into the touch. He started giggling again, because really, he was so fucking easy. Pathetic.
Drawing a shaky breath to stop the laughter, Clint said, “Can you at least disappear me somewhere warm?” Another giggle slipped out, and he closed his eyes and let his head fall back into the snow with a sigh. The stuff looked softer than it actually was, the ice crystals crunching under his skull and poking through his hair. He couldn’t feel the cold of it anymore.
2. sun is cold and rain is hard (HAIL/SLEET)
Coulson hail concussion? huddling for warmth?
3. calm before the storm (RAIN)
Thor interlude/ust
4. fast and slow (FROGS)
rain of frogs! first kiss!
It’s raining frogs in Atlanta, and Phil Coulson is not dead.
There’s some blond sorceress named Amora demanding single combat with the one who raised arms against Loki, and when she laughs at the Hulk and starts raising hell all over the country, Fury was forced to cough up the minor detail that he’d lied to Captain America.
Clint could care less, because Phil Coulson is not dead.
Only, small problem: now Phil is stuck in a one-on-one fight with an Asgardian. Clint can tell by the set of Phil’s shoulders and his shallow, controlled breathing that he’s still hurt, and Clint is stranded on a rooftop across the street, trying to watch through all the falling amphibians. Fear sits heavy on his chest, and he can’t even help if something goes wrong (more wrong).
But Phil is calm as he ends his whispered conversation with Thor and steps up to the helipad Amora chose as her combat ring. “As the challenged party, I believe I have the right to choose the weapons?”
Amora glares at Thor, but grudgingly nods. “Choose wisely, mortal.”
Phil smiles blandly and clasps his hands in front of him. Clint’s stomach settles a little. He only smiles like that when he has a plan. Of course he has a plan.
“I choose riddles.”
Amora looks stunned for a moment, then a calculating look steals over her face. “Then as the challenger, I claim my right to name a champion.” She turns and raises her hands to the sky. Acid green light flows from her fingers and a shape forms above the far edge of the roof, blurred and misty at first, until it abruptly solidifies into sharp-edged reality and drops with a thud.
Clint swears in disbelief. She summoned a fucking sphinx.
A muscle flickers in Phil’s cheek, but he otherwise doesn’t react.
“Mortals first,” Amora purrs, her smile as catlike as her champion, and as dangerous. Phil drops his hands to his sides and shakes them out minutely - just a flick, an unconscious tell that Clint has forgotten to miss. He has to close his eyes for a moment, because Phil is alive.
Across the roof, the sphinx tilts its head at a frog that landed too close. Lightning fast, she pins it under her massive paw, then carefully skewers the frog with one razor sharp claw and flicks it over the edge of the building.
[riddle where the answer is reality TV?]
Amora shrieks and stamps her foot. Green fire blossoms up from the concrete and in a blinding flash, she vanishes. Overhead, a final few frogs plop out of the sky; the clouds clear, and Clint says, “Iron Man, I need transport over there right goddamn now.”
By the time Tony flies in from the safe distance he’d been forced to retreat from Amora’s magic, Steve has already burst onto the rooftop, followed closely by Natasha. Across the gap, he see Thor clap Coulson on the shoulder - the uninjured side, to be fair, but Clint sees Coulson hide a wince and has to dig his nails into his bow to keep from screaming in sheer frustration. He’s so focused on the scene that Tony catches him by surprise, and Tony is not exactly stealthy even when he tries.
After the fourth time Tony had to pick him up by the scruff of his uniform like a damn kitten and his vest ripped mid-battle, they built a hidden harness into his suit and practiced, so Tony scoops him with no problem, but drops him from a bit higher than usual in his haste - not that Clint blames him, but he still stumbles the landing, falling to one knee.
Then a warm hand cups his elbow and pulls him up.
It’s Phil, and he’s smiling. Clint can’t breathe.
“Glad to see you back on your feet, Agent Barton,” he says with a tiny, impish smile.
“You, too,” Clint echoes automatically, distracted by how close they’re standing and all the things he’d wished he’d done when Phil was gone, then says, “Sorry, sir, I’m going to take advantage of your injury now,” and leans in and kisses the confused twist just starting to pull at Phil’s mouth.
His lips are chapped and a little cool, windblown but warming under Clint’s mouth. Clint slides a hand over Phil’s good shoulder, all smooth muscle under his suit, and threads his fingers into Phil’s tousled hair, trying not to count the seconds, and hoping....
And Phil kisses back.
Phil Coulson is alive, and Clint can’t wait to catch up on lost time.
5. been coming for some time (RAIN)
happy dancing in the rain, umbrellas and wet hugs
sketching in Central Park
[finishing a visit to June's granddaughter at Mt Sinai?]
Neal had a bad habit of looking over artist's shoulders. He knew it was annoying; he didn't mind so much, but Kate had nearly stabbed him with her paintbrush a few times before he learned better, and most people didn't like that vague tingling feeling of being watched (and possibly judged). But he couldn't help it.
The bad habit paid off unexpectedly one cloudy afternoon in Central Park. Neal was eating a pretzel, careful to keep the salt and crumbs off him for fear of being scolded by Mozzie for not buying an extra
As Neal sauntered over, he followed the artist's line of sight to the playground, where a tiny redheaded boy was sliding down a fireman's pole. The boy hit the gravel and immediately raced up to go again. He was too small to grab the pole while standing on the platform, but he threw himself across the gap without hesitation, over and over again.
Neal looked down at the artist's sketchpad, and blinked. Wow.
The sketch was rough, just a hint of the wood's edge and the boy outlined simply, but he had caught the perfect moment after the boy threw himself from the platform, reaching outward with the fearlessness of childhood. Without the pole in the drawing, he didn't look like he was about to fall; he looked like he was about to fly.
It was a gorgeous study in movement for being made in such a short amount of time - the kid couldn't have been on the pole very long, since he was already running off for the next playground attraction already, but the sketch was whole and complete. The artist slowed his pencil, adding a line here, some shading there, and finally came to a stop.
Neal startled when the man said, "So, what do you think?" He tilted the sketchpad and a wry smile up at Neal.
“Very nice,” Neal said honestly. “Sort of [comics artist?]. You've got a great eye for movement.”
“Thanks,” the man said, beaming. “I didn't think anyone knew [artist] these days.”
“Do you usually go for subjects that run off that quickly?” Neal said, nodding at the redhead, who had moved on to conquer the swingset.
“More habit than anything else,” the man said, absently rubbing a smudge of charcoal off his knuckles. “When I was... overseas, I didn't have a lot of time to sit and draw, so I learned to get it done fast.” He grinned self-deprecatingly. “So now I'm great at action, but terrible at still lifes. Or portraits.”
"I'm a consultant with the FBI." Neal hesitated - he could stop there, or tell a story, but he needed practice telling the truth.
Steve leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees. "Maybe you just haven't figured out your style yet," he said. "You sound like you're going through a lot of changes, and I know I didn't draw like this before I joined up. Part of that was learning to draw things fast before we had to move on, but mostly... I'm not the same person that I used to be. It makes a difference." He shrugged. "I don't worry about it much - art is a passion of mine, but it's not my life's work." He grinned at Neal, bright and sudden. "I'll change the world in other ways."
[They keep meeting randomly until Neal runs into him with Peter along (on a case?). Peter gets all flustered and calls him 'sir' and Neal's like... what? And Peter's like, "He's Captain America!"]
Neal couldn't look away. Peter was stuttering.
[And then, I dunno, they all go out for coffee and Steve and Diana start debating the DADT repeal or something.]
Nazi sub tied to Red Skull/old mission of Steve's somehow?
http://www.centralparknyc.org/visit/things-to-see/reservoir/east-96th-street-playground.html
Mt Sinai
Museum Row is along the straight shot down to the Avengers Mansion
Jones = descended from Gabriel Jones of the Howling Commandos, y/y/mfy?
“I bet he would start absentmindedly whistling it [Star-Spangled Man] on missions sometimes, and the Howling Commandos would all throw things at him to get him to stop.” - Lindsey
Spider-Man/Avengers crossover
[Spidey's sitting on Steve's balcony, Steve startles him but grabs his arm, except Peter also shot some webbing and accidentally hit Steve in the face instead]
The man grabbed for him, leaning down - just in time to catch Peter's frantic web directly in the face.
"Oh, man, sorry, that's...really hard to get off. I shot myself in the face with it back when I was making them...um. Not...that you needed to know that...."
Captain America winced. "Yeah, I hit myself in the face with the shield when I was starting out. Just once." He smiled warmly at Peter, who smiled hesitantly back - then realized Cap probably couldn't see that under the mask.
[Tony calls him a kid. Or “Arachnikid”]
“I’m not a kid!” Peter protested. “Just because I’m up here with Captain I-Fought-In-WWII....” [When-I’m-94?]
Iron Man laughed, which sounded really weird coming out of his voice synthesizer.