Chapter Text
It’s 2012.
Loki comes to Earth and enslaves a bunch of SHIELD agents and scientists, including Clint Barton and Eric Selvig.
Barton is a guy who knows a lot of people. A bunch of ex-SHIELD agents, and some mercenaries, and various criminals with a grudge against Big Brother’s secret guard dog. He promises them revenge or information or money, and then assembles them in an old bunker SHIELD doesn’t know he knows about.
Here’s the problem: Clint is entirely loyal to Loki now. The Mind Stone knows he wants to do good, knows he doesn’t trust himself to do good on his own. It tells him Loki is the greatest good he’ll ever find and shows him what Loki needs him to do.
But Selvig is devoted to the Stone and the knowledge it possesses. He wants to know how the universe works. It tells him only what secrets the man could guess at asking for, but it’s enough to break his mind. It pieces him back together and refuses to show him more. Loki is its master for now and Loki needs the human to complete his plan; the Stone isn’t going to waste effort keeping one little man together, as little energy as it would take.
Selvig wants more. He was told just enough about the Space Stone to open a stable portal between it and Loki’s army. Which is nothing at all compared to what he knows he could know.
So, he sets up an experimental portal and tells Barton that even the best machines require a test run.
The portal opens just long enough to spit out one man before it destabilizes and fades away.
“Could have gone better,” Selvig mutters to himself, checking the readout on his computer. “We’re missing something. Something to keep it steady.”
Barton doesn’t care. He keeps too-blue eyes narrowed at the man on the floor as he picks himself up.
“Good news, though,” Selvig continues. “The energy is dissipating. We’re not going to blow up the bunker.”
Barton strikes.
0o0o
Jefferson is a portal jumper. It’s his job and his life, and he’s perfectly happy with it, thank you very much.
He has a magic hat and many talents and an eye for shiny things. He’s a thief, a grifter, and a pickpocket – and a porter and anything else he’s paid to be or fancies trying out.
Rumpelstiltskin is his principal employer, though not his only one. The imp sends him on quests for magic items all the time, but mostly he wants Jefferson to find him a world without magic; Jefferson isn’t interested in that beyond the somewhat regular gold straw Rumple gives him to ensure he keeps looking.
The problem with that arrangement is that when Jefferson finds a world without magic, his pay will dry up. It’s not a very motivating thought.
Which is why he’s taking a break.
A princess has just come of age and her kingdom is celebrating with a week of feasting and partying. Jefferson invites himself, goes in disguise as a noble from a neighbouring kingdom. Over three days he circles closer the princess, flirting and dancing, earning her trust.
He lifts a small fortune in jewelry from the nobility before the princess finally takes the bait he’s laid. She dances with him in the morning and invites him for drinks in her chamber after dark. Jefferson couldn’t be happier. It’s always so satisfying when a job comes together. It’s just a pity his understanding of ‘drinks’ won’t be what the princess expects – a heavy sedative and an undisturbed sleep for her, and all the gold in her rooms for him. He’ll be gone before she wakes, off to another world and another mark.
Except.
Something that feels an awful lot like a portal opens up underneath his feet.
And a dizzying fall not unlike a realm-jump twists his stomach.
And then he hits solid ground, and someone puts a knife to his throat.
0o0o
Agent Barton, that barbarian, grabs their unexpected guest and holds him at knifepoint.
Selvig wonders, not for the first time, if the man’s trigger-happiness won’t be a detriment to Loki’s plan. Sure, he’d found them a hideout and some personnel, made sure SHIELD couldn’t track them, but he was so quick to use violence.
The boy – he couldn’t have been more than mid-twenties, not much younger than the archer – takes the situation a lot better than Selvig would have. No screaming or fighting, not even any wonder at having travelled across space in an instant to be thrown out at the feet of a couple of strangers. He just… kneels there, empty hands held out in front of him, calm as anything.
“Who are you?” Selvig wonders aloud. If the Stone knows, it doesn’t tell him.
The boy smiles. He twists to get a look at Barton, but quickly turns back when the knife is pressed deeper.
“You’re not Asgardian,” Selvig says, his eyes on the thin line of red at the stranger’s throat.
“I’m afraid not,” the kid says. “I’m just a traveler.”
“Where did you come from?” Selvig asks, because Barton looks impatient, and the Stone reminds him that Loki is impatient too, waiting for an army. If he wants answers about portals, he needs to ask quickly.
“Well,” the kid drawls, reaching slowly for the top hat that had fallen from his head when he landed, “that answer depends on what you’re looking for. Where did I come from just now? Or where did I come from originally?”
His fingers close over the brim of the hat and blood beads on his neck where the knife hasn’t moved forward to accommodate his reach.
“Are you saying you’ve been through multiple portals?” Selvig steps into the boy’s personal space, stiffly lowering himself to one knee as excitement for learning pushes against Loki’s control.
The kid smiles wider. He looks up at Barton one more time, then back to Selvig. He winks and puts on his hat.
He disappears the moment the felt touches his head.
0o0o
Jefferson can’t say being held at knifepoint is the worst introduction to a new world he’s had, but he can’t say it’s ever a pleasant one either.
Although, if he had to be held at knifepoint again, he wouldn’t mind if it was the guy who’d held him today. Tanned skin, very well-muscled arms, incredibly handsome…
Something had been off about his eyes though. Too blue. Magic blue.
Both men had had the eyes of a wizard’s thrall.
He sees the same eyes glowing in the dim light of the hallway beyond the dark room he’s hiding in – twin pinpricks of enchantment on nearly guard he sees. Nearly, but not all. If he can find a spare set of clothing, he’ll be able to blend in and sneak out without hassle.
It goes without saying that using his Hat again is out of the question. Cut off from the Enchanted Forest, he needs to conserve all the magic he can until he finds a way to open a portal the Hat can get back through. Obviously, escaping immediately life-threatening situations is an exception. But now that he’s no longer in an immediately life-threatening situation…
Jefferson peers around the dim room. It looks like a storage room of some sort. There are boxes of strange metal things he assumes are weapons since all the guards are carrying them, stacks of metal chairs on and under metal tables, and a couple of cloth bags of gear.
A closer look reveals helmets, jackets, boots and gloves, and an odd pair of glasses with a stretchy strap. Setting those aside for now, he rifles through the bags until he finds one of each of the other things in his size.
With a bit of magic, he tucks his own boots, vest, scarf, and hat into various pockets in his coat, then folds the coat in on itself until it’s no larger than a coin purse. He tucks it safely into the pocket of his stolen jacket and then slips that on along with the rest of the disguise.
0o0o
The Stone tells Selvig he needs Iridium for the portal to work properly.
The biggest sample any of them know about is in Germany, so the Stone shows Barton the best target he’ll need to get them access to it. The archer picks a handful of men and lays out a plan to steal the chunk of rare metal.
Loki declares that he will be joining them. SHIELD will surely come after them when they show themselves, and SHIELD will have the Hulk. He wants the unbeatable monster on his side.
Barton works him into the plan: Loki will be a distraction for him and his team during the heist and after, when SHIELD takes him prisoner. He’ll be held on the helicarrier, which will get him as close as possible to the Hulk and give Barton time to get the Iridium to Selvig.
Once Selvig has the metal, Loki tells him, he needs to go to Stark Tower and set up the portal on the roof. There, they will bring the Chitauri army to Earth and conquer the tiny planet in Loki’s name.
All of this is executed exactly as planned.
It’s only when Barton breaches the helicarrier to free Loki that things go off the rails.
0o0o
Jefferson wagers that the portal he came through is his best bet for getting home, so he sticks close to it. When the activity in the base (fort? castle? He hasn’t seen enough to tell where they are) increases, he dives into the fray and makes himself busy.
They move the portal artifact. It’s bulky and heavy and requires a strange contraption to load it into a large metal carriage. He helps where he can, tightening straps on things in the carriage.
The man from before, the one who questioned him (portal master?), is the men giving orders. He stays with the artifact the whole time, and Jefferson, disguised, lingers near him as much as he can.
After a few minutes, most of the men file out, leaving Jefferson, a guard, the portal master, and a bald man in a white coat. The back of the carriage is closed, and everything around them starts to shake as they move. Jefferson tells himself the loud rumbling and shuddering is normal.
They stay in there for hours, the portal master and the man in white working with the Cube, Jefferson and the guard sitting in silence. He’d tried to start a conversation with the guard, but he’d just blinked unnaturally blue eyes at Jefferson before he went back to tracking the scientists’ movements.
Jefferson keeps his eyes the glowing Cube resting in the portal machine –it’s an incredibly powerful source of cosmic energy, he can feel it – and tries to convince himself the motion of the odd carriage doesn’t make him feel ill.
And then, finally, the rumbling stops. The same man from before opens the back and everyone scrambles out. They load the portal onto a short, wheeled cart and drag it to a very, very tall building. Jefferson lags behind, staring up at it.
He’s never felt so small – everywhere he looks he sees glass and stone and metal forming the tallest, strangest towers he’s ever seen. It was like an entire city had taken the Evil Queen’s aesthetic as inspiration. Endless crowds of people cover roads of seamless stone, and horseless carriages roar past in an ugly, juttering dance.
He wonders if the whole world looks like this – stone and metal forever onward.
The portal and the men have disappeared. He hurries through the doors they had been heading for, running to catch up. They’re not in the entrance hall, but he knows they were going to the roof.
Looking around, he spots a door and a sign with a drawing of what looks like stairs. He doesn’t fancy the idea of walking to the top of such a tall tower, but his Hat is out of the question – he needs to conserve the it’s magic as much as possible. It’ll be unpleasant, especially with how queasy he feels, but he doesn’t see any other options. Besides, if the others are carrying the portal machine they won’t be moving very quickly.
“Hey! You one of Barton’s?”
A man in the same black uniform he’s wearing stands by a crescent desk. He’s carrying one of those weapons and the scowl on his face isn’t friendly.
“Good,” the man sighs before Jefferson can respond. He heard the name earlier, but he doesn’t know exactly who Barton is. “Thought you were one’a those blue-eyed freaks.”
“Ha, no, not me.” He smiles easily and taps at his pocket. “Just had to grab something from the… uh. For the portal thing.”
“Uh-huh.” The man is silent for a moment, casting a quick look around the room. Then he shakes his head. “Red Skull had that thing for years and they never figured out what it did. Say what you want about SHIELD but at least they got us this.”
‘This’ being an army from the stars. What has he gotten tangled up with? Though he supposes the immediate knife at his throat should have tipped him off that this was not going to be an easy jump. He can’t wait to get his hands on that portal and get out of this realm – he’s really not one for violence.
“Lucky break,” he says, instead of asking who Red Skull and Shield are.
“Yeah, no kidding. Anyway, you should head up when the coast is clear. The others will be down once they help Selvig set up, but I take it from your lack of a piece you’re stuck on babysitting.”
Piece of what? Baby sitting?
He doesn’t ask, just heads in the direction the man had gestured and watches as several people enter tiny little rooms with doors that open and close by themselves. When the doors opened again, the people are gone.
Finally, something familiar.
0o0o
Natasha is a spy. She was made to kill, to use guns and knives and her body to end human lives. She lies and imitates and manipulates to get what she wants.
She is not trained to deal with aliens or magic or holes in space.
But she adapts – she was born to adapt.
Loki is an alien, but he reads like any other man. A story and a few tears, and he struts right into her trap.
She escapes the Hulk.
Clint’s eyes are unnaturally blue, and he tries to kill her because a magic spear tells him to. She slams his head against a pole twice and gets her partner back. Cognitive recalibration.
Half-mechanical aliens on flying sleds pour through a wormhole in the clouds. Giant flying mechanized whales follow. She stabs one of the little ones in the shoulders and uses the corpse to get to the top of Stark Tower.
“The Sceptre,” Selvig tells her. “The Tesseract…you can’t fight against yourself.”
She takes the spear, tells the others.
Stark guides a missile through the portal. She shoves the spear into the machine and closes the hole in the sky.
“I think I killed a man,” Selvig confesses.
0o0o
It takes a moment of standing in the tiny room before Jefferson figures out that the little knobs on the wall control where the room goes. He presses the one with the highest number and steels himself while the room moves up. He’s going to have to get Selvig alone (ideally, he’d get the portal artifact alone, but he doubts he could convince the thrall to leave it).
The doors open to a wide floor still under a ceiling. There isn’t much in the way of furniture; the floors and shelves have piles of boxes made out of what looks like really smooth, thin wood. He peeks around surreptitiously, then opens one to find multiple coloured square cushions. A second box reveals the disassembled parts of… something.
It doesn’t matter what it is – he’s wasting time. Closing the box, Jefferson looks around. There’s a door not too far away with a little window in it. Sunlight streams through, lighting up a small square of the floor. The metal creaks when he pushes it open.
Four people are waiting out on the small, pebble-strewn rooftop. Three of them are guards standing at attention, their weapons drawn, eyes scanning the skies. Two of them are on the lower level with him, the third on a higher section. The fourth person, he’s relieved to see, is Selvig, the man who’d questioned him. He’s on the higher section too, hunched over and tinkering with the portal machine.
Jefferson nods to the guard closest to him as he passes her, posture deliberately relaxed, and climbs the short ladder. He stops behind the old man, examining the strange machine and trying very hard not to look at how high up they are. Then he looks around at the guards again. None of them have the too-blue eyes of the thralls.
“We’re done here,” he calls to the closest over the wind. “Loki needs you below.”
The guard glances at him, then nods. He climbs down the ladder, makes a loose circle in the air when the other guards look over, and then they leave without protest. Now it’s just him and the portal-keeper.
The old man turns to face him, squinting against the sun. “What did you do that for?” he demands to know. “I needed them to run more cables for me. The machine isn’t ready yet!”
“I need that power source,” Jefferson says. He keeps his limbs loose, ready to dodge and make a grab for the Cube when the man tries to fight. Because he will, that’s what thralls do. He has to be ready for it.
“Wh-” The man looks him up and down, focusing his eyes on the white bird emblem sewn onto the stolen jacket’s breast. “I can’t let you take her! The Tesseract wants to show us so much!”
“I just need it to get home!” He doesn’t feel the need to mention that he wouldn’t be returning it; an object that powerful would fetch a nice price from any witch worth her broomstick. But people don’t tend to want to let you hold things when you mention you’ll be stealing them.
“Home? …You’re the one from the portal.”
The man’s arms relax, his stance shifts to something more comfortable. His expression opens as curiosity replaces caution.
Jefferson strikes. He darts around the man’s left side and lunges for the machine, for the Cube sitting freely between the two large copper rings and their silver braces.
“No!” the man shouts, twisting too slowly.
Jefferson’s hand glances off an invisible forcefield. A wave of blue energy ripples out from where he hits, revealing a protective globe around the Tesseract. It’s unexpected and very unwelcome – he doesn’t have anything with him that can break a magical barrier.
Preoccupied with shaking the pain out of his stinging fingers, he misses the portal-keeper’s attack. Silver case in hand, the man swings at him and smashes the flat of it against his shoulder. Jefferson falls forward, catching himself against the machine. He dodges the next swing, reeling back out of the way, narrowly missing a blow to the head.
“You can’t stop this!” the old man bellows, swinging again.
Jefferson steps back and abruptly regrets the instinctive move. His foot tangles in one of the thick cords running out from the machine and he trips. Gravity pulls him down, and fate had put him too close to the edge.
He lurches off with a surprised yelp.
The man and his too-blue eyes disappear as the building rushes past.
It’s a testament to how often he’s fallen or been thrown off tall towers that Jefferson doesn’t waste time panicking. Tumbling through rushing wind, spinning end-over-end, Jefferson catches the corner of his stolen jacket and digs around in the pocket, withdraws the folded square of his own coat, and rummages around until he finds his Hat.
Pulling it out is a bit tricky, but he snaps it back into shape and pops it on his head with seconds to spare. Mere feet from the ground, he disappears safely into Limbo.
Taking a moment to breathe in the endless nothing, Jefferson curses his luck. He’s got no magical power source, is one use down on the Hat, and now he needs to find a way to get through a magical shield!
Why was there a barrier in the first place? The old man couldn’t have done it, the only magic in him was Loki’s. Did the Tesseract, as he’d called it, want to do what the man was asking? Was it enthralled too?
Jefferson sighs. He won’t get any answers or find any magical solutions in a void, and every minute he spends in here is too many back in that realm. He’ll have to improvise. There’s precious little he knows about the world he’s ended up in, but he’s confident that something will work out.
He folds his coat again and shoves it back into the jacket pocket, then lifts the Hat from his head, and materializes in a battlefield.
0o0o
Today sucks and he needs a nap.
Clint groans, carefully raising himself out of the pile of glass shards he’s landed in. Everything from the tips of his toes to the top of his head aches. He’s been mind-controlled, flown to Germany and back, nearly taken down a helicarrier, been beat up by Natasha, now beat up by aliens, and smashed through a skyscraper window legs first. Oh, and he’s been awake for about the last 60 hours.
This week sucks.
The trek back to Stark Tower also blows; he’s out of arrows, separated from his ‘team’, his feet hurt, and the ground is littered with fallen rubble and aliens alike. At least the Tower is air conditioned. And the elevators work.
His earpiece crackles and Natasha gives him a floor number. He makes it to the party just before an unconscious Loki, lying in one of several Loki-shaped holes in the tile flooring, opens his eyes. In a truly stupid move that has Natasha staring at him, Clint punches the Hulk on the arm and tells him, “Nice one!”
Things get a little blurry from there as exhaustion tries to pull him under. He fights it long enough to hold Loki at arrow-point until Strike Team arrives, accepts a drink from Nat as the Cube is packed away and Loki is cuffed, but falls asleep for the short elevator ride down to ground level. Nat nudges him awake and he grudgingly pushes off from the wall to follow her into the lobby.
Stark, Rogers, Thor, and Strike Team head left toward the front door and the several unmarked black vehicles waiting in front of it. The dozen agents surrounding the vehicles swarm inside at the sight of the Avengers and immediately there’s arguing about who gets custody of the Tesseract and Loki.
Clint and Nat hang back, waiting for the crowd to settle. Clint considers walking out the back and circling the building, but each step he takes feels more and more like walking on hot knives, so he lets the thought pass.
A few seconds later, he’s glad he stuck around.
One of the agents hesitates at the door, which is what pulls Clint’s attention. He watches the guy enter the building, assess the situation (at least, he’s reasonably sure that’s what had him stop and peer around at the others), and then expertly weave through the crowd.
He nudges Natasha, who nods to indicate she’s seen the guy too. Both of them are aware that not all of Loki’s followers have been rounded up, and Clint’s memory is fuzzy on how many of them had been disguised as SHIELD.
The fake agent stops at the second row of people from the front, staying near the edge of the group. The helmet and goggles cover the top of his face, but Clint thinks he almost looks familiar.
He keeps his eyes on the target as he reaches for the gun Natasha surreptitiously offers-
Then the stairwell explodes, chunks of concrete and façade thrown outward as the Hulk shoves his way through.
“NO STAIRS!” he bellows.
What a perfect distraction, Clint thinks. He turns back to see the fake agent making his move. Everyone had alerted at the Hulk’s entrance, and the case holding the Tesseract had been dropped in favour of bringing a gun to bear. The ‘agent’ scoops up the case without anyone else noticing and slips back into the crowd.
Natasha slips faster. Clint limps after her, a small grin on his face as he watches her sneak up and secure both case and man in one move. She doesn’t need his help, but she waits for him anyway.
“Hey, man,” Clint says casually, slinging an arm around the guy’s neck. The man cringes, ducking his head. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you stealing was wrong?”
Nat starts walking, flagging over one of several agents still waiting at the vans. Eric Selvig is talking to another, wrapped up in a shock blanket. Clint keeps it to himself that he’s using their new prisoner as a crutch.
“What’s the matter?” he asks, when the guy stays quiet. Natasha hands the silver case over to the agent and steers them to the closest van. Their captive’s head follows the case. “You pouting?”
Clint reaches over and knocks the helmet off. Familiar, tousled brown hair fluffs out, the slight breeze blowing it into the man’s eyes. Speaking of…
With a slight anticipation, Clint gently (gentler than he’d been planning on before, anyway) lifts the goggles away from the man’s face and sets them on his crown. The action traps a lot of hair, leaving the face beneath clear to see.
“Oh boy.”
Clint’s not sure if he says it because he recognizes the man from the portal or because it looks like Natasha does too.
0o0o
They put him in a ‘van’ and from the van to a flying machine and from there to a much, much larger flying machine. It looks like a fortress in the sky, only it’s noisy and uglier than any fort he’s ever seen.
He’s ushered inside along with several others in chains by soldiers whose uniform he’s still wearing. The halls smell of iron and smoke, and once or twice Jefferson spots blood splashed on the walls. At one point, their little procession stops to let a table on wheels go past, two people pushing it while a wounded third lays on the top.
Jefferson is led into a small room and his chains are taken off. The guard who isn’t standing at the door holding one of those blocky weapons sneers at him and grabs the little tab on the neck of his jacket. He yanks it down and roughly drags the garment off. Then he gives Jefferson a shove and the two leave. The door is quiet as it closes, but the click of the lock echoes in his ears all the same.
Jefferson pulls at the cuffs of his frilly red shirt and looks around at his cell. It’s cleaner than any of the prisons he’s ever been in. Spotless floor, shiny metal walls, bright lights, and smelling faintly of lilacs and something that makes him want to sneeze. There’s a bed in one corner and a door by the other. That door, he finds, leads to an even smaller room with a latrine.
He sighs. They’d taken his jacket. Sure, it wasn’t his, but it had his in it and his jacket had the Hat in its pocket. And his lockpicks too. And a small ration of bread and water. And a change of clothes. And…well, it had pockets deeper one would think, and he tended to pick up a lot of things.
The lockpicks and the Hat are the ones he misses most if only because the first could have gotten him to the second and the second was the foundation of his entire livelihood.
He sighs again, louder and more frustrated, and crosses the room. Dropping onto the bed, he scoots back until his back brushes against the wall.
He’d been so close to getting that portal. A good disguise, careful timing, a wonderful distraction – all ruined by one person. Or maybe two. The guy he’d seen when he first got here, the one with knife and the nice arms, had been with her.
His eyes had been clear this time. Still blue, but humanly so. Greyer.
Jefferson thinks about those eyes, and the playfulness in his voice even as he mocked what he thought was an enemy, and waits.
0o0o
Fury calls Natasha in to debrief her personally. He’s standing at his desk when she arrives, his motions stiff and short, frustrated.
He asks about Barton – a formality. Her response is short and nothing he doesn’t know already.
“He’s in medical. Unconscious. No serious injuries. How’s Selvig?”
Fury nods, shuffling through a folder on his desk. “He’ll live.”
“That bad, huh?” Natasha says. She waits for the director to get to the point. She’d done her paperwork after she’d made sure Clint was settled; there was only one thing worth talking to her about now.
Sure enough, when Fury finds the page he wants, he flips the entire folder around and slaps it down in front of her. Two men stare up at her from two different photographs, identical in every way except hairstyle and clothes. One photo is black and white and dated 1943, the other is in full colour, taken only hours ago.
Fury doesn’t say anything, his eye trained on her face. She keeps her expression neutral as she compares memories from today against those from many years ago. She doesn’t like the reminder of the Red Room, but James was, at least, a part of some of the better memories.
Finally, she twitches her lip in a frown. “They’re not the same guy.”
“Really,” is the deadpan response. “We’ve already got magic spears and extraterrestrial Shakespeare. Why not immortal soldiers? Or maybe time travel?”
She lets Fury get the snark out of his system. The Council had to have been giving him shit for everything that’s happened; if this is how he needs to deal, it’s no difference to her.
“I’ve got an alien army to clean up and a dozen agents to take care of who’ve had their brains scrambled by Loki. Captain America’s dead friend showing up on my helicarrier is the last thing I need right now.”
“They’re not the same guy,” she repeats.
Fury’s eye narrows, and he sits heavily in his chair. He waves a hand for her to continue.
Natasha folds her arms, leans her weight on one leg. She doesn’t want to seem too willing to say what she’s about to but doesn’t want to appear closed off either. She keeps her forehead relaxed, her posture loose.
“Barton and Selvig both talked about a man who came from a Tesseract portal the same way Loki did. They also said he disappeared less than a minute later. This,” she pokes at the colour photo, “is the man they saw. I caught him trying to steal the Tesseract from Stark Tower; whoever he is he isn’t a soldier. He’s not Barnes.”
She’s good – she’s the Black Widow – but even she would have a hard time taking down the Winter Soldier. Their prisoner had barely resisted. It was kind of disappointing, actually.
Fury exhales, not quite a sigh. She wonders what would have been easier for him – time travel or a man who doesn’t age? Neither would be ideal, but it’s simpler, in her opinion, to deal with one man than keep track of time.
“When Agent Barton wakes up, if he’s in any condition to, have him interrogate this guy. If they’ve already met, it might be easier to build a rapport.”
She doesn’t remind Fury that she learned how to interrogate before she was in her teens. She doesn’t say anything, just takes a last look at the black and white portrait, and then heads out to find something to do.
0o0o
Clint had barely made it through Stark’s impromptu celebratory lunch. The only reason he didn’t fall asleep right there in the busted restaurant with his foot up on Nat’s chair is because sleep wasn’t the only thing Loki had decided was unimportant. Though, as hungry as he was, it still took far too much effort to stay awake while he picked at a shawarma bowl in the silent eatery.
Stark had paid for everyone’s meal, so that was a bonus. Then Thor flew off to find Jane Foster and Stark had headed back to his Tower to assess the damage. Rogers disappeared to help with the clean-up. Banner just straight up disappeared.
Clint and Natasha had caught the last quinjet headed back to the helicarrier. He’d made the turn to his quarters, but his partner had steered him around toward the infirmary. He’d almost put up a fight, but he’d figured some painkillers weren’t unwanted and the beds in medical were closer than his anyway.
He’d passed out the second he laid down.
He dreams about giant pitas and strangers with familiar faces. It’s a lot better than other things his subconscious could have called up.
When he wakes up, the sky outside the porthole is light again and his whole body aches. He thinks about trying to sleep again but he knows if he tries the nightmares will find him. Instead, he rolls off the hard bed and limps across the helicarrier to the mess hall. Stares and glares follow him, nothing he hasn’t experienced before, except this time he knows he deserves them; he keeps his head down and his hearing aids low.
The mess is nearly empty, just a few exhausted-looking techs in scorched jackets sipping coffee and waving their hands around in what he’s sure is a heated debate. They don’t seem to notice him as he crosses the room, hobbling up to the unattended serving counter and examining his choices. He grabs a napkin and piles on a few squares of cold pizza. He doesn’t much feel like staying so he heads off to search for Nat.
0o0o
Jefferson doesn’t know how long he’s waited in the too-clean cell. It feels like weeks. Months. Years!
He’s so bored he’s taken to laying on his back, hands crossed under his head, kicking at the lavatory door so it swings in and bounces back with a bang. He thinks about the job Rumpelstiltskin has waiting for him – something about a little mermaid. He daydreams about the treasury he never got to loot at Princess Imogen’s party. He wonders if his captors have found his coat yet.
Something chirps and the main door swings open. Two glaring guards enter.
“Up,” the man growls.
Jefferson sighs loudly and climbs slowly to his feet. The second guard swoops in, grabbing one arm and snapping a manacle around his wrist. She pulls his other arm and locks that one in too, and then drags him out into the hallway.
“We taking a trip?” Jefferson asks. “Anywhere exciting?”
He prepares to add to the little mental map he’s made but they only get three rooms down before the male guard opens another door and he’s lead inside. The one holding him pushes Jefferson into a metal chair at a metal table. One wrist is released, the manacle threaded through a shiny loop on the tabletop, and then locked back on his arm.
So many things are made of metal in this world. He’d be surprised if the beds weren’t filled with iron shavings. He should have checked. It had felt like it.
There’s a mirror in this room. It takes up most of the wall to his left, reflecting harsh white light and a serious case of bedhead that he can’t fix. He scowls at his reflection, then turns his attention to the silvery manacles, picking at the links and lamenting the loss of his tools.
When the door opens again, he leans back as far as he can and gives the women entering his best bored stare. She hardly spares him a glance, striding with her chin up to the table and setting down a thin binder before pulling out the other chair and gracefully lowering herself to sit. Still without looking at him, she leafs slowly through the very few pages. It isn’t until he rolls his eyes and drops his head on his arm that she raises her eyes.
“You’re an interesting one, aren’t you?” she asks.
He peeks up at her, then straightens when she holds eye contact.
“We’ve managed to identify everyone involved in the attacks on the helicarrier and Stark Tower except for you. No ID, no fingerprints, no matches on facial recognition. Well,” she amends, opening the binder again and flipping through. “One match.”
She turns the page around and pushes it across the table. The chain at his wrists clinks as he leans closer. There are two portraits on the page along with the neatest writing he’s ever seen. One is painted in shades of grey, the other in full colour. It’s him, strangely. Not only has he never commissioned his own portrait, but with the level of detail in these, how would they have had time to make them?
“Care to explain?”
“It appears to be two portraits,” he says. He smiles at her. “You like what you see that much?”
She doesn’t react. “What’s your name?” she asks instead.
He debates lying or not answering, but in a world almost entirely devoid of magic, he doubts they’ll be able to do anything to him, so he answers truthfully.
“Jefferson.”
“Jefferson…?”
“Yes.”
Her expression sours – the tiniest crinkle of her forehead – and his grin widens.
“Who do you work for, Mr Jefferson?”
“I’m something of an independent contractor.”
“Have you ever heard of HYDRA?”
“Sure. Nasty lizard things with the heads, right?” He wiggles his fingers in imitation. “Never met one, but I hear their hearts are pretty valuable.”
“Did Agent Barton contact you at all? Did he hire you to participate in any of the events of the last week?”
“Who?”
The woman folds her hands on the table in front of her. “Why were you at Stark Tower today, Mr Jefferson?”
She sounds stressed, which is odd, he thinks. He’d thought he was going easy on her; he’s answered all her questions so far. Maybe he’s not her first interrogation of the day. Well, if she hasn’t liked his answers so far, she’s not going to like the truth.
“I was just trying to get back home.”
Her expression twitches again.
“I’m a long way away, you see.” He leans back in the chair again, and his wrists catch when he tries to put his hands behind his head. He pouts at the chain, then gets as comfortable as he can with it still attached. “Several realms distant, it feels like. Not exactly somewhere I can ride to, you know? I need a portal.”
This time, the woman frowns. “The Tesseract,” she says.
Jefferson winks at her. “Exactly.”
0o0o
Natasha isn’t surprised when Clint walks into the observation room only a few hours after he’d passed out. He looks exhausted, deep shadows under his eyes and the usual humour absent from his expression. She doesn’t comment; she knows what waits in sleep for people who have gone through what they have. She’d rather not bring it up, for both of their sakes.
“Hey, Nat,” he greets, mumbling around a bite of pizza.
She nods back, then resumes staring through the two-way glass at Barnes’ doppelganger. Clint joins her, leaning against the steel notetaker’s desk and setting his lunch near the microphone used to broadcast into the adjoining cell.
He adjusts the volume on his hearing aids and then asks, “So what do we know?”
“We’ve got a name,” she says. “Just the one. Like Beyoncé.”
Clint huffs. It’s not exactly a laugh, but she’ll take it.
“Just a name? I thought you’d have the guy’s whole life story by now.”
There’s a tiny smirk on his lips, enough to hint to anyone else that he’s joking. It’s a billboard to her, a giant, unspoken ‘I’m okay’. She doesn’t believe him, but the fact that he’s trying tells her he’s at least slightly more okay than he was earlier.
She jostles his arm and reciprocates the teasing look. “I haven’t talked to him yet. It’s Jefferson, by the way. His name.”
“Right,” Clint nods.
‘Have you ever heard of HYDRA?’ Agent Brennan’s voice crackles from the speakers.
“You said Selvig opened another portal,” Natasha says, nodding at the prisoner, “and he came through?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. My memory’s blue a little fuzzy, but I think…he was way too calm about everything.”
“Did you talk to him?”
Clint scratches at the back of his head. “Don’t think so.”
‘Did Agent Barton contact you at all?’
Natasha slides off the table and crosses her arms. She gives Clint a quick visual assessment, noting the way he’s hunching over and continuously shifting his weight on his feet.
“Fury wants you to talk to him.”
“What, really?”
Natasha frowns. “Yes really. You’re not locked up, are you? You’ve got free reign of the ship. If Selvig’s still on the payroll, so are you.”
“Selvig didn’t almost bring down the helicarrier,” Clint mutters, picking at a band-aid on his neck.
“No, but he did bring an alien army to Earth.” She sighs. “No one who knows what happened blames you. The ones who don’t know, will. It wasn’t you, Clint.”
“You’re right,” he agrees, far too casually. He swipes his lunch from the table and then knocks on the two-way glass. Agent Brennan looks around, then stands.
“But I still did it,” Clint huffs as he swaps places with her.
Natasha understands.
0o0o
Jefferson is pleasantly surprised to see that the man who enters is the man who’d had the knife. He’d changed into a jersey at some point, dark blue with the now-familiar white bird crest. Small bandages dot his hands and face.
“Hey, man,” he says, dropping whatever it was he’d been holding onto the table. He grabs the free chair and brings it around to the side, spinning it and sitting down backwards. He crosses his arms on the backrest and rests his chin on them, smiling softly.
“Brennan wasn’t givin’ you a hard time, was she? Fantastic agent, but uh, poor conversationalist.”
Jefferson allows himself a moment just to get distracted – the dark circles under his eyes, the dimple on his cheek as he smiles, the way the wool stretches across the muscles of his arms – before he reminds himself that knife guy works for the people who’d imprisoned him. He needs to use this interrogation to earn enough trust to be let go, or he needs to be intriguing enough that he can convince them to bring him his coat.
He shrugs. “For all the times I’ve been interrogated, that is my favourite. So far. I’m Jefferson.” He winks. “It is my pleasure to meet you again for the first time.”
“Yeah, sorry about that.” The man nods at the thin scab on Jefferson’s neck. “It wasn’t the best time for either of us, I s’ppose. I’m Clint.”
“I’ve had worse introductions to a new world. Almost got decapitated once.”
“Right…”
Clint shifts in his seat, scooting closer to the back of the chair so he can lean in. He gestures with his hands, forming two half-circles in the air,
“So, we’re pretty new to the whole interstellar wormhole thing. You wanna fill us in? I mean, how often do you accidently pull someone through a portal, right?”
Jefferson tries not to laugh, but his smile breaks and he snickers. Interstellar, ha! He shakes his head at Clint.
“You’re not thinking big enough! Of course, a portal can take you from end of your realm to another, but with the right intent, you can go anywhere. Infinite lands at your fingertips!” He throws his hands out as far as the chain allows for emphasis. “Provided you have enough magic, that is.”
“Wait, wait, you’re saying the multiverse is real?” Clint’s eyes are wide open, crinkling his forehead as his brows push towards his hairline. He straightens up in his surprise.
Oh, he loves bursting the bubble of ignorance on civilizations that think they’re so advanced.
“Unquestionably.”
“So… are you not from this universe?”
Jefferson just grins at him.
Clint sits back, nodding to himself, a vaguely stunned look on his face. He glances at the mirror, then rakes his eyes over the extradimensional being. Jefferson makes sure to look as relaxed as possible, keeps his posture loose, but he can’t help running his thumb over the chain attaching him to the table.
After a moment, Clint reaches out and pushes the small pile of food he’d brought in in front of Jefferson.
“You ever had pizza?”
0o0o
Fury rubs a hand over his forehead.
“In one week, we have not just aliens from other worlds, but a visitor from a parallel universe.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Council doesn’t pay him enough for this. SHIELD was created to deal with human threats and even though aliens aren’t completely novel, an invasion force is a little out of their depth.
At least they’d had the Avengers. Barely.
“You’re certain he’s not a threat?” he paraphrases, reading from Barton’s interrogation report.
“Anyone can be a threat, sir, as you know. But as far as I can tell, this guy’s pretty harmless. He’s got no supports here, no contacts. Barely understands indoor plumbing. The guy couldn’t wrestle a kitten to the ground. He hadn’t even heard of pizza before.”
Fury levels an unimpressed stare at the archer, who shrugs.
“So, what are you recommending we do, Agent Barton. It wouldn’t be ‘fair’ to keep a civilian locked up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Barton squirms. He knows this is Fury is telling him that Jefferson is his responsibility, and part of him resents that. A lot of shit has happened in the last few days that he needs to sort out, he doesn’t want to have babysit on top of that.
“Sir, do we have any contact with Asgard? Any way to ask Thor to… beam down the Tesseract or something so we can send him home?”
“No. The Council was…very interested in keeping the Tesseract here on Earth. Thor decided it would better to get it and Loki off-planet as quickly as possible.”
Barton’s heart sinks.
“So, this guy’s is stuck here until Thor or some other Asgardian decides to mosey on down to our backwater rock for an ego boost?”
“Looks like. Unless you can find some other way to cross dimensions.”
0o0o
The door of his room clicks and swings open. Jefferson pokes his head out from the side room where he’d been attempting to wash, sees Clint in the doorway, and immediately goes back to what he’d been doing.
“Miss me already?” he calls, pulling the sink plug and watching the water swirl down the drain.
Clint huffs. Leaning against the bathroom entrance, he crosses his arms. “I’ve got good news and bad news. Which d’you want first?”
“Let me guess,” Jefferson says, whirling around and tipping his ear toward his shoulder with a mocking expression. “The good news is you’re letting me go. The bad news is you don’t have that portal anymore.”
A humourless smile twitches Clint’s lips. “The good news is you and I are going to be spending some quality time together. The bad news is… yeah, SHIELD doesn’t have the Tesseract anymore. I’m supposed to keep you company until we get it back. Unless you got a backup plan?”
While the idea of spending more time with Clint is a nice one, the confirmation that he’s still trapped on this world sucks most of the fun out of it. He doesn’t do well in one place for long, especially when it’s a place he didn’t choose himself.
Jefferson sighs with all the air in his chest, pouting at Clint. “Are you really so eager to get rid of me, dear archer? I thought we’d come to an understanding when you offered to share your food with me.”
Remembering the pizza brings its awful taste back, and he smiles to cover what would have been a gag. He’s sure it would have been more enjoyable if he could taste anything besides salt (and something unpleasant he had no comparison for) but he’d been diplomatic and finished the piece regardless. He wants to make allies, not guards who simply tolerate him.
“Whatever, man. C’mon, I’ve got stuff to get.”
Jefferson follows Clint out of the room where the archer then slows to fall into step beside him. The path they take is straightforward with only a few turns and climbs up stairs. Jefferson memorizes it anyway.
“Is it just me or is nobody happy to see us?” he asks, after yet another group of people stop what they’re doing to glare at them.
Clint clenches his hands into fists and walks a little faster. “Yeah, strange. It can’t have anything to do with the fact that yesterday I almost blew this place out of the sky, broke an evil alien god out of containment, and led the mercs responsible for the deaths of a dozen agents. It must just be you.”
Jefferson purses his lips, regret in his eyes as he watches Clint tense. “Of course,” he agrees, easily. “Must be me.”
Clint stops abruptly and slaps his hand against a small box on the wall. A green light flashes, and then the door next to them slides sideways into the wall. The archer gestures for Jefferson to enter first.
“They do know you were under a spell, right?” Jefferson asks, looking around the new room. Metal shelves and tables take up most of the space inside. Their surfaces are covered with clothes and various weapons, pieces of armour like the ones he’d borrowed, and some other things he’s never seen before.
“Magic is kind of a new thing around here,” Clint says, following the other man inside. “It’s easier for them to believe I sold out to Loki than it is to believe I was brainwashed.” Easier for him too, and he was the one it had happened to. He takes quick stock of what’s in the room, looking for his gear.
“You really don’t use magic?” the portal jumper wonders, as intrigued as he is dismayed by the idea. How does a fortress fly without magic? He wanders along the shelves, running his finger across the labels until he comes to one with his name on it. He pulls the jacket down.
“Well…” Clint spots his bow on a rack on the far wall alongside the guns and myriad other weapons confiscated from the SHIELD imposters. It’s upsetting to see it among them, but he knows for paperwork’s sake it had to be processed. He wonders if complying so easily to the order to turn it in had made him look more guilty or less.
“There’s illusions and shit. Y’know, saw someone in half, pull a coin from behind your ear kind’a crap. No potions or flying broomsticks though.”
“Flying broomsticks?” Jefferson drags his coat out from the jacket pocket – written off as empty on the label, he’d been amused to see – and shakes it out. “Wait, you saw people in half for fun?”
“No,” Clint says, chuckling at the horror on Jefferson’s face, and shaking his head as he answers. “It’s a trick. Just smoke and mirrors.”
Jefferson squints at him, keeping eye contact until he throws his long coat on top of the table between them. Clint slips his bow over his shoulder so the string crosses his chest and grabs his quiver. He sets it across from the other.
“Where’d that come from?” he asks, nodding at the coat.
“If I was going to be disguised, I couldn’t very well carry this with me.”
“Right.”
Clint pulls arrows from the quiver one by one, inspecting them for damage, but keeps most of his concentration on Jefferson. The man flips the coat so its buttons face upward, and straightens out the flower-decorated collars. Then he reaches into the left pocket. His arm disappears up to the elbow, digs around for a few seconds before he pulls out a handful of scarlet fabric. The scarf is then expertly tied around his neck.
It gets ridiculous from there. Diving back in, Jefferson comes up first with a brown leather vest, then a pair of black leather pants, and finally a pair of black knee-high boots.
Clint forgets his arrows, watching with his brows raised as Jefferson removes an entire outfit from a pocket that looked barely large enough to hold a particularly big wallet.
“…Magic?”
“Magic,” Jefferson confirms. He grabs the waist of his SHIELD uniform pants and meets Clint’s eyes. “You mind? I mean, I don’t mind. If you want to look-”
“Hoookay!” Clint averts his eyes to the arrow in his hands as Jefferson unzips and starts to change. “We are not there yet,” he quips.
He only looks back up when the coat slides out of view. Jefferson shrugs it on, then throws his hands out with dramatic flair.
“Well?” he asks, grinning wide.
Clint almost snaps the arrow he’s holding. With the whole outfit together and his eyeliner refreshed, Jefferson looks like a dashing rogue from an old movie. Clint hates to admit it, but he’s hot.
“You look ridiculous,” he tells him instead. “Nobody’s worn anything like that since the 1800s.”
Jefferson’s smile doesn’t falter, he just lowers his hands back to the pocket and starts rooting around again. “Shame. I’ll just have to live with out-dressing everyone.” His left hand reappears with two thick rings and then holds the pocket open while the right struggles with something. “Fashion is such a pain, isn’t it?”
Clint straps the quiver to his hip and waits to see what the man will produce this time. It takes some wiggling and whispered cajoling, but eventually Jefferson drags a top hat clear. If he’d been a cartoon, there would have been a ‘pop!’ Clint thinks.
“Really?”
“Really really.” Jefferson tosses the hat, rolls it down his arm, catches it, and flips it onto his head.
Clint’s stomach twists, the feeling somewhere between interest and anxiety. Though attractive, something about seeing Jefferson in a hat makes him feel like he’s forgetting-
Jefferson winks.
Clint reaches out and grabs his coat collar just in time for them both to disappear.