MCU pot luck
Three vignettes:
1) Tony (and Rhodey) post-CA:TWS
Tony had seven solid light HUD screens open when Rhodey, looking slightly less dead man walking after his nap, came in to the living room and dropped down heavily next to him. He had a green juice in a tall glass in his hand, but Tony could also smell bacon because Marcel, his personal chef, did not believe in dietary trends and there were probably belgian waffles already underway. Breakfast for dinner was something Marcel had long ago come to terms with.
“How bad is it?” Rhodey asked as he took a sip, then winced. Tony probably should have warned him about the watercress, but that wouldn’t have been sporting. Or fun. “What the hell is that?”
Rhodey had landed on the balcony five hours ago or so, exhausted and heartsick after spending the day and night watching the US government teeter on the edge of a cliff it hadn’t seen approaching at high speed. It had been less than a day since Natasha had released the HYDRA and SHIELD files into the ether, less since the Pentagon had spasmed and then unclenched, sending out directives to first lock down all bases and then force everyone in uniform to re-take their oath of enlistment and disavow HYDRA before sending them out to keep the peace. HYDRA was in the government - and when things weren’t quite so fraught and tense, Tony would have a party to celebrate that Stern, that rat bastard, was one of them - and the country and the world were on the edge of panic.
“That is a national nightmare for a different day,” Tony replied, knowing which screen Rhodey was looking at. “Miss Romanov sent me a get-well present.”
The screen under discussion was a 3D rendering of the Winter Soldier’s arm, part of a packet of files on the man - or “man” - who’d been Fury’s putative assassin, a Cold War legend, and might just be Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. It was the last that Natasha wanted verified; Rogers was clearly convinced, but he was, to put it mildly, not the most objective observer right now. Rogers wasn’t observing anything at the moment - he’d been fished out of the Potomac a few hours ago and was still in surgery an Undisclosed Location that happened to be HUP in Philadelphia - but they were going to need an answer before he regained consciousness because this was not going to be something he would be willing to drop.
“Is that the HYDRA asset who took out half the cavalry?” Rhodey asked, grimacing as he finished the contents of the glass. “What is it with you and watercress? Can’t you just drink kale like every other lemming?”
Dad had kept the files on Barnes out of SHIELD’s hands from the beginning, part of a pact with Peggy Carter and the others to leave the sordid past in the past. Barnes had been long dead, Rogers had been more recently dead, and nobody had needed to know that Captain America possibly hadn’t been the only super-soldier in the Howling Commandos. Tony had scanned in Dad’s files after the Battle of New York, once it became clear that the Avengers Initiative was going to be a thing and that Fury was going to play Rasputin by way of Knute Rockne; he wanted the origins of SHIELD’s secrets if he was going to be spending time cleaning up what those secrets turned into.
“I like watercress,” Tony replied loftily. “It’s got a kick.”
He threw some of the screens with documents Rhodey’s way - nothing to do with the Winter Soldier, not that Rhodey wouldn’t be interested, just that he was currently more interested in whether the Republic was still standing. Which in turn Tony wasn’t disinterested by, but that was going to be someone else’s job all the way anyway - Rhodey was part of the crew holding the line between chaos and civilization, Tony wasn’t. He had been their armorer for a while, then he’d been their adorably rascally cousin as Iron Man, now he was… a very smart man with a diminished conditioning level and lung capacity and a very particular ability to see the future. James Barnes, alive as the Winter Soldier in DC or seventy years dead in an Alpine valley, was going to matter.
After a meal of buttermilk waffles and bacon and fruit salad, Tony took Rhodey down to the workshop so they could futz with Rhodey’s armor, which wasn’t malfunctioning, but he’d managed to bend a few things that hadn’t meant to bend when he’d been trying to move Helicarrier parts off of structures that contained people. There was no point in reminding Rhodey of the maximum lift limits and torque capacity; Tony would have done the same thing in the same circumstance, although he would have known better than to blow out the hand repulsors when the legs had eight times the thrust.
“Sometimes, it’s really obvious you have an economics degree,” Tony told him as he disassembled the right gauntlet. “Dummy, go dig out a pair of palms out of the parts bin, would you?”
Dummy wheeled off after a parting chirp at Rhodey that managed to thoroughly convey that he didn’t think much of Rhodey’s economics degree, either.
“Hush, you glorified can opener,” Rhodey called after him, but without any heat. Rhodey was Dummy’s favorite uncle; they’d gotten over their early animosity years ago.
Rhodey left after the suit was put back together; he’d gotten three different calls from the White House requesting his immediate presence. He got to talk to Pepper before he left, assuring her that he would make sure Tony didn’t do anything crazy, which nobody took seriously because Pepper knew that, historically and especially since Afghanistan, Rhodey had been an enabler more than he’d been a container.
“Stay where you are and get comfortable,” Rhodey told her. “They’re not going to re-open the airports for a day or two and it’s going to be a mess for even longer. You can do what you need to do from Trieste.”
Thank you, Tony mouthed at Rhodey once Pepper agreed. They both knew that Pepper would not have acquiesced if it had been Tony asking; she always thought he was being overprotective. Which he possibly had been since the Extremis incident, but that didn’t negate the fact that Pepper, as the CEO of Stark Industries, was a prime HYDRA target and she would be extremely vulnerable in transit.
Once he’d seen Rhodey off, Tony returned to the couch and asked JARVIS to call up the SSR files from 1943 that included the reports on and interviews with the just-rescued Sergeant James B. Barnes.
“Okay, Dad, what kind of mess did you leave for me now?”
2) Clint Barton during CA:TWS
Clint was in Palmyra when his phone beeped for a text. He'd turned the thing off three days ago and, honestly, the first thought that he'd had was that Tony was being a fucking wiseass and hacking his phone despite him knowing that Clint turned off his phone for precisely one reason and that reason was that his life would be in jeopardy if it rang. So his thoughts were on whether Fury would give him a pay bump or an ass-chewing if he did something lasting to Stark.
But it wasn't Tony, which meant that he didn't have to be grateful that Pepper Potts graded on a curve. (He was generally grateful for that, but embedding an arrow in Tony's ass was of a different order than him not knowing a white wine glass from a water glass when they both came with stems.) The text came from Natasha, although there was no name attached. She was the only one with the code to remotely turn on his phone. The text was simple and terrifying in its simplicity.
SHIELD = HYDRA. C/K on you + me + Cap. GTG & check 3rd drop in 7.
He could translate it easily, but the words still made no sense in their full form. HYDRA was seventy years in the dust heap of history, so how they'd suborned SHIELD was a mystery, although considering Cap was running around seventy years after he died, too, Clint maybe should be less shocked. That Natasha was bypassing her first two alternate communication options was a testament to how badly she thought they were fucked and that he took very seriously. But the capture-or-kill notice was the hard part. He believed her, absolutely, but he was already in a fucking war zone where everyone was already willing to either kill him or sell him to someone who did and the realization that he had to either find safety here or crawl out of this cesspit and hope he had an ally left in the world, well, that was a tall order for a man who'd been running on empty for the last few days.
Staying in Syria wasn't his first choice, but his closest allies in the region were also the most likely to go along with a request coming out of DC that didn't involve their domestic affairs.
He dialed a number he knew from memory.
"Hey, Ofir," he began when the connection was made. He spoke in Arabic so as not to draw attention should anyone be close enough to overhear. "So it seems my agency's put out a burn notice on me. If I turn up in Tel Aviv, what are the odds your people are going to hogtie me and throw me on the first El-Al flight to DC?"
A bitter laugh was his answer. "Low. Fury's dead and SHIELD just tried to use a Hellfire to assassinate Captain America right outside the Triskelion. Nobody knows what the fuck is going on with your people, but the assumption is that you are not the problem."
Clint laughed, but more because he didn't know what other kind of reaction to have. He understood the words, but they made no sense. "Fury's dead?" he asked, although that was the least preposterous part of what he'd heard. Fury had a million enemies and faced at least two assassination attempts a month; statistically, they were going to get him at some point. That SHIELD would launch a jet to try to blow up Cap on the Beltway was too insane to even imagine, however.
"You're clearly under a rock," Ofir replied, not meaning it as a value judgment. The two of them had spent weeks under rocks together over the years. "Come out from under it and I'll tell you the whole story over arak and schnitzel. Don't use your papers, whatever they are. You remember that shitty dive in Akko? Get yourself there and I'll find you."
It took three days to get to Acre because he had to sneak across a border heavily watched by multiple parties and then make his way through the insanity that was Israel's road system. The latter was more dangerous. He got to the bar, left a message and a healthy tip for the bartender, and spent the day moving from café to café with copies of, in turn Haaretz, Israel HaYom, the J-Post, and Maariv, each with the same stories that might as well have been in a funnybook for all that they had pictures of Helicarriers falling out of the sky and the Triskelion reduced to rubble and stories of data uploads that laid bare a global infection no antibiotic could cure. Ofir was waiting at a table in the rear of the bar when he returned and, over arak and shawarma and pickles and fries, Clint got the story of what had gone on the last few days. It made no sense hearing it from someone he trusted, either.
"You realize this sounds like bullshit, right?" he asked, spearing a pickled radish that had escaped his pita. "I mean, this all sounds like a Michael Bay movie and I'm speaking as someone who has been up close with both demi-gods and aliens."
Ofir, mouth full, rolled his eyes. "It looked like a Michael Bay movie on television," he assured once he'd swallowed. "But your friend just made Snowden an afterthought and we've had every agency all-hands for all-hours trying to make sense of what she uploaded. Starting with Alexander Pierce being the new Johann Schmidt and it only gets worse from there."
Clint took a moment to appreciate how insane Israel's intelligence and security communities must be with the proof of the return and immense power of HYDRA, the effective takeover of SHIELD and the US Government and God knew what else by an organization that had been the Nazis's most competent element.
"You guys are fireproof?" Clint asked, since it would be foolish to assume that HYDRA's reach stopped at the US's borders. Especially with the ties between DC and Jerusalem.
"Fuck no, we're not fireproof," Ofir spat. "We're one step away from a panic. So is everyone else. There isn't a security service in the world right now that's not freaking out. And that's just worrying about secrets. Your entire Direct Action service got suborned, the guys with the best training and the biggest guns. You think anyone else isn't afraid that their own might be about to go rabid and shoot up the place in the name of a new world order?"
The meal ended with Ofir handing him a large wad of shekels and euros in small bills. "Because we're not fireproof, I can't guarantee your safety if our people know where you are," he warned. "But you're safer here than anywhere else because the odds of us being infested with neo-Nazis is probably lower than anywhere else right now. Get yourself some new papers and go be a tourist or a kibbutznik or something until this blows over. If someone finds you, we won't let them take you from us."
Clint took the promise of limited protection - the best that could be offered under the circumstances - along with the cash as gestures of friendship. He and Ofir hugged and went their separate ways with promises to keep in touch and fuller stories once they were available - with the understanding that it would be Clint's turn to tell stories once he heard what was really going on. He spent the night in Akko and went up to Nahariya in the morning to buy false papers; it would be easier there and also harder to trace if Shabak didn't know where he'd started his disappearing act. From there, it was a couple of buses and a hitchhiked ride to the middle of nowhere, where he played the Quebecois tourist (his French accent was terrible, despite his fluency, so he could sound Canadian) and took stupid pictures on his phone and paid too much for everything like a tourist would. He moved around at a brisk but leisurely pace, sleeping in and eating well if not lingering, killing time until he could check in with Natasha to see if it was safe to poke his head up yet. He looked at the newspapers and bought time at internet cafés en route, so he knew that Steve was alive, if not necessarily in one piece.
"It's bad," Natasha said when they got in touch. "There's more that isn't public domain yet and it's... it's bad. Come to New York; Stark will put you up."
He made his way to Amman and bought a ticket to Montreal, which was more complicated than it should have been because he never remembered that Dorval wasn't Dorval anymore. He texted Ofir to tell him he'd left Israel from the bus between Montreal and Boston; from Boston he took Acela down to New York and walked up to Stark's place from Penn Station.
"Grab some popcorn, pull up a seat, and watch the show," Tony greeted him from the couch as a half-dozen solid light screens danced and slid through the air. Some had words, some had pictures, and none of them made a damned bit of sense. "For our main feature, we've got the future of the American republic - it's a real cliffhanger. Instead of the cartoon warm-up, we've got a sci-fi special that will blow your mind: your childhood hero turned zombie assassin! But first, shower. I can smell you from here."
Clint flipped Tony the bird, which he didn't see, and followed JARVIS's directions to the linen closet and the shower because Tony wasn't wrong.
Being clean and then fed fancy food (and popcorn) didn't make up for the fact that Natasha had not been underselling just how bad things actually were.
3) Sam Wilson's introduction into the Freezer Burn universe
"Does he need a hospital or can we get by with a first aid kit and a toolbox?" Clint asked as he drove. "If we need to steal supplies from somewhere, this is the place."
Annandale had plenty of storefront clinics and medical practices and didn’t have the kind of complicated security that went with high-crime neighborhoods.
"He might need blood," Steve said from the backseat, where he was cradling Bucky halfway in his lap. "It’s hard to tell."
Because Bucky was covered in blood, he didn’t need to say, and how much of it was his and how much he’d left behind in the factory they’d helped him escape from wasn’t clear.
"Don’t," Bucky piped up weakly, his voice slurring on even that.
Clint stopped at the stop sign, like any law-abiding driver. Making a getaway in a regular civilian vehicle through a residential neighborhood wasn’t hard, but it required patience and nerves because you had to keep to the speed limit, obey the signs, and look like any other car on the road because ‘hiding in plain sight’ was the only option. They didn’t have enough ammo to survive a gunfight and the CRV wasn’t exactly up-armored.
"Don’t what?" Steve asked sharply and Clint could hear the frustration and the fear as he accelerated slowly through the intersection. Steve was pissed at Bucky for running off half-cocked and justifiably rattled at the condition they’d found him in.
"Don’t need blood," Bucky said, the words coming out more clearly this time. "Not mine. Mostly."
"I’ll believe it when I see it," Steve retorted.
They’d gotten Bucky free partially because the man had been halfway to liberating himself - keeping the Winter Soldier prisoner was a lot harder when he was conscious - and mostly because Corrales knew all of Rumslow’s moves.
"Brock’s fierce, man," Corrales had said during the planning. "But he’s predictable. Always runs the same few plays. It usually doesn’t matter because he’s so ferocious and the people he’s up against don’t get a second chance. But if you knew his moves, he was pretty easy to take down in training exercises."
This hadn’t been a training exercise; it had been a straight-up battle and Clint was grateful that they’d survived intact. It hadn’t been any kind of victory, just a preservation of the status quo ante, which under the circumstances should probably have been granted honorary victory status, but he was still too amped up to be gracious like that.
"If he’s not gonna croak between here and the District, I know a guy we can go to," Clint said as he signaled his right turn. "Good guy and he owes me one."
Bucky made a noise of disagreement - or maybe pain - but Steve drowned him out. “This is a bigger favor than borrowing bootlaces.”
There were capture-or-kill orders out on both Clint and Bucky and he had no doubt that there’d be a BOLO out with a picture of what Steve looked like with the image inducer - if there wasn’t one already. The hunt for them would be delicate - they were men of the shadows and their enemies wanted them to stay in the shadows - but that didn’t mean that the people chasing them didn’t know how to hunt in the dark.
"He owes me for more than bootlaces," Clint said, but he also knew what Steve wasn’t saying. "He’s a good man. He’s not caught up in this. We can trust him."
It was twenty minutes later when Clint pulled in and parallel parked on a quiet residential street. “Stay here,” Clint told the senior citizens in the back seat. “I’ll be back in five.”
He waited for Steve to check the Sig Sauer he was holding - Bucky’s weapon - before closing the door and setting the alarm like anyone else would. He walked the two blocks to Sam’s place in an indirect route to allow him to check for tails - and any early risers - before returning to the car and helping Steve get Bucky out of the backseat. Bucky was clearly favoring his prosthetic arm, which was either good news or not - they knew fuck-all about fixing it if were broken, but at least it could be taken off, unlike any other limb that might be damaged.
Clint held his own pistol cocked and ready as he led them back to Sam’s place. The moon was hidden by clouds, but there was a streetlight and Steve stood with Bucky under a tree to hide in its shadow as Clint went up to the front door and rang the bell twice.
Considering that it was four in the morning and Sam hadn’t seen Clint in eight years, Sam was relatively unsurprised to see him.
"I need to call in my marker," Clint said with a shrug. "Me and a couple of friends are in the shit and I need a guy with a toolbox and a first-aid kit."
Sam scratched his belly and sighed as he held open the screen door. “Lemme go put on some pants.”
Also posted at DW.
1) Tony (and Rhodey) post-CA:TWS
Tony had seven solid light HUD screens open when Rhodey, looking slightly less dead man walking after his nap, came in to the living room and dropped down heavily next to him. He had a green juice in a tall glass in his hand, but Tony could also smell bacon because Marcel, his personal chef, did not believe in dietary trends and there were probably belgian waffles already underway. Breakfast for dinner was something Marcel had long ago come to terms with.
“How bad is it?” Rhodey asked as he took a sip, then winced. Tony probably should have warned him about the watercress, but that wouldn’t have been sporting. Or fun. “What the hell is that?”
Rhodey had landed on the balcony five hours ago or so, exhausted and heartsick after spending the day and night watching the US government teeter on the edge of a cliff it hadn’t seen approaching at high speed. It had been less than a day since Natasha had released the HYDRA and SHIELD files into the ether, less since the Pentagon had spasmed and then unclenched, sending out directives to first lock down all bases and then force everyone in uniform to re-take their oath of enlistment and disavow HYDRA before sending them out to keep the peace. HYDRA was in the government - and when things weren’t quite so fraught and tense, Tony would have a party to celebrate that Stern, that rat bastard, was one of them - and the country and the world were on the edge of panic.
“That is a national nightmare for a different day,” Tony replied, knowing which screen Rhodey was looking at. “Miss Romanov sent me a get-well present.”
The screen under discussion was a 3D rendering of the Winter Soldier’s arm, part of a packet of files on the man - or “man” - who’d been Fury’s putative assassin, a Cold War legend, and might just be Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. It was the last that Natasha wanted verified; Rogers was clearly convinced, but he was, to put it mildly, not the most objective observer right now. Rogers wasn’t observing anything at the moment - he’d been fished out of the Potomac a few hours ago and was still in surgery an Undisclosed Location that happened to be HUP in Philadelphia - but they were going to need an answer before he regained consciousness because this was not going to be something he would be willing to drop.
“Is that the HYDRA asset who took out half the cavalry?” Rhodey asked, grimacing as he finished the contents of the glass. “What is it with you and watercress? Can’t you just drink kale like every other lemming?”
Dad had kept the files on Barnes out of SHIELD’s hands from the beginning, part of a pact with Peggy Carter and the others to leave the sordid past in the past. Barnes had been long dead, Rogers had been more recently dead, and nobody had needed to know that Captain America possibly hadn’t been the only super-soldier in the Howling Commandos. Tony had scanned in Dad’s files after the Battle of New York, once it became clear that the Avengers Initiative was going to be a thing and that Fury was going to play Rasputin by way of Knute Rockne; he wanted the origins of SHIELD’s secrets if he was going to be spending time cleaning up what those secrets turned into.
“I like watercress,” Tony replied loftily. “It’s got a kick.”
He threw some of the screens with documents Rhodey’s way - nothing to do with the Winter Soldier, not that Rhodey wouldn’t be interested, just that he was currently more interested in whether the Republic was still standing. Which in turn Tony wasn’t disinterested by, but that was going to be someone else’s job all the way anyway - Rhodey was part of the crew holding the line between chaos and civilization, Tony wasn’t. He had been their armorer for a while, then he’d been their adorably rascally cousin as Iron Man, now he was… a very smart man with a diminished conditioning level and lung capacity and a very particular ability to see the future. James Barnes, alive as the Winter Soldier in DC or seventy years dead in an Alpine valley, was going to matter.
After a meal of buttermilk waffles and bacon and fruit salad, Tony took Rhodey down to the workshop so they could futz with Rhodey’s armor, which wasn’t malfunctioning, but he’d managed to bend a few things that hadn’t meant to bend when he’d been trying to move Helicarrier parts off of structures that contained people. There was no point in reminding Rhodey of the maximum lift limits and torque capacity; Tony would have done the same thing in the same circumstance, although he would have known better than to blow out the hand repulsors when the legs had eight times the thrust.
“Sometimes, it’s really obvious you have an economics degree,” Tony told him as he disassembled the right gauntlet. “Dummy, go dig out a pair of palms out of the parts bin, would you?”
Dummy wheeled off after a parting chirp at Rhodey that managed to thoroughly convey that he didn’t think much of Rhodey’s economics degree, either.
“Hush, you glorified can opener,” Rhodey called after him, but without any heat. Rhodey was Dummy’s favorite uncle; they’d gotten over their early animosity years ago.
Rhodey left after the suit was put back together; he’d gotten three different calls from the White House requesting his immediate presence. He got to talk to Pepper before he left, assuring her that he would make sure Tony didn’t do anything crazy, which nobody took seriously because Pepper knew that, historically and especially since Afghanistan, Rhodey had been an enabler more than he’d been a container.
“Stay where you are and get comfortable,” Rhodey told her. “They’re not going to re-open the airports for a day or two and it’s going to be a mess for even longer. You can do what you need to do from Trieste.”
Thank you, Tony mouthed at Rhodey once Pepper agreed. They both knew that Pepper would not have acquiesced if it had been Tony asking; she always thought he was being overprotective. Which he possibly had been since the Extremis incident, but that didn’t negate the fact that Pepper, as the CEO of Stark Industries, was a prime HYDRA target and she would be extremely vulnerable in transit.
Once he’d seen Rhodey off, Tony returned to the couch and asked JARVIS to call up the SSR files from 1943 that included the reports on and interviews with the just-rescued Sergeant James B. Barnes.
“Okay, Dad, what kind of mess did you leave for me now?”
2) Clint Barton during CA:TWS
Clint was in Palmyra when his phone beeped for a text. He'd turned the thing off three days ago and, honestly, the first thought that he'd had was that Tony was being a fucking wiseass and hacking his phone despite him knowing that Clint turned off his phone for precisely one reason and that reason was that his life would be in jeopardy if it rang. So his thoughts were on whether Fury would give him a pay bump or an ass-chewing if he did something lasting to Stark.
But it wasn't Tony, which meant that he didn't have to be grateful that Pepper Potts graded on a curve. (He was generally grateful for that, but embedding an arrow in Tony's ass was of a different order than him not knowing a white wine glass from a water glass when they both came with stems.) The text came from Natasha, although there was no name attached. She was the only one with the code to remotely turn on his phone. The text was simple and terrifying in its simplicity.
SHIELD = HYDRA. C/K on you + me + Cap. GTG & check 3rd drop in 7.
He could translate it easily, but the words still made no sense in their full form. HYDRA was seventy years in the dust heap of history, so how they'd suborned SHIELD was a mystery, although considering Cap was running around seventy years after he died, too, Clint maybe should be less shocked. That Natasha was bypassing her first two alternate communication options was a testament to how badly she thought they were fucked and that he took very seriously. But the capture-or-kill notice was the hard part. He believed her, absolutely, but he was already in a fucking war zone where everyone was already willing to either kill him or sell him to someone who did and the realization that he had to either find safety here or crawl out of this cesspit and hope he had an ally left in the world, well, that was a tall order for a man who'd been running on empty for the last few days.
Staying in Syria wasn't his first choice, but his closest allies in the region were also the most likely to go along with a request coming out of DC that didn't involve their domestic affairs.
He dialed a number he knew from memory.
"Hey, Ofir," he began when the connection was made. He spoke in Arabic so as not to draw attention should anyone be close enough to overhear. "So it seems my agency's put out a burn notice on me. If I turn up in Tel Aviv, what are the odds your people are going to hogtie me and throw me on the first El-Al flight to DC?"
A bitter laugh was his answer. "Low. Fury's dead and SHIELD just tried to use a Hellfire to assassinate Captain America right outside the Triskelion. Nobody knows what the fuck is going on with your people, but the assumption is that you are not the problem."
Clint laughed, but more because he didn't know what other kind of reaction to have. He understood the words, but they made no sense. "Fury's dead?" he asked, although that was the least preposterous part of what he'd heard. Fury had a million enemies and faced at least two assassination attempts a month; statistically, they were going to get him at some point. That SHIELD would launch a jet to try to blow up Cap on the Beltway was too insane to even imagine, however.
"You're clearly under a rock," Ofir replied, not meaning it as a value judgment. The two of them had spent weeks under rocks together over the years. "Come out from under it and I'll tell you the whole story over arak and schnitzel. Don't use your papers, whatever they are. You remember that shitty dive in Akko? Get yourself there and I'll find you."
It took three days to get to Acre because he had to sneak across a border heavily watched by multiple parties and then make his way through the insanity that was Israel's road system. The latter was more dangerous. He got to the bar, left a message and a healthy tip for the bartender, and spent the day moving from café to café with copies of, in turn Haaretz, Israel HaYom, the J-Post, and Maariv, each with the same stories that might as well have been in a funnybook for all that they had pictures of Helicarriers falling out of the sky and the Triskelion reduced to rubble and stories of data uploads that laid bare a global infection no antibiotic could cure. Ofir was waiting at a table in the rear of the bar when he returned and, over arak and shawarma and pickles and fries, Clint got the story of what had gone on the last few days. It made no sense hearing it from someone he trusted, either.
"You realize this sounds like bullshit, right?" he asked, spearing a pickled radish that had escaped his pita. "I mean, this all sounds like a Michael Bay movie and I'm speaking as someone who has been up close with both demi-gods and aliens."
Ofir, mouth full, rolled his eyes. "It looked like a Michael Bay movie on television," he assured once he'd swallowed. "But your friend just made Snowden an afterthought and we've had every agency all-hands for all-hours trying to make sense of what she uploaded. Starting with Alexander Pierce being the new Johann Schmidt and it only gets worse from there."
Clint took a moment to appreciate how insane Israel's intelligence and security communities must be with the proof of the return and immense power of HYDRA, the effective takeover of SHIELD and the US Government and God knew what else by an organization that had been the Nazis's most competent element.
"You guys are fireproof?" Clint asked, since it would be foolish to assume that HYDRA's reach stopped at the US's borders. Especially with the ties between DC and Jerusalem.
"Fuck no, we're not fireproof," Ofir spat. "We're one step away from a panic. So is everyone else. There isn't a security service in the world right now that's not freaking out. And that's just worrying about secrets. Your entire Direct Action service got suborned, the guys with the best training and the biggest guns. You think anyone else isn't afraid that their own might be about to go rabid and shoot up the place in the name of a new world order?"
The meal ended with Ofir handing him a large wad of shekels and euros in small bills. "Because we're not fireproof, I can't guarantee your safety if our people know where you are," he warned. "But you're safer here than anywhere else because the odds of us being infested with neo-Nazis is probably lower than anywhere else right now. Get yourself some new papers and go be a tourist or a kibbutznik or something until this blows over. If someone finds you, we won't let them take you from us."
Clint took the promise of limited protection - the best that could be offered under the circumstances - along with the cash as gestures of friendship. He and Ofir hugged and went their separate ways with promises to keep in touch and fuller stories once they were available - with the understanding that it would be Clint's turn to tell stories once he heard what was really going on. He spent the night in Akko and went up to Nahariya in the morning to buy false papers; it would be easier there and also harder to trace if Shabak didn't know where he'd started his disappearing act. From there, it was a couple of buses and a hitchhiked ride to the middle of nowhere, where he played the Quebecois tourist (his French accent was terrible, despite his fluency, so he could sound Canadian) and took stupid pictures on his phone and paid too much for everything like a tourist would. He moved around at a brisk but leisurely pace, sleeping in and eating well if not lingering, killing time until he could check in with Natasha to see if it was safe to poke his head up yet. He looked at the newspapers and bought time at internet cafés en route, so he knew that Steve was alive, if not necessarily in one piece.
"It's bad," Natasha said when they got in touch. "There's more that isn't public domain yet and it's... it's bad. Come to New York; Stark will put you up."
He made his way to Amman and bought a ticket to Montreal, which was more complicated than it should have been because he never remembered that Dorval wasn't Dorval anymore. He texted Ofir to tell him he'd left Israel from the bus between Montreal and Boston; from Boston he took Acela down to New York and walked up to Stark's place from Penn Station.
"Grab some popcorn, pull up a seat, and watch the show," Tony greeted him from the couch as a half-dozen solid light screens danced and slid through the air. Some had words, some had pictures, and none of them made a damned bit of sense. "For our main feature, we've got the future of the American republic - it's a real cliffhanger. Instead of the cartoon warm-up, we've got a sci-fi special that will blow your mind: your childhood hero turned zombie assassin! But first, shower. I can smell you from here."
Clint flipped Tony the bird, which he didn't see, and followed JARVIS's directions to the linen closet and the shower because Tony wasn't wrong.
Being clean and then fed fancy food (and popcorn) didn't make up for the fact that Natasha had not been underselling just how bad things actually were.
3) Sam Wilson's introduction into the Freezer Burn universe
"Does he need a hospital or can we get by with a first aid kit and a toolbox?" Clint asked as he drove. "If we need to steal supplies from somewhere, this is the place."
Annandale had plenty of storefront clinics and medical practices and didn’t have the kind of complicated security that went with high-crime neighborhoods.
"He might need blood," Steve said from the backseat, where he was cradling Bucky halfway in his lap. "It’s hard to tell."
Because Bucky was covered in blood, he didn’t need to say, and how much of it was his and how much he’d left behind in the factory they’d helped him escape from wasn’t clear.
"Don’t," Bucky piped up weakly, his voice slurring on even that.
Clint stopped at the stop sign, like any law-abiding driver. Making a getaway in a regular civilian vehicle through a residential neighborhood wasn’t hard, but it required patience and nerves because you had to keep to the speed limit, obey the signs, and look like any other car on the road because ‘hiding in plain sight’ was the only option. They didn’t have enough ammo to survive a gunfight and the CRV wasn’t exactly up-armored.
"Don’t what?" Steve asked sharply and Clint could hear the frustration and the fear as he accelerated slowly through the intersection. Steve was pissed at Bucky for running off half-cocked and justifiably rattled at the condition they’d found him in.
"Don’t need blood," Bucky said, the words coming out more clearly this time. "Not mine. Mostly."
"I’ll believe it when I see it," Steve retorted.
They’d gotten Bucky free partially because the man had been halfway to liberating himself - keeping the Winter Soldier prisoner was a lot harder when he was conscious - and mostly because Corrales knew all of Rumslow’s moves.
"Brock’s fierce, man," Corrales had said during the planning. "But he’s predictable. Always runs the same few plays. It usually doesn’t matter because he’s so ferocious and the people he’s up against don’t get a second chance. But if you knew his moves, he was pretty easy to take down in training exercises."
This hadn’t been a training exercise; it had been a straight-up battle and Clint was grateful that they’d survived intact. It hadn’t been any kind of victory, just a preservation of the status quo ante, which under the circumstances should probably have been granted honorary victory status, but he was still too amped up to be gracious like that.
"If he’s not gonna croak between here and the District, I know a guy we can go to," Clint said as he signaled his right turn. "Good guy and he owes me one."
Bucky made a noise of disagreement - or maybe pain - but Steve drowned him out. “This is a bigger favor than borrowing bootlaces.”
There were capture-or-kill orders out on both Clint and Bucky and he had no doubt that there’d be a BOLO out with a picture of what Steve looked like with the image inducer - if there wasn’t one already. The hunt for them would be delicate - they were men of the shadows and their enemies wanted them to stay in the shadows - but that didn’t mean that the people chasing them didn’t know how to hunt in the dark.
"He owes me for more than bootlaces," Clint said, but he also knew what Steve wasn’t saying. "He’s a good man. He’s not caught up in this. We can trust him."
It was twenty minutes later when Clint pulled in and parallel parked on a quiet residential street. “Stay here,” Clint told the senior citizens in the back seat. “I’ll be back in five.”
He waited for Steve to check the Sig Sauer he was holding - Bucky’s weapon - before closing the door and setting the alarm like anyone else would. He walked the two blocks to Sam’s place in an indirect route to allow him to check for tails - and any early risers - before returning to the car and helping Steve get Bucky out of the backseat. Bucky was clearly favoring his prosthetic arm, which was either good news or not - they knew fuck-all about fixing it if were broken, but at least it could be taken off, unlike any other limb that might be damaged.
Clint held his own pistol cocked and ready as he led them back to Sam’s place. The moon was hidden by clouds, but there was a streetlight and Steve stood with Bucky under a tree to hide in its shadow as Clint went up to the front door and rang the bell twice.
Considering that it was four in the morning and Sam hadn’t seen Clint in eight years, Sam was relatively unsurprised to see him.
"I need to call in my marker," Clint said with a shrug. "Me and a couple of friends are in the shit and I need a guy with a toolbox and a first-aid kit."
Sam scratched his belly and sighed as he held open the screen door. “Lemme go put on some pants.”
Also posted at DW.