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cap_ironman2008-05-17 04:51 am
seanchai.livejournal.com) wrote in cap_ironman2008-05-17 04:51 am
Entry tags:
Hostages to Fortune 1/7
Title: Hostages to Fortune 1/7
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seanchai and elspethdixon
Rated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan.
Warnings: No much, really. Some swearing and violence.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: The sequel to Readjustment. Things are finally settling down, and the Avengers are settling in. It's time for disaster to strike again.
X-posted to Marvel Slash.
And again, our thanks totavella for the great beta job.
Hostages to Fortune
Tony's punch glanced off Steve's shoulder as Steve twisted his upper body back out of the way, and then Steve grabbed him by the arm and swept his foot around to knock Tony's legs out from under him.
Tony hit the mat hard enough to knock the breath out of his lungs. Then he simply lay there for a moment, staring up at the ceiling and gasping in air. The workout room in the Avengers Tower had high, white, very basic ceilings, nothing like the decorative plasterwork the Mansion had had.
"You're pulling your punches," Steve informed him. He crouched down beside Tony, hands resting loosely on his knees. "I shouldn't be able to do that so easily."
"I am not pulling my punches." Tony pushed himself up onto his elbows, glaring at Steve, who was looking down at him with an air of exasperated superiority.
"You're pulling your punches," Steve returned. "I can always tell when you are."
Not only had Tony not pulled that punch, he hadn't pulled any of the blows Steve had been shrugging off throughout this sparring session. It was possible that he was a little rusty, thanks to spending the past month letting his cracked ribs heal, but he was giving it everything he had, even though part of him winced every time he threw a punch at Steve. "Force equals mass times acceleration, and you have about forty pounds more mass than I do."
Steve raised his eyebrows. "Your point?"
"I have to hit you harder to knock you down than you have to in order to knock me down. It's basic physics."
Steve shook his head, smiling, and sat down on the mat beside Tony. "Would it help if I brought you coffee?" he asked.
"Maybe," Tony said, offering Steve a smile of his own. Yes, coffee would be good. "I should take a shower first, though. I have to leave in an hour." The process of dismantling the SHRA and revamping the Initiative had not gone as smoothly as they might have hoped; the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security had dragged their heels every step of the way, and Henry Gyrich had requested that Tony come to DC to light a fire under those officials who were reluctant to give up the notion of a government-controlled superhuman army.
At least the deploying of teenagers into combat situations had stopped; Gyrich and Rhodey's team had seen to that. Gyrich could sense which way the political winds were blowing, and he'd always known how to follow political trends.
"Can't you be a little late?" Steve asked, taking Tony by the wrist and pulling him up into a sitting position. He kept hold of Tony’s wrist for a moment longer, squeezing it lightly. "A quinjet can get you to DC in twenty minutes."
"And I have a nine o' clock meeting with Jack Kooning in an hour and a half."
Steve frowned. "I can't believe he's still pushing to keep the government-created superhero project. You'd think at this point he have given up on it."
"He tried to recruit Maya to investigate using Extremis to create super soldiers. Since it has a ninety percent fatality rate and has caused insanity in fifty percent of surviving test subjects, I made her tell him no." Actually, he'd begged her. It had been during those dark, empty weeks when Steve had been gone, and Kooning had wanted to use an Extremis-enhanced super soldier to replace him.
"Please tell me you didn't know about the ninety percent fatality rate when you shot yourself up with it."
"Okay," Tony said. "I won't." It wasn't as if he'd had much of a choice, but Steve was stubbornly clinging to his dislike of the Extremis. "I'll be gone for three days," he added. "Don't let Clint destroy the tower." He didn't mention that it would be the longest span of time they would be apart since Steve had come back. He wasn't that pathetic.
"I'd worry more about Hank destroying your lab." Steve grinned at him, then reached out and placed his free hand on the side of Tony's face, regarding him silently for a moment. "The cat will miss you," he said finally. "You're the one he likes best."
Tony turned his face into Steve's hand, closing his eyes. He wasn't looking forward to three nights spent alone. "I don't know why it keeps getting up on our bed," he said. "It's supposed to be Jarvis's." The cat probably kept jumping up onto the bed because Tony had invited it up there, one night during the SHRA hearings when Steve had been far away in Washington and Tony had been unable to sleep. However, there was no way he was going to admit that, particularly not to Steve, who seemed to be involved in some endless, petty war with the cat, which had begun sleeping in his shield and gnawing on its leather straps.
"I'll miss you, too." Tony's eyes were still closed, but he could hear the smile in Steve's voice. Steve leaned in and kissed him briefly, then pulled back, adding, "When you get back, we'll do this again, and I'll expect an actual challenge."
***
Monitor duty had never been Hank's favorite part of being an Avenger, but since he was off the active duty list for the foreseeable future (or at least, until he could find a way to balance chemicals in the bloodstream while shrinking, which was theoretically possible but not something he was entirely prepared to risk death-by-mood-stabilizer-overdose to test), he'd decided that there was no time like the present to get used to it, and had volunteered to handle communications while Tony was out of town.
It wasn't difficult work, by any means. It was just, as a rule, deeply boring. On the other hand, boring meant that nobody in New York was trying to blow anything up, which was always a plus.
And it was better than being grilled by the government and the media. Thank God they'd only needed Tony this time; Hank had made more than enough public, detailed confessions of all his sins for one lifetime. Trials, Avengers' court-martials, congressional hearings -- they were all the same, really, exercises in trying to justify yourself to groups of people who were all silently judging you.
The phone rang shrilly, and Hank steeled himself before picking it up -- there had been three calls this morning from various Daily Bugle reporters, all wanting an exclusive interview with the Avengers, all of which he'd turned down, since Steve refused to talk to any Bugle reporter other than Ben Urich.
"Avengers Tower," he said, already preparing for round four of the "no, we will not be giving any interviews until all of the libel suits have been settled," argument.
"Pym, I cannot believe you left me alone with the teenagers to play secretary." James Rhodes' voice was sharp and clear, but with the faint electronic hum in the background that meant he was using the War Machine armor's headset and mike rather than a telephone.
"I'm not playing secretary," Hank said, not at all defensively. "I'm monitoring communications."
"Fine. You're not playing secretary. Look, that's not why I called. Don't think I'm happy about it, but it's not why I called. I'm in New York for the next couple of days, trying to call in favors and draft somebody to be your replacement, and I wanted to give you guys a heads-up in case you needed back up for anything while I'm in town."
"That's good to hear," Hank told him. "With Tony in DC, we've got no firepower." They were going to have to do something about that eventually. They currently had two hand-to-hand specialists (Sam could fly, but he was a hand-to-hand fighter when you got right down to it), one archer, and Jan, whose stingers were effective, but who still wasn't really a powerhouse. Until Jan could master her new growing powers, Tony was their only big gun.
None of them had invulnerability or super-strength, either, which hadn't been an issue yet, but had the potential to be.
"Better Tony than me. I get enough anti-superhero shit on a daily basis as it is."
"Ah." Hank said. "I guess the protestors haven't gone home, then?" During his month-long stint at Camp Hammond, the angry men and women with "mutie go home" signs had been a semi-permanent fixture outside the base's front gate.
Rhodes snorted. "What do you think? Anyway, you have any idea who I can blackmail into replacing you? I mean, I know you're trying to fix things with your ex, but come on, you're leaving me in the lurch here."
Yes, he was, and he even felt guilty about it, if only slightly, but, "I had to get out. I had to." It was more than the opportunity to be an Avenger again, more than a second, well, fourth, shot at things with Jan. "It was only a matter of time before Gyrich and Dr. Blitzschlag would have had me cloning a superhero army for them, and I really don't want to become the government's better-looking answer to Armin Zola." Blitzschlag had made Hank's skin crawl, with his wild-eyed glee over the prospect of working with the man who'd created Ultron and cloned (so horribly unsuccessfully) a god. He'd been disturbingly comfortable with the idea of using people as government science experiments, and Hank strongly suspected that he was a former Nazi.
"Everything's changed since Tony and Reed and the rest of you blew the lid off everything. Blitzschlag is out, and there's an oversight committee looking into Van Patrick's death. I think his family is going to sue."
They'd have to get in a very long line first. Hank resisted the temptation to point out that that wasn't exactly an incentive to come back, letting Rhodes continue uninterrupted.
"Look, I'm desperate here. I spend half the day reminding Gauntlet that he's not allowed to call seventeen-year-olds pussies, and that Vance is going to telekinetically throw him through a wall if he calls the New Warriors baby-killers one more time, and the other half explaining to everyone who will listen why one horrific training accident shouldn't be allowed to shut down the program."
"At least you don't have to keep it classified anymore." Making the students cover up the death of one of their classmates had been one more thing Hank had hated having to do.
"Yeah, thanks for that, by the way." Rhodes' voice was not quite sarcastic, but only by a small margin. "You did hear the part where I said they're suing us?"
"I wish Scott Lang were still around. He would have been great at this." It wasn't just that Scott had been a father himself; he'd been legitimately good with children, and had had an enviable ability to put complex concepts into simple terms without sounding as if he was talking down to people. Hank himself had never quite mastered that. "You could try calling Ben Grimm for advice," he suggested. "He's got experience with kids. I'd suggest the X-Men, but most of them won't touch the Initiative with a ten foot pole." He'd had to promise to run a battery of DNA tests on active and deactivated X-genes in order to get Hank McCoy to bring in an empath and set up extra training for Trauma, when the trainee's fear-projection powers had gotten out of control. "Scott Summers might be willing to give you a lesson plan, but that's about the best you'll get."
"Yeah, I'll think about it," Rhodes said, in a tone of voice that implied that he had already dismissed the idea.
"Or you could try convincing some younger heroes to join you. I know Firestar hung up her cape, but she might be willing to help out now, especially since we've already got Vance on the project." Unless Vance's presence would be more of a deterrent, given that he and Angela had broken off their engagement ages ago. That didn't change the fact that Firestar would be good at teaching; she had always been level headed, and her struggles with her own powers would give her a good perspective on what some of the Initiative's new recruits were going through.
"Vance wanted to try and bring in Silverclaw, but Gyrich wants someone more experienced for your replacement. I'll think about Firestar, though. I guess what I really want is someone else with the same kind of perspective that you and I've got."
"Unfortunately, I think most of the people with our level of experience already have commitments." There were more and more superheroes becoming free agents again, now that the Initiative was no longer mandatory, but people who had already opted out of it weren't likely to want to get involved with it once more.
"I don't mean that kind of experience. You, me, hell, even Vance, we've all screwed up. We know having powers is a dangerous responsibility that you can't take for granted, but we also know making a mistake isn't the end of the world."
The kids who had seen Michael Van Patrick accidentally killed at the hands of one of his own classmates probably grasped that superpowers were dangerous. They were probably less than convinced that disastrous mistakes with them weren't the end of the world. Hank wasn't entirely sure of that himself.
Real screw-ups followed you around for the rest of your life.
"You got into a fistfight with a friend," Hank pointed out. "I created Ultron."
"It was a little too one-sided to call it a fistfight," Rhodes admitted, sounding chagrined. "Ultron was an accident. I meant to knock the hell out of Tony. He was just trying to stop me from being an idiot, and when Tony has to stop me from being an idiot, well, that's a wake up call all on its own. And speaking of Tony, tell him he better not steal any more of my teammates."
"You could tell him yourself."
"I will, next time I see him. Figures he'd go out of town right when I show up for a visit."
"I don't think he wanted to go." That was an understatement, actually. Tony had begun to wear a distinctly hunted look any time anyone connected with the government contacted them. He was handling all of it, and better than Hank would have, but nobody bounced back quickly from the kind of burnout Tony had been headed for after Doom and company attacked. Even a week later, when the hearings in DC had started, there had still been circles under his eyes.
"He'll be back tomorrow, anyway," Hank went on. And thank God for it. If Hank had privately thought that Steve sulked like a twelve-year-old any time Tony was gone before, it was only because he hadn't seen the way Steve was sulking now. If he'd been away another few days, things would probably have devolved to the point where Steve started picking fights with Clint to blow off steam, and Clint didn't need the encouragement.
"Great. I'll call back tomorrow."
"And I'll call you if we need the backup."
There was a click as the line went dead, Rhodes hanging up, and Hank went back to staring at the monitor screen and mentally calculating the drop in body weight produced by a shift from five-foot-ten to two inches, and what percentage of an average-sized dose of any given medication would have to be shifted out of one's body in the process in order to avoid toxicity.
***
"You have no idea how silly I feel flying on a commercial airline," Carol said, as she snatched her final bag from the luggage carousel. She was wearing jeans and a tight black t-shirt, stuff that wouldn't be wrinkled or otherwise ruined by sitting on a plane for hours, and her long, blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
"Why did you, then?" Clint shouldered her other bag and elaborated, "They don't even let you take toothpaste anymore."
"Or mascara." Carol shook her head, and said, "But it's more trouble than it's worth to try and take a general aviation aircraft into New York these days. I could just fly in under my own power, but," she hefted the suitcase she was holding, "it would just look silly flying through the sky toting Samsonite. Plus, I’d be screwed if I dropped it."
Clint had been to LaGuardia airport dozens of times, and it never got any less crowded. It wasn't that hard to get through the crowd, though, as long as you didn't mind shoving past people.
"I can't believe you're actually meeting with a publicist," Clint snorted, as they reached the exit into the main concourse, where there were three times as many people as there had been in baggage claim. "You've been in LA too long."
"You lived in LA for three years," Carol said. "Or was it five?"
"Yeah, but I never had a publicist."
"How else was I supposed to promote my book?" Carol edged around a trio of businessmen who were standing smack in the middle of the path to the main door, talking loudly to one another.
"So you really are writing a sequel?" Clint asked.
"Yep. In this one, the star pirates have to stop a time-traveling warlord from taking over their solar system."
If the first book had been based on Carol's time with the Starjammers... "Let me guess," Clint stepped in front of Carol and swung the door open with his free hand, "the evil warlord has an even more evil son who's gonna get his."
Carol shrugged. "Oh, he doesn't die. He just loses both legs in an unfortunate teleporter accident."
"You're sure he doesn't get turned inside out?" If it happened in zero gravity, Marcus's insides could float all around the spaceship.
"This isn't a comedy. I'm not writing Galaxy Quest, Clint."
"Well, It's good that you're here," Clint told her, dropping the topic of the book before they actually had to talk about Marcus and Kang. "We are one seriously underpowered set of Avengers. As awesome as I am, I can't punch somebody through a wall." Too bad Jen was also staying in LA; having She-Hulk on their side would be damn useful. Clint could remember a time when everyone was always complaining that all the superheroes were in New York; these days, it seemed like people were everywhere but New York.
Carol smiled, and shifted her suitcase up onto her shoulder. "Tell me you brought a car, and we're not taking public transport back to the city."
"I came from Stark Tower. Of course I brought a car." Clint pulled the keys out of his pocket and flourished them. "Red BMW convertible. You should see Tony's garage. It's like a Bond movie."
"BMW?"
"Cap wouldn't let me take the Ferrari." Because he was still inwardly convinced that Clint was nineteen, and would crash it into a building or something. The only time Clint had ever wrecked a car, it had been entirely Jen's doing. Cap, on the other hand, had been responsible for the destruction of no less than half a dozen of SHIELD's flying cars, and his Harley had been rebuilt twice.
The BMW wasn't as sexy as a Ferrari, but it still accelerated like a race-car. Carol insisted on driving, which Clint didn't blame her for; anyone would jump at the chance to drive a bright red European convertible, even in New York traffic.
"So," Carol said awkwardly, after they had crossed into Manhattan and Clint had finished teasing her for writing a book that was basically about a thinly veiled version of herself, "how's Tony doing?"
Clint blinked, and turned to look at her. "You've talked to him on the phone, haven't you? Why are you asking me?"
Carol snorted. "You know how Tony is. Asking him would be a waste of time, since he'd never actually say anything if something was wrong. And I can’t very well ask Steve."
"Why not?" Clint returned his eyes to the street ahead of them, just in time to catch the sign marking the next turn. "You go left here," he added. These days, if you wanted to know something about Tony, Steve was probably the best person to ask.
"So, Captain America, how's your boyfriend doing? He was a total wreck the whole time you were dead, and I was wondering if he'd gotten over that yet?"
"Right." Clint said. "I see what you mean. I don't know, he seems fine to me." He shook his head. "It's still weird hearing people talk about that. I only saw it on TV. It feels kind of like it never really happened, but then someone will say something, or not say something, and it's like they're all having this secret conversation that doesn't include me."
"Just ride it out. Eventually enough stuff will have happened that we'll all have different things to glare at each other over and avoid talking about, and then you'll feel right at home again."
That was mockery, wasn't it? They were all far too casual about coming back from the dead, Clint reflected. He had died, and then been brought back... somehow. He still wasn't sure exactly what Wanda had done, but since it had resulted in Clint Barton still walking around breathing air, he wasn't complaining.
Only, she had never told him why, and dying and coming back, getting a second chance... it ought to mean something, right? He hadn't had much time to think about it before, with everything going to hell, and then seeing Cap on the news, alive once more, and then all the reunions in DC, but he had time now, and the more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Why had Wanda chosen to bring him back, and not Vision, or her kids, or anyone else? She'd brought Simon back because they were in love, and had had that link thing going on. Cap coming back had this feeling of rightness to it; he deserved it, and people needed him, and it wasn't as if Clint thought he didn't deserve his own second shot at life (because he certainly hadn't deserved to die), but he wasn't Captain America. He didn't have people who needed him.
Clint wasn't the kind of guy who sat around pondering the meaning of his own existence, but it was starting to bug him.
But nobody else seemed to wonder about why he had come back, or even how. They'd just accepted it.
"It won't really feel like home until we're back in the Avengers Mansion," he said. Not that Tony's penthouse wasn't nice, but it wasn't home.
Carol turned a corner so sharply that Clint had to brace himself to keep from being thrown into the door. "I love this steering system. You know, I never got the whole story on what happened with you. Jut that it had something to do with Wanda. I don't blame you for staying out of the whole Registration mess, but you could have dropped us a message to let us know you were alive."
"Sorry about that." And now it was Clint's turn to be awkward. "I was pretty confused those first couple of months back. The only part I really remember was trying to hunt down the Witch, to see if I could get her to tell me what she'd done. Why she killed me. Why she brought me back."
"I guess you never found her." Carol's voice was suddenly flat. "Or she'd be in the Raft or the Negative Zone right now."
"I...” Clint looked down at his hands, picking at the edge of one of the calluses on his palm. "She had amnesia. She didn't remember me, didn't even remember who she was."
"And you left her there?" Carol's voice rose half an octave. "That's great. What happens if she gets angry and decides to say 'no more people?' She's too powerful to leave out there now that she's a crazy sociopath."
"I don't think she even knows she has powers anymore," Clint protested. It sounded like the lame excuse it was, since Omega-level mutants who didn't know how to use their powers were probably more even dangerous than Omega level mutants who did.
He couldn't remember why he hadn't brought her in. He couldn't even remember leaving. He barely remembered anything after he'd arrived on in that little town, except for... the sex. He remembered that part.
He'd gone there intending to force answers out of Wanda, to bring her back to justice, and then he'd left empty-handed, after sleeping with her. He'd tried not to examine the memories too closely, because he wasn't sure he wanted to remember the reasoning behind that.
He wouldn't have blackmailed Wanda into having sex with him in exchange for letting her go, would he?
Even if he hadn't... she'd had amnesia, had no idea who he was, no knowledge of their shared past. There had been a million and one reasons why sleeping with her had been a bad idea, and Clint had known all of them, and Wanda hadn't. And that felt uncomfortably like taking advantage of her.
Worse, he couldn't remember why he'd slept with her.
"What the hell were you thinking, Hawkeye? She's powerful enough to reshape the world, and she's crazy. And she hates us!"
"I don't remember what I was thinking," Clint admitted, still picking at the callus. Even with gloves, archery toughened your hands up. "Hell, I don't even remember where I found her."
There was a moment of silence, and then Clint said, softly, "I don't really remember most of what I was doing."
Carol sighed. "I know coming back to life like that is confusing-"
"No," Clint interrupted. "It wasn't that." He hadn't been able to bring himself to mention any of this to Cap, because he knew exactly how disappointed in him Steve would be, and he couldn't talk about it with Jan, because, well, he just couldn't. And he'd be damned if he'd admit any of it to Hank, after the way he'd gone after him for hitting Jan. There was Sam, but he treated Clint like he was Cap's stupid younger brother half the time. And Clint had only decided a week ago that he wasn't going to hold Tony's recent lapse into Big Brother is Watching insanity and inexplicable ability to turn Cap gay against him anymore. Mostly because the Big Brother thing had really been the government's fault, and, when he really thought about it, Cap had always been kind of gay.
Carol had lost memories before, and had done things she was less than proud of. And she was kind of like a guy, which somehow made the idea of talking about this less intimidating.
"I was so angry at her," he said, trying to explain, but not sure he could, since he didn’t really understand it himself. "For what she did to us, for what she did to me. I wanted her to explain. She must have gone crazy; she couldn't have done all of that if she wasn't crazy. I thought maybe I could... I don't know. Somebody needed to help her."
"No," Carol snapped, glaring at the cars ahead of them. "Somebody needed to stop her. She's a menace. Look what she did to us, to Scott, to Vision, to her own brother. You don't come back from that kind of crazy. That's supervillain crazy"
"Two months ago, that's what we all thought about Tony," Clint pointed out. You didn't just write your friends off, not if there was still a chance that there was anything left of them. "We've gone crazy or gone to the dark side before, some of us. Hank got so bad he had to be kicked off the team, and he ended up in jail." If Hank could fix things enough that Jan could forgive him, then there had to be something Clint could do to make up for this. There had to be. If he'd actually done anything. "Natasha started out working for the bad guys. There's that time Rhodey flipped out and had to be taken down by Tony. And, hell, there's you and Tony, with the drinking, both of you came back from that."
Carol stared fixedly at the back of the Lexus SUV in front of them, not looking at him. "What time with Rhodey? I've never heard about that."
"That's the only other time I was ever mad at the Witch." Clint shrugged slightly. "I don't know the whole story, she didn’t tell me until after everything was over. Apparently there was a while there, right after Tony stopped drinking, when Rhodey was having some kind of issues. Wanda saw him haul off and slug Tony once."
"So," Carol said. "Who hasn't wanted to do that occasionally? I threw him through the wing of an airliner once."
"Yeah, but since he's still alive, I'm guessing he was in the armor. That time he wasn't, and Rhodey was. And then he went on some kind of rampage, and Tony had to put on some suit of armor he'd made out of scrap metal in our lab and chase him down. But he's been great for years, and Hank's mostly sane now, so maybe-"
"Why have I never heard about this?" She sighed, shaking her head. "Did you do anything about it? Does anyone other than you, Wanda, and Tony even know?"
"By the time I found out, the whole thing was over," Clint said, feeling thoroughly on the defensive now. "That's why I was mad, because Wanda didn't tell me about it until it was too late to do anything."
"But did you tell anyone?" she pressed. "When people like us lose it, it's a big deal. You have to tell someone. The more people who know, the better the chance that if it happens again, somebody will step in before anyone gets hurt. If nothing else, you should have told Steve. If any of us had known about Wanda..."
"I slept with her. With Wanda," Clint blurted out. "And then I let her go."
"Okay, that--" she broke off, eyes widening. "You what?"
"It's funny. I meant to bring her back, and then I found her, and we had sex, and then I was on a plane headed back here. I was in the Heathrow airport when I saw the press conference you all held after you took down the Mandarin and Red Skull." He shrugged, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "I think maybe I took advantage of her somehow, like maybe we made some kind of trade." And what a way to prove himself worthy of that second shot at life; he hadn't deserved to die, but men who took advantage of women were scum.
Carol's hand tightened on the wheel. "You think you made some kind of trade? How can you think she let you fuck her in return for not bringing her it to face justice? You either did or you didn't."
Clint shrugged, desperately uncomfortable. "I don't know if I did. I don't remember. I don't remember deciding to do it, or deciding to come back. I don't even remember the sex all that well. It's kind of a blur."
"What do you mean, you don't remember? Were you drinking?"
Things would have made more sense if he had been, but there had been no alcohol involved. "No." Clint shook his head. "I just don't remember. The whole thing's kind of like a dream, like it happened to somebody else."
Carol frowned. "That almost sounds like mind-control, but even if she was faking the amnesia, Wanda's powers never worked like that." She hesitated, then shook her head. "Of course, she can manipulate reality on a global scale now, so God knows what she can and can't do."
"It can't be mind control," Clint protested. He wished it were. It would be an awfully convenient explanation for the memory loss, and it would mean that it wasn't his fault. "She didn't even know she had powers."
"Clint, does any of this sound like something you would do?"
He didn't want to think so, but... "I almost ended up working for the Russians just because Natasha slept with me."
Carol's lips twitched. "You were nineteen. Would you be that stupid now?"
"Well, no, but-"
"Just because she doesn't remember that she has powers doesn't mean she isn't using them unconsciously. People don't just lose all their memories, not in real life, not unless there's something they need to forget. Maybe she recognized you on some level, and because she didn't want to remember, she just, I don't know, made you go away."
"After sexing me up."
"Maybe she was lonely. Maybe some part of her wanted to reconnect with her past. Maybe she just wasn't done screwing with you, literally."
Maybe she had put some kind of whammy on him. As he'd said to Carol, the whole thing was like trying to remember a dream. Several weeks worth of his life were just gone.
"Honestly?" Carol said softly, "Normally, if a guy told me something like this, I'd call him a prick and kick him out of the car, but what you just described sounds an awful lot like what happened with Marcus." She grimaced. "I can't remember why I decided to go with him, I just know that I didn't really want to. Like one of those dreams where you don't want to do something, but you're watching yourself do it anyway."
It hadn't been like that, for Clint. Not exactly. There hadn't been any disgust or fear; he'd always thought that Wanda was attractive, always liked her. It was why her betrayal had hurt so badly. Mostly, there had just been a feeling of confusion over why he was there, why he was doing what he was doing. Like Carol said, it had been like watching himself from a distance, while someone else controlled his body.
"That's... it was a little like that, yeah."
Carol made a little half-laughing sound, either disgusted or amused or both. Clint couldn't tell which. "Then I can promise you, you didn't take advantage of her. If she put the whammy on you, even subconsciously, then she must have wanted it."
"Oh." He wasn't sure if that made things better, or much, much worse.
***
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven
Authors:
seanchai and elspethdixonRated: PG-13
Pairings: Steve/Tony, Hank/Jan.
Warnings: No much, really. Some swearing and violence.
Disclaimer: The characters and situations depicted herein belong to Stan Lee and Marvel comics. No profit is being made off of this derivative work. We're paid in love, people.
Summary: The sequel to Readjustment. Things are finally settling down, and the Avengers are settling in. It's time for disaster to strike again.
X-posted to Marvel Slash.
And again, our thanks to
tavella for the great beta job.Tony's punch glanced off Steve's shoulder as Steve twisted his upper body back out of the way, and then Steve grabbed him by the arm and swept his foot around to knock Tony's legs out from under him.
Tony hit the mat hard enough to knock the breath out of his lungs. Then he simply lay there for a moment, staring up at the ceiling and gasping in air. The workout room in the Avengers Tower had high, white, very basic ceilings, nothing like the decorative plasterwork the Mansion had had.
"You're pulling your punches," Steve informed him. He crouched down beside Tony, hands resting loosely on his knees. "I shouldn't be able to do that so easily."
"I am not pulling my punches." Tony pushed himself up onto his elbows, glaring at Steve, who was looking down at him with an air of exasperated superiority.
"You're pulling your punches," Steve returned. "I can always tell when you are."
Not only had Tony not pulled that punch, he hadn't pulled any of the blows Steve had been shrugging off throughout this sparring session. It was possible that he was a little rusty, thanks to spending the past month letting his cracked ribs heal, but he was giving it everything he had, even though part of him winced every time he threw a punch at Steve. "Force equals mass times acceleration, and you have about forty pounds more mass than I do."
Steve raised his eyebrows. "Your point?"
"I have to hit you harder to knock you down than you have to in order to knock me down. It's basic physics."
Steve shook his head, smiling, and sat down on the mat beside Tony. "Would it help if I brought you coffee?" he asked.
"Maybe," Tony said, offering Steve a smile of his own. Yes, coffee would be good. "I should take a shower first, though. I have to leave in an hour." The process of dismantling the SHRA and revamping the Initiative had not gone as smoothly as they might have hoped; the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security had dragged their heels every step of the way, and Henry Gyrich had requested that Tony come to DC to light a fire under those officials who were reluctant to give up the notion of a government-controlled superhuman army.
At least the deploying of teenagers into combat situations had stopped; Gyrich and Rhodey's team had seen to that. Gyrich could sense which way the political winds were blowing, and he'd always known how to follow political trends.
"Can't you be a little late?" Steve asked, taking Tony by the wrist and pulling him up into a sitting position. He kept hold of Tony’s wrist for a moment longer, squeezing it lightly. "A quinjet can get you to DC in twenty minutes."
"And I have a nine o' clock meeting with Jack Kooning in an hour and a half."
Steve frowned. "I can't believe he's still pushing to keep the government-created superhero project. You'd think at this point he have given up on it."
"He tried to recruit Maya to investigate using Extremis to create super soldiers. Since it has a ninety percent fatality rate and has caused insanity in fifty percent of surviving test subjects, I made her tell him no." Actually, he'd begged her. It had been during those dark, empty weeks when Steve had been gone, and Kooning had wanted to use an Extremis-enhanced super soldier to replace him.
"Please tell me you didn't know about the ninety percent fatality rate when you shot yourself up with it."
"Okay," Tony said. "I won't." It wasn't as if he'd had much of a choice, but Steve was stubbornly clinging to his dislike of the Extremis. "I'll be gone for three days," he added. "Don't let Clint destroy the tower." He didn't mention that it would be the longest span of time they would be apart since Steve had come back. He wasn't that pathetic.
"I'd worry more about Hank destroying your lab." Steve grinned at him, then reached out and placed his free hand on the side of Tony's face, regarding him silently for a moment. "The cat will miss you," he said finally. "You're the one he likes best."
Tony turned his face into Steve's hand, closing his eyes. He wasn't looking forward to three nights spent alone. "I don't know why it keeps getting up on our bed," he said. "It's supposed to be Jarvis's." The cat probably kept jumping up onto the bed because Tony had invited it up there, one night during the SHRA hearings when Steve had been far away in Washington and Tony had been unable to sleep. However, there was no way he was going to admit that, particularly not to Steve, who seemed to be involved in some endless, petty war with the cat, which had begun sleeping in his shield and gnawing on its leather straps.
"I'll miss you, too." Tony's eyes were still closed, but he could hear the smile in Steve's voice. Steve leaned in and kissed him briefly, then pulled back, adding, "When you get back, we'll do this again, and I'll expect an actual challenge."
Monitor duty had never been Hank's favorite part of being an Avenger, but since he was off the active duty list for the foreseeable future (or at least, until he could find a way to balance chemicals in the bloodstream while shrinking, which was theoretically possible but not something he was entirely prepared to risk death-by-mood-stabilizer-overdose to test), he'd decided that there was no time like the present to get used to it, and had volunteered to handle communications while Tony was out of town.
It wasn't difficult work, by any means. It was just, as a rule, deeply boring. On the other hand, boring meant that nobody in New York was trying to blow anything up, which was always a plus.
And it was better than being grilled by the government and the media. Thank God they'd only needed Tony this time; Hank had made more than enough public, detailed confessions of all his sins for one lifetime. Trials, Avengers' court-martials, congressional hearings -- they were all the same, really, exercises in trying to justify yourself to groups of people who were all silently judging you.
The phone rang shrilly, and Hank steeled himself before picking it up -- there had been three calls this morning from various Daily Bugle reporters, all wanting an exclusive interview with the Avengers, all of which he'd turned down, since Steve refused to talk to any Bugle reporter other than Ben Urich.
"Avengers Tower," he said, already preparing for round four of the "no, we will not be giving any interviews until all of the libel suits have been settled," argument.
"Pym, I cannot believe you left me alone with the teenagers to play secretary." James Rhodes' voice was sharp and clear, but with the faint electronic hum in the background that meant he was using the War Machine armor's headset and mike rather than a telephone.
"I'm not playing secretary," Hank said, not at all defensively. "I'm monitoring communications."
"Fine. You're not playing secretary. Look, that's not why I called. Don't think I'm happy about it, but it's not why I called. I'm in New York for the next couple of days, trying to call in favors and draft somebody to be your replacement, and I wanted to give you guys a heads-up in case you needed back up for anything while I'm in town."
"That's good to hear," Hank told him. "With Tony in DC, we've got no firepower." They were going to have to do something about that eventually. They currently had two hand-to-hand specialists (Sam could fly, but he was a hand-to-hand fighter when you got right down to it), one archer, and Jan, whose stingers were effective, but who still wasn't really a powerhouse. Until Jan could master her new growing powers, Tony was their only big gun.
None of them had invulnerability or super-strength, either, which hadn't been an issue yet, but had the potential to be.
"Better Tony than me. I get enough anti-superhero shit on a daily basis as it is."
"Ah." Hank said. "I guess the protestors haven't gone home, then?" During his month-long stint at Camp Hammond, the angry men and women with "mutie go home" signs had been a semi-permanent fixture outside the base's front gate.
Rhodes snorted. "What do you think? Anyway, you have any idea who I can blackmail into replacing you? I mean, I know you're trying to fix things with your ex, but come on, you're leaving me in the lurch here."
Yes, he was, and he even felt guilty about it, if only slightly, but, "I had to get out. I had to." It was more than the opportunity to be an Avenger again, more than a second, well, fourth, shot at things with Jan. "It was only a matter of time before Gyrich and Dr. Blitzschlag would have had me cloning a superhero army for them, and I really don't want to become the government's better-looking answer to Armin Zola." Blitzschlag had made Hank's skin crawl, with his wild-eyed glee over the prospect of working with the man who'd created Ultron and cloned (so horribly unsuccessfully) a god. He'd been disturbingly comfortable with the idea of using people as government science experiments, and Hank strongly suspected that he was a former Nazi.
"Everything's changed since Tony and Reed and the rest of you blew the lid off everything. Blitzschlag is out, and there's an oversight committee looking into Van Patrick's death. I think his family is going to sue."
They'd have to get in a very long line first. Hank resisted the temptation to point out that that wasn't exactly an incentive to come back, letting Rhodes continue uninterrupted.
"Look, I'm desperate here. I spend half the day reminding Gauntlet that he's not allowed to call seventeen-year-olds pussies, and that Vance is going to telekinetically throw him through a wall if he calls the New Warriors baby-killers one more time, and the other half explaining to everyone who will listen why one horrific training accident shouldn't be allowed to shut down the program."
"At least you don't have to keep it classified anymore." Making the students cover up the death of one of their classmates had been one more thing Hank had hated having to do.
"Yeah, thanks for that, by the way." Rhodes' voice was not quite sarcastic, but only by a small margin. "You did hear the part where I said they're suing us?"
"I wish Scott Lang were still around. He would have been great at this." It wasn't just that Scott had been a father himself; he'd been legitimately good with children, and had had an enviable ability to put complex concepts into simple terms without sounding as if he was talking down to people. Hank himself had never quite mastered that. "You could try calling Ben Grimm for advice," he suggested. "He's got experience with kids. I'd suggest the X-Men, but most of them won't touch the Initiative with a ten foot pole." He'd had to promise to run a battery of DNA tests on active and deactivated X-genes in order to get Hank McCoy to bring in an empath and set up extra training for Trauma, when the trainee's fear-projection powers had gotten out of control. "Scott Summers might be willing to give you a lesson plan, but that's about the best you'll get."
"Yeah, I'll think about it," Rhodes said, in a tone of voice that implied that he had already dismissed the idea.
"Or you could try convincing some younger heroes to join you. I know Firestar hung up her cape, but she might be willing to help out now, especially since we've already got Vance on the project." Unless Vance's presence would be more of a deterrent, given that he and Angela had broken off their engagement ages ago. That didn't change the fact that Firestar would be good at teaching; she had always been level headed, and her struggles with her own powers would give her a good perspective on what some of the Initiative's new recruits were going through.
"Vance wanted to try and bring in Silverclaw, but Gyrich wants someone more experienced for your replacement. I'll think about Firestar, though. I guess what I really want is someone else with the same kind of perspective that you and I've got."
"Unfortunately, I think most of the people with our level of experience already have commitments." There were more and more superheroes becoming free agents again, now that the Initiative was no longer mandatory, but people who had already opted out of it weren't likely to want to get involved with it once more.
"I don't mean that kind of experience. You, me, hell, even Vance, we've all screwed up. We know having powers is a dangerous responsibility that you can't take for granted, but we also know making a mistake isn't the end of the world."
The kids who had seen Michael Van Patrick accidentally killed at the hands of one of his own classmates probably grasped that superpowers were dangerous. They were probably less than convinced that disastrous mistakes with them weren't the end of the world. Hank wasn't entirely sure of that himself.
Real screw-ups followed you around for the rest of your life.
"You got into a fistfight with a friend," Hank pointed out. "I created Ultron."
"It was a little too one-sided to call it a fistfight," Rhodes admitted, sounding chagrined. "Ultron was an accident. I meant to knock the hell out of Tony. He was just trying to stop me from being an idiot, and when Tony has to stop me from being an idiot, well, that's a wake up call all on its own. And speaking of Tony, tell him he better not steal any more of my teammates."
"You could tell him yourself."
"I will, next time I see him. Figures he'd go out of town right when I show up for a visit."
"I don't think he wanted to go." That was an understatement, actually. Tony had begun to wear a distinctly hunted look any time anyone connected with the government contacted them. He was handling all of it, and better than Hank would have, but nobody bounced back quickly from the kind of burnout Tony had been headed for after Doom and company attacked. Even a week later, when the hearings in DC had started, there had still been circles under his eyes.
"He'll be back tomorrow, anyway," Hank went on. And thank God for it. If Hank had privately thought that Steve sulked like a twelve-year-old any time Tony was gone before, it was only because he hadn't seen the way Steve was sulking now. If he'd been away another few days, things would probably have devolved to the point where Steve started picking fights with Clint to blow off steam, and Clint didn't need the encouragement.
"Great. I'll call back tomorrow."
"And I'll call you if we need the backup."
There was a click as the line went dead, Rhodes hanging up, and Hank went back to staring at the monitor screen and mentally calculating the drop in body weight produced by a shift from five-foot-ten to two inches, and what percentage of an average-sized dose of any given medication would have to be shifted out of one's body in the process in order to avoid toxicity.
"You have no idea how silly I feel flying on a commercial airline," Carol said, as she snatched her final bag from the luggage carousel. She was wearing jeans and a tight black t-shirt, stuff that wouldn't be wrinkled or otherwise ruined by sitting on a plane for hours, and her long, blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
"Why did you, then?" Clint shouldered her other bag and elaborated, "They don't even let you take toothpaste anymore."
"Or mascara." Carol shook her head, and said, "But it's more trouble than it's worth to try and take a general aviation aircraft into New York these days. I could just fly in under my own power, but," she hefted the suitcase she was holding, "it would just look silly flying through the sky toting Samsonite. Plus, I’d be screwed if I dropped it."
Clint had been to LaGuardia airport dozens of times, and it never got any less crowded. It wasn't that hard to get through the crowd, though, as long as you didn't mind shoving past people.
"I can't believe you're actually meeting with a publicist," Clint snorted, as they reached the exit into the main concourse, where there were three times as many people as there had been in baggage claim. "You've been in LA too long."
"You lived in LA for three years," Carol said. "Or was it five?"
"Yeah, but I never had a publicist."
"How else was I supposed to promote my book?" Carol edged around a trio of businessmen who were standing smack in the middle of the path to the main door, talking loudly to one another.
"So you really are writing a sequel?" Clint asked.
"Yep. In this one, the star pirates have to stop a time-traveling warlord from taking over their solar system."
If the first book had been based on Carol's time with the Starjammers... "Let me guess," Clint stepped in front of Carol and swung the door open with his free hand, "the evil warlord has an even more evil son who's gonna get his."
Carol shrugged. "Oh, he doesn't die. He just loses both legs in an unfortunate teleporter accident."
"You're sure he doesn't get turned inside out?" If it happened in zero gravity, Marcus's insides could float all around the spaceship.
"This isn't a comedy. I'm not writing Galaxy Quest, Clint."
"Well, It's good that you're here," Clint told her, dropping the topic of the book before they actually had to talk about Marcus and Kang. "We are one seriously underpowered set of Avengers. As awesome as I am, I can't punch somebody through a wall." Too bad Jen was also staying in LA; having She-Hulk on their side would be damn useful. Clint could remember a time when everyone was always complaining that all the superheroes were in New York; these days, it seemed like people were everywhere but New York.
Carol smiled, and shifted her suitcase up onto her shoulder. "Tell me you brought a car, and we're not taking public transport back to the city."
"I came from Stark Tower. Of course I brought a car." Clint pulled the keys out of his pocket and flourished them. "Red BMW convertible. You should see Tony's garage. It's like a Bond movie."
"BMW?"
"Cap wouldn't let me take the Ferrari." Because he was still inwardly convinced that Clint was nineteen, and would crash it into a building or something. The only time Clint had ever wrecked a car, it had been entirely Jen's doing. Cap, on the other hand, had been responsible for the destruction of no less than half a dozen of SHIELD's flying cars, and his Harley had been rebuilt twice.
The BMW wasn't as sexy as a Ferrari, but it still accelerated like a race-car. Carol insisted on driving, which Clint didn't blame her for; anyone would jump at the chance to drive a bright red European convertible, even in New York traffic.
"So," Carol said awkwardly, after they had crossed into Manhattan and Clint had finished teasing her for writing a book that was basically about a thinly veiled version of herself, "how's Tony doing?"
Clint blinked, and turned to look at her. "You've talked to him on the phone, haven't you? Why are you asking me?"
Carol snorted. "You know how Tony is. Asking him would be a waste of time, since he'd never actually say anything if something was wrong. And I can’t very well ask Steve."
"Why not?" Clint returned his eyes to the street ahead of them, just in time to catch the sign marking the next turn. "You go left here," he added. These days, if you wanted to know something about Tony, Steve was probably the best person to ask.
"So, Captain America, how's your boyfriend doing? He was a total wreck the whole time you were dead, and I was wondering if he'd gotten over that yet?"
"Right." Clint said. "I see what you mean. I don't know, he seems fine to me." He shook his head. "It's still weird hearing people talk about that. I only saw it on TV. It feels kind of like it never really happened, but then someone will say something, or not say something, and it's like they're all having this secret conversation that doesn't include me."
"Just ride it out. Eventually enough stuff will have happened that we'll all have different things to glare at each other over and avoid talking about, and then you'll feel right at home again."
That was mockery, wasn't it? They were all far too casual about coming back from the dead, Clint reflected. He had died, and then been brought back... somehow. He still wasn't sure exactly what Wanda had done, but since it had resulted in Clint Barton still walking around breathing air, he wasn't complaining.
Only, she had never told him why, and dying and coming back, getting a second chance... it ought to mean something, right? He hadn't had much time to think about it before, with everything going to hell, and then seeing Cap on the news, alive once more, and then all the reunions in DC, but he had time now, and the more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Why had Wanda chosen to bring him back, and not Vision, or her kids, or anyone else? She'd brought Simon back because they were in love, and had had that link thing going on. Cap coming back had this feeling of rightness to it; he deserved it, and people needed him, and it wasn't as if Clint thought he didn't deserve his own second shot at life (because he certainly hadn't deserved to die), but he wasn't Captain America. He didn't have people who needed him.
Clint wasn't the kind of guy who sat around pondering the meaning of his own existence, but it was starting to bug him.
But nobody else seemed to wonder about why he had come back, or even how. They'd just accepted it.
"It won't really feel like home until we're back in the Avengers Mansion," he said. Not that Tony's penthouse wasn't nice, but it wasn't home.
Carol turned a corner so sharply that Clint had to brace himself to keep from being thrown into the door. "I love this steering system. You know, I never got the whole story on what happened with you. Jut that it had something to do with Wanda. I don't blame you for staying out of the whole Registration mess, but you could have dropped us a message to let us know you were alive."
"Sorry about that." And now it was Clint's turn to be awkward. "I was pretty confused those first couple of months back. The only part I really remember was trying to hunt down the Witch, to see if I could get her to tell me what she'd done. Why she killed me. Why she brought me back."
"I guess you never found her." Carol's voice was suddenly flat. "Or she'd be in the Raft or the Negative Zone right now."
"I...” Clint looked down at his hands, picking at the edge of one of the calluses on his palm. "She had amnesia. She didn't remember me, didn't even remember who she was."
"And you left her there?" Carol's voice rose half an octave. "That's great. What happens if she gets angry and decides to say 'no more people?' She's too powerful to leave out there now that she's a crazy sociopath."
"I don't think she even knows she has powers anymore," Clint protested. It sounded like the lame excuse it was, since Omega-level mutants who didn't know how to use their powers were probably more even dangerous than Omega level mutants who did.
He couldn't remember why he hadn't brought her in. He couldn't even remember leaving. He barely remembered anything after he'd arrived on in that little town, except for... the sex. He remembered that part.
He'd gone there intending to force answers out of Wanda, to bring her back to justice, and then he'd left empty-handed, after sleeping with her. He'd tried not to examine the memories too closely, because he wasn't sure he wanted to remember the reasoning behind that.
He wouldn't have blackmailed Wanda into having sex with him in exchange for letting her go, would he?
Even if he hadn't... she'd had amnesia, had no idea who he was, no knowledge of their shared past. There had been a million and one reasons why sleeping with her had been a bad idea, and Clint had known all of them, and Wanda hadn't. And that felt uncomfortably like taking advantage of her.
Worse, he couldn't remember why he'd slept with her.
"What the hell were you thinking, Hawkeye? She's powerful enough to reshape the world, and she's crazy. And she hates us!"
"I don't remember what I was thinking," Clint admitted, still picking at the callus. Even with gloves, archery toughened your hands up. "Hell, I don't even remember where I found her."
There was a moment of silence, and then Clint said, softly, "I don't really remember most of what I was doing."
Carol sighed. "I know coming back to life like that is confusing-"
"No," Clint interrupted. "It wasn't that." He hadn't been able to bring himself to mention any of this to Cap, because he knew exactly how disappointed in him Steve would be, and he couldn't talk about it with Jan, because, well, he just couldn't. And he'd be damned if he'd admit any of it to Hank, after the way he'd gone after him for hitting Jan. There was Sam, but he treated Clint like he was Cap's stupid younger brother half the time. And Clint had only decided a week ago that he wasn't going to hold Tony's recent lapse into Big Brother is Watching insanity and inexplicable ability to turn Cap gay against him anymore. Mostly because the Big Brother thing had really been the government's fault, and, when he really thought about it, Cap had always been kind of gay.
Carol had lost memories before, and had done things she was less than proud of. And she was kind of like a guy, which somehow made the idea of talking about this less intimidating.
"I was so angry at her," he said, trying to explain, but not sure he could, since he didn’t really understand it himself. "For what she did to us, for what she did to me. I wanted her to explain. She must have gone crazy; she couldn't have done all of that if she wasn't crazy. I thought maybe I could... I don't know. Somebody needed to help her."
"No," Carol snapped, glaring at the cars ahead of them. "Somebody needed to stop her. She's a menace. Look what she did to us, to Scott, to Vision, to her own brother. You don't come back from that kind of crazy. That's supervillain crazy"
"Two months ago, that's what we all thought about Tony," Clint pointed out. You didn't just write your friends off, not if there was still a chance that there was anything left of them. "We've gone crazy or gone to the dark side before, some of us. Hank got so bad he had to be kicked off the team, and he ended up in jail." If Hank could fix things enough that Jan could forgive him, then there had to be something Clint could do to make up for this. There had to be. If he'd actually done anything. "Natasha started out working for the bad guys. There's that time Rhodey flipped out and had to be taken down by Tony. And, hell, there's you and Tony, with the drinking, both of you came back from that."
Carol stared fixedly at the back of the Lexus SUV in front of them, not looking at him. "What time with Rhodey? I've never heard about that."
"That's the only other time I was ever mad at the Witch." Clint shrugged slightly. "I don't know the whole story, she didn’t tell me until after everything was over. Apparently there was a while there, right after Tony stopped drinking, when Rhodey was having some kind of issues. Wanda saw him haul off and slug Tony once."
"So," Carol said. "Who hasn't wanted to do that occasionally? I threw him through the wing of an airliner once."
"Yeah, but since he's still alive, I'm guessing he was in the armor. That time he wasn't, and Rhodey was. And then he went on some kind of rampage, and Tony had to put on some suit of armor he'd made out of scrap metal in our lab and chase him down. But he's been great for years, and Hank's mostly sane now, so maybe-"
"Why have I never heard about this?" She sighed, shaking her head. "Did you do anything about it? Does anyone other than you, Wanda, and Tony even know?"
"By the time I found out, the whole thing was over," Clint said, feeling thoroughly on the defensive now. "That's why I was mad, because Wanda didn't tell me about it until it was too late to do anything."
"But did you tell anyone?" she pressed. "When people like us lose it, it's a big deal. You have to tell someone. The more people who know, the better the chance that if it happens again, somebody will step in before anyone gets hurt. If nothing else, you should have told Steve. If any of us had known about Wanda..."
"I slept with her. With Wanda," Clint blurted out. "And then I let her go."
"Okay, that--" she broke off, eyes widening. "You what?"
"It's funny. I meant to bring her back, and then I found her, and we had sex, and then I was on a plane headed back here. I was in the Heathrow airport when I saw the press conference you all held after you took down the Mandarin and Red Skull." He shrugged, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "I think maybe I took advantage of her somehow, like maybe we made some kind of trade." And what a way to prove himself worthy of that second shot at life; he hadn't deserved to die, but men who took advantage of women were scum.
Carol's hand tightened on the wheel. "You think you made some kind of trade? How can you think she let you fuck her in return for not bringing her it to face justice? You either did or you didn't."
Clint shrugged, desperately uncomfortable. "I don't know if I did. I don't remember. I don't remember deciding to do it, or deciding to come back. I don't even remember the sex all that well. It's kind of a blur."
"What do you mean, you don't remember? Were you drinking?"
Things would have made more sense if he had been, but there had been no alcohol involved. "No." Clint shook his head. "I just don't remember. The whole thing's kind of like a dream, like it happened to somebody else."
Carol frowned. "That almost sounds like mind-control, but even if she was faking the amnesia, Wanda's powers never worked like that." She hesitated, then shook her head. "Of course, she can manipulate reality on a global scale now, so God knows what she can and can't do."
"It can't be mind control," Clint protested. He wished it were. It would be an awfully convenient explanation for the memory loss, and it would mean that it wasn't his fault. "She didn't even know she had powers."
"Clint, does any of this sound like something you would do?"
He didn't want to think so, but... "I almost ended up working for the Russians just because Natasha slept with me."
Carol's lips twitched. "You were nineteen. Would you be that stupid now?"
"Well, no, but-"
"Just because she doesn't remember that she has powers doesn't mean she isn't using them unconsciously. People don't just lose all their memories, not in real life, not unless there's something they need to forget. Maybe she recognized you on some level, and because she didn't want to remember, she just, I don't know, made you go away."
"After sexing me up."
"Maybe she was lonely. Maybe some part of her wanted to reconnect with her past. Maybe she just wasn't done screwing with you, literally."
Maybe she had put some kind of whammy on him. As he'd said to Carol, the whole thing was like trying to remember a dream. Several weeks worth of his life were just gone.
"Honestly?" Carol said softly, "Normally, if a guy told me something like this, I'd call him a prick and kick him out of the car, but what you just described sounds an awful lot like what happened with Marcus." She grimaced. "I can't remember why I decided to go with him, I just know that I didn't really want to. Like one of those dreams where you don't want to do something, but you're watching yourself do it anyway."
It hadn't been like that, for Clint. Not exactly. There hadn't been any disgust or fear; he'd always thought that Wanda was attractive, always liked her. It was why her betrayal had hurt so badly. Mostly, there had just been a feeling of confusion over why he was there, why he was doing what he was doing. Like Carol said, it had been like watching himself from a distance, while someone else controlled his body.
"That's... it was a little like that, yeah."
Carol made a little half-laughing sound, either disgusted or amused or both. Clint couldn't tell which. "Then I can promise you, you didn't take advantage of her. If she put the whammy on you, even subconsciously, then she must have wanted it."
"Oh." He wasn't sure if that made things better, or much, much worse.
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven
no subject
Steve sulking! Like a Twelve Year Old! XD That I can so see and I love the banter from the beginning of the chapter between Steve and Tony. It's just perfect, along with the conversation with Hank and Rhodey. There's a lot of things that are alluded in this and I can't wait to see how things play out.
Points for the Carol and Clint convo too. It's really interesting to read and great to hear about Clint "complain" about not being in the loop anymore or belonging with the others.
Real nice, I look forward to the next installment!! ♥ ♥ ♥
no subject
*grins* That's exactly the reaction we always love to hear.
Steve sulking! Like a Twelve Year Old! XD That I can so see and I love the banter from the beginning of the chapter between Steve and Tony. It's just perfect, along with the conversation with Hank and Rhodey. There's a lot of things that are alluded in this and I can't wait to see how things play out.
Steve sulking is invariably really cute, for reasons we can't quite define - and the Steve/Tony banter is a vital part of their ship (we think, anyway ^_^), so it's good to we got it right. It's also really good to know that the Hank & Rhodey scene came out well, because Rhodey isn't a character we write a lot.
Points for the Carol and Clint convo too. It's really interesting to read and great to hear about Clint "complain" about not being in the loop anymore or belonging with the others.
*grins* Clint's missed a lot, even more than Steve, who was only dead for a month of so - all of New Avengers and Civil War went on without him. Things are different! Things should never be different! He feels left out!
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(yes I know I have a one track mind)
Just thinking, Peter's a teacher, he is experienced, wellrounded and he's a scientist. Sure it might take a lot of convincing to get him to agree, but he'd probably need the money, and with his identity still being out, he might actually be convincable if it meant having a place where MJ could live safely.
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Thanks! We... may be mentioning that later on ^_^.
Just thinking, Peter's a teacher, he is experienced, wellrounded and he's a scientist.
*Nods* Plus, he started being a superhero when he was a teenager, so he's got some perspective on what it's like for those kids. But Peter, like Daredevil, is one of those heroes who'd be really hard to take out of New York (I know Matt was in LA for a while while he was dating Natasha, but that whole thing ended poorly).
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So I'm thinking whatever messed up Clint's memory is going to be this time's Big Bad?
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*love being hearted*
So I'm thinking whatever messed up Clint's memory is going to be this time's Big Bad?
Not... quite. Next time's big bad, though, definately! *shuffles feet* This fic is more along the lines of shameless h/c while we set up for the final installment.
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I love the R,R&R -verse^^
I love the cat^^ does it have an official name now?
Steve, who seemed to be involved in some endless, petty war with the cat, which had begun sleeping in his shield and gnawing on its leather straps.
That´s a fight you can´t win, Steve!
I don´t know much about Initiative and what Rhodey has been up to, but it will be great to read more about him (a lot of my "knowledge" of comic characters comes from fanfics and yours are amazing!
I can´t wait for the next chapter^^
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Thanks! It's totally our comics happy place (Steve alive, no more SHRA, no Skrull…), so it's always great to hear that other people like it too ^_^.
I love the cat^^ does it have an official name now?
Avenger!Kitty has many names - Jarvis calls him Churchill, Peter calls him Matt (because he's "all scruffy and psychotic and doesn't trust anyone"), Clint calls him "Hank" (for similar reasons. "First you want me to pet you, then you want to eat my fingers. Make up your mind, Cat"). Tony calls him "Cat." Sam calls him "Lunch Cat," and claims this is how Redwing refers to him.
I don´t know much about Initiative and what Rhodey has been up to, but it will be great to read more about him
He's been training teenagers in how to be superheroes/use their powers. Sadly for said teenagers, the Initiative in the comics is being controlled by skeezy evil people, so there's all kinds of evil cloning stuff going on behind Rhodey's back (which is what happens when you hire a scientist named "Baron von Blitzschlag"). RR&R-verse Initiative is much less evil, since the Superhuman Activities Committee isn't in charge anymore.
I can´t wait for the next chapter^^
Yay!
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Okay. I don't think I'm going to be able to read this story.
I really do not want to come across as insulting, but I draw the line at pointless character bashing. There was no reason for any of that to be here.
I was hoping I would not be put in this position, since I've enjoyed your other work, but this had to be said.
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So, um, who did you see as being character bashed? I know a couple of characters didn't come off too well, but that's all canonical, so I don't think it counts.
(
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If it's Wanda, this is the start of a set up to bring her back and redeem her, so we wanted to have the work laid for people both still thinking about her, and feeling bad about not realizing that something was off.
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That little part mentioning the cat was too cute. Also cute was the image of Steve sulking.
The conversation between Rhodes and Hank was really nice. When you start looking at it, a lot of Marvel characters have screwed up in some pretty big was a least once. I guess I find it interesting to look at those who haven't...
I also really liked the discussion between Clint and Carol. Of course, I love both characters so that always helps but it was interesting to hear about Wanda. I've always found the Scarlet Witch to be a fascinating character.
Plus that scene gave some ideas has to how a hero would feel after some weird/unusual thing happens.
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Thanks! The cat is shamelessly, blatantly only there for the cuteness it enables (and Steve is always cute when he sulks ^_^).
The conversation between Rhodes and Hank was really nice. When you start looking at it, a lot of Marvel characters have screwed up in some pretty big was a least once. I guess I find it interesting to look at those who haven't...
'Those who haven't' is a very short list in Marvel-verse - once we started thinking about it, we could come up with at least one major mistake for almost everyone (of course, some people's mistakes are "I slept with a communist spy when I was 19," and other people's are "I built Ultron."). Marvel likes its flawed heroes a lot.
I also really liked the discussion between Clint and Carol. Of course, I love both characters so that always helps but it was interesting to hear about Wanda. I've always found the Scarlet Witch to be a fascinating character.
Carol is totally not there completely gratuitously just because we also like herWanda's really gotten a lousy deal from the Marvel writers over the years (worse even than Tony, since Civil War is arguably in character for Tony, while Dissassembled and M-Day are... really not in character for Wanda as she's shown prior to that point, unless she was secretly a crazy sociopathic villainess all along despite that not making any sense, a la DC's new retconned-into-evil take on Max Lord). I'm telling myself she was under mind-control, because that can excuse a multitude of sins.Plus that scene gave some ideas has to how a hero would feel after some weird/unusual thing happens.
*nods* Random weirdness happens in the Marvel U all the time, so they're probably used to at least some kinds of weirdness by now, but unless you're the X-Men, coming back from the dead is still something above and beyond the general order of weird.
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-- Love you guys~!
I like how you are getting into the issues of Clint's interactions with Wanda and not just sweeping her to the side.
This is very interesting start! Looking forward to the rest ^_^
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*grins* Our cat chews on things like a dog, and he did it even more as a kitten. He was especially fond of metal.
I like how you are getting into the issues of Clint's interactions with Wanda and not just sweeping her to the side.
There... may be something planned with Wanda in the next fic. We wanted to eventually get all of the Avengers back together, and that means we couldn't just forget about her.
This is very interesting start! Looking forward to the rest ^_^
Half of the rest is posted now, of course. Arg, I reply way too slowly.
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Also...
and, when he really thought about it, Cap had always been kind of gay.
...that line made me laugh out loud. It's funny because it's true! *g*
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*dances happily at comment* Hank never gives up on scientific research, even when he and everyone else around him might be better off if he did. And we're glad people see to be enjoying the pretty much gratuitous Rhodey and Carol cameos, since they're mostly there because we like them.
Her conversation with Clint was very well done, by the way. I don't know how much of what he tells her is canon, but it all made sense regardless. :-)
Thanks! We were trying to get across the canon situation (and Carol's anger at Wanda) without bashing Wanda too much, though we apparently didn't succeed quite as welll as we'd hoped (it probably doesn't help that I've got issues with M-Day and the whole idea of depowering mutants against their will that I haven't exactly been silent about).
The stuff about Wanda apparently having amnesia and Clint sleeping with her is canon; the possible mind-whammying is our fanon interpretation, but there's clearly some form of supernatural hinkiness going on when he runs into her, and sleeping-with-amnesiac-former-teammate-who-nearly-destoyed-the-world-and-then-leaving-her-there doesn't make any sense for Clint in that situation unless something else were going on .
and, when he really thought about it, Cap had always been kind of gay.
...that line made me laugh out loud. It's funny because it's true! *g*
*grins* Have you seen the bit of Captain America back-canon where he goes into a biker bar(wearing a roll-neck sweater, just to give you the complete mental image) and orders root beer and cake? And then, of course, there's the bit in Spiderman: The Other where he's playing pool with MJ and she says (in response to some comment by him) "Huh. I guess you're straight after all," upon which Steve stares at her blankly and says, "Why would you say that?"
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Thanks!
b) love that it's an ensemble with Clint, Carol and Rhodey - they all need more love;
They do, they really do. Rhodey, at least, seems to be getting a little more love now that the movie is out (though the amount of Tony/Rhodey fic out there is vastly outnumbered by the Tony/Pepper fic). He and Carol are basically in the fic just because we like them, like Peter in the later chapters.
c) love that the cat is back. *g*
The cat seems to be everyone's favorite part -- I've even found a link to "Readjustment" on delicious that lists "Avenger!Kitty" as a character.
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If I started listing really good/awesome/funny/touching lines, we'd be here all day. I will simply say that I love, love, love the dialogue--the characters all have distinct voices, and it is win.
*waits none-too-patiently to see where this Something Is Afoot is going*
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*grins* We're both gen fans as well as slashers (oh, Magnificent Seven, you were the perfect fandom), so we've got a fondness for ensemble fic as well.
If I started listing really good/awesome/funny/touching lines, we'd be here all day. I will simply say that I love, love, love the dialogue--the characters all have distinct voices, and it is win.
Yay! Dialogue is one of our favorite parts to do, and often the first part of a scene we write, so it's good to know that it came out well.
*waits none-too-patiently to see where this Something Is Afoot is going*
I'd leave teasing hints, but of course, by now, you know what the Something is for this fic -- the perils of replying to comments really, really late.
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Many things made me happy. Tony and Steve sparring, now, as lovers (THIS especially), Hank and Rodney, and Carol and Clint.
And I love that you're planning on bringing Wanda back, and dealing with what happened between her and the other Avengers. I have a soft spot for her.
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*grins* This entire verse is totally our fannish happy place (well, this, and
DenialverseClassic-verse), so it's always great to hear that other people are enjoying it, too. We're trying not to make it too much of a fluffy, everything's-perfect-now fixit, because even with Civil War repaired, some of the Avengers' collective issues still remain (like Tony's general fucked-up-ness), and the bad things that happened during Disassembled and Civil War will take a while to fix completely..Many things made me happy. Tony and Steve sparring, now, as lovers (THIS especially), Hank and Rodney, and Carol and Clint.
Steve and Tony's sparring has always been chock full of homoerotic subtext, so letting them be able to openly flirt while doing so is loads of fun (and have you seen Clint makes everything better!
And I love that you're planning on bringing Wanda back, and dealing with what happened between her and the other Avengers. I have a soft spot for her.
In order to achieve our sekrit goal of fixing the entire central Marvel U, we have to tackle Disassembled as well as Civil War ^_^
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And you want to know the really awesome thing? You sold my husband on it too. XD
I read him your fics while he drives (he's a truck driver, I ride with him) and as a result of this he's working some Steve/Tony into our Marvel RP.
Just thought I'd let you know.
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When I first got into the Marvel fandom 4 months ago I stumbled upon your RR&R verse fics while looking for Iron Man stuff. I was dubious about Steve/Tony but you guys have really sold me on the pairing, and seeing your new story for this AU popping up on my friends page made me squeal in happiness.
Yay! Like we've probably said before, every reader who enjoys the fic is wonderful to hear about ^_^ (RR&R cost me a letter grade off of a gradute history seminar paper, but has turned out to be more than worth it, because no one but my professor will ever care about or read that paper, whereas the fic is at least entertaining to other people. Plus, writing about Alive!Steve was far more satisfying than read 19th century bank records). Were you dubious about slash in general, or about the pairing in particular?
And you want to know the really awesome thing? You sold my husband on it too. XD
OMG, that's awesome *grins*
I read him your fics while he drives (he's a truck driver, I ride with him) and as a result of this he's working some Steve/Tony into our Marvel RP.
Just thought I'd let you know.
The Steve/Tony OTP will seduce all under its sway eventually! There's just too much melodrama and banter potential to resist.
Interesting to hear that you're reading it aloud, since it essentially gets written aloud (
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But YAY! It's back! *happy dance*
when he really thought about it, Cap had always been kind of gay.
Hehe. Reminds me of the panels where Clint is grilling Cap about his love life.
Great start - am patiently waiting on the Big Disaster. :D
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That's okay! All reveiws are good, no matter when we get them. And it took even longer for one of us to reply *shuffles feet*
Hehe. Reminds me of the panels where Clint is grilling Cap about his love life.
Those are made of awesome and adorableness. I think they may be my favorite Clint scene anywhere (and possibly
Great start - am patiently waiting on the Big Disaster. :D
Which has, of course, already struck by now. Such are the perils of late replying.
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Oh man, I love Clint. He's such a normal guy. I've always kind of thought it was cool that he seemed able to fall in love with all the women on the Avengers at the drop of a hat, because honestly, what reasonable man wouldn't? They're usually beautiful, they're strong and brave and cool, and on some level Clint's probably never quite gotten over "OMG! Superheroes!"
I love his conversation with Carol about superheroes and how they screw up, and her literary revenge on Marcus. Poor Carol; it's easy to forget how badly she got screwed over. And Rhodey and Hank. I miss Rhodey; one of the few good things to come out of all this idiocy is that he's been around in the comics more lately.
But is it me, or is Hank's affect a little flat? Or maybe he was just too bored to drum up much enthusiasm.
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Oh man, I love Clint. He's such a normal guy. I've always kind of thought it was cool that he seemed able to fall in love with all the women on the Avengers at the drop of a hat, because honestly, what reasonable man wouldn't? They're usually beautiful, they're strong and brave and cool, and on some level Clint's probably never quite gotten over "OMG! Superheroes!"
Or should it be "OMG, Superheroines?" (For some reason, I always find myself referring to Carol, Jan, et al as "female superheroes," rather than "superheroines," even though I love and regularly use the term "villainess.")
It would be massively, massively intimidating to hang out with the assembled female Avengers in real life -- they're all so drop dead gorgeous and cool and awesome, and there you would stand looking like the female version of pre-spiderbite Peter Parker, torn between "OMG, so hot, can't make brain function" and "Why!? Why are they all so much prettier than me?!" (Peter, on the other hand, wouldn't be at all intimidating to hang out with, and would probably be fun to talk to in short doses).
I love his conversation with Carol about superheroes and how they screw up, and her literary revenge on Marcus. Poor Carol; it's easy to forget how badly she got screwed over.
What are self-insertion novels for if not to consign everyone who was ever mean to you to horrible fates while your avatar saves the galaxy? Personally, I wanted the volume three version of Marcus (where Carol finally gets some of her own back) to die horribly from the very fist time he called Warbird "spirited," completely independant of his previous-timeline-self's actions.
And Rhodey and Hank. I miss Rhodey; one of the few good things to come out of all this idiocy is that he's been around in the comics more lately.
The Initiative is basically the Rhodey & Hank title (there are some teenagers who keep popping up to use up valuable War Machine and Yellowjacket screentime, but they are immaterial -- you know every who buys it does so solely because warMachine is in it). One of the good things about the movie is that it's introduced a bunch of new fans to Rhodey (though there's sadly little Tony/Rhodey slash in comparison with the Tony/Pepper het).
But is it me, or is Hank's affect a little flat? Or maybe he was just too bored to drum up much enthusiasm.
That... was unintentional, but given that it's something that mood stabilizers + anti-depressants can actually do to you, we're going to claim intent.
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-Tro
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Not as slow as my replies! (answering reviews on the first chapter the day the last chapter is due to be posted possibly warrents a special kind of fail).
Clint! I loooove Clint! And Carol!
Everyone loves Clint. It's why Bendis brought him back from the dead. And Carol always needs more love.
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another fic another fic another fic!! :D :D :D and it's RR&R-fic! You guys know how much I love RR&R! :D :D
::tries to think coherently::
OK! well first off I LOVE sparring in the beginning and how 3 days seems like a horrible eternity of doom for Steve and Tony to be apart D: ::wibble::
Also Avenger!kitty ftw! I can imagine the epic!pout of Steve's when he has to give up his shield as a kitty bed :O
Rhodey's in the fic!!!! OMG SQUEE!
Also Hank still working on trying to grow ::hugs him::
Carol's lips twitched. "You were nineteen. Would you be that stupid now?"
-- lolz
::goes to read part 2:: :) :) :) :) :) :) :)
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RR&R is our happy place ^_^!
OK! well first off I LOVE sparring in the beginning and how 3 days seems like a horrible eternity of doom for Steve and Tony to be apart D: ::wibble::
Well, they haven't been apart for more than a day or so since Steve came back from the dead, and even though the post-trauma clinginess has diminished considerably, you know there's still that little irrational part of Tony that's going "Noes! Steve! If I go over 24 hours without seeing him, he'll magically stop existing!"
Also Avenger!kitty ftw! I can imagine the epic!pout of Steve's when he has to give up his shield as a kitty bed :O
Steve will ultimately defeat him. For America! *grins* The mental image of the kitty sleeping in the shield is one of the major reasons for his existance.
Rhodey's in the fic!!!! OMG SQUEE!
Gratuitous cameos where characters show up just because the writers like them are one of the things that make comics great!
Also Hank still working on trying to grow ::hugs him::
You know Hank's not going to give up. He will eventually find a way to keep being an active superhero anyway (like he did the last four times something went funny with his powers). It's just going to take a while.
Carol's lips twitched. "You were nineteen. Would you be that stupid now?"
-- lolz
The answer to that question depends on who the woman involved is. As we all know from the bit in Avengers volume 3 where Clint sleeps with Jan as part of a disastrous attempt to make Hank jealous, Clint would in fact be almost as stupid now. (Hank: "OMG, you slept with Clint!"
Jan: "OMG, I'm sorry! Let's get back together."
Hank: "How about in a couple of weeks, when the horrible images of you getting it on with Clint have faded from my mind."
Clint: "Wait, Jan, does this mean we're not going steady?"
Steve: "I hate you all.")