Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jason bolts awake, a hand coming to his throat.

Bruce - Joker - a batarang - explosion -

“Peace, Jason Todd,” a low, soft female voice calls out into the empty nothingness he’s only now just starting to see. The familiarity of it stops him mid-panic.

He takes one breath, holds it, and releases it as he traces the new scar wrapping around his throat. He takes another, closing his eyes against the black, and gravels out with a weak, bitter chuckle, “The Bats kill me?”

Talking hurt, he discovers. He doesn’t remember death hurting last time, not once he was here.

“No.”

His eyes flash open, staring at the small, snow-white woman in front of him who he remembers with... perfect clarity. Perfect clarity, now. Death. Her hair is a frizzy black; her clothes the exact same down to the black grommet belt, tank, and jeans. She still has a black spiral underneath her right eye and a silver ankh necklace.

“Then what the fuck am I doing here?”

She purses her lips. “He injured you seriously enough that I could talk to you--”

He snorts, “So he almost killed me. Over the goddamn Joker“.

“Jason.” She looks down at him from where he is still sitting on nothingness, sighs, and sits cross legged across from him. It was startling enough to shut him up. “I have a story to tell you. Are you going to interrupt?”

He shrugs, clenching and unclenching his fists. “I make no promises.”

She looks resigned as if she knew she couldn’t get anything better from him. “Very well.” She shifts where she’s sitting, looking at him with intense, deep black eyes. “Destiny. My brother writes, and creates, and destroys. We can not exist without him, yet he can not exist without us. Checks and balances, you could say.

“He creates not a set order of events, but things one is going to live through, or perhaps those near them. Some people are just plot devices, used to further on the world with little consequence. Some further endlessness by leaps and bounds, rising actions, climaxes, endings… But, Death is everything’s destiny, in the end.” Her eyes sharpen, and Jason knows to pay absolute attention to her next words.

“You, Jason Todd, are a plot hole in your universe. You lived your death before you checked the other boxes Destiny wrote for you. My bringing you back rectified that, but now… Each box has been marked. You played your part in other’s stories-”

“So, what,” he interrupts aggressively, “now that I’ve played the puppet you’re just going to cut my strings with my semi-fatal Batman-inflicted wound?”

“No.” She smiles softly. Goddamn, is she patient. “You are unmoored, Jason Todd. And my brother is a crappy writer. In another universe, different plots are crashing and I do not like the road that they are on. The climax I see is not written, yet will happen without interference.” Her voice drops, eyes and lips twitching downwards, “I rather like watching humanity, Jason. Do not let me take half of a universe in a blink.”

“Wha-what?” Jason shoots to his feet, “What the fuck do you mean, take half of humanity?”

She looks up at him. “You are unmoored. Your future is not writ, save the death that is obscured at the end of your road.”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” Jason wants to pace, but the non-ground was like walking on something unbalanced and after a step or two he decides to not push it.

“You can interfere. This event is not Destiny. It can be prevented.”

“You want me to go to another universe to stop half of all life in their universe from dying?” He asks, voice pitched. “What- what about Gotham, and-”

Death stands, hands cupping his face. “Jason. It is your choice. Every choice is exactly yours to do with as you please. Nothing’s set for you.”

“Except my death.”

“Death is inevitable. But the how, where, when has already been filled once for you and now is up to the spinnings of life.” She steps back. “The choice is yours.”

“How do you know this disaster isn’t inevitable? How do you know it’s even going to happen? The Flashes mess up the timeline enough as it is to know that it’s never that easy. How do you know that my going there won’t just make it worse?”

“I… I am not Destiny. But I feel the deaths of the multiverse. This… is like a ripple, it’s so big,” her voice grows with each word, “I do not know if your intervention will make it better or worse, but I can sense. Your intervention would do something big enough that I can feel the potential ripples already.”

That’s a non-answer. Potential ripples means that the universe already knows what he’s decided. Potential ripples don’t mean anything good. They don’t mean anything bad, either. It just means he changes something.

The choice is yours.

It’s not a choice, not really. He doesn’t exactly care about these strangers in a whole ‘nother universe, but there could be innocents, children, dead in one, giant blow. If he could prevent it and he doesn’t, then that’s on him, isn’t it? It’s hardly a question. He couldn’t not help.

Gotham has the Bat. The Replacement’s smart, he won’t let Jason’s power vacuum eat Gotham right back up to how things were. Gotham will go on without him, he bitterly muses.

“The choice is mine,” he scoffs, “You're almost as manipulative as the Bat, Death.”

She smiles at him, warm, genuine, relieved. He wants to hate her, but the After is never what scared him. It is... the possibility of coming back, again and again, to a world where everyone has forgotten him. He muses if that’s still possible, now that his death isn’t set. Then he drops that thread, wary of where it’ll lead his thoughts.

“Well, let’s get this show on the road. Anything I should know besides that this universe is fucked?”

She teeters her hand back and forth. “You’ll have a few years. Soon, a team will come together that will have the best chance of stopping this. Do not forget that it is not just a Terran conflict.”

“Right. Aliens and an off-brand Justice League, got it,” he tilts his head, mind already spinning through different scenarios. He doesn’t have near enough information. “How many years?”

“Unclear-” he takes a breath to declare just how not useful that is “-but the average is about a decade.”

He releases his breath, staring into the nothingness over Death’s shoulder. A decade. He can work with a decade. In a decade, he’d have been with this new universe for roughly a third of his life. He takes in and releases another deep breath. He closes his eyes and breathes again.

He opens his eyes, shaking out his hands. “Okay. Alright,” He refocuses on Death, “Okay. What kills everyone?”

Death tilts her head to the side. “...They are called the Infinity Stones. Much like the Endless, they provide and control the constants in the universe. Unlike the Endless, they were created. They are… tools. There are six: Reality, Soul, Mind, Time, Space, and Power. A being has plans to use them to wipe away half the universe. They are scattered, right now, across the galaxy. They will not stay that way,” Her eyes meet his, “Find them before your enemy, Jason.”

“Right. Six little pebbles are gonna destroy half the universe. Got it.” He clears his throat, tracing his new scar. Talking hurt. He presses his lips together, “Anything else?”

“I have a gift for you,” She stands, eyes tracing his face, his body. They flicker back up to his eyes, some unintelligible emotion in them. For a second, he wonders why she cares-- about any of it, about all of it. He supposes it doesn’t matter, not truely.

She holds out her hand and out of nothing comes… more nothing. It looks exactly like the darkness around them, black and empty, but it has… shape. It looks like an ankh.

“...Okay,” he glances from the depthless Ankh to Death’s face. She looks amused at his reaction. “What is it?”

“It is… energy and potential, for lack of a name and something more comparable. It is anything you want or need it to be. It is powered by the soul. Currently, it is powered by mine.”

He snaps his fingers, “Like the All-Blades?”

“Energy-source wise, yes. This can, however, be used on anything and take whatever form you wish. The bigger or more finer detailed, the more soul energy it takes. Regardless, it should take hours before you come to any serious harm.”

She demonstrates, the Ankh seamless flowing from it’s current shape to that of a small knife. She presses the hilt into his hand for him to take. He shivers, a bone-deep twang reverberating through his body. Sneaky, it’s his whether he wants it or not now. He peers closer and realizes that the ankh symbol is still embedded on the handle.

“What if I lose it? Like, what if I turn it into a throwing knife and use it that way?”

“It shall return to you, be it active or passive state-- depending on what you need or are thinking, after it serves whatever function you let go of it to do.”

He nods, “Sounds useful. And what about when I’m not using it?” he asks, rolling the knife between his fingers. He thinks for a second, willing the blade to dagger-size. It transforms in suit, albeit slowly. He needs to practice. “And how do I know when I’m low on juice before I get fatigued?”

“When you’re not using it, it shall enter it’s passive state.”

“Passive state?”

“It will look like a tattoo of an ankh,” she nods at his arm, “Go on, try to figure it out.”

He looks at the dark dagger in his right hand, focusing on turning it into something like what she said. Passive, he thinks. It… melts, again for lack of a better term, a cool, barrierless solid that travels up his arm and sinks beneath his skin.

Goosebumps break out over his body. “That felt… odd,” he pauses, trying not to sound like he’s complaining, “D, can it be any smaller?” The Ankh tattoo is the length of his forearm.

“No,” her voice is lilting, “Again, passive state, it’s most basic form. There are other uses, of course, besides it being a weapon, but I shall leave that up to you to discover.”

“Alright. Sounds… fun. Now, how do I know how much I’ve used of myself to power it?”

She reaches up and tugs on the white streak in his hair. “The bigger this patch gets, the more of your soul you’ve used. In it’s passive state, the Ankh won’t take any energy from you and you shall naturally replenish your own.”

He blinks and the ramification of what she said. “I don’t have part of my soul?”

Death frowns, “...That is not what I wanted you to take away from that. But, no, some of you… remained behind when I reincarnated you.”

His hands shake. Deep breaths, he’s been doing good so far.

When he gets it together again, he croaks, “Thanks for the gift. Time to go?” Please, please be it time for him to go. He doesn’t want any more surprises.

She nods, “Time to go. Don’t join me anytime soon.” She presses her hands to his temples.

He flashes a jagged smile, “I have no plans to.”

“Goodbye, Jason.”

He looks at her, the one constant in his life. He thinks it should be sad, that it’s Death. “Goodbye, D.”

White, blinding in the empty black, flashes and he snaps his eyes closed against the onslaught.

Then he proceeds to not see anything at all.

Chapter Text

Jason aches. Wherever he is and whatever happened, he has not felt this shitty in a long, long time.

He struggles to get his eyes open, glued together like cement. It happens slowly, and with more than a little frustration. He’s in an alley. A cold, dingy wet alleyway with garbage cans and with utterly nothing he recognizes.

Step two, then: he needs to catalog his injuries. He just generally aches, deep to his bones, but it is his throat that feels like it is on fire.

He sits up, curses vehemently at the dizziness and nausea, collapses back down, and just viscerally, viscerally curses all that his life is. He curses Bruce, the Joker, and Death.

He breathes deep, head on concrete and eyes tracing the rooftops. He has to get up. He has to get up, away from whatever disturbance in the fabric between universes brought him here- because there was no doubt in his mind that there was one- and has to catalog anything and everything he can about this universe.

This time, he sits up slowly. It’s still bad, he still wants to turn his insides out, but it’s manageable. From his sitting position, he gradually shifts to his knees, then he stands with help of a brick wall. He pulls the sleeve of his right arm up. The Ankh is there, the black a little too dark to be natural. He releases his sleeve; he’ll deal with it later.

His eyes flicker to the mouth of the alley, where people go back and forth along a busy city street. He hears snippets of English in a familiar accent he could probably place when he was a little less out of it. Well, he gathers he’s at least he’s in America.

He slowly makes his way towards the open sidewalk, gradually easing himself off of leaning on the wall. His gait is unsteady, but at worst people will think he’s drunk. That is, if anyone even notices; city folk mind their own business.

It’s then, he realizes, that for the most part, he’s in his Red Hood gear. He’s lacking only his helmet. He sighs and leans against the wall as he stuffs the guns typically strapped to his thighs in pockets on the inside of his leather jacket. He puts another in the waistband of his pants, angling it just so that the outline is unrecognizable. He pulls off his mask, the skin determined to stay attached. He puts that in the interior of his jacket too, then zips it up. He ruffles his hair for good measure.

There’s not much he can do for his holsters. It’ll also do little to distract from the ruined collar of his suit, nor the ugly red scar beneath it.

Thank the stars for whatever voodoo Death worked on him and his own healing factor.

He does, however, like cities for just this reason. No one will give Jason a second glance. (It's a lie to say this is why he likes cities, but it’s a lie he likes. It’s easier to say he likes cities for something so simple.)

He turns towards the street and slips into the crowds, just one among the masses.

-----

Jason sips his coffee, busy writing up defenses for his brand new laptop smack in the back of some local coffee shop. He had seen a Starbucks or two, an apparently multiversal chain, but passed them up for something smaller with less cameras. He had acquired both the coffee and computer with a cash stash that he always keeps on him, along with some generous donations from the one or two odd rich asshole or thug he pickpocketed on the street.

He takes another sip of black coffee and thinks he should have gotten tea.

He finishes his laptop a few minutes later, not satisfied, but for the kind of deep programming he wants to do he’d need a few hours, a steady stream of caffeine, and no headache (or any other distracting bodily hurts, for that matter. But knowing him and his lifestyle, that was unlikely to happen). He’d get the first two here except for the fact that the café closes in an hour.

He hums a little at the coffee, pulling up the search engine. He decided to start it simple, typing in ‘superheros.’

Overall, the general consensus is comic books, t.v., movies, and a WWII hero named Steve Rogers, Captain America. He laughs, which hurts, but he can’t keep the amusement off his face. Which, while he’s glad there are no kids in spandex running around, does not help him at all. He decides to bookmark the man for research later, though.

(Captain America, sheesh. He represses another snicker.)

He types in his name, the Bat’s, and that of everyone he knows. There are some overlapping names (how can there not be with over seven billion people on the planet?) but no one he knows. There is also, however, no Joker. He can get behind that.

There is also no Gotham, he finds out. There is no Metropolis, Central City, Star City, or any of the other dozen places vigilantes have made their homes. He learns he’s in New York. That’s good, he supposes. That’s something-- familiar.

There are no aliens visiting the planet- nor alien contact, period (that the average joe on the internet knows, anyway), which will make space travel and transmission harder.

There is next to nothing he is familiar with. It is… unsettling. It makes him antsy, so he turns to more buried websites for information.

This universe’s ARGUS is called the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division or SHIELD. He snorts, but he has his first lead.

He goes to type for more in depth research when a young male voice calls out, “Sir? We’re closing in five minutes.”

Jason looks up to the young curly haired barista staring at him. Jason’s the only customer left in the café.

“Right,” he answers. He finishes off his coffee, shuts his laptop, and tips the man a tad more generously than the usual coffee-goer. “‘Til tomorrow.”

He goes out onto the street, laptop tucked under his arm. For tonight, he needs to find a hotel. The one he finds has internet, minimal cameras, and looks exactly like the place where nobody asks questions (but does sell out whatever answers they find).

It’s comfortable, familiar, if shitty.

The next day he finishes protecting his laptop, feeling a lot less like he was just rolled over by a tank. He drops back by the hotel, leaving a baffled café staff behind with another generous tip, then heads out into the city to start scouting places for him to set up while he gets his feet under him and to familiarize himself with the city.

The rooftops are different from Gotham’s. The streets are too. Not because it’s a completely different city (that is a factor, though), but because there isn’t the same level of violence. New York is by no means violent-free, but it’s less… open. People are more discreet.

For tonight, though, it's not his problem. (But he does stop an attempted rape.)

He finds an abandoned apartment with rooftop access. By the state of things, it has not been occupied in a long time. It’ll do, he decides. At least until he finds something he can occupy semi-legally anyways. Right now, legally doesn’t even apply to him.

(It’s nothing new, unfortunately.)

He returns to the hotel, strips, and takes a shower. Under the thrumming of lukewarm water, he thinks. He needs plans. He needs plans for his plans.

The first thing he’ll do is move into the abandoned apartment. He’ll buy food and clothes after that, maybe pickpocket a rich asshole or some street thug too. If that doesn’t take the whole day (it shouldn’t, he only has what he got stuck here with and his shiny new laptop and charger,) he will hack SHIELD.

Woo.

He’ll need to find a different coffee place for it, he kinda likes the one he’s been going to (the barista’s cute, too, even if he’s never going to go for it) and doesn’t want to stop because some shady government organization is watching it with laser focus.

He’ll keep an eye on the news, but most of his long-term plans are hinged on what sensitive information SHIELD is hiding. After tomorrow he’ll decide how he wants to handle that.

He finishes scrubbing down and turns off the water. He steps out and pats himself dry with a towel so old he’s suspicious of putting it on his body. He does so anyways, then slips on his underwear and pants again. He looks over his worse-for-wear top, sighs, and gets out his emergency kit for repairs he keeps on himself and busies himself patching up the collar.

Talking to people the past two days has been… hard. He’s stuck to glares and choppy gestures for the hotel staff, but he put in some effort for the barista at the coffee place. He’s kept his food soft after trying to eat a slice of bacon.

That wasn’t fun.

His fingers twitch with the angry want of being able to speak without it hurting or damaging his injury and vocal cords furthur, of wishing people knew ASL. (He’s used it a lot, surprisingly. With all the crazy in Gotham, more than one street kid has gone deaf.)

He stabs the needle (the rather sharp needle, specifically made to go through the materials that made up his armour) a little harder than necessary as he sews the sides together.

The rest of his body has healed up mostly fine, though there are some lingering bruises. Pit regeneration coupled with whatever the hell Death did to him really ramped up the healing process. He wonders if the Pit’s regeneration would have been enough to close the wound at his throat without Death’s interference. He wonders if the Bat had left him to die with a lethal wound.

He stabs the collar too hard again, and finishes stitching the collar up in stormy silence.

Chapter Text

Jason’s at a different café after a night of little sleep.

Today he’s going to hack SHIELD.

He feels fluttery, like he’s about to ride an adrenaline high. His brain keeps ticking forwards, miles a minute, running though all his fallback code and the potential problems he could run into. It pulses through his limbs.

He’s excited, if he’s being honest with himself. He’s no Barbara Gordon, nor what the Replacement seems to be shaping out to be, but he is nowhere near bad. It does not bring him the same thrill fighting does, exactly; it’s a different kind of satisfaction. It’s proof that his intelligence is something that beats others too, not just brute violence.

He orders a tea (honey lemon) today with a flash of his fingers. He discovers, rudely and with some embarrassment, that speaking now only results in no more than a whisper and a painful tightness in his throat that threatens to make it permanent. So, tea. He can’t exactly go to a doctor.

He settles in a seat near the back of the café with good sightlines and easy maneuverability. There’s also no camera coverage. He plugs in a hard drive to the computer, knowing that the computer will be a lost cause when he’s done, despite his hours of programming. That, at best, will give him a half-hour to do with whatever he pleases as he moseys his way through SHIELD’s firewalls and code.

(Of course, a lot can be done in thirty minutes.)

He pulls up SHIELD's homepage, which he finds endlessly amusing, (they have a homepage with a login, basic info— everything) and bypasses the login with a backdoor hidden well enough that most wouldn’t find it, but not so well that it’s likely to access anything super important. That’s okay. He’ll get there eventually.

He cruises the first level access it gives him. For the most part it’s just grunt operative basic information. He bypasses the second, third, and fourth levels entirely, stopping as he gets to Level 5 security. Their code is beautiful, but off somehow. It’s like leaving for vacation and coming home with everything moved two inches to the left.

It’s not his problem. It is harder than hacking the Pentagon, though. ...He did do that when he was twelve, so perhaps the point is moot.

All told, everything he’s done so far couldn’t have taken more than five minutes.

Level 5 definitely is on bigger things. He skims, eyes lingering over various projects, but there’s nothing much. He worries about the ease at which he’s hacked in, off put by the thought that they’d deliberately left a trap for hackers to fall into. He’d hurry up, but that means he could get sloppy, which means they could find him that much easier.

It takes Jason another four minutes to get to Level 6. He’s not entirely sure he hasn’t been caught, but he’s worked around several levels of security that would’ve told any number of people about his presence in their network.

Now, Level 6 is interesting. He wonders what an 0-8-4 is when he comes across it, then clicks various links to learn it simply means ‘object of unknown origin.’

Which is a big deal for a spy organization, to not know where something is from. Upon further thought, he realizes he classifies as an 0-8-4 (to SHEILD, anyway.)

Jason learns about Hydra, the defunct Nazi group from WWII and mentally marks it for later. Groups like that don’t die out easily. And besides, it seems like a lot of their research is based off old Hydra research. It’s at the very least worth looking into.

He finds plans for various SHIELD bases, considers, and decides it’s better to have them than not.

He downloads them.

His eyes skim the screen, blue light peering back at him as he decides to look into people next.

Jason discovers Natasha Romanoff, codename Black Widow, former(ish) assassin, who’s information is almost all redacted. He makes another mental sticky note about the organization she came from, too (one of the only things not redacted, which, odd).

It’s scanning Romanoff’s profile and attempting to follow links to Agents Coulson and Barton, together composing STRIKE Team: Delta, that he finally gets caught and the system starts to try and kick him out.

He smirks at the challenge, shifting in his seat, fingers flying across the keyboard. Whoever designed this, they’re good. He almost gets tracked to his location, backpedals (insomuch as you can in code), then hops from Level 5 to Level 7. He routes his pursuer (by now someone manually starting to try and kick him off) through a loop of code, figures he has less than five minutes until he gets kicked permanently, and less than seven before SHIELD arrives at his location.

He laughs a little, breathlessly and silent. His brain is swimming with trying to keep up with streams of code and he vaguely wonders what he looks like in his little corner of the coffee shop.

His fingers keep clacking away at the keys.

Jason reads on Clint Barton, too, finally, codename Hawkeye, (as much as he can, almost all information on him is redacted too), a candidate for something called the Avengers Initiative. Barton’s one of SHIELD’s best, right besides Romanoff, and a few one or two others whose files he briefly skimmed. He tries to access Coulson’s file, a common link between most of them, but the clearance for his file is too high for him to hack here and in this time frame.

The Avengers Initiative, though, is when he hits gold. From the bare details in the project’s brief mention, this looks to be Justice League in-the-making. Romanoff seems to be a candidate, right besides Coulson and Barton. He doesn’t get any more information than the cliff notes, though. All the interesting stuff is high clearance. It flashes a big, red Level 10 at him.

This universe’s policy on murder does seem to be much more realistic than his if they are letting assassins on superhero teams.

SHIELD-- the Avengers, these are people he needs to keep his eye on. And not piss off. He grimaces. Hacking into their place of employment doesn’t seem like a good start. But he needs them if he wants to succeed, if this is the group-to-be that Death said he’d need.

Before he cashes out of the system, Jason looks into any oddities from two days ago. His arrival was hard to miss, honestly. According to these reports energy flared so strongly in the area that some electronics were disabled. (Only the size of it was what kept blocks from having a power outage, he realizes.) There are no reports on what could have caused it, and all cameras in the area had shorted out so there was no footage of him. There are SHEILD agents trying to investigate further.

They won’t get anywhere.

He makes sure everything he looked into, made mental sticky notes of, and even remotely though was interesting was downloaded onto the hard drive. It was.

His internal alarm sends off bells that he needs to move it. He gets booted from the system at the same time, the screen blinking up at him faux-innocently.

His adrenaline spikes. It would do him no good to be caught now.

Jason has the bones of information, though. He’d have to be on internal computers to get more.

Hmm, now there’s an idea.

Jason removes his harddrive, snaps his computer closed, grabs his empty tea cup, and dumps the computer and tea in the trash as he leaves the coffee house. He sees a college student eyeing the can and mentally wishes them luck.

He ducks outside, cold biting his face and hands, harsh white light permeating the space, and the sounds of the city rising in contrast to the muted space of the coffee shop. He keeps his head tilted down and hair in his face as he darts out. He slips the harddrive in an interior pocket in his jacket. He went without his obvious armour today, sans jacket and pants, instead wearing scratchy clothes he had bought at a thrift store this morning. He’d figure it would only make him stand out when that’s exactly what he doesn’t want to do.

Jason spots three suits heading this way who are so clearly SHIELD he feels offended on behalf of the spy organization. On the behalf of spies everywhere. They do spot him stepping out of the café, so he figures they can’t be too poorly trained.

He turns his body, launching down the street. He hears feet pick up behind him as he shoves people out of the way. Shouts follow him, and he doesn’t bother apologizing. (He can’t, anyway, he thinks with a bitter twinge on his tongue.) He skids around a corner, shrugs off his jacket, and enters the first shop he sees, the bell chiming as he enters.

It’s a candle shop, tells the various smells immediately assaulting his senses. Jason instantly relaxes his posture, runs a hand through his hair to change it’s style, and drops his hand with the jacket below sight lines and behind shelves.

To outside observers, you wouldn’t be able to tell he’s the same man. This, Jason thinks, is what makes him good at what he does. He wears different personas nearly as easily as he does clothing. They’re his armour just as much as his high-grade Kevlar as.

He picks up a candle and sniffs it. Right now, he’s an innocent consumer in a shop with too many smells. This one smells faintly of vanilla.

The bells tings and he counts three pairs of footsteps entering the shop, not even pretending to look around. The woman at the register lets out an indignant noise at their blatant rudeness. Jason doesn’t look up as he sets the candle back down and moves on to another one. He gets a face full of cinnamon rolls as he listens to the patter of feet searching the shop. Black suits dot his peripheral vision. One in particular brushes right by him as he sticks his nose further in the candle. They stop just to the left of him, Jason’s careful not to tense, mentally cursing his distinctive hair, and they move on.

He would let out a breath if that wouldn’t be a dead giveaway.

After one short minute, the bell rings as they empty out again. His smirk and glittering eyes are hidden by the white birthday cake candle he’s hiding behind.

Idiots.

The lady manning the register huffs in exasperation after they leave, “People these days,” she mutters.

People these days.

Jason sticks around the candle shop a little bit longer, just to be sure they’re gone, smelling various candles, and smiles politely at the lady behind the register as he leaves without buying anything. He leaves the shop with his thumbs in his belt loops, jacket back on. He hates the cold. It stings his eyes anyway as he walks down the street opposite of the agents who have long since past him.

SHIELD, he thinks. Nice to meet you.

Chapter Text

Jason needs to buy a new computer. He can’t actually access any of the information he obtained without one. But he doesn’t want to risk any hidden bugs on the data hijacking a brand new computer, so he sits and thinks it through. Where could he access a computer without buying it? Better yet, where others could access it too?

A library, he thinks.

He abruptly realizes he can’t look up where to find one.

He sighs, glancing up at dreary, overcast sky, fingers freezing in his pockets, and wonders what his life has come to when he can’t even think through getting the right amount of technology the first go.

He hasn’t bought a phone yet, and doesn’t want to be caught at the same place he bought his first computer, so he kind of just… roams the streets for a tech store.

It starts to snow, flakes drifting into his hair and melting on his face.

He is not warm enough for this shit.

So instead of finding a tech store, a place that will inevitably end up just as cold as the outdoors, he turns the corner and crosses the street with a crowd of people instead of just going on his merry way. He walks two blocks before he comes across another thrift store, this one slightly larger than the one he went to the day before.

As he is scavenging the shelves for a damn scarf (having already found a beanie), he passes by a rack of suits. He stops, eyeing the scarf stand, sighs, and turns around.

He hasn’t looked at the blueprints for the nearby SHIELD facilities yet (seeing as he needs to purchase more equipment), but he knows this isn’t the kind of job where you can brute force your way in.

So: disguise. He needs a suit. The problem with that, he thinks, is that he isn’t exactly average sized. He needs a fitting, but not big, suit. And he’s at a thrift store.

He looks through the racks anyways. He’s done worse with less. He eventually settles on a black suit whose jacket is too wide in the hip and whose pants are too tight in the thigh, but he figures that an average class SHIELD citizen wouldn’t have an exact suit. He makes sure to get a button-up shirt too, but eventually decides against formal shoes.

He finally gets his damn scarf before he leaves, though.

-----

It takes him an hour to find another tech store, deal with customer service, get a new laptop and phone, and leave.

On the retreat back to the coffee shop (because wifi), he stops by a drug store for black hair dye. It got all magicked away when Death spoke to him and portaled him here and the white strip isn’t exactly discreet (or wanted).

He enters the café, nodding at the barista, the same one as the first two days. He takes the same seat, too.

He boots up the laptop and sighs. He should probably encrypt and put up firewalls for, well-- everything. At the very least location and his IP address, anyways.

He gets to it, sipping at his tea intermediately. A couple of hours later, and Jason’s just about done looking at code. The café has been a rotation of people, their chatter and the City that Never Sleeps a muted backdrop to his programming.

Time to look at his bounty.

-----

Rooftops at daytime.

The notion was odd on his shoulders, and at first he thought it was because he was so used to rooftops at nighttime, but then he realized it was because the SHIELD building was taller than most of the ones around it. And it was Times Square. There are more cameras, phones, and blinking lights in that little corner of New York alone than crazies in Gotham. He’d be a fish in a barrel.

So instead of hopping roof to roof, he broke into a building across the street from the bottom and worked his way up three stories. He’s already spent a day observing the patterns of the facility’s lobby and planning, but every other window in the whole goddamn building is one-way. He can’t see inside besides the one point.

Now he’s here, watching again in his new-not-new suit, whose collar ends up covering the low scar on his throat. In fifteen minutes he’s going to sneak out of the building the same way he broke in, walk a block away, circle back, and enter the SHIELD facility as if he belongs there.

In Times Square. In daytime.

How very different than waiting on rooftops across from some abandoned warehouse just to viciously announce his presence to the latest ring of thugs he’s taking down.

Jason is not going in empty-handed. He has a chest holster for his gun like apparently all the spooks do, plus knives hidden under his clothes. And his Ankh, but frankly, he hasn’t worked with it enough-- at all-- for it not to be a possible liability. He stuffs a pair of gloves in a jacket pocket.

The trick is not accidentally killing someone before his instincts do. ...Should he get into a fight.

He does not want to be on SHIELD’s kill on sight list. In fact, the plan is to not engage anyone at all.

(But it certainly doesn’t hurt to be prepared.)

Fifteen minutes later, he’s walking out of the building in a little alleyway, slipping sunglasses on his face. Merging into the crowd is easier than putting on socks in the morning.

He runs over the plan in his head. SHIELD is good. Really, really good. Jason downloaded the building plans and security systems off the harddrive, but he’s sure that there is stuff left out. (He left the rest of the information to look through later, after he gets whatever he can from the SHIELD facility.) As it is, the second their software recognizes that his face isn’t supposed to be there, the place will go on alert and his timer to get out will start. So, he needs to delay that timer as long as possible.

He’ll walk in, lift a keycard off some poor sap, and get past the access doors inside the building. He’ll take the stairs to the second level, enter the elevator, and take that to the twenty-first level. His key card should have access as long as he’s not foolish enough to take it from some Level 1 mook. If they have retinal scans then he’ll… improvise. From there, he’ll take the hallway to his immediate left, take the second hallway on the right, and then it’s the second to last door to the left where he’ll find the server room. He’ll plug in his hard drive, get to hacking, and borrow (steal) as much information as possible about anything and everything that could be useful to him, all without making a true enemy of SHIELD.

Easy peasy.

He probably just jinxed it.

Billboards flash goodbye at him as he walks in the SHIELD facility and out from the city street, head tilted away from the cameras. The space is clean and modern, all monotones with a glass eagle of the SHIELD logo in the foyer. The windows aren’t one-way from this side, Jason can immediately tell, and a mix of sunlight and bright colors stream through them. Agents go this way and that, nearly identical in their suits.

He turns his head, as if his attention is caught by something, and bumps into a suit that looks enough like him at a glance.

Jason lips quirk sheepishly while he stabilizes himself against them, mouthing, “Sorry.”

The SHIELD agent just shakes his head, eyes vaguely irritated, “No problem.”

They go their separate ways. Jason looks down at the card in his hand: John Peterson, Level 5. It’ll do. He was hoping for Level 6, but. It’ll do.

He flashes the card across the access scanner and it beeps green. He goes through the gate, nodding at the two agents behind the desk whose eyebrows are raised at the scans the metal detector brought up, and heads up the stairs.

So far, so good.

He uses the card again to enter the elevator, and again to access the twenty first floor. (“John Peterson: recognized.”) He’s almost surprised it let him up. (Even more surprised that there was no retinal scanner.)

It brings him to the twenty first floor without any trouble, the elevator ride silent for lack of elevator music. The doors slide open and Jason starts off down the hallway to his left.

For the most part, the SHIELD building seems like any other office, albeit with the occasional suit carrying a gun. But there are techs, scientists, and everyone in between too. The field agents stand out in their synchronizing suits amongst the professional, yet unique clothing the non-field agents wear. Something seems to be going on, an unusual spike of rushing and raised voices in the hall and between rooms.

No one spares Jason a second glance.

He passes the busy offices, turning once he reaches the second hallway on his right. It’s a series of more offices and he finally nears the end of the hallway, discreetly glancing up and down the hall to look for wandering eyes, and he strolls into the server room like he belongs there.

The room is large, filled with server banks, and as he ghosts further in the room, a single computer in the center with a camera smack in front of it. Well. He knows he still isn’t likely to gain access to the most classified projects and information, but there is plenty that this computer can give him. And-- there’s a good thirty percent chance they have his face already. He’s careful, but he’s not perfect, and New York has a lot of cameras between streets, shops, and cellphones.

So he strolls right up to the computer, a black screen with a rotating silver SHIELD logo, and he smirks at the camera as he takes the seat in front of it. He calculates that it’ll be about three minutes until they realize he’s not supposed to be here, and absolutely no more than ninety seconds after that until they have agents in the room. He’ll be long gone by then.

Jason fishes his hard drive out of a pocket in his jacket and plugs it into a USB port on the side of the computer. The folder opens up and Jason pauses for a second, deciding where to start.

Aliens. Jason starts by searching SHIELD for proof of extraterrestrial contact. He wastes a precious thirty seconds on it, and all he gets is old mythology attached to something called the Tesseract. He uses another half minutes to download anything he can find on that; reading all the information will come later.

As his eyes skim it, however, there’s that term again-- Hydra. He decides it might as well be worth it to get more information on that, too. Twenty seconds later, Jason realizes he could probably spend hours searching information on the organization. He wastes three seconds to decide to use another twenty to download more relevant-- or classified-- information.

From what he gathers in his very, very brief skimming while downloading, Hydra, a breakaway group of Nazi origins, was nasty and technologically advanced. The two organizations’ history is all tangled together, so it’s no wonder that SHIELD gained such deep intel on the opposing group when it collapsed.

He lets out a breath and refocuses. With seventy seven seconds left until agents figure out he’s here, Jason decides to gather more intelligence on the Avengers Initiative and it’s candidates.

Which is, apparently, too high a classification for even this computer. Sixty seven seconds, his brain helpfully supplies while he tries to decide if he can hack in in time. No, his brain helpfully answers.

Okay-- known candidates: Romanoff, Barton, Coulson.

He starts with Coulson, who Jason recalls is connected to both the former agents. His eyes flicker over the man’s info, downloading it as he reads. Recruited before Jason was born, a brief incident in the ‘90s, and Director Fury’s right hand man.

Wait. Director Fury? Huh. Jason despairs at the choice of having to leave that information alone for now, and instead thinks of the ramifications of stealing intelligence on the man as Jason’s brain supplies thirty seconds.

Ah-- well. If it makes him a higher priority target, then so be it. He’s Batman and League of Assassins trained. Jason can disappear as if he never was if he needs to, and it's all the easier seeing how he doesn’t exist and all.

Twenty five seconds.

He definitely doesn’t have time to get extensive info on either of the remaining agents’ profiles. He skips past what he’s already put on the hard drive, and downloads quite literally anything he finds interesting on the agents.

He closes the folders and ejects the hard drive with three seconds left. He waves by at the camera, turns out the door, and smoothly slips himself back in the hallway right as a female voice announces over the intercom, “Intruder in the twenty first floor server room. Repeat. Intruder in the twenty first floor server room. Priority Level 5.”

Where agents were busy before, they are absolutely chaotic now. Exactly nobody realizes Jason doesn’t belong, and it takes barely any effort to lift another card off a similar-looking agent. (This one reads Jacob Marrow, Level 4. It’s a downgrade, but the first one he lifted is potentially compromised.)

He approaches the elevator, trying not to rush. He flashes his second stolen card, the elevator number telling him an elevator is on it’s way down. When the elevator door opens, a suit’s already there. Jason walks in, thinking it would be suspicious if he waited for the next one. They nod at each other and Jason can see that the elevator is already destined for the ground floor. It’s probably for the best that he doesn’t test his lifted identity with another agent in the same room.

“Busy day,” the man says, glancing at him. His dark blue-gray eyes appear disinterested, but-- there. A keen intelligence rests behind them, studying Jason like he’s looking for any and all of his secrets. It takes Jason approximately two and a half seconds to register that he literally just read this man’s files.

Agent Coulson.

Fuck.

Jason smiles lightly and nods in agreement (he’s noticed the unusual level of activity, but has absolutely no idea what it’s about, not to mention what he throws in the mix), his own seeking eyes hidden behind the sunglasses he’s still wearing.

“Where are you headed?”

Nosey. Jason opens his mouth. Closes it. He grimaces, signing, “Ground floor.”

Coulson makes a soft, “Oh.” Then, shocking Jason, (though he’d never show nor admit it), he turns further towards him, signing back, “Sorry. I can sign if you prefer?” His face is a bit impassive to gaining any intent behind the signs.

Jason shakes his head. It still takes him a second to translate it all in his head, and he can hear just fine.

(Unless it’s quiet. His ears ring when it’s silent and that makes it one of the easiest times to sneak up on him. Unless someone is just ridiculously loud. People who try to kill him tend to be silent on their feet, though.

Or it’s a noisy place and someone isn’t being loud enough or he’s not looking at them as they talk to him. Or… And now that he thinks about it, maybe he does have a little trouble hearing. He mentally shrugs it off; he’s doing just fine. As now proven, the Lazarus pit heals everything, it just doesn’t fix everything. It’s just what being bashed in the head and having a bomb go off in your ear will do to someone.

He decides to summarily ignore all these thoughts, filing them away for later. Way later, when he doesn’t have a million and one things going on.)

Jason pulls down the collar of his suit, showing his scar as explanation.

The man doesn’t even look phased. Jason wonders just how much shit he’s seen for that to be his reaction. “Nasty,” Coulson says, forgoing signs.

Jason nods again.

They continue the elevator ride. He wonders, briefly, why there’s no elevator music. It makes the ride so much more awkward.

“You know,” the agent starts, voice almost easy, and eyes completely guarded, “there was an intruder spotted on the floor you’re coming from.”

Jason moves his face somewhere between apologetic and irritated at the accusation (if he is playing the role of an agent, that is) and lifts his hands to sign, “Just got sent on a mission. Pretty time restrictive. I’m running late.” Jason kindly does not point out that Coulson is on the elevator with him (though not coming from the same floor.)

Coulson nods, smiles politely. “Of course.”

Come on, just seven floors to go.

Those seven floors, thank fuck, are spent remaining in stilted silence.

The elevator doors slide open with nothing more than a soft whir, and it takes a considerable amount of will for Jason to not bolt off the lift. Because of course it’s just his luck to be trapped in a metal box with the same man he just stole information on. Instead, Jason nods his head respectably goodbye as he steps out just ahead of Coulson.

He’s just turning his back on the man, when he hears him call out a polite, “Excuse me.”

Jason stops, briefly closes his eyes, and turns to the agent, an eyebrow raised in question.

“I didn’t catch your name.” Coulson’s eyes are patient, waiting almost. For what, though, is the question.

“J. M-A-R-R-O-W,” Jason spells out, then repeats with the sign for M and bone in an impromptu spur of thought that his persona would have probably been given a sign name.

Coulson holds out a hand, “Nice to meet you, Mr. Marrow.” Jason returns the grip easily. “I’m Agent Coulson.”

“Nice meeting you,” Jason replies with a gesture of his arms.

Coulson nods goodbye, eyes glinting and guarded; whatever curiosity that was in them was wiped smoothly away.

Jason finally turns, leaving the facility a little absently and yet way too grounded without incident, passing agents whose panic was hidden under poor masks. He somehow feels like he was the one who lost the meeting with the SHIELD agent that he’s all too likely going to meet again.

He lets out a breath, the harsh colors and noises of the city immediately assaulting his senses.

Lovely.

At least he got what he came for.

Just fucking lovely.

Chapter Text

Jason spends the next two days entirely dedicated to reading his lifted information in what he’s dubbed his favourite coffee shop.

By far, the Tesseract is the most interesting thing he’s read about.

It’s an energy source. It’s a weapon. And it is most definitely alien.

Of course, knowing that isn’t all that helpful.

SHIELD has tried to harness its energy, but has been by and far largely unsuccessful. A Project PEGASUS seemed to have almost achieved what they wanted, but the project was terminated after the deaths surrounding it. The whole file is irritatingly vague and redacted, even on the internal servers. The most successful attempts at weaponizing the Tesseract seem to be credited to Hydra, which is a little disappointing on SHIELD’s behalf.

If he wants any more alien information, he's going to have to continue syphoning information off SHIELD, he realizes. He sits with that for a minute, his future in this unknown universe looming ahead of him. He’s absolutely sure what he has only touches the tip of the iceberg. (It’s a pretty big iceberg, though.)

Jason finds the miniscule tracker halfway through the second day, which is a sad testament to his skills (but a credit to Coulson’s). But that leads to a whole another set of questions.

Primarily, why hadn’t they tried to apprehend him yet?

They’re tracking his movements, he realizes again. (His poor coffee shop, he thinks distantly.) Why?

He snorts. He infiltrated SHIELD successfully and got away, that’s why. There are several other answers to that particular question, but Jason focuses on the fact that they’re probably observing him. Maybe to see if he meets up with someone or to see if he does anything else particularly dangerous or illegal. So at the very least, he’s not public enemy number one. The do know where he is, though.

Alright, he thinks slowly. He can work with that.

He can work with that.

Jason stares at the screen of his computer, classified information pulled up and waiting for him. The Tesseract. The Avengers Initiative.

He runs through the information in his head. The Tesseract is alien. SHIELD would deal (or already does deal) with aliens. Jason somehow met Coulson, who could tell with enough suspicion that Jason didn’t belong, and had enough skill to hide a tracker on him. SHIELD knows where he is and has yet to act on that information.

How can he use that to his advantage?

SHIELD. When it comes down to it, Jason needs SHIELD. And it would be a lot easier to not have to hack or break his way in to gain information. It’d be a lot easier if he was there from the start.

So why not bring SHIELD to him?

This could be a terrible idea.

-----

He goes out the next two nights, does a little bit of old school vigilante-ing. The mask feels comforting, the routine of it settling over him like a balm he didn’t know he needed.

He generously doesn’t kill anyone. It wouldn’t do anyone any favors, though his trigger happy self itches to aim his guns. He might get a little aggressive, maybe, with the particular kind of people who hurt kids or women walking home, but then, who could blame him?

The third night, he gets a tail.

It’s a prickle on the back of his neck; the instinctive knowledge of knowing someone is watching or following creeps into his mind.

When he can, he tries to discreetly eye the rooftops behind him, but whoever is trailing him is a credit to their craft. He doesn’t spot them.

Jason’d be disappointed otherwise.

In the meantime, during the days, he goes over the rest of his pillaged information. He crafts a sort-of plan, but he’s lying to himself if he claims it’s anything but flimsy.

The other information remains largely unhelpful. (Increasingly interesting, but largely unhelpful. The files he grabbed on Barton and Romanoff contain nothing personal, a win and a loss, and instead include mission reports. Coulson’s get a little more specific, but again, nothing much in the way of learning how they operate.)

The night after arrives, and he has a tail again within the hour.

He crouches on the edge of some rooftop, an echo in his ear warning him of the dangers of doing so, and scans the alleyway below.

It’s dark, dank, utterly empty, and the cold stings his eyes, nose, and ears, while nipping at his gloved fingers.

Goddamned winter.

The sound of rebounded laughter and loud talk reaches his ears over the heavy night noises of the city and his attention is drawn away from the alley.

He traces the sounds in the air, ready to run across the roof to jump the alleyway.

The feminine laughter is abruptly cut off, followed shortly by a distant and leering, “Heya ladies. You lookin’ for a good time?” Catcalls and cruel laughter followed the declaration.

And that was Jason’s cue. He takes off from the rooftop, over the alley, and to the other side of the building. It’s a minor miracle that he could hear anything from even a building away.

He takes a cursory glance at the scene below. Two young women are against the cold, wet ground, terrified and sobbing, the brunette of the pair struggling from her hold. They couldn’t be any older than college students. Two assholes are on top of them, trapping their arms against them, and a third watches the entrance to the alley. As hands move to waists, Jason scowls and jumps.

He grapples the opposite rooftop and lands harshly, boots thunking against the pavement behind the criminals. If the sound of his boots didn’t alert them, the audible click of the safety disengaging on his gun did.

He doesn’t wait for that, though. He shoots Thug Three in the kneecap, then moves forward and rips Thug Two off the pixie-haired brunette woman over the added clamour. As he stumbles back, Jason punches him square in the face, then twists to grab Thug One.

Thug One stands before Jason makes it to him, pulling his own gun from the waistband of his pants, face twisted in an ugly snarl. His other arm has grasped the girl roughly around her bicep, and he shoves the gun in her sobbing face, blonde hair clinging to her tear-streaked face.

“Stop right there or the bitch dies!”

Jason stills, considers, then the gun in his hand is firing into the asshole’s face, the loud shot reverberating through the alley. The girl screams and drops, pale and shaking, the gun clattering to the concrete beside her. Blood coats the alley behind the dropped body and red paints the woman's face. He takes a moment to resent the added trauma he just unloaded on her, but then Thug Two is regaining his feet and the thought takes a backseat in his mind.

The guy’s eyes flicker to Thug Three, moaning in pain on the ground, to Thug One, a dead smear, and his face pales and he starts shaking, backing away. Jason points his gun at the bastard’s head, cocking his own head slightly.

He knows what he looks like: a predator, mean and violent and vicious, utterly unforgiving, a nearly untethered instrument of death. He won’t enjoy it, but he certainly will get a rush of vindication with a bullet in the asshole’s head.

“Wait-- wait! Look man, ‘wasn’t gonna do nothin’, I swear! I-- I--” he breaks off into broken sobs when Jason steps closer, pressing the gun into his head.

Pathetic coward.

Jason opens his mouth to retort, No? What the fuck were you going to do then?

The words die as his throat closes around them, pain lancing up and down his esophagus and he lets out a half-frustrated, half-angry puff of air through his nose.

Instead he looks to the fist girl, who’s pale, silent tears streaming down her face, eyes wide and watching Jason and the man in front of him. He tilts his head at her, jerking it towards him, a silent question, undoubtedly clear with one man an incapacitated, moaning mess and the other dead.

Her eyes flicker between them for a second, then to her friend whose sobs have broken off into near-silent hiccups. She stares at Jason, hard, hands wiping furiously and her stained cheeks. She looks at herself, then, and shudders, nodding her head and turning her face away, hands raising to cover her ears.

Jason turns back to the sobbing, pathetic mess in front of him. The guy, obviously having followed the silent discussion, beings frantically shaking his head, “Look, I’m sorry, I--”

A second gunshot echoes through the alley, whimpers escaping the girls’ at the abrupt noise. A second thud and blood splatter fills the cold concrete tunnel.

A stillness comes over the alley and Jason takes a moment, eyes closing briefly. They snap open a second later. He’s not done.

He places the gun in back in its holster, then moves slowly towards the second woman, crouching down in front of her. His hands are held out in front of him, nonthreatening, but her eyes look through him. She’s pale, breathing too fast, and shaking. He moves his hand towards her and at no signs of movement, pulls it back, takes his glove off, and checks her pulse. It’s light and fluttery, entirely too fast.

She’s probably going into shock.

Fuck.

He turns back to the other girl, who’s watching him warily, an unused phone now in her hand, studiously avoiding looking at the dead bodies. He waves her over, and her eyes flicker between him and her friend before she shifts and stands, padding over the few feet between them to kneel back down in front of the other woman.

“What’s wrong?” she asks hoarsely, her phone in a white-knuckle grip in her hand.

Jason doesn’t answer, instead raising his fingers nine digits then one twice, raising his hand to his ear. She nods, shaking fingers opening up the phone.

Jason taps the blonde lightly on the shoulder, then when he again gets no response, pushes her gently backwards, hand cupped under her head.

“Hey!” her friend snaps, “What are you doing?” Her eyes are wide and her brow is pinched and furious. Jason can hear the hotline responder over all the gernal clamour of background noise and Thug Three’s tapered off groaning.

Jason purses his lips and doesn’t respond, settling the blonde woman on the ground, her straw-honeyed colored hair staining a red not her own. He shifts and raises her legs and settles them on her friend’s raised lap.

He glances at the brunette, whose face is still distrustful, but she isn’t shoving Jason off, so he considers that something. She watches him, then settles her hand over her friend’s ankles, drawing in a deep breath. She raises the phone back to her face.

“Yeah, um, my friend and I got attacked…” her voice trails off into background noise as Jason rises and moves away, glancing briefly at the would-be rapists before taking in the women once more. They won’t be fine, not by a long shot and not anytime soon, but this outcome is still better than the alternative.

He closes his eyes again, briefly, against the emotions and leftover violence and cold quiet simmering in the alleyway before noiselessly making his way up the fire escape, needing to burn some leftover energy that simply grappling away wouldn’t let him do.

His hairs prickle when he reaches the roof, his senses realerting themselves to his tail.

Ah, fuck, he thinks a little emptily, damage already done. But the presence never comes any closer than before. It’s there for the rest of the night, Jason can tell as he stalks through a city that’s not his, but it remains distant.

He doesn’t take any more kill shots.

-----

Jason comes out of the bedroom of the apartment he had been staying at in a hoodie and sweats (look, he was tired of sleeping in the same pair), yawning, to find Coulson standing in the kitchen-dining-living area with a bland smile on his face. Jason has his gun raised, aimed, and off safety before his hairs raise and he wishes to hell and back he carried a second on him to sleep. A second guy, a blonde, comes out of the shadows with a bow and arrow aimed at him (his shoulder, nonlethal, he assesses), like some rip-off Green Arrow.

Jason feels like he researched him. It takes his rapidly awakening tired brain a second. This is Hawkeye, Clint Barton. Damn. There’s no such thing as a coincidence, he thinks. Barton’s younger than he would have thought, but probably older than Jason by a few years.

It’d be an interesting fight.

The suit pins him with those piercing, intelligent gray-blue eyes, clearing his throat. Jason resists the urge to straighten. “As you know, I’m Agent Phil Coulson, and I work for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. We’re here to bring you in for questioning.”

Chapter Text

Jason stares at Coulson. Coulson stares at him. Barton’s there, his own piercing eyes never leaving Jason. Unlike Coulson, Barton is not in a ridiculous and impractical two-piece suit, but some sort of light-weight purple, gray, and black kevlar, similar to Jason’s own. A uniform. A costume. A different kind of suit.

(Jason can also see the vague outline of bandages on the right side of Barton’s chest. There are visible stark white bandages on his bare left forearm, which is just impractical for the safety of his limbs-- evidence by the bandages.)

Jason raises an eyebrow, tilting his head at Barton, playing ignorance.

“Hawkeye,” Coulson answers to the silent question.

Jason nods, assessing the situation. Well. He knew it was going to happen. Now it is. Jason clicks the safety back on (with reluctance) and returns it to it’s hiding spot on himself. Eyes track the movement the entire time. He sighs silently, rolling out his shoulders as the tension in the room knocks down a notch. If the two agents were surprised by his quick acquiescence, they didn’t show it. Face posed curiously, eyebrows quirked, he signs, “Whatever for?”

Barton doesn’t so much as twitch when Jason signs, but his eyes flicker to his ears, temples, then down to the prominent scar on his throat.

Coulson’s resting bland face is impressive. “Breaking and entering, theft of government information, and murder.”

Ah. In all likelihood the latter is why they’re here, now, and not when they got a positive location from the tracker. He had no reason to even touch a SHIELD agent, though. Something about the look in both the men’s eyes tells him that they know it, and that’s why they’re here and Jason’s not dead in a ditch.

“You’re being awfully nice about it,” Jason replies, partially amused and partially distantly concerned for the man.

Coulson still has that bland smile on his face. Jason vaguely wonders if it hurts to have it plastered on all the time. “We’d like your cooperation. If you don’t cooperate, well, that’s what Hawkeye is for.”

Jason pulls on his most agreeable face, shoulders and the rest of his body following suit. Jason raises his hands and asks with as much politeness as he can muster, which admittedly is not a lot, but the facade helps, and asks, “Can I at least get dressed first?”

“Are you going to run away, arm yourself, or otherwise do anything detrimental to your situation?”

Detrimental to his situation is a very loose parameter to follow. In context, even, he’s not lying when he replies, “No.” (And he isn’t lying. He doesn’t plan on doing anything. But still, those are very loose guidelines.)

Somehow, Coulson doesn’t believe him. Or at least doesn’t trust him, which Jason supposes is fair. Coulson looks him up and down, for the first time visibly assessing him. Jason hadn’t realized that the man hadn’t. Or he had, and Jason hadn’t noticed. That-- Jason’s begrudgingly impressed. Finally, Coulson glances to Barton. “Take Hawkeye with you.”

At this directive, Barton lowers his arms and sheathes his arrow. Jason feels just slightly less tense without a weapon pointed at him.

With a pang, Jason misses his rapidfire sarcasm and scathing words. His retort sits there on his tongue, unbidden. He tries, anyway, moving his arms with a smirk on his face that he doesn’t quite feel, but slips on like another mask, “You don’t even know my name. Isn’t it a little early to watch me get undressed?” Though, honestly, he wasn’t expecting to be able to change at all.

Barton raises an eyebrow, talking for the first time with the question, “Do you have a name?” There’s a subtle implication there, like he’s asking for a sign name or a lengthy fingerspelling.

Ouch. Jason very nearly signs the name the kids in Gotham gave him, the sign for red followed by an H, pressed against his chest where his insignia lay on instinct reaction. But-- It doesn’t seem right, not here, to these strangers. Jason shrugs after a brief pause, fingerspelling, “J,” with a flick of his wrist.

“Hawkeye,” Barton says, signing a bird while moving his arms as if he’s drawing back a bow in lieu of fingerspelling.

Which brings up its own set of questions.

Jason nods in understanding, mimicking the sign to make sure he has it, and glances at the bedroom. Great. He might as well get it over with. He turns with a spin, gesturing to Barton over his shoulder to follow.

Coulson calls out, “Five minutes,” behind them.

His hairs prickle with having someone behind him, but he figures if SHIELD was going to try to kill him by now, they would have.

Barton follows him into the small room, not much more than a dingy mattress and his clothes either thrown or folded in a corner.

“I’m going to need to take your weapons.” Yeah, Jason had figured as much.

He takes the gun out of his waistband and hands it to the agent. He goes over to the folded pile where his armoured pants and leather jacket lay there idly. Jason glances at Barton once. He’s inspecting the gun, but when he feels Jason’s gaze on him, he looks up at him.

“All of them,” he says pointedly, eyes tracing Jason’s figure and lingering on most of the spots Jason had hid his knives last night.

(Yes, he slept with knives. But they were sheathed, so no harm no foul, right? He was limiting himself severely with only one gun.)

Jason considers signing ‘good eye’, but he rather feels that the effort would be waste. He spends a good three seconds debating this, then realizes he’s stalling.

Ah, fuck, he can do this.

He shucks off his sweatpants, scars and knives on display. He calmly (and with absolutely no panic, none whatsoever and certainly not where Barton can see) hands over the knives and their sheathes. He slips on his gray armoured pants, the only pair he has besides his sweats.

Barton, somehow, is making all of Jason’s weapons disappear on his person. He also looks unimpressed. “The rest of them.”

Jason smiles sharply, but refrains from adding too many teeth. Cooperative, he tells himself, he needs to be cooperative. He shoves up the sleeve of the hoodie and unstraps the two knives on his forearms.

Barton takes the knives and attaches them to his belt, the first of all the knives Jason had handed over to be done so. His eyes flicker to Jason’s right bicep where Jason knows there is another knife hiding, completely undetectable. He doesn’t ask for it.

In counter to what Barton was probably intendeding, the secession puts Jason on edge. He still doesn’t hand over the knife, though he tries to watch Barton more closely. The man, in turn, is studying him heavily too. His gaze hadn’t lingered on any of his scars, though Jason noted that he had cataloged them. His eyes flicker over the Ankh, a little curious, or maybe he’s just having a visible tell to fuck with him. Based on his mission reports, he seems like the type.

Jason shoves down his sleeves either way, then grabs his leather jacket. He slips it on, the drops to the bed to tie on his shoes. Unexpectedly, Barton sits himself down across from him, along the opposite wall.

Jason raised an eyebrow in question.

“You know, I haven’t known a lot of people to break into -- or hack -- SHIELD, just to immediately comply with arrest. Or questioning,” he tacks on, probably recalling Coulson’s words.

It’s not a question, except it is. A test too, probably. He’s in a room alone with Barton, and despite what he said, Jason still had the potential to attack him. It would have been easier to face one SHIELD agent in close quarters -- even specialized ones -- than to take two on long range. (Across a room isn’t long range, exactly, but both had weapons that could fire at Jason before he could down them with his own.)

Jason thinks through his answer. It’s easier to do that, he muses bitterly, when he can’t say the first thing that comes to mind. ASL is not quite instinctive for him (--yet).

“Maybe I think SHIELD is my best bet,” he signs after a moment. It’s not a lie, but it’s not the whole truth either.

“The super secret shady government organization that you stole classified information from?”

Yep, that sounds about right. He nods in agreement as he starts lacing up his left boot. (And, sure, he is effectively admitting to being guilty, but they all know he did it, and it’s not like he’s trying to keep it secret.)

“That must make whoever you’re running from pretty damn awful.”

Jason’s eyes flicker up. Barton still has his eyes glued on him, fingers absentmindedly tapping and tracing shapes on his bow. Or not so absentmindedly, because Jason still thinks there’s a fifty percent chance he’s screwing with him.

He finishes tying his shoe and doesn’t answer.

“Yeah, no, don’t tell me about it. Wasn’t really expecting you to, anyway. Coulson’s gonna want to know, though. Hey, kid,” Jason glances up where he’s tying his other shoe, but he doesn’t retort because he’d have to start over. Barton’s impassive face has changed, and he’s looking at him imploringly, like whatever he’s about to say is damn important and Jason better listen. “Coulson’s a good guy. He listens, and he cares, and he won’t treat you like shit even if you’re being shitty. And, yeah, sure, you’re being arrested-- brought in for questioning, whatever, but Coulson has had his eyes on you for almost a week. You’re probably not going to stay arrested for long, provided you cooperate.”

Jason finishes tying his other shoe as the words are said. He doesn’t really have an answer. Even if what Barton said was true, Coulson’s not all of SHIELD. But he knows how these agencies work. If they can get someone like Jason to work for them, at least he’s working for what they’re feeding him, instead of rotting away in a prison cell. So he shrugs a nonanswer and stands.

Barton follows him up. “Yeah, I’m not really surprised you don’t believe me. My partner, Nat-- Agent Romanoff, she didn’t believe me either. Of course, I was sent to assassinate her, not apprehend her, but,” he shrugs, “semantics. You’ll be fine, kid.”

“Provided I cooperate,” Jason signs wryly, face posed in disbelief, “and I’m not a kid.”

“Provided you cooperate. And you can’t even be old enough to drink, ergo: kid.”

Jason’s about to respond because he’s not a kid, and he hasn’t been one in a long time, when Coulson calls out, “Time!”

Barton opens the door, gesturing for Jason to go first. He sees Coulson, and they head out of the building. Jason remembers all the rest of his stuff in that rooftop apartment-- his armoured top, his mask, the rest of his weapons. He wonders if he’ll see it all again.

For now, though, it’s time to face the music.

Chapter Text

Jason had been in the white interrogation room for two very long, very boring hours. He passed the time by counting the hidden cameras (four), staring piercingly through the one-way glass, unlocking and relocking his handcuffs rhythmically, and trying to figure out how much British Sign Language he knew. (The answer was the alphabet and the most basic signs like ‘yes’ and ‘no’.) He figures it is five minutes past that two hour mark when Coulson walks in, folder in hand.

He sits down across from him, face impassive.

“Busy?” Jason signs. He bets fifty-fifty on Coulson being busy versus them trying to psyche him out. (If so, he doesn’t really know why they bothered.)

Coulson doesn’t give him an answer, and instead slides in the seat opposing him and puts the folder on the table. He doesn’t even blink at the open handcuffs. “Sorry that took so long. Water?”

“Can’t answer your questions with water in my hands,” he signs.

“So that’s a no?”

“It’s a-- warning,” he replies, and Coulson does something with his hands that signals an agent outside to bring in a water bottle with the SHIELD logo on it.

Jason takes it, looks it over. When he opens it, the seal cracks. He takes a sip, and it doesn’t taste any different, so he takes another.

“We’re not going to poison you.”

Probably not, no. But it certainly didn’t hurt to be sure. He shrugs in response.

“Anything else we can do for you? Are you hungry?”

Jason raises an eyebrow. Setting down the water, he raises his hands, “C-O-U-L-S-O-N,” he spells out, “enough of this standard interrogation shit. Ask your damn questions.”

Coulson doesn’t look even mildly offended or surprised. He just nods, and opens his folder. “What should I call you? Or do you simply prefer J?”

He’s surprised to learn J doesn’t really bother him. Still, he spells out, “J-A-S-O-N.”

Coulson nods and writes it down on the top of a white page with Jason’s picture from his breaking and entering on it and some information that’s small enough that it’s a pain to read it upside down. It’s basic information mostly, general weight and height, suspected skills, and similar whatnot. The rest of the folder’s pages appear to be itemized lists of the information he stole and pictures of the two criminals he killed.

“No last name?”

For some reason, that gives him pause. Jason Peter Todd, he thinks. Jason Peter Todd, son of Willis and Catherine Todd. Son of Sheila Haywood. Son and second Robin of Bruce Wayne, the Batman. A laundry list of disappointments, betrayals, and failed parents.

He shakes his head no, and he’s not sure why. He raises his hands to sign, “You won’t find me anywhere, anyways. I’m little more than a ghost.”

Coulson eyes him strangely. It takes Jason a moment to recognize it as distant amusement, like what Jason said is funny. From Coulson’s perspective, Jason doesn’t doubt that it is. Afterall, SHIELD is America’s premier intelligence agency.

The moment passes.

“And you’re over the age of eighteen?”

He snorts and signs, “Yeah.”

“Can you tell me where you were on February tenth?”

Here’s the thing: since coming back to life, Jason has had trouble with dates. First he was catatonic, then his time with the League that was spent in a technologyless loop, and when he got to Gotham, he studiously avoided actual dates. He tracks days, sure, but not dates. He hasn’t been sure of the exact date since the day he died, and that’s the way he likes it.

He isn’t really happy that that’s about to change.

So, reluctantly, he signs, “How many days ago was that?”

Coulson raises his eyebrows faintly. “Ten.”

Jason nods. “Then I suppose I was in a nice little coffee shop, breezing my way through your servers. They’re not bad, but I’ve seen better.” Not in this universe, but the point is moot.

Coulson humms a small, noncommittal noise, and writes something akin to his confession on that page of his.

“And-- three days after that?”

And Coulson picked up on it.

“Learning more government secrets and shaking your hand,” he gestures in response, somewhat flippantly, but the tone is lost when there isn’t one. He bites back a scowl when it falls flat.

He can tell that Coulson notices, but he doesn’t comment on it. “And the information you took, what did you do with it?”

He shrugs, “Read it.”

“On the computer in your apartment?”

Jason nods. They won’t find the info he stole, not yet anyways. The hard drive with all the information is in the sole of his boot.

“Our tech analysts didn’t find anything on it.”

“They wouldn’t,” he signs. Ah, damn. He gives Coulson a glance, and the man just watches him. Like he knows that Jason isn’t done. It’s a little unnerving how keen the man is.

Or maybe Jason’s just that easy to read, but he doubts it. Still, the thought leaves him with a sticky feeling.

After another moment, he sighs and brings his leg up and bends down over the sole of his boot. He pries it open, revealing the harddrive, and takes it out. He looks it over, wishes he made a copy, and holds it out to the man.

Coulson is watching Jason’s face closely. His blue-gray eyes are pinched a little, hinting at the man’s curiosity. But he takes it without question, sticking it in a pocket somewhere in his suit jacket. “And what did you plan to do with this information?”Did someone order you to? Did someone pay you to? Did you steal it with plans to sell it later? For your own gain? Questions in questions.

“I was curious.”

“You were curious?”

He shrugs again. “I wanted to see how good SHIELD was,” he signs. Does SHIELD have a sign? He really doesn’t like spelling it out each time. Maybe he should ask or look up the sign, but-- later.

And his answer is not a lie, really, but nowhere near the forefront of his brain either when he was doing it. “And you should know aliens are real. It’s math,” (-ematically); it’s about context. He makes a face and signs out, “I-M-P-R-O-B-A-B-L-E for there not to be.”

Coulson humms faintly, but overall ignores his comment. “And where did you gain the skills to hack and break into a high security government facility?”

Maybe he didn’t think this though all the way. Honesty will only get him so far seeing as how all his answers belong to a different universe. SHIELD will want answers they can find.

(--Another universe, another universe. Why is he impulsive, again? Death of half a universe, right--)

So, he goes with honesty anyways. It will read better, he knows. “From different people. A little from my,” here he hesitates slightly, his fingers almost unwilling to form the word, and he tampers down an insistent need to punch something, “dad. More-- most from a few others, later. Most of whom are dead.”

And he doesn’t regret a single life taken from that line of scumbags. (A grand total of two trainers weren’t found dead, and one of them was Talia.)

“I see,” Coulson’s face remains stoic as ever, utterly unruffled that most of Jason’s trainers are dead. “Could you give your remaining trainers’ names and other relevant information-- including your father’s?”

Jason shrugs. The thought isn’t uncomfortable, exactly, but it certainly isn’t cozy. And it really won’t help them. But, he spells, “B-R-U-C-E,” (And holy fuck he just admitted that Bruce Wayne, even if they don’t know who he is, trained him. It wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be, rather it leaves him with this kind of viscous, vindictive pleasure that makes him want to laugh), “and T-A-L-I-A are the only names I know. B and T had a thing once,” he adds, “T took me in after B. She made me better. Got me the other trainers.”

It’s a gross oversimplification, but he doesn’t really feel the need to divulge more.

Coulson, the odd semi-statue that he is, takes that with a nod, and doesn’t ask any more questions about how Jason acquired his skillset. “And were your trainers killed by your hand? Like these two men?” He slides over the pictures of the two criminals he killed last night.

He’s pretty confident he can escape whatever cell they might put him in. And he’s only a little less confident that they’re not going to put him in one. So with little remorse, he nods and signs, “Yes.”

“Why?” Coulson leans back in his chair, eyes still never leaving Jason.

“Assholes, each and every one,” he signs, “Murderers, rapists, human traffickers--” he’d had to relearn each of those signs after moving into the Manor. Apparently on the streets, they had signed them wrong; it was more a hodgepodge of letters and motions, whatever built the appropriate picture. (Did it really matter if it got the point across, he had argued with Bruce. Jason had refused to learn them properly for three weeks after.) After he returned to Gotham, he started using the ones he had learned on the streets again, so he’d be understood by the people there. His brain and fingers hiccup as he tries to use the actual signs, and he nearly doesn’t bother. “And last night, it was the only option.”

“There’s always another option,” Coulson replies, straight faced and unbothered by his obvious stumbling, except-- There’s a twitch in his eyelid, barely anything, except it’s all he needs.

“Now you know that’s not true. Come on, C,” (Jason is not spelling out Coulson’s whole name everytime he wants to use it), “you’re a government spy.”

“I am. Which is why you’re here.” He pauses for a moment. “Do you regret it?”

Coulson rather looks like he won’t care one way or the other, but Jason’s already decided to be honest, and honestly, not many people’s opinion on him really matters to him. Coulson included, though it’d probably be more beneficial if it was in his favour.

“No.”

Coulson nods, unsurprised. “And your most recent injuries?”

Jason represses a flinch and scowls. He was not expecting that. Under the table, he clenches and unclenches a fist. He almost snaps ‘none of your damn business’, and he’s sure the sentiement pases over his face, but he doesn’t. It’s silent for a good, long moment, and it probably gives away more than he intends, but he struggles to find his words.

He tilts his head to the side and smiles. It isn’t a pleasant smile, he knows. It’s bitter, and sharp, and has too many teeth. “B gave them to me,” he signs sharply. He shakes his head, huffs, and vehemently, aggressively, tries to quell the green whispering in the corners of his head. “I gave him a choice. He made it. Nothing you should concern yourself about, C.”

Coulson’s eyes are pinched in the corners, brow slightly furrowed, and his lips have thinned a little. If Jason didn’t know any better, he’d say the man was angry.

It’s the most emotion he’s shown the entire conversation.

And like a switch, Jason’s anger leaves him, draining out and leaving him feeling heavy and empty. “Is that all?” he signs tiredly.

Coulson’s face has smoothed over. He nods once and the motion is slightly sharp, the only evidence that he still has feelings under that calm surface. He gathers everything back into the folder and stands. “I’ll be back shortly,” he tells Jason. His cool eyes sweep Jason once more before leaving the room.

It’s quiet.

-----

They don’t know what to think of him, Jason figures. He doesn’t exist. He has no known affiliates. Yet he was able to both hack and break into a high-security SHIELD compound and get out again. He was only caught because he wanted to be. He returned the information, didn’t sell it, and he was the only one who ever laid eyes on it.

He wonders when they’re going to ask.

It’s been approximately another two hours since Coulson’s left when he gets his answer.

“Alright,” Coulson says as he sits across from Jason in the hard metal chairs the blank room provides, folders with the SHIELD logo stamped on them in his hands, “we have an offer for you.”

Jason raises an eyebrow.

“You can remain in SHIELD custody indefinitely--” Jason snorts-- “Or you can sign an agreement to work for SHIELD. Of course, you would need to go through our testing and vetting process first.”

Jason pauses his immediate response. Instead he asks, “I’m less than a ghost. I’ve killed without remorse. Why do you want me?”

“For those reasons. We need people like you. People who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty ridding filth from the world. People who can sneak into a SHIELD facility without being noticed. People like that are rare, and more valuable under our employ than sitting in a prison cell.”

He nearly scoffs. To go from being scorned for his skills to valued for them. He nods instead. It’s what he wants afterall. It’s the plan.

“Okay.” Coulson slides the folders over with a pen, “Let’s get started then.”

Jason opens the folder to find form after form after form asking for information. There’s a lot to fill out.

The first spot asks for his name. Like before, he hesitates before the box for his last name.

“I guess I need a last name, don’t I?” he signs, lifting his gaze from the papers.

Coulson nods, seemingly fine with his current lack of one.

He taps his fingers on the table, staring at the paper. He can be someone new. Not someone without the ugly history of Jason Todd because he won’t deny what made him, but someone…

Fuck, he doesn’t know. Just different.

He stares at the paper for a long time. When he finally picks up the pen to write what he’s chosen, he glances at Coulson. He merely raises his eyebrows in answer to whatever question is on his face. The corner of Jason’s lip quirks as he writes himself into existence.

Jason Ashla.

He likes it.

Chapter Text

Knocking on his SHIELD-issue door jerks him awake at the ass-crack of dawn, and he bolts out of the bed, his Ankh a knife in his hand. They didn’t return his weapons yesterday, (he still has the one Barton let him keep, though), and he stares at it blankly, before abruptly willing it back into a tattoo. He needs to work on that.

He shoves on his hoodie and yanks open his door, scowl firmly in place. It swings open to reveal Barton. His eyes have purple shadows and his posture is slightly slumped. It reminds Jason of an under caffeinated zombie.

Unfortunately for him, Jason doesn’t have much sympathy, being under caffeinated himself. He opens his mouth to bite out ‘what’, but when his throat closes around his words and pain lances down his throat, he scowl deepens and he signs it instead.

“Hey, man, don’t be snappy,” Barton returns in sign, “You’re due for your Psych Evals in an hour and authority figured you’d want breakfast so he sent me.”

Jason blinks. “Authority?”

“What,” Barton says out loud. “Authority,” he gestures again, “You know.”

“Hawkeye,” he signs, because he figures Barton has a personal sign name too, but this is the one he knows. As his brain starts to boot up, he continues, “Do you mean C-O-U-L-S-O-N?”

“Duh,” he says out loud and with his hands, staring at Jason like he is the one who’s crazy, “Who do you think I-- Oh.” He shakes his head, “I need coffee.”

Jason rolls his eyes and memorizes the sign for the future. “Let me get dressed,” he signs, then shuts the door in Barton’s face.

------

Later, once Jason’s changed and they made their way to the cafeteria for breakfast and coffee, Jason decides to ask what’s been on his mind.

He sets down his coffee (it’s shit, and he wants his tea,) and raises his hands, signing, “So does everyone in SHIELD know ASL? Or just everyone I’ve met?”

Barton blinks at him, nose deep in coffee. With very obvious reluctance, he sets the half drunk styrofoam cup down. “Ah, no, not everyone here knows ASL.” He scratches the back of his neck, and Jason’s a little surprised by the honesty in the motion. “Ah, what the hell, you’ll probably be working with me anyways. I’m deaf,” he declares, turning his head so Jason can see the hearing aids he had missed yesterday. They’re smaller than normal, but still, Jason’s a little disappointed with himself for not noticing.

Jason takes that with a nod when Barton’s facing him again. Barton’s face ticks upwards at the easy acceptance.

“Can I ask a question of my own?”

Jason shrugs, signing, “Sure.”

“What’d you do to Doc. Bliant? Rumor mill says she came out of your eval room pale. It takes a lot to shake a SHIELD doc, especially Bliant. She takes care of me, after all,” he adds wryly and half under his breath.

“I didn’t do anything,” Jason signs, but he knows what Barton’s talking about.

Yesterday had been… an experience. After Jason finished filling out the forms Coulson gave him (twice, because apparently they were too incomplete the first time) he had been escorted to SHIELD Medical by none other than Coulson himself. When he’d tried to protest that he was fine, really, Coulson had glanced pointedly at his neck and asked if he had seen a proper medical professional since obtaining his most recent injuries.

When Jason rolled his eyes and signed, “Yes,” Coulson just gave him this look and proceeded to inform him that no one had checked into any hospital in a five state radius-- or otherwise-- matching his physical description to his injuries in the last three months.

“And besides,” Coulson added, “it’s standard protocol to have new recruits examined for physical wellness.”

So then Jason had been escorted into an evaluation room with a tall, gray-haired female doctor with a no-nonsense look on her face. Doctor Bliant, as she’d been introduced, also knew ASL--- likely the reason she’d been assigned to him at all. She’d been polite, if clinical, about his injuries and scars, and if she felt pity for him, she didn’t show it. She had faltered only slightly when gazing upon his autopsy scar, but the slip was covered within a moment.

And Jason had felt nothing but deep, full-body relief when she declared he would eventually regain his ability to speak. In a few weeks, once he’s healed completely, then he could start speech therapy. “It’ll be a process,” she told him, “and frustrating. But you’ll regain your voice with some work.”

Apparently the woman had better masks than he gave her credit for, if Barton’s telling the truth.

“She just…” Jason shrugs, “checked me over.”

“Oh. Shit, man,” Barton says, hands wrapped around his now empty coffee cup. He blinks down at it disappointedly. “Well. I guess it’s time to get you to your physc eval. I don’t know who’s doing your evaluation, but it’s better if you’re on time and all that, you know?” Barton makes a distasteful face.

Jason does not know, and he rather figures Barton doesn’t either, so he doesn’t sign anything otherwise. They leave the cafeteria, and Jason ponders on doctors and masks the whole way there.

-----

The agent-doctor they had assigned to do his psych eval was frustrating, but easy to talk around. They kept looking at their clipboard almost as much as they looked at Jason, and he had to sign some things more than once. Despite the sheer inconsideration in the gesture, it helped Jason’s side of the evaluation enough where he had thrown around just the right amount of childhood trauma and promises of wanting to do good that he was confident that he was going to pass whatever the requirements were.

Barton was waiting outside the evaluation room when he was finished.

“Don’t you have people to do this for you?” Jason asks.

Barton shrugs, “Eh. Not a lot of people know ASL. And besides, I think I upset Coulson when I let you kill those two guys, and this is his way of punishing me.”

“You my shadow?” He’d been wondering, and since Coulson had picked him up in his hidey-hole apartment, he’d been fifty-fifty on either Barton or Romanoff.

Barton nods. “You move fast on rooftops.”

Jason lets out a huff, a silent piece of wry laughter. “Been doing it since I was twelve,” he shakes his head though, clearing his thoughts, “Where to next?”

Barton grins, a slash of teeth that’s more anticipatory than anything. “Combat and weapons evaluations.”

That sparks Jason’s attention. And then his thought line immediately offshoots into damn. Because as much as he wants to show off, in all likelihood it’s probably not a good idea. He’s already left out information on the SHIELD documents he’d been asked to fill out (he left off at least half the languages he knew, not to mention the whole ‘magical weapons’ thing).

Jason needs to appear capable, sure, but there’s no advantage in revealing all his cards. There are, however, advantages in not revealing them. Should he ever need to leave SHIELD, under any circumstances, he wants to have things that they don’t know so he can properly ensure that.

“Do I get my weapons back?” Jason signs, not a whisper of his thoughts in sight.

------

He’s in the gym, running the parkour course (easier than rooftops, honestly) for part of his skills assessment, when Natasha Romanoff walks in.

He has already completed his weapons assessment (where he had shown his proficiency with knives and guns alike, and he had dropped his accuracy to nine out of ten-- where previously it was twenty four out of twenty five; he also did not get his weapons back) and his close combat assessment (which was a near thing. He’d nearly killed the guy testing him-- the man was too slow-- and at the last moment Jason realized what he was doing and diverted the blow. He cringes to think what those results look like.)

Romanoff’s blood red hair is pulled back in a ponytail and she’s wearing plain gray, tight-fitting gym gear, much like himself. Her calculative emerald green eyes attach themselves to him as completes the parkour course, finishing it with a roll.

“Agent R-O-M-A-N-O-F-F,” he signs in greeting.

Her eyes don’t move from him, “Mr. Ashla.”

“What can I do for you?” he gestures, head tilting to the side. He has an idea.

“Care to spar with me?” She gestures towards the training mats on the left side of the gym.

“Sure,” he nods in agreement, and then, unable to help himself, he adds, “Something wrong with my previous close combat test?”

“Not obviously,” she says, a slight rasp noticeable in her voice, “I just want to test something.” She looks faintly amused with him, lips quirked at the corners.

“Alright.” He wants to spar anyways. Romanoff is one of SHIELD’s best. In all likelihood, from what he has read, she’s probably better than him. It’ll be fun.

(For SHIELD, though, it’s likely going to be a more accurate assessment of his fighting ability. He doesn’t think he’ll get away with holding back on this one.)

They head over to the left side of the gym. There they step onto the red, clay colored mats, standing a few feet apart from each other. Neither of them call go, instead just assessing each other, looking for openings and weaknesses. Jason stands there, not in any one particular starting position. Romanoff is a mirror. She could probably stand there all day, he realizes, waiting on him to make the first move. So he does.

At the first contact of skin, he knows he isn’t going to win. Romanoff is fast, lithe, her body language almost entirely unreadable. She’s strong for her size and uses his strengths (and definitely his weaknesses) against him.

It lasts for three and a half glorious minutes, longer than either of them are used to-- he assumes-- in just a spar. It ends with them locked body to body, Romanoff’s hands set in a position to break his neck and one arm trapped underneath him. He huffs, thumping his hand against her to tap out.

She disengages, steps up and back, and he rolls upwards, shaking out his limbs. He hasn’t had a spar like that, something almost friendly, in a long time.

It feels good, he thinks.

Romanoff wipes a stray hair away from her face, the beginnings of sweat trying to make it stick. “You held back on your previous assessment.”

Jason rolls his head from side to side, trying to release some of the tension in his neck. “I almost killed the guy,” he signs just to be contrary.

Romanoff tilts her head at him, gaze narrow. It unnervingly reminds him of a cat watching their prey. “Indeed you did. You held back, your opponent took advantage, and you defended yourself the way you know how-- instinctively and destructively. Your holding back led to that.”

Jason thinks about it; privately admits she’s probably right. He just signs, “Maybe.”

Her lips quirk, eyes shining, amused at him again. She probably knows he agrees, he thinks, if she’s letting her amusement show. “Do you want to go again?”

He wonders what she’ll look for this time. Maybe she’ll analyze his fighting style, or try to figure out just how long he’s been doing this. Maybe it’s neither, and she simply likes having a sparring partner that lasts longer than a minute. Maybe it’s a mix.

Jason figures it doesn’t matter. She’ll get what she wants from him, and he’ll likely be none the wiser.

“Sure.”

Chapter Text

Two weeks pass. Jason spends the time training and researching.

He’s been caught in a cultural limbo; the things that vary from this universe to his are immense in some regards, but near negligible in others. In the halls he overhears parts of conversation he has no context for ---as is wont to happen when overhearing, but more in the manner of not knowing cultural references. He compiles a list, actually: Stark-- both Tony and Industries, Captain America (trading cards, comics, and other variations in World War Two), politics, and the subtle manipulations of SHIELD (and other organizations) have all been brought to his attention.

However, in other areas, history aligns perfectly: there’s still the Wizard of Oz, AC/DC, and the Kennedy Assassination (others as well, of course, but that last one puzzles him when it’s all but been confirmed that the League of Assassins was responsible for it.)

Not one for wanting to explain himself when he doesn’t get a reference-- bringing up the fact he was raised in another universe won’t help him all that much-- he researches.

(And, he concludes, he needs to figure out this universe’s shady and ancient, history-altering organization because there must be one.)

The immediate thing he notices is that in the absence of Wayne Industries (and other big name corporations such as LexCorp, Queen Industries, and others) is that new businesses have arisen. The lucrative, weapons-dealing Stark Industries is one. Tony Stark, certified genius and playboy, is CEO-- and recently missing in Afghanistan. (Which accounted for the high levels of activity the day he infiltrated the SHIELD building.)

Other prominent businesses include Hammer Industries, the Roxxon Corporation, and Rand Enterprises. None have quite the level of fame Stark Industries does, but some are just as old and of equal levels of wealth. (And none are squeaky clean.) There are others of course, scientific groups such as A.I.M., but Jason finds that these cover the highlights.

He looks into history too.

It is exceedingly… less varied, for all the modern-day differences. World War Two is the earliest, most noticable difference, with the emergence of Captain America and Stark Industries. Captain America, Steve Rogers, was a verifiable American Superman, super-soldier, and World War Two hero-- and a government pet project.

Man, does he love the easy access to SHIELD servers. (Much of this information is not Jason’s clearance level, but what they do or don’t know won’t kill them. Besides, most of Rogers’ information is too high a security level for him to access without raising eyebrows anyways.)

He thinks long and hard about the instances in history the League is responsible for. The important, world-changing things they’re responsible for.

On a whole, they’re replicated throughout history.

It bothers Jason greatly, and he thinks again on the importance in figuring out who is responsible here. He doesn’t like not knowing. It’s an itch, an uncomfortable ball of unease in his sternum. He notches it up on his priority list.

(He doesn’t need to deal with whoever they are and aliens. Whoever they are needs a thorough dismantling or a tentative treaty. Either way, they need to be known.)

Politics more or less matches up with his universe, though his knowledge on politics was shoddy to begin with. His motto for political figures tended to be avoid and don’t get caught by and corrupt. There are a few prominent background figures and political maneuverings that make him draw a blank, though, so he feels validated for doing research anyways.

All of which leads to now, what seems to be a typical morning in the daily routine established in the past weeks. Barton wakes him up before his time, escorts him to the cafeteria, talks at him, and then lets him loose on the SHIELD facility. Jason tends to end up in one of three places--- the gym, the shooting range, or the computer lab. At night he explores.

Every other day, when Jason’s in the first, Romanoff shows up. Unlike with Barton, they mostly do not speak. She shows up, tilts her head at the mats, and they spar from anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours. And they don’t just stick with unarmed combat. They’ve fought with mock daggers, knives, and on one memorable occasion, tuned down electricity volts and rubber bullets. (In that particular spar, Jason came a lot closer to winning than in any other.) He lasts a little longer each time, though. She starts pointing out gaps in his form.

She’s absolutely brutal about it, but Jason is fucking thrilled.

If it’s the second-- the shooting range-- Jason usually encounters Barton again. The man is absolutely wicked with a bow. Jason watches and observes, making damn near perfect shots of his own with the range’s guns. Jason never seeks Barton out, but somehow they still end up within ten feet of each other, and like with Romanoff, they don’t talk.

Jason doesn’t mind it as much as he thinks he should.

When it’s the last-- when he’s in the computer room-- he’s void of the terror twins (as he joyfully overheard two SHIELD agents call Barton and Romanoff in the halls). Of course, the room is filled with others using the room’s various computers, but in essence, Jason is alone. This is when he researches. The information is infinitely more accurate and plentiful with SHIELD’s resources.

Of course, using said resources means word of it can get back to the people in charge.

Today, instead of leaving peacefully after breakfast to do whatever it is he does when not on a mission or in the weapon’s range, Barton lingers.

“You know, if you have questions about-- anything, you can just ask. America, history, widely-known businesses…”

Jason glares up at Barton, who looks absolutely unrepentant, if a little awkward. “I don’t.”

“No?” Barton nods, clearly not believing Jason. “You know, for all Nat had knowledge and prowess when I met her, there were all these little things she had no clue on. Of course, we did have to introduce her to American culture, but there are other things her… education overlooked.” Barton stares at him pointedly.

“I’m wonderfully educated. I know bands, and idioms, and classic literature,” Jason signs, slightly irritated and brows furrowed, “I’m also a highschool dropout who has spent most of his life since freshman year with an assassin cult, so.” He shrugs.

Barton blinks. “A-- what?”

“Assassin cult,” he signs again, eyebrows raised in a yeah, I know sort of way. The sign is used pretty synonymously for the League of Assassins back home, but Barton has no way of knowing that, so maybe context is lost. (It’s definitely lost.)

Barton scratches at his temple. “See, I know whatever you’re signing can’t be good, but,” and here Barton signs, “assassin cult,” and then continues both verbally and with his hands, “I don’t know what that means.”

Jason thinks about that for a second. He recalls little ticks in the faces of whoever he was talking to that had sometimes occurred over the past weeks, as if they were struggling to translate a word. He then decides to start just fucking asking if they know what he’s signing because he’s grown since his days with Bruce and knows that clear communication is essential in his line of work. (Of course, he doubts that it will stop him from doing something without communicating, but when he is, it needs to be done clearly.)

“A-S-S-A-S-S-I-N C-U-L-T,” he spells out. He gestures his sign for it again, then raises his hands, asking, “Do you have a different sign for the words?”

Barton shrugs and mouths the words ‘assassin cult’ to himself, but looking as a whole unsurprised. He signs something choppily and unfamiliar to Jason. “That’s what Nat and I use for ‘assassin.’ It’s the sign for assassin.”

Huh. Perhaps the League has its own sign. But, then again, Jason had been starting to notice his ASL isn’t quite translating to everyone else’s.

He nods, taking it in. “So,” he signs after finishing off the last bite of his breakfast, putting down the plastic utensil, “Was there something you wanted other than harassing me on what I do and don’t know?”

Barton starts, “Shit! Yeah, actually-- Shit, I meant to tell you yesterday -- Dammit -- We have a meeting with Coulson in…” he looks at his watch, “Two minutes. Aw, shit.”

Jason thinks about the layout of the SHIELD base in his mind from here, the cafeteria, to there, Coulson’s office. They could, technically, make it in time, but not without leaving a little bit of chaos in their wake.

“Barton,” he gestures, using the sign for ‘coffee’, but replacing the fist of his right hand with a ‘C’, “You up for a little mayhem in under two minutes?”

Barton’s face quirks upward, eyes lighting in mischievous interest. “Always.”

-----

Coulson and Romanoff are both in the office when they erupt through the door. They are not out of breath, but Jason has a small grin in the corner of mouth, and Barton is laughing.

“I didn’t even know that room had two doors,” Barton says, voice filled with mirth as he straightens up.

Jason smirks because the room certainly doesn’t look like it has two doors, and the people currently using it had been surprised when they barged through, but Jason has a good eye and was thorough when exploring the place. He shrugs a shoulder in response.

“If you two are done,” Coulson says from behind his desk, voice flat. Romanoff doesn’t spare them more than a glance.

Barton rolls his eyes and bumps shoulders with Romanoff. “Sure, sure. We got here on time, that’s all I’m saying.”

“With,” Coulson glances at his watch, “fifteen seconds to spare.”

Barton nods. “Exactly.”

Coulson shakes his head slightly, then turns his attention to the files on his desk. The mood in the room sobers, and Jason moves to stand on the other side of Romanoff, gaining a better view of the desk and easier access to be read.

Coulson gives them a once over and taps the stack of files. “You three have a mission in Iran. This is a covert operation. Get in and out unnoticed,” he pauses briefly, as if gathering his words, or as Jason suspects, reading the room, “You'll be infiltrating a known base and escorting Dr. Alim Faheem, a nuclear engineer, out of the country and to the SHIELD base in Poland. We have it on good authority that his life is in danger. All three of you will be required for initial contact, but Agent Romanoff will be escorting Dr. Faheem directly to the base.

“Agents Barton and Ashla, you’ll remain behind to acquire any files or other sensitive information. If possible, you will find who’s threatening Faheem. Here’s a file of all the information Intelligence currently has gathered. You leave here today at noon sharp. You have what’ll remain of today and tomorrow to scout and make plans, and you need to be in and out by the end of the eighth. Romanoff, you should be back at base by the end of the eleventh with Faheem.”

Romanoff and Barton both nod. Jason, a tad bit more hesitant, follows suit while he thinks.

It’ll be his first official, SHIELD-sanctioned mission. Time to observe the place himself is good, but little more than a day isn’t, and certainly not when observed. He doesn’t want to say ‘how high’ when SHIELD asks him to jump. He doesn’t know this universe well enough to make conclusions based on the information SHIELD’s gathered, and even if he did, he’d still investigate further. He’s isn’t some tool to be pointed and told to shoot. (Even if SHIELD considers him to be so.)

But he has little option on the matter, doesn’t he?

He takes consolation in the fact that it’s an extraction, not an assassination.

(Not that he’s opposed to killing, of course, but he needs to be both the pointer and the shooter. He needs to know why he’s killing whoever he is.)

Barton glances over Romanoff and him and tilts his head a bit. “Aren’t the three of us overkill for this kind of mission?”

Coulson taps his fingers against the desk. “I want Ashla’s first mission supervised by someone on the ground,” he admits honestly, but lacking… something, and it seems more like a half-truth than anything. “This seemed like a good opportunity.”

Barton pops his lips, “‘Kay.” He glances at Jason again and nods to himself.

Jason has a question himself if they get to play twenty questions. He waves to grab Coulson’s attention. “Yeah, that’s good and all,” he signs once Coulson’s looking at him, “but how am I supposed to communicate with everyone?”

Coulson does a nod-tilt of his head, acknowledging the point. “We have a system step up for verbally compromised parties. Your comm unit will send bursts of noise in correspondence to taps. One tap for any type of confirmation, two for denial. Three taps to call for immediate backup. Four taps for complications, but not anything immediate.”

“And how the fuck will anyone know where I am?” Jason signs with a slight scowl and brows raised.

“Trackers,” Coulson replies simply, the smug fucker.

Trackers. Great. He is not surprised, nor would he be if he looked for one and found one on his person now. Always with the trackers.

He nods and rolls his eyes with a full tilt of his head, a leftover from communicating facial expressions in alternative ways thanks to his helmet.

Coulson returns his gaze to the room at large. “Anything else?”

Yes, actually, Jason thinks. He has many questions, but the most informative would be this, “Do you have any leads on who’s after him?”

Coulson purses his lips, “Nothing more than a ghost story, I’m afraid. We’re hoping the information you’ll retrieve will help enlighten us.”

Right. Jason doesn’t believe that for a second, but he doesn’t press. Coulson won’t give him any more than he already has.

“That all?”

The room remains silent and Coulson nods as he stands. He grabs and hands a file to each of them. “Go pack and be in front of the facility by ten fourty at the latest. A car will be ready and waiting. Read up on the plane. Dismissed.”

They file out the room. Jason flips through the files information and all it essentially says is the same things Coulson gave them, but there’s a detailed map of the base they need to get into and guard schedules and such, including a picture of the scientist. It is useful, admittedly.

They break apart to go to their separate SHIELD lodgings. The information plays on loop through his head and on the back of his eyelids as he packs.

Nothing more than a ghost story.

Jason snorts in time with a final zip from his SHIELD-issue go-bag.

If that were always true, half the world wouldn’t go ‘round.

Chapter Text

The plane ride and their arrival to Iran’s capital city occurred with little fanfare. It’s dark, well into the early hours of the next morning when they arrive. Jason’s glad he took a nap (light and with multiple interruptions, but it was sleep) on the plane because damn, time change would be a bitch and a half.

They don’t bother with a hotel either, instead they take over a SHIELD safehouse in the city.

The walk there is a test in re-familiarizing himself with Persian, and after a couple minutes the snippets of conversation from words caught here and there from Iran’s nightlife and early morning workers change into actual comprehensible sentences. As they walk, he decides Romanoff must know the language (she’s escorting the engineer, after all) and that Barton has to be at least passing with the written language, if not the spoken, to be sent with them.

The safehouse, when they arrive, is a small, one-bedroom apartment, relatively clean-- if dusty from unuse and has paint peeling off the walls-- and is well stocked with nonperishables and medical supplies.

The door locks behind them, and they all just stand there for a moment, before Romanoff breaks the reverie. “We have a few hours. Let’s go over the blueprints and surrounding buildings, then get there early enough to observe their morning routine, double check the guard routes.”

Barton nods, dropping his duffle on top of the couch. “Yeah. That sounds good. Eat at noon, observe, etcetera, etcetera. Plan afterwards. Go to sleep early so we can be there early tomorrow.”

And just like that, they had an outline for the day. Jason felt a little blindsighted, honestly. Damn.

-----

Their stakeout of the base (in the cold, but the SHIELD uniform’s thermal regulation is no joke, and he spends the whole time on the abandoned concrete floor comfortably warm, besides the nipping at his fingertips) reconfirms all the information in the file Coulson gave them.

It’s a little odd, to be surrounded by people who are supposed to be his team. Romanoff and Barton talk softly, a familiarity to it that speaks volumes of their routine and comfort with each other.

The stakeout ends when they finish following the engineer home, well after darkness falls. They amble their way back towards the safehouse, slipping in and out of shadows and crowds.

The door shuts behind them and relocks itself with a faint buzz, and the first thing that Jason does is make his way over to the kitchen, taking better stock of the provided food. Romanoff and Barton follow slowly behind him, shedding layers and weapons as they go-- if the soft sounds of fabric and clattering of metal is anything to go by.

There’s rice, seasonings, and dried vegetables in the cabinet and he idly wonders if this particular safehouse is used regularly to be as well stocked as it is. He pulls it all out and scrounges for a skillet in the lower cabinets.

From behind, he hears the terror twins enter the kitchen. One of the pairs of footsteps stop and Barton asks, “What’re you doing,” confusion notable in his voice.

Jason stands from where he's crouched to answer, pan (there was no skillet) in hand, while Romanoff perches on a countertop, watching them like a lazing cat.

He raises his eyebrow in what he hopes is a what does it look like I’m doing fashion while pointedly looking at the pan and ingredients he has gotten out, before turning to the stovetop.

“Huh,” is his elegant reply, “You can cook?”

He glances back at Barton in time to see Romanoff flick his ear.

“Yeah, yeah, obviously he can cook, yeesh,” he says, swatting her hand away.

Jason turns back to the stovetop and puts together the food while Barton and Romanoff gossip in the background. It’s interesting, quite frankly, and he gets copious amounts of blackmail material on the SHIELD spooks he sees around most often. (A cynical part of his brain wonders if they’re doing it just to make him looser around them.)

Once the meal gets to the point where he just needs to stir it every few minutes, he turns back to face them fully. They adjust slightly, so he-- and his hands-- are in better view. He wonders if they’re even aware they’re doing it (probably) and he tries to stamp down the odd mix of gratitude and discomfort he feels.

He eases his way into the conversation, adding his bit about the agent who called them ‘terror twins,’ but mostly he observes them. They have an obvious ease with each other, more like best friends or siblings than coworkers. He recalls Barton’s previous statement, about how he was sent in to kill her, and wonders how they got from there to here.

Gradually, he assumes, Or quicker than a speedster can say ‘flash.’

The whole thing is disturbingly domestic (if one ignores Romanoff’s casual comments on how to better seduce a man.) He turns back to the cooking food, studiously ignoring the warring emotions in his gut.

-----

The next day, they’re out of the door right after dawn.

After fueling up on Jason’s home cooked meal the night before, they talked strategy, and that’s what goes through his mind as they make their way to the facility.

The plan’s simple, really: get in, grab the engineer, then Romanoff and the engineer leave. Barton and Jason make their way to the computer room, grab the information, then they leave.

And they aren’t going to get him before they break into the base because they need to keep up appearances as long as possible and the facility’s lead engineer not showing up for work would definitely get the opposite effect.

The drawing and firing of weapons is a non-option, with the state of Iran-U.S. relations, but all three of them packed just in case. He keeps his guns holstered, but his hand hovers over it nonetheless as they make their way into and move throughout the building.

Romanoff splits from them halfway through. The hallways remain quiet, bar the routine guards on their routes. Jason and Barton avoid them like clockwork, footsteps eerily silent against the floor.

Their breakin continues undisturbed.

Barton stops at the corner between hallways, right hand held up opposite of his bow.

Jason refrains from rolling his eyes, raising his eyebrow in question.

“C-R,” Barton signs, pointing ahead. Computer room.

Jason nods.

Barton glances around the corner, then crosses the hall with Jason following.

Jason opens the door after a moment of listening for motion on the other side. The room is quiet, bar the faint humming of electricity. The computer monitors sit dark and sleepy, ready to be woken at the push of a key.

“You got the computer?” Barton whispers into the room, looking at him while settling against the table to watch the door.

Jason raps his fist against air in confirmation and doesn’t bother to wait for a response. He taps open the computer to the lock screen. It’s nothing a simple hack can’t fix, especially when the fancy SHIELD gizmo he plugs into the computer does it for him.

Files. Sensitive information. Thank you, Coulson, that’s real specific. Well, they’re here for a nuclear engineer, he reasons. Nuclear information is sensitive.

So he looks for that.

When he gets to the information that goes over his head, he starts downloading files. A bar pops up on the screen, projecting the download time.

A tab in the bottom right of the screen catches his eye and he clicks on it. Words pop up, in the shape of correspondence, and he struggles through it to find that it is, indeed, a message box.

And then it translates in his brain what he read.

He stares at the screen and curses silently. Fuck. He turns to Barton, who spots him out of the corner of his eye and turns to face him better.

“Problem,” Jason signs, “This was an inside job. A plant, I think.”

Barton sighs and shakes his head, muttering, “‘Course. Why not?” His eyes flicker to the door, then back to Jason. “Who?”

“A-B-D-U-L, talking to one Mr. R-U-X-T-M-I,” Jason replies, cutting off when he turns back to the computer to scroll through the messages. He feels Barton lean over his shoulder to read them too and tries not to tense.

He’s probably not very successful judging by the way Barton draws away and back to the door, more than far enough that the feeling creeping up his spine fades.

He gets to the correspondence from last night.

Shit.

He snaps at Barton and jabs his finger at the screen. Jason watches the door, keeping an ear out, as Barton reads what he found.

“Shit.”

Jason’s thoughts exactly. The assassin knows they’re here and more importantly--- that the engineer isn’t.

Barton’s on the comms immediately, trying to contact Coulson and Romanoff, while Jason downloads the chat logs along with everything else. He keeps scouring the computer for more information.

“Coulson!” Jason hears Barton bark into the comms out loud, the effect doubled. “Problem.”

“Copy,” Coulson replies, all the prompt Barton needs to continue.

“The hit is an inside job. They know we’re here, SHIELD agents, and that Romanoff and Faheem have an escape route. Ashla’s getting more information as we speak.”

He is. He tries to trace the contact, but it pings off of secure servers globally and it isn’t something he can solve on their time limit. He thinks for a second, then reads through the messages again, this time looking for more than just dates and names-- different distinctions, words used, grammar-- anything that’ll help narrow the pool.

“Well,” Romanoff’s dry voice says over the comms, “That’s a lovely development. Thoughts, anyone? Got Faheem, by the way. Leaving now.”

His eye catches on something, the structure of the sentences. He grabs Barton’s attention with a movement of his hand.

“Plant talking to a handler. The--” his brain falters for a second, then his fingers shape his newly gained word-- “assassin is simply referred to as ‘soldier.’”

“Could they be talking to someone in the military?” Barton muses. “Nuclear treaties are ongoing right now.”

“For those of us not in the room?” Coulson’s voice says into his ear.

Barton makes a face, “Ashla says the plant is just talkin’ to a handler. The assassin is referred to as ‘soldier.’ So, military, maybe? That’d be a real bitch,” he says while Jason turns back to the computer.

He’s almost got everything they could possibly need off of it and the progress bar pings ‘complete’ as he finishes the data dump to the flash drive.

Romanoff humms, “Any changes to the plan, boss?”

There’s a moment of silence over the comms, whether in consideration or hesitation, Jason can’t tell. “Negative, Agent Romanoff. Barton and Ashla, follow up this lead and report back.”

“Copy, sir,” Barton replies while Jason taps his comm once in confirmation.

He ejects the flash drive and waves it in front of Barton before slipping it into a pocket on his waist.

“Ready?” Barton’s eyes are pinched a little-- he’s worried. For Romanoff, probably, though Jason has seen plenty of evidence that she can take care of herself.

Jason nods.

Nothing more than a ghost story, huh Coulson?

A ghost. A soldier. Consider his curiosity peaked.

(He never could avoid trouble.)

-----

They get out of the facility without any difficulties and journey back to the safehouse quietly under the cold Iranian sky; Barton practically radiates tension for all Jason’s unable to actually see it. They stop, once, to put civvies over their SHIELD-ware and to stick their weapons in the same stashed duffle bag they retrieved their clothes from.

The streets are busy-- it’s almost midday local time-- and people are bustling to and fro for lunch and other odds and ends. Chatter fills his ears and spices tingle his nose. It’s comforting, in a way, after weeks spent inside the SHIELD base. They pass a food stand with a line half a building long and Jason puts a hand on Barton’s arm.

“I haven’t had genuine Middle-Eastern food in ages,” Jason signs, gesturing to the stand they just passed. He eyes the savory meats and rice and his tongue waters at the phantom tastes mixing with the spice in the air.

Barton eyes him, the stand, then him again, lifting his hands to sign in return, “We have pressing research to do about an unknown assassin and you want street food?”

Jason nods, eyes demanding, because yes that’s exactly what he wants to do, he’s hungry, and he can’t fucking order any by himself.

The corner of Barton’s lip twitches and his whole body goes loose while he sighs dramatically, looking up at the sky. His gaze only flickers back down to sign one handedly, “OK.”

So they get in the back of the long line, get up to the stand only to cringe at Barton’s broken Perisan, and they both leave with a lamb nan-e-kebab (at Jason’s recommendation, though this specific meal he’s never had before), minus all the mouthwatering side-dishes.

The meal isn’t really meant for walking, but they make do. The trip back to the safehouse is spent eating and Barton stops him at the door to the safehouse (equipped with an inconspicuous but harcore SHIELD-issue lock) before they go in.

He fiddles with the lock for a second, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. “Thanks,” he says lowly. He clears his throat and turns to face him fully, “For the food, I mean. Good stuff.”

Jason nods, feeling vaguely uncomfortable. He shifts a little. “No problem,” he signs a tad briskly, “Got to make sure you know more than just SHIELD cafeteria food.”

“‘Course,” Barton replies.

They leave it at that.

-----

They settle down, then, on computers with spotty wifi. Jason taps his fingers against the coffee table, leaning against the hard, faded blue couch. He pulls out the flash drive, ignoring Barton’s curious gaze. He plugs it in, waiting for the main file to appear before opening it and biting back a scowl at the files’ disorganization.

He turns to Barton, brows furrowed slightly in thought. “You search SHIELD for information. I’ll sort this,” he gestures, following it by pointing at the heavy-duty laptop in front of him.

Barton’s eyes search his face before he shrugs and nods. “Sure. You want coffee?”

“Is there even coffee in this place?” he signs back. There’s tea on every other corner in the country, Barton would be hard pressed to get coffee in this region of the world.

Another shrug. Barton stands, walking over to the small kitchen area. Jason turns back to the computer and the mess of files, listening idly to the banging of cabinet doors as he starts opening files to reveal their contents.

He’s just decided to leave the mess of nuclear whatchamacallits alone and has opened the chat logs when Barton shouts a defeated and frustrated, “Fuck! Coffee, why must you do this to me?”

Jason snorts softly, his amusement nothing more than a puff of air.

“Fine, fine,” he hears Barton grumble after a moment, “I’ll settle for tea, you assholes.”

He scrolls through the correspondence with the mousepad, briefly scanning the information before moving on to the messages above. It’s not pretty.

Abdul is most certainly a plant, if the cache of weekly reports is anything to go by. He was sent to observe the very engineer they’re getting out of the country and he was the one to recommend the hit. Despite all that though, the guy’s nothing more than a lackey. Jason can tell by the way he refers to the person he’s talking to for guidance and objectives.

The bigger question that needs to be solved is: Who’s the guy working for?

-----

They work well into the night, fueled by caffeinated tea and determination. When they finally decide to call it quits for the night, Jason takes the couch and barely sleeps a wink. His mind runs through various scenarios and dead ends on the ‘soldier’, while the contact’s name pings back and forth in his mind. Mr. Ruxtmi. There’s something there he’s missing, and he’s not quite sure where to start looking.

The next day, they’re back at it again after a bland breakfast and several more cups of tea.

They are well and settled in when a phone rings, loud and abrupt through the working silence.

“Fuck,” Barton mutters, patting himself down for his cell.

Jason checks his own phone, silent and still on the table in front of him. There’s nothing, not that he expected any different.

“It’s Coulson,” Barton says, frowning at the device before hitting the answer button. “I’ll just…” he stands awkwardly, pointing towards the single bedroom.

Jason nods, mind already back on the computer in front of him.

It couldn’t have been more than a minute later when Barton bolts back out of the room, door slamming against the wall. He moves quickly towards the nearest duffle, haphazardly shoving the nearest objects in it. “We-- we gotta go,” he says rushed, voice thick with worry and another dozen unnamable emotions.

Jason eyes Barton, who’s made his way across the space, efficiently (if in a horribly unorganized fashion) packing everything away. He slowly closes the screen of his computer, compiling all his notes in one stack.

Barton stops, dead in his tracks, and sighs, running a hand through his short hair. He looks at Jason, eyes lost and desolate and just on the verge of spiraling anxiety, and half-says, half-signs, “Nat’s been shot.”

And, oh, yeah, that would do it.

Jason hops up, shoving the computer in it’s bag. The research papers follow it.

Barton’s still just standing there.

Jason snaps at him to grab his attention. “Well,” he signs, “Get your ass moving. We have a plane to catch.”

Barton blinks, and all the raw emotion swimming in his eyes disappears, a wall built up like it never went down. He nods, “Right.”

Jason swallows down his own budding tension while a headache blooms in his skull.

Afterall, they have a plane to catch.

Chapter Text

They arrive at the hospital in Ukraine in record time, Barton undoubtedly breaking several traffic laws with the vehicle Coulson left at the airport for them.

Barton rushes into the building, Jason on his tail (otherwise he’d be stranded) and they neatly bypass the main lobby and subsequent halls. Ukranian-- that he can only pick a word or two up from (his Slavic languages really need some work)-- is shouted in their wake. His head pounds, gradually having worsened on their flight, and is unhappy with having to translate yet another language. He hopes Barton knows where he’s going-- maybe Coulson texted him on the plane-- because they don’t stop to ask what room Romanoff is in.

Three floors and many hallways later, they find Coulson. He’s pacing; his coat jacket is thrown over the edge of a nearby chair, his tie is loose, and his shirt is rolled up to his elbows. The man looks rumpled in a way that’s so out of character Jason has to double check that it is actually him.

Barton moves over to him, mask once again slipping, while Jason lingers in the open hall, the feeling of being out of place rushing over him in full force.

He’s not sure what it is about the scene before him-- the worry and care so obvious on their faces, the stewing emotions of the room, or the fact that Jason hasn’t really dealt and has instead shoved everything behind research and work and this is the final thing that tips the bucket over--- but before the next moment passes his head feels light, his hands are shaking, and he’s moving swiftly out the room without conscious thought.

Because Coulson and Barton do care, it’s plain to see; it’s easy to read. The raw worry, the open love they have for each other, for Romanoff (even hidden away behind masks)-- Jason--- He hasn’t seen that kind of-- of anything directed towards him in years.

And the last person who did slit his throat.

Jason got his throat cut by someone who’s supposed to be his father over his goddamn murderer.

How absolutely fucked up is that?

He had been hellbent on revenge, had his last hope ripped out of his chest in the form of a batarang, and now he’s just here, in another whole goddamned universe. Cut off, left adrift. Everything abandoned him, so he abandoned everything in turn.

He’s disposable, is what he is. It’s the whole reason Death picked him in the first place.

And now he’s supposed to save a whole fucking universe. He’s- He’s- This world’s premiere intelligence agency hasn’t even had alien contact and the threat is extraterrestrial.

How is he supposed to be expected to do anything? He just-- He--

The world gets distant and blurry and he shoves open the door to some unoccupied hospital room as the thoughts cycle through his head.

He wants to yell. He wants to scream, he wants to holler, he wants to punch something until his fists bleed, and he wants to shoot something else until he runs out of bullets.

He tries. He tries, he does, but the most he gets is a hoarse, croaking whisper and pain flaring anew, worse than it had in weeks, barring the initial injury.

Wet warmth pinpricks his eyes because he can’t. He can’t talk, he can’t talk, he can’t talk, he can’t talk--

He-- He--

His dad took away his voice.

Something cracks, deep and raw and irreparable in his chest, and something snaps in the room in correspondence and he distantly recognizes the feeling of splintered wood underneath his fingertips and a faint ache in his knuckles.

Goddammit.

He feels the world tilt sideways, his head dizzy and aching, and he catches himself against a wall. He slides down it, his breathe trapped and struggling, tears warm on his face, but so caught up that he struggles to do much about it. He distantly realizes what’s happening to him, but the thoughts go round and round and round---

He has to stop a universal massacre, and he can’t talk. He can’t talk; he can’t talk because his dad took away his voice and--

Jason rubs at his chest, trying to relieve the tightness in there. Breathe, he thinks, a struggle for control. He sucks in air harshly, abrupt, stuttering breaths filling his lungs.

Fuck. He sucks in another breath, the sound wet and harsh against the quiet room.

It takes him a while to even out his breathing-- minutes, hours; he doesn’t know. All the while stupid, silent, traitorous tears stream down his face, eventually trickling down to only when a stray, unwanted thought enters his head.

He sits there in the unwelcome quiet, heavy and numb and yet a hairpin away from another attack.

What a fucking joke he is.

-----

Jason leaves the hospital in a flurry of half-remembered movements, stepping out on the Ukranian street with no more sense in him than away. He can’t stay in that building with strangers for teammates who are as good as he is at what they do. One look and they’ll know and he can’t stand that. Maybe their worry over an injured Romanoff would throw them off, but it’s not a risk he’s willing to take.

He makes his way down the street without really seeing it, heavy and dull, with a thread of anger and frustration at-- everything-- underneath it all. It passes quickly and comes back in starts, a recurring thought that he just doesn’t have the energy to keep up lest he tip the bucket over once more.

He isn’t sure how long he walks, and if asked, he couldn’t tell you how to get back to the hospital, but he knows he can if he lets his feet control him. By the time he doesn’t feel like the slightest thing will set him off (and yet his fingers twitch unrhythmically against his thigh for a cigarette) he’s in an entirely different point of the city and the sun has moved positions in the sky. A glance at his phone shows that a good two and a half hours have passed since getting to the hospital, that there are seven missed calls from Barton, one missed call from Coulson, and thirteen missed messages from the both of them combined.

He ignores the calls completely and spares little more than a brief once-over for the texts, all containing much the same vein of ‘where the hell are you’ and ‘come back.’ But they could probably track his phone, so he isn’t really too concerned about that part. He tucks the phone back away, immersing himself in the people to try to figure out the language (to get lost), pushing all other thoughts from his mind except where can I get a damn cigarette.

He finds a small little corner shop that gives him a pack when he points at the cartons behind the counter and pulls out too much money. The man gives him two cartons and a lighter when Jason pulls one off the stand and gives him a look that wars between wariness and concern. He takes them and flashes a small, grateful smile he doesn’t feel before leaving the shop.

Immediately outside, he tucks the extra carton away and taps a cancer stick out of the other one. He holds it between his fingers as he tuck that carton away too. He brings it near his lips, lights it with a click, and takes a drag.

The smoke irritates his injured throat, but he could give less of a shit at the moment. He leans his head back, blowing it back out before taking another puff.

Fuck. He needed that more than he thought.

He starts walking and the smoke helps dull the remaining static he can feel over his skin, an antsy-ness he’s been feeling since at least the hospital, if not longer, dissipating. After an unknown time, the stick burns down to the nub, and he puts it out against a nearby concrete wall before sticking it in his pocket. (Old habits die hard, he supposes.)

He goes through three more and debates having another, but they had done a remarkable job of soothing his fraying nerves and there’s no reason to at this point besides having something to do. Besides, he turns the corner and the bitter scent of coffee hits his nose, expelling any thoughts of having another. He stops where he stands, breathing in the roasted aroma in disbelief.

Huh, comes the thought unbidden, coffee.

He starts moving again, meandering his way to the open door of the small café. He goes inside, eyes flickering over the small café’s occupants, all of whom are immersed in one thing or another and certainly aren’t a threat to him. He walks up to the counter and squints at the menu, trying to make sense of what’s written and thanking that at least numbers written plainly don’t change in most countries.

He thinks that most of the items listed on the menu are tea, but he points to the one that’s most likely to be coffee and raises two fingers.

The barista looks extremely unimpressed with him, but he must get this shit often enough because he goes over to the coffee machine and starts putting together two coffees.

As he does so, Jason rummages through his pockets for the remaining amount of cash he filched away on the plane. He’s not entirely sure why he’s doing what he’s doing, but as soon as the smell wafted towards him, he knew he needed to get some of the rare-to-find drink.

He leaves with two drinks in his hand, neither for him, and can’t help but think: what the fuck is he even doing with his life.

-----

“Where the fuck have you been!”

Jason blinks, taking in Barton before him. He’s disheveled, more so than when Jason had left, hair sticking every which direction. A glance to Coulson, coming out of the room behind him, shows that the man has ditched his tie entirely. He looks back to Barton, who’s standing there waiting for an answer with eyes that betray his exhaustion and pressing anger that only barely hides his panic.

Jason holds out the coffee to him in explanation despite the rippling tension in the room, tilting the other one towards Coulson.

What the fuck, he thinks to himself, What the fuck are you doing, getting coffee for these people.

“That-- That’s--” Barton takes the coffee, practically inhaling the first sip. Unfortunately for Jason, his peace offering was not enough to derail whatever this was. “You can’t just up and disappear on us. Like, fuck, Ashla, Nat was just shot! You can’t just go fuck off in a foriegn country to look for coffee without telling us!” He sniffs the air, “And have you been smoking?

Jason shrugs one shoulder, handing Coulson’s coffee off to him. The man’s eyes are hard and pinched as well, disapproval warring with worry in his stormy gray eyes.

“You didn’t need me here,” he signs. It’s true, but a bold faced excuse on Jason’s part. In no way was Jason telling him that seeing fucking emotions made him have a breakdown and run off. He huffs, frustration rushing through him with himself, with Barton, with the whole goddamned situation. He runs his tongue over his lips to swallow down words he can’t (he can’t) say. “And, yes, I have been fucking smoking. Problem?” he signs harshly, eyebrows raised in irritation while his mouth turns downwards in a scowl.

Barton shakes his head. “That’s not the point, asshole,” fingers twitching against his cup like he wants to sign with his speech, his other hand cutting through the air to emphasize his words. “The point is that Nat was just shot and the people responsible are still out there and there’s no telling if they want to clean up their loose ends!”

“I am sure you can look after Red on your own for a few hours,” he signs back roughly. To think he got this asshole coffee.

Barton lets out an incomprehensible noise of frustration, the hand not gripping his coffee so hard that it might explode runs through his hair. Blue eyes lock onto him, bleeding sincerity so honestly that it hits Jason like a freight train. “You and me and Nat? We’re partners, now. And, sure, I don’t know you, but partners look out for each other. And I can’t do that if I don’t know where you are.”

Jason swallows and valiantly tries to hang onto his slipping anger before it leaves him empty again. He wants another goddamned cigarette, but he’s in a hospital and in the middle of a conversation-argument and just-- Shit. Barton’s not lying, if there is an assassin out there good enough to get through Romanoff’s defenses then it would be better to be together where they’re strongest, but--

Well.

It’s just another thing, he supposes, and the last of his anger slips through his fingers like ash. He should just be glad nobody’s dead. (None of them, anway.)

Barton seems to realize he’s made his point because he backs away, taking another sip of his coffee. He sighs, then, after swallowing another sip. “Good stuff,” he says appreciatively, like it means something.

Jason shrugs his shoulder because it doesn’t. “No problem,” he signs anyways, little emotion coloring his face, before his fingers start tapping nonsensically against him. Dammit. He’s back on the high-wire, numb to the chaos below, but in a very easy position to be pushed off. He takes a seat in the back of the waiting room, opposite Coulson, with good sightlines and everyone in view.

Fuck, he wants another cigarette. He takes a deep breath. Releases it. Repeats the process until the nagging need to tap his fingers abates some.

In the meantime, Barton’s taken a seat and polished off his coffee, seemingly having snagged Coulson’s too.

“How’s Red doing?” he eventually signs, long after Barton’s finished Coulson’s coffee too and disappeared in the room Coulson came out of earlier. He assumes it’s Romanoff’s. (He’s not sure who else's it would be if it wasn’t.)

“She’ll make a full recovery,” Coulson replies, taking his attention off his phone (which he’s had three calls on since Jason’s been back.)

“Good,” he replies, and the conversation falls into a lull. He doesn’t ask to see her. Maybe he will, later, when Barton’s had his private time with her. Maybe not.

Jason breaks the silence again sometime later. “I’d like this case. To look into the assassin.”

Coulson leans back in his cheap hospital seat, brows faintly raised. “And why should I do that?”

“I’m--” He stops, realizing he doesn’t know a sign for ‘detective’ that isn’t also ‘cop’ (--a distinction he wants, and he doubts ‘bat-trained’ would provide any sort of clarity.) He starts over, “I’m good at this. I learned about, hacked, and broke into SHIELD within a week. With enough time and resources, we’ll have the assassin and everyone behind him before you know it.”

Because this guy got Romanoff, he doesn’t say. That makes it personal. And he’s always gone after and done better on cases that were personal.

Coulson stares at him for a long moment, dissecting that, probably reading into the unsaid much more than Jason wants him to. He must have already been thinking about giving it to him because Jason was absolutely prepared to argue his point further (--Secret, shadowy organization, his mind whispers, but the thought is useless with no proof to back it up--) when Coulson sits up, steeples his fingers together, and nods. “Technically, this case doesn’t exist. But I’ve had orders from above to have it looked into, so,” another pause in Coulson’s nigh-impenetrable stoicism, “You’ve only been here two weeks, Ashla. That isn’t enough time to build trust with us. This is a good way to start. You’re to report in every three days at 10 a.m. sharp, bar other missions. Understood?”

It’s something that needs to be done and done quietly, is unsaid. Giving the case to Jason-- someone new to SHIELD, unlooked at, if on a high-ranking team-- ensures that the investigation doesn’t reach ears it’s not supposed to. And, like Coulson said, it’ll be a good way to build trust with the very untrusting organization.

Jason grins, mouth twisted to one side and eyes lit with challenge. “Understood,” he signs.

Coulson nods. “Good. They call him the Winter Soldier.”

(Later, he’ll get a flash drive and admire Coulson’s balls for being so brazen with the name out loud.)

Chapter Text

They transferred Romanoff to the base in Poland after two days. Since Coulson is his handler, Jason gets dragged there too.

The Polish base is… cold. It’s really, really fucking cold. He can’t say it’s the coldest he’s been since arriving in this universe, but that doesn’t really take from the fact that it’s still cold.

And Jason definitely needs to brush up on his Polish, but he’s not as lacking in it as he was in Ukrainian, and the longer they’re here, the more familiar he is with it. Unfortunately, his ability with the language means shit in little more than observing when nobody speaks ASL.

It grates, makes him snappish and more prone to glaring and flipping people off than anything else. But they’re not going back to the States until Romanoff can handle a flight that long (nevermind that she flew from Ukraine to Poland), so he has to deal.

Dealing, of course, means jumping in the deep end of a research dive.

The Winter Soldier Coulson called the assassin.

The name rings in his head like a bell. This, this, this, this is what you need.

SHIELD links the assassin, the virtual ghost, to eight assassinations in the past twenty years. (The earliest of which is that of Stark Senior, a direct contradiction to Jason’s earlier research. It’s... curious and bears looking into in the future.) There’s a comment in the research, about a potential spotting of him in the 60s, but given the sheer time difference, the information was dismissed.

Jason latches onto it because the picture is clear as day to the recounting Romanoff gave: a mask covering the lower half of his face and a silver metal arm with a red star. Jason’s heard weirder shit than a non-ageing assassin. He’s heard of non-ageing assassins. So, he looks into all the shady-ass deaths and assassinations between the sixties and today. (This information is helped by the shady-ass League-related deaths from his world. Apparently all shady background organizations have similar targets. Who would have thought.)

He bunkers down in his temporary bedroom with a computer and gets to work. He pulls up dozens of SHIELD files, hacks at least seven different government organizations, and chases down leads with a vengeance. Within three days, more hacking, and forced stops from Barton, (“--You gotta eat, Ashla--” “--Damn, how long have you been awake--” “--Is that JFK--”) Jason attributes the Winter Soldier to another dozen murders spanning the last five decades.

He tells Coulson on the sixth day, his second mandatory check-in, as promised. The man frowns, his eyebrows pinch, but he does nothing more than nod and say, “Good work.”

It’s weird.

Of course, crediting the Winter Soldier to the assassinations isn’t the same as figuring out who ordered them (or where he came from or how to find him again). Which, at the end of the day, is what he’s really trying to figure out.

Besides the subtle Russian influence in the Soldier’s branding (as subtle as a red star is, anyways) there are very little leads to help with that. He convinces the laid-up Romanoff to start teaching him what Russian he can learn in his state anyways.

His first lead in that direction would be the plant in the Iranian base. The man had been apprehended by SHIELD agents when Barton and him were still on the way to Ukraine. Jason would have tried to interrogate him (via Barton, probably, the guy held grudges like the best of them), had he not killed himself barely twenty-four hours later. And Jason might have even believed it, watching the footage of the man foaming at the mouth (because the autopsy report was certainly unhelpful), except for the water bottle on the table. A man who was going to kill himself in this line of work would have just done it-- and sooner. But instead he asked for water and half a bottle and thirty minutes later, he’s foaming at the mouth and dead.

Which, really, only leads to more questions.

Because reviewing the footage, nobody besides SHIELD agents went near that water. He contemplates for all of three seconds waiting to look into the agents before deciding that that’s stupid and furthur encrpting his SHIELD-issue laptop instead.

He’ll come back to it later (on a non-SHIELD-touched laptop.)

So Jason takes the next logical step: he traces the elusive Mr. Ruxtmi-- to America.

It takes another good seventy-two hours. The software is intense. He gets there, though, before Ruxtmi falls off the grid completely. That’s another lead that’s cold so, frustrated, he moves on.

(The fact that Ruxtmi is clearly an alias niggles at him, but he gets impatient after five minutes and decides to let his subconscious handle the problem.)

This, inconveniently, leaves him with no leads at all.

Coulson jumps on the opportunity with all the energy of someone who’s been waiting an eternity for someone else’s free time to open up.

“Speech therapy,” he says, voice and face pleasantly, insufferably, peaceful.

“Speech therapy,” Jason signs back with no small amount of trepidation, making sure that it shows. Under all that unease is a little kernel of excitement, but he’s long since learned to ignore that part of himself.

“Yes.”

Jason hums a little, glad he can make the sound without fear of damaging his vocal cords. It’s not that he doesn’t want to speak again. It’s just that he doesn’t want to go through the whole rigamarole of embarrassing himself and building up the strength to speak in more than grunts. And he especially doesn’t want to do it with some stranger.

Coulson takes his silence as his cue to continue, “Tomorrow, 1000 sharp. I’ll be getting reports about your progress.”

Jason smiles tightly, giving two thumbs up to show he understands.

Yay.

-----

Jason decides he hates speech therapy.

He exits out of the room with a little more force than necessary, the door hitting the wall loudly behind him. Barton-- what the hell is he doing here-- bounces out of his chair and follows him out to the hallway.

“Hey, man! Hey!” Barton touches his shoulder. Mistake. Before he can even really think about what he’s doing, Jason’s grabbing the offending hand and twisting it behind his back, shoving the archer up against the wall. He can physically see Barton not retaliate and breathe out, “Okay, yeah, that one’s on me. Let me go, yeah, so we can talk about this like adults?” He raises his eyebrows in question.

Jason grinds his teeth and lets him go, “What?” He signs choppily.

Barton straightens, pulling on his faded purple jacket to make it sit right. “I-- Just wanted to make sure you were all good.”

He raises his eyebrows in incredulity, an ‘uh-huh’ face if there ever was one.

“Seriously, dude. Doctors are never fun, especially the ones trying to get you to do shit you already know.”

He makes a small grunt of acknowledgement, continuing down the hall at a more sedate pace. Barton trails behind, pulling on the strings of his jacket while he talks.

“Anyways, Nat says you asked her to teach you Russian? Why? I mean, I know Russian, so why go to Nat. There are easier people to deal with if you want to learn a new language.”

Jason glances at Barton. He’s an alright guy, Jason thinks. He still has a sense of humour and an empathy for the purer things in life that a lot of people in the business lose. He’d do a hell of a lot for SHIELD, but more for Coulson and Romanoff. He’s loyal, but not blind about it. There are certainly worse people Jason could be teamed up with for the foreseeable future.

He shrugs, feeling the last of his frustration abating. Speech therapy had been a bitch and the man in charge of the sessions had very little about him that made Jason want to try and croak his way through rebuilding his vocal strength. The asshole had been condescending and vulgar in reference to Jason’s injury. But, needs must, so Jason suffered through it, trying not to think about how very easy it would be to get the man to shut up. Then Barton comes and is all - Barton, asking after him and making questions and being all -- Barton about it.

“Red’s Russian. Best learn from a native,” he signs to Barton, not missing the faint shine of surprise in the man’s eyes.

“Hmm. Interesting theory. What makes you say that?”

“Her name, for one,” he gestures, smirking a little at the chuckle that escapes Barton’s lips, “other, little things. Don’t worry. If I weren’t me, I doubt I would’ve noticed.”

“Huh. Well I don’t know about that, but it’s an interesting point. And I suppose Nat does speak Russian better than me, but don’t tell her I said that. She knows it, sure, but a guy can pretend.” He smiles, then, softly and more genuinely than Jason was expecting. It’s the kind of smile that speaks of care and love and little inside jokes that make life better.

“Sure, man,” he replies, not feeling the need to put a damper on anything resembling happiness. There’s much too little of it as it is. “Whatever you say.”

-----

That night he finally decodes Ruxtmi’s name. It’s simple, really, in practice. Ruxtmi is a cipher for Lerna.

He wasn’t sure at first, but he takes the name to his computer, in hopes the man-made magic that is Google can spit anything back at him. If not, he’d take it to darker webs (and he will, later, to see what the person behind the alias has been up to), but there’s no need. Within seconds, he learns all he needs to.

Lerna is the Ancient Greek city from which the hydra originates.

One hell of a coincidence, Jason thinks, staring at the screen before him that holds all his research, chin resting on his hand. Damn.

And all he has is an alias.

He has an alias, a great, shadowy organization that’s supposed to be kaput, the Winter Soldier, and moles in SHIELD.

Puzzle pieces that slowly knit themselves together, is what he has. But not the full picture. Not enough information to do anything about it, not yet. And where there is one mole, there’s more. So he doesn’t know who to trust.

He realizes it bothers him, that he doesn’t know if he can trust Coulson or Barton or Romanoff. He wants to. Isn’t that odd; wanting to trust someone, multiple someones. He hasn’t wanted to trust someone since before he can remember. How’d they get his want for that so quickly?

He sighs, deep and heavy, into his empty room. Leaning back into his pillows (having no place to work other than his bed), he stares up at the plain gray ceiling. All Jason can think to do is whisper, “Shit.”

Chapter Text

Coulson ends up reassigning him to the Middle East. The official story is something more along the lines that Jason doesn’t need the ability to speak to gather information (which Jason disagrees with because his job would be much easier if he could) or something along those lines. Coulson doesn’t look happy about it though, and Jason wonders if the order for his reassignment didn’t come from somewhere else or if it’s something else entirely that’s bothering the man.

But apparently, it’s not for him to worry about.

Coulson ends up mostly sending him on small, one-person intelligence missions, on the Ten Rings -- a terrorist group, and one suspected of having bigger connections and for the kidnapping of Tony Stark -- and other small, nameless organizations, making sure that Jason checks in on a set schedule. It’s not bad, all told. He gets in, he gets out, and he hasn't killed anyone. None go quite as disastrously as his first mission - which wasn’t his fault, mind - and he’s glad. He doesn’t want anyone at SHIELD looking at him or what he’s doing too closely.

Secondarily, Jason knows from watching the news that the Stark heir who got kidnapped out here is still missing. He can’t help but wonder what other angles his boss is playing at, and he makes sure to keep an ear out for information in that vein of heirs and weapons that might be useful.

Meanwhile, his Farsi, Arabic, Urdu -- and countless other Middle Eastern languages -- get better, reawakened from their months-long slumber since he last used them with the League. His mandated speech therapy is made by video call and Jason opts out more than once under claims of shitty reception. The scowl on the bastard’s face is worth it every time, especially when Jason knows he can work on improving his voice on his own.

He does everything on his own.

Surprisingly, Barton makes an effort to keep in contact with him. He sends memes and pictures of dogs he finds on his own missions and little updates on Romanoff’s recovery. Red herself even steals Barton’s phone once, to send Jason a picture of Barton passed out folded over a table, drooling onto all his paperwork.

Jason likes it, he finds. Having people is… comfortable, and strange, and dangerous. It isn’t something he enjoys, exactly, for all he likes it, his paranoia rearing it’s ugly head and making him doubt.

But otherwise… March rolls into April and all the while Jason researches. And researches, and researches.

He acquired a Stark laptop to help him because he has a salary now, which is so fucking weird. And, perhaps, a bit ironic. He goes from vigilante-antihero-kingpin to a government employee for the same skills. He can’t help but shake his head every time he thinks of it.

The laptop is very good technology, though. Stark definitely knew what he was doing. There was actually very little Jason had to do in ways of security, although he went in the software to make sure Stark-- the company, anyway-- couldn’t get into his laptop. Anything sensitive (i.e. all of it) Jason runs across is put there on a ghost drive. He uses it to look deeper into SHIELD, too. He has, successfully, gotten into the personnel files without the agency noticing.

It involved less hacking and more… slipping his way in. He uses holes already in the security program to accomplish it, holes that he patches up to be better behind him. Hydra, in all likelihood, is behind those. And under the guise of routine code maintenance, sealing the flaws in the security is not too suspicious. More useful, though, is one of the cards he swiped, looked at, and put back from one of the agents on Coulson’s level of things after a meeting said person had with them before Jason was reassigned. That had left him smirking.

He takes Coulson’s, Barton’s, and Romanoff’s files, even if he feels a bit guilty about it. The act had him shifting uncomfortably in his seat and trying to squash down the little seed of unease growing in his stomach.

Coulson, he figures with some relief before ever looking at the file, is likely clean. The man wasn’t going to give Jason a research mission which could lead back to him in an incriminating manner and he doesn’t seem like the type to mask it as one big trick. And by domino effect, this makes Barton clean too. Barton is loyal to Coulson, like a bird to a bat.

This, of course, leaves Romanoff.

She’s more tricky. While she has a subtle, but steadfast loyalty to both Barton and Coulson, she’s more loyal to the agency - or the idea of the agency, anyway - at large. The big number one too, probably, the director he has yet to meet.

Her childhood is even more screwed up than his, and that includes his reincarnation. He feels uneasy just skimming her files, and eventually elects to decide to just skip to her recruitment. She was brought in by Barton, which he knew, who was sent on a mission to assassinate her, which he also knew.

What really struck him was this, a statement from Romanoff that ultimately became one of the defining reasons she was flipped instead of killed: “I have red in my ledger. I’ll never be able to wipe it all clean. But… I want to try.”

And that, that stuck with him.

But he doesn’t tell Coulson and crew immediately. This is, mostly, because he doesn’t trust sending the information online, so they’ll all have to wait until he’s back there in person.

And so, with nothing else to do, he continues on. Jason scours SHIELD databases for anything useful he can find, something about his recent missions and the slow but steady gathering of information on the Ten Rings nagging at him in a sense that he knows means it’s all going to tie together later.

It bothers him that he’s not aware of it now.

In other arenas, Jason is peripherally aware that Coulson knows he’s digging into SHIELD files, but the man hasn’t said anything, so he’s taking that for non implicit approval. He wonders vaguely if that means Director Eyepatch (he hasn’t seen a picture, but he’s heard the stories) knows as well.

It’s not his problem. Except it very well could be, if the man is Hydra, but if so then he really has other things to worry about, so maybe, sure, it is his problem. But there’s nothing he can do about it.

-----

A month after he’s stationed in the Middle East, Coulson recalls him for a brief, three day period, citing ‘mandatory, non-long term debrief.’ The debrief itself is relatively easy, and the rest of his time during his recall is his. Or at least, it would be, if Jason hadn’t decided to fill it with telling his team about Hydra instead.

Or just Coulson, apparently.

The two of them sit in Coulson’s office, some fancy SHIELD gadget activated to fuzz out any recording devices, and Jason has just eloquently signed Coulson’s whole problem to him.

The silence is stifling; a dark, brooding look that is better suited to Bruce on Coulson’s face as he shuffles through the stockpile of papers Jason’s acquired in the past two months. The faint rustle of paper on paper is the only sound that can be heard other than their breathing, and after an untold amount of minutes, Coulson finally gives his attention back to Jason.

“And you’re sure?” Something about the look in his eyes is resigned, like he’s asking only because he’s clinging to the last vestiges of hope, when he knows, deep down inside that such hope is futile. It’s not a look that belongs on Coulson’s face.

Jason pinches his lips. Hope is not something he wants to take. But he nods, and Coulson’s face shutters closed, and heavy silence reigns once more.

Coulson raps the folder of papers against the corner of his desk, breathing out heavily through his nose, a different kind of hope gleaming anew in his eyes. Coulson’s an optimist, and this? This isn’t going to break him. “Alright. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

Jason leans in.

-----

Jason gets another in-person speech session, a fact which Coulson had reminded him of as he was leaving his office, which was just a joy to attend.

Jason can talk, or at least he’s getting there. The first time he swore in front of Barton - the first time he spoke in public, period - the man broke out a large grin and clapped him on the shoulder. Jason hadn’t even realized he had said anything.

But - But - But -

His voice isn’t his.

It’s a choked whisper. It’s gravel in his throat. His voice has been rough since the Pit, but now he sounds like a chain smoker of eighty, not give-or-take twenty. He’s done research- it should be soft, raspy. And it is, but also not. Apparently the Pit’s the gift that keeps on giving.

It’s… He doesn’t have words for it. But he’s angry. He knows that much. Bruce took away his goddamned voice, in more ways than one.

It’s the final nail in the coffin, really.

This isn’t helped by his Deathday right around the corner, the day before he’s shipped back to sunlight and food with actual flavour. If he had it his way, he’d avoid dates. He had been. But thanks to SHIELD, he quite literally can’t.

It puts him on edge. Makes him snappish. He knows Coulson and Barton and Romanoff all notice. They’re good at their jobs, how could they not? But other than the unamused glare, pointed eyebrow, or worried glance, they don’t say or do much about it.

Jason is - reluctantly - grateful for this fact.

And then his death day rolls around.

-----

Jason wakes up on April twenty-seventh feeling heavy. He stares at his ceiling in gray pre-dawn light, thoughts slipping through his head sluggishly. The bed is warm, which is nice. Or it would be nice if he gave two shits. He knows, distantly, that he actually has to get out of the bed. But it’s warm. And heavy. And he’s heavy, like his limbs are made of lead, and --

Jason sighs.

He has told Romanoff he would spar with her, since she was released from bed rest while he was on mission. And if he arrives late, she will absolutely make sure he feels it for the next week. Not that he particularly cares, exactly, but there’s no reason to be unnecessarily sore either.

He groans as he rolls out of the bed, the covers catching and dragging with him. His feet hit the cold ground and he hisses, but he reluctantly pulls himself further from the heavy cocoon of his blankets and out into the cold air of his room. Jason pulls on the SHIELD-issue gray training gear as the cold saps at the last of his lethargy. The Ankh on his arm is biting cold, and tugs at some recess in the corner of his mind for attention. What for, Jason doesn’t know. He ignores it.

After getting dressed, he shuffles out of his room towards the cafeteria, set on getting his morning’s coffee.

He does not get his morning’s coffee. Apparently, Jason overslept and Romanoff’s been waiting on him. Barton -- who found him, right before his glorious turn into the land with coffee -- shoots him an amused, odd look disguised as overacted pity.

The gym is empty save for his sparring partner. It’s early enough in the morning that those who are awake are taking advantage of the weather to run, not exercise in the gym which is temperature controlled all year round. Romanoff appears just as unimpressed with his tardiness as Barton is amused. She raises an eyebrow at him in question from her spot on the clay-red mats, the rest of her face utterly flat. The traditional gray training gear seems to only feed into the expression, despite the fact she’s not wearing any shoes, as is often traditional for some of their sparring matches.

Jason shrugs one shoulder half-heartedly in response and Romanoff’s gaze turns sharper and more assessing. She purses her lips a little, handing flitting in an invitation for him to join her on the mat. He does so, slipping his shoes off to match Romanoff, while Barton parks on one of the many benches off to the side, apparently content to watch them go out at it.

They stand there, like they often do, taking each other in and reading the other for who is going to attack first. The mat is chilly beneath his bare feet, but it helps focus him despite his lack of caffeine. Romanoff moves first, and from there, it’s a dance.

It is… brutal. Jason’s aware he’s hitting harder; he’s less focused than normal, for all the cold helps, and it’s not for lack of coffee. And, in turn, Romanoff meets him equally. She’s not as strong, but she’s fast, even faster than him, and has more years of experience under her belt. When he slams her into the mat hard enough Barton jumps to his feet, she reciprocates in a move he can only appreciate. His head bounces off the mat as she stops on top of him, head tilted to the side like a great cat, eyes sharp and calculating.

Jason eyes her back, unapologetic, if a little bitter. He hadn’t meant to be so aggressive, but… He’s not going to apologize for being himself, but he hadn’t meant to be so close to having lost control.

She moves off of him. “Get up.”

“Nat--” Barton says warningly, eyes trained on Jason as he slowly maneuvers to his feet.

“I know what I’m doing,” she replies calmly.

“Yeah,” Barton agrees, not sitting back down. “That’s part of the problem.” But he acquiesces, moving backwards. He doesn’t sit again, though, arms crossed and shoulders tense.

This time, Romanoff waits him out. Since Jason doesn't want to be standing here for half an hour, he moves first. She draws it out, he thinks, once his internal timer reaches somewhere around five minutes then seven then twelve. It’s twelve plus minutes of movement and nigh choreography, a rhythm in bones and in his body that leaves all else behind and clears the fog in his brain.

Which sucks because then Jason starts thinking with just the bare edge of feelings and that-- that can be distracting, and is and Romanoff takes full advantage, quickly getting him into a familiar chokehold that could easier than not result in a snapped neck, just like the first time he sparred with her.

She shifts off of him when he taps out, gaze critical. “Again.”

Off to the side, Barton grimaces but doesn’t intervene.

Jason glares, feeling petulant. She playing with him. He gets up, breathing hard and rolling his shoulders back, trying to release some of the tension there.

He lunges, moving around Romanoff as she dodges and hits back, the two twined in a beautiful, deadly -- if this were real -- dance once more. Jason can feel his sweat trickle down his spine and into his eyes; his breathing is laboured as he fights for oxygen to be consumed as fast as it’s being used. It goes on. They’ve been sparring for -- well, a while.

And somewhere, in between throwing a punch and skirting out of the way of something he’d be sure to feel for weeks, something in Jason just… lets go.

He died. He died, and he came back. He died, came back, and no one found him, and no one avenged him.

He was just… replaced.

And that hurt. Bruce was his dad. Bruce was his dad, and Bruce put a weapon in his throat.

And Jason knows, he knows that Talia used him. He knows that the Lazarus Pit affected his emotions. He knows this-- and deeper still, he knows that the original thought, those original feelings, are still his.

And that’s anger, yes, but it’s also grief, and sorrow, and betrayal. It’s hurt.

Jason misses his next swing and only realizes then that his vision is blurred and he’s shaking and-- And, and, and--

Romanoff pulls back, a blur of gray and red in front of him, and Jason stops too, his target gone. He turns on himself, pulling on his hair and trying to ground himself. His breaths stutter, and futility, he tries to count them out in pattern.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit shit.

There’s a gentle touch on his wrist and Jason knows he’s safe, but Jason also knows that SHIELD isn’t and that confusion doesn’t help years and years worth of trained instincts so Jason swirls on whomever touched him, grabbing on their wrist and yanking. In a show of force he rarely uses, and even today didn’t quite reach, Jason slams his attacker into the reddish mats beneath them.

“Shit,” someone wheezes from beneath him.

“Told you,” a female voice says from his right, sounding not in the least concerned.

“Jason,” says the first voice again, a little raspily, but with a kind of empathy rarely found in the world and god, Jason hates that. It’s just-- too much, and-- “Hey, man, I get it. Okay? I have bad days too. I get angry, and I scream, and I get sad, and I won’t leave my bed, and sometimes the only thing that makes it better is taking it out on a bunch of assholes or lounging in my pjs and eating too much pizza. Sometimes there’s a reason and sometimes? Sometimes I just feel shitty. And that’s okay, alright? It’s okay to have a bad day.”

Jason sucks in a deep, ragged breath, trying not to break down any further. He lets Barton go, shifting his weight from keeping him down to barely holding himself up, arms braced on either side of the blonde. This close -- and really, had he been any calmer, much too close for comfort -- he can read Barton's facial expressions despite the steady stream of tears coming down his face. It’s just… empathy and kindness and understanding. There’s no pity or wonder at his just a little too-much strength or, or, or.

Carefully, in his peripheral, Jason can see Barton reach up to him, carefully placing his hands against Jason’s back. One hand comes up to Jason’s head and cards through his hair, gently pushing him down to rest his forehead against Barton’s chest, nearly in the crook of his neck. He begins a careful track up and down Jason’s back, a soothing gesture that Jason can vaguely remember his mom doing for him, after a bad night but on one of her good days.

And Jason just… let’s him. It’s not that he isn’t in any state to refuse, because he has enough sense about him to know he could fend him off, but it’s certainly from a reluctance to. He… He wants that comfort and somewhere, along the line, Barton had earned the trust to give it.

He hears a distant click, and realizes Romanoff locked the door to the gym. Not to keep him in, but to keep others out, to prevent him from the imminent mortification of someone walking in on him would bring. She settles down beside them and Jason collapses further into Barton’s chest, sobbing quietly as Barton soothes him in return.

“It’s okay to have a bad day,” Clint says again, quietly.

Chapter Text

Jason appreciates that the first words out of their mouths are not, ‘you’re lying.’

Granted, “Fuck. Fuck!” isn’t much better.

Jason, Coulson, Clint, and Red are all gathered in Coulson’s office, mere hours before Jason is scheduled to leave again. And Jason -- and Coulson -- just told the two that the agency they’ve devoted their lives to is corrupted.

The idea to include them in the know was one Jason had argued with Coulson over, his newfound… awareness of trust, he supposes, making him speak out. Coulson believed that the information was to be shared on a need-to-know basis. Jason argued -- successfully -- that the terror twins were need-to-know.

After Clint’s minor explosion of expletives, he calms down outwardly, if not internally. The pinched brows and downturned lips are minor compared to the glare in the archer’s eyes. The blue orbs radiate fury and betrayal and better yet, determination.

Red is much more collected in her response, meaning she has none at all. Her face falls flat and blank, a blatant mask to keep her real feelings from being read. But her eyes -- they, too, show flashes of pain and betrayal and such utter determination that it makes Jason feel glad he’s not one of her future targets.

Natasha looks between the three of them, molten steel in her eyes, firing each of them in turn. “Okay. So how do we bring it crashing down?”

-----

Jason leaves again for the Middle East. Coulson did not look comfortable about it, and by this point Jason thinks he can read him pretty well, but, well. Don’t argue with the boss.

However, all that time gathering intelligence was as Jason thought -- at least in an indirect sort of way, as it was also clear that it was not his main objective, nor the terrorist organization that kidnapped him (though that information feels telling in the sort of way that he knows he’s going to loop back to it later). Because Tony Stark? He’s just been found outside of a currently on fire and previously unknown terrorist camp.

And so, after all that time in the Middle East, Coulson ends up sending him to Germany on May the first. He stuffs Jason in a suit and tie and makes him talk -- shortly, but talking nonetheless -- to officials from what seems like every letter organization in the United Nations, when really at most there should only be United States officials dealing with Stark’s return, as Stark is a State’s citizen. Jason’s nearly positive that nearly every official that talks to him regrets it soon after; Jason can pack a lot of scathing remarks into very little words. It’s a skill, he feels, that’s invaluable, if only for the pinched faces all the stuffy spooks give him.

A part of him wonders why Coulson even sent him on this trip. Surely, SHIELD has better representatives than he, a scarred, large, and scruffy guy who despite his best efforts, doesn’t look a day over twenty who can barely talk and lacks social grace. The latter is by his choosing, but everything else? He knows there are trained PR people within SHIELD. Hell, Coulson himself has probably been a liaison many a time. So why him?

It is something he thinks on in the back of his mind as he interacts with a blur of faces that all look the same.

When the billionaire is dragged out from hiding, Jason’s eyebrows nearly fly into his hairline.

Stark looks like utter shit.

The billionaire is long-gone from his thousand-piece suits and perfectly trimmed hair the newsreels and magazines paint him having. After having been released from the doctors on base, the man had been given plain army fatigues to wear in lieu of the clothes they rescued him in. It doesn’t stop Jason from noticing the obvious -- the sling all the way down to the small cuts littered here and there, the faint bruises around his eye, or the burns peeking out from under the shirt sleeves and from beneath the collar. And, oh yeah, the glowing arc reactor in his chest.

Yeah, this is just a superhero origin story waiting to happen.

They have him in a debriefing room while Jason and several other members of various intelligence organizations watch and record from behind the one-way glass. It’s all a bit much, Jason muses, for someone who just got out of three months of captivity.

A small mercy, Jason supposes, is that Stark is being questioned by who he’s been told is his best friend -- Colonel James Rhodes. Jason had met the man briefly, and he was perhaps the only one who didn’t question how young Jason looked out of superiority, but out of worry. He seemed decent, and reminded him vaguely of Commissioner Gordon, if less jaded, for all they said maybe ten words to each other.

Jason does not envy the battered billionaire. It’s obvious to Jason -- or anyone with two eyes -- that all the man really wants is a nap and some peace and quiet. He looks over the Colonel with deep, tired eyes, pulling a smirk for the crowd he knows is watching him.

“Rhodey,” he greets.

“Tones.” Jason can’t see Rhodes’ face, but his voice alone sounds deeply apologetic. The man sits, setting down papers and a recorder on the table.

“I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“Just… repeat what you told me earlier, yeah? I’ll guide you with some questions and we’ll record it so you don’t have to go through this again.”

Stark huffs, wry amusement, quaking the corners of his lips. “Until I get home, and the media storm hits.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s get this hoopla over with…”

Jason falls back as the questioning begins, knowing official transcripts will be provided at the end of the session. Instead he studies the people. There’s Stark with his gallows humour and Rhodes with his easy acceptance of it going through Stark’s last months and his escape and then there’s the officials -- men and women cataloging and making their own observations of the pair, invasive and not caring in the least about it.

These interactions -- these are what Jason takes in and tucks away. There’s interest to be found everywhere. He can tell how different offices feel about each other, about the situation, about Stark, just from the tension in the room. It’s useful information.

Jason refocuses on Stark and Rhodes as they near Stark’s escape. Coulson had pulled him aside before he left, saying that SHIELD has a particular interest in that particular given the readings pulled in from their satellites and intelligence gathered in the local area. When Jason had raised an eyebrow in question, Coulson had grimaced faintly and said, “We have reason to believe he built himself a suit and blasted his way out.”

Jason took that at face value, knowing better than most how true that could be.

The whole situation, in fact, made him think about Death and her words to him. The start of the Golden Age of Heroism for this universe. Perhaps, with a metal suit and a glowing arc reactor, it starts here. Superhero origin story indeed.

It’s certainly an intriguing thought.

—--

The only thing of immediate interest during the whole interview is Ten Rings and the weapons they most definitely should not be having. And more importantly, who they got them from. It certainly worth noting and looking into, anyway.

(Later, he will learn about Obadiah Stane. Even further along, he will learn about Stane and Hydra. Later, he will be one step further along. But only later.)

—--

Jason doesn’t know what exactly compels him to draw Rhodes aside after the interview that is definitely not an interrogation.

He doesn’t know what exactly is on his face that Rhodes lets him.

But the man takes one look at him, glances over to Stark, who in turn glances Jason over boredly, meets Rhodes eyes, and shrugs, and then Rhodes is pulling Jason into a side room, locking the door behind them.

Jason takes a beat, mildly surprised he aquised so easily. “Okay,” he signs to himself, giving himself a moment to gather his thoughts and take the colonel in.

The man’s tired. There’s a faint exhaustion in his eyes that was not there before the interview, and there’s a sort of air around him that holds a faint sense of disbelief at all the events up to this point. But he’s looking at Jason with his arms crossed, leaning back against the door behind him. It’s more disheveled than he presented himself throughout the entire interview, and surprisingly honest. The incidental vulnerability in the gesture nearly throws Jason off guard. However, despite all that and his willingness to hear Jason out, he’s clearly impatient to get back to his friend and so Jason decides he’s stalled long enough.

“Your friend’s gonna need help.”

Rhodes raised a brow at him, “Really? And here I was thinking we’d send him off back party-ing tomorrow.”

Oh, Jason thinks. That’s how they became friends. He rolls his eyes, signing, “No,” incidentally. He only catches the action as the colonel tracks the movement with a thoughtful expression on his face and he barely refrains from scowling. “No,” he repeats, “Not what I meant. Your man’s a genius with a battery in his chest,” he takes a breath as his throat closes up around his words. Jesus fuck, he’s so tired of this injury. “He was held in captivity for three months.”

And Jason’s just pausing because his voice decided to give out, but Rhodes takes the opportunity anyway, “I know all this already. If you’ve just come in here to tell me what the doctors have been repeating for days, I think I’ll take my leave now.”

“No,” he says with enough patience that even Alfred would be impressed, the sign repeating itself with his words. Jason resigns himself to it becoming a thing now, at least for the foreseeable future. “Just– how much do you know about how he escaped?”

Oh, Coulson’s going to kill him. Coulson is actually going to bullet between his eyes and bury him where no one will ever find him because this information must be so extra classified. But the billionaire’s going to get himself killed if he does what Jason’s thinking he’s going to do by himself. The vigilante gig sucks when you do it by yourself. So, Rhodes.

Except Rhodes is talking again, eyebrows pinched, and with more than a little annoyance coloring his voice, “Well, I’m the one that found him. I was the one in the room with him when the doctors patched him up. I was the one in that room interrogating him, so don’t you talk to me about—”

“Colonel,” Jason interrupts sharply and with regret as a lick of pain crawls up the back of his throat. Fuck it, he thinks, frustrated, loosening his tie and pulling down the collar of his shirt and jacket to show it to him. This is the longest conversation he’s had since– since. “Just give me a moment.”

The colonel’s eyes catch on the clean line wrapping itself around his throat, face pulling downwards as he nods.

“Thanks,” Jason mutters. “Your friend– SHIELD’s intel shows he built himself a–” he clears his throat, “A suit.”

“A suit,” Rhodes repeats in monotone.

“Yeah.”

Rhodes meets his eyes, and the look in them can only be the pure exasperation felt by someone realizing that their loved one is hurtling themselves head-first down the path. He’s not sure that the colonel knows that that’s what the look is, but it’s definitely the look worn by everyone who’s been close with a vigilante-hero type at one point or another. “Well, damn.”

Chapter Text

What.

The.

Hell.

Jason stares at the screen before him in horrified fascination, names, ages, locations, and abilities of every powered person SHIELD -- and therefore, Hydra -- can get their hands on listed out before him.

They have a fucking Index.

Jason scrubs a hand over his face, pulling at his hair. His day had started out simple enough. Coulson called him in for a solo mission, one of many by this point. After his apparent alright handling of the Stark case —minus the maybe leaking of confidential information, but whatever— Coulson had taken over for the more public aspects, while making sure Jason got a steady stream of Ten Rings information from all their other informants in the Middle East. Unfortunately, given the off-the-books case nature of that particular project, Jason keeps getting sent around the globe to do SHIELD’s bidding instead of being able to spend all his focus on Hydra. The missions are vageuly remeniscent of his time with the League of Shadows, just marginally less… murder-y.

And they’d given him back his gear. Not his armour, because that thing was dinged all to hell from the fight and explosion, and SHIELD has pretty good gear itself, but his weapons, his mask. Jason must have stared at it for a good, solid minute before looking up at Coulson’s expectant face. He raises the red domino in one hand.

“Can I still use this?”

Coulson raised his brows, “SHIELD agents typically worked bare-faced.”

“I like my anonymity.”

“Well, we gave it back,” which is answer enough from Coulson.

Jason smirked.

For the latest assignment, Coulson handed him a paper report of a list of missing known powered people, and then an even longer list of missing unofficially known powered people, then told him to find out what was going on and sent him on his way.

Jason, the curious and very, very thorough individual that he is, decided to use his definitely not SHIELD-sanctioned methods of accessing their servers to see if SHIELD had any more information on the powered community Jason had previously not known existed and, well.

GIven his new enlightenment of information, Jason supposes he can at least be glad mutants -- what Jason figures is this universe’s metahumans - are not on said Index (but are on the unofficial list, in all likelihood), if only by the grace of laws that seemed to have been fought to the last tooth and nail for, and because of the good work of a small band of hero-vigilantes called the X-Men. It’s a small consolation.

A deep, uneasy ball of lead settles somewhere in his lower stomach and his lips twitch downward at the glowing screen.

Jason is, by all terms and definitions, a powered person. Various magical weapons excluded, the Lazarus Pit is it’s own gift of enhanced abilities, ranging everywhere from accelerated healing to superior senses and strength. It’s not enough to be easily noticeable, but it is enough that it certainly gives Jason a certain edge in most scenarios.

Well, fuck. He wasn’t planning on revealing any of his various enhancements any time soon, but it’s another situation when the option is taken out of his hands entirely. Because he can’t, no matter what, let Hydra know he’s enhanced and give away that advantage. And that means not telling Coulson, or Clint, or Red, because telling one means telling all, which means telling SHIELD and getting Indexed, his life never to be private again.

He swallows down the bitterness that brings him. It’s not like he isn’t keeping a million and one other secrets. What’s one more? But… Well, it’s not as if his strength isn’t an open secret between at least him, Clint, and Nat. He doubts they’ve missed his advanced healing. He’s sure the rest can guess accurately from there some of his other mild enhancements. So maybe… Maybe it’s not quite as terrible as it initially seemed.

Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that he can’t openly admit any of his neater abilities -- ie, magical, badass weapons -- or the fact that SHIELD is indexing people.

So, as he does with most other unpleasant things in his life, he sighs, firmly packing that little thing stolen away from him in a box behind a locked door in a dark, unwelcoming cave in his mind, and moves on to the issue at hand.

There are powered people going missing.

—--

So, there’s a trafficking ring.

With a little research, it’s not hard to find out most of the victims are high-risk, coming from unstable homes and families, unstable jobs, or lives of crime. Or they’re runaways, escaping bigoted parents. Frankly, the amount missing is disturbing in its own right, but given there’s at least as many victims who might not be reported at all?

And the victims aren’t just from the New York area, but Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities. It’s a wide network, and Jason would bet that he will find influence of the ring across the Atlantic, too.

Best he can figure, the ring is based in the States, moving locations every few weeks. And, lucky him, based on the trends, it’s currently in New York.

Jason decides to hit the streets.

The routine of rooftop hopping and …interrogating the right thugs for information is surprisingly nostalgic. It’s not like Jason missed it, exactly. He’s still been doing work. It’s not exactly the kind of work one enjoys, but it’s fulfilling in its own right.

The information he gets isn’t exactly encouraging. The information on locations, numbers, dates, and the like is tight-lipped. He eventually tracks down two guards who give him the location before he surrenders them over to SHIELD, whole and hale, minus a few new holes which earn him scowls.

But his real break comes when he’s surveying the place – an abandoned… something with at least three floors and a basement – and trails one of the guards home after the watch shift.

He follows the man as the rooftops climb higher and higher, before the guard wanders off into an alleyway for a shortcut and Jason drops down on him from above, grappling hook in one hand, gun in another. His feet connect soundly with the guard’s sternum, and the thug lets out a grunt of air as he goes crashing onto the concrete.

Leveling his gun at the fallen thug, Jason asks, “You’re going to answer some questions for me.”

“Yeah?” the man says, right before Jason puts a bullet through his knee. Under the ringing gunshot, the man screams.

“How ‘bout we try this again?” He says levely, pointing the gun with a steady hand at the man’s other knee.

“Okay, okay–” the thug gets out between sobs– “what– whatever you wanna know!”

“Good. The ring you work for. Tell me ‘bout it.”

“I– I–” the man’s eyes search upwards, tears streaming down his face and blood seeping beneath his leg– “Just ask the other guy!” he whines out.

“What other guy?” he growls. His intelligence thus far hadn’t revealed any more parties.

Jason grinds down on the man’s knee when he doesn't respond. He cries out, “The- the- the one with the claws! He– he overheard us at the bar– and, and, and—”

“And what.”

“I dunno, man! Asked questions!”

Shit. Grinding his teeth, he asks levelly, “And did you tell your boss?”

“Shit, no!” he gets out between gasping breaths, “I’d be a dead man!”

Okay. Okay, if the trafficking ring hasn’t been tipped off, then Jason still has a chance. He takes a breath, “What, exactly, did you tell this other guy?”

The man tells him.

—--

And, so, Jason plans.

The thug had told him guard numbers, where the kidnapees are being held, where the main office is, and, most shiningly: the most vulnerable days the operation would be susceptible to attack.

This particular circuit isn’t going to have an auction day, which is what Jason would have preferred to get both buyer and seller. It does, however, have a routine.

The same number of guards are on watch at all times, switching at the same times each day. They follow the same circuits. The same guards get lazy at the same time, like clockwork. It is just the thing that Jason can take advantage of.

The new thing about this — because this kind of work is fairly routine for him, even before this universe — is that he has to update Coulson.

It’s… not so bad, really. Coulson just nods in acceptance to Jason’s choices, unless he thinks something is egregiously wrong (which he hasn’t done, but Jason knows Coulson. He’d point something out if he seriously doubted it). In essence, the man’s a backup policy on information and, well, actual backup, should things go tits up. He keeps things going smoothly on the SHIELD side, so that the actions Jason takes end up on just the right side of legal.

So, on the day of Jason’s plan of attack, he has Coulson just a tap away on the comms. He knows the man has at least two teams on standby should Jason alert him that everything’s gone to shit. Jason would almost prefer it be just Natasha or Clint, but both are out of country on assignment, though Clint should be getting in by the end of the day and Nat within the next few.

And then.

The assholes are prepared for him when he arrives. Someone tipped them off.

Instead of the half-dozen guards Jason was expecting, there are nearly three-dozen lying in wait and hiding, only to emerge when Jason shows his domino-clad mug.

Well, shit.

He tries to hit his comm to alert Coulson — this being the imagined tits up scenario — but his hands are quickly needed to well, defend himself. This is what emergency buttons are for. Why doesn’t he have an emergency button?

Jason tries. He really does. But Jason is just one man, and one lucky hit on the back of his skull (this is what he had a helmet for, he’ll think later) is all it takes for sweet oblivion to take him in as he goes crashing down.

—--

Jason’s whole body aches, is cramped, and there’s a pounding in the back of his head that speaks of a head injury.

It’s the first thing he notices as bare thoughts drift into his head. And then everything filters in and clicks at once— the pain, the ambush, the bastard who clocked the back of his head. He flinches himself to wakefulness, eyes opening as he just barely refrains from bashing his skull against the metal bars mere inches above his head.

Heart fluttering from the sudden adrenaline, he looks around the bars of his cell, a little embarrassed and more than a little annoyed. He’s— Well, he’s him. He doesn’t get captured by two-bit thugs, even if they outnumber him.

The glorified cage he’s being held in is small, especially for a man of his size. The width is not even the span of his arms. His legs are scrunched up close to his chest. He can’t even sit up fully, so he’s hunched over himself awkwardly. The lock to the cell is high-gear, especially for a place like this. And even if Jason can maneuver himself to it, he has to get himself out of the cuffs he’s in first, though that is probably the least complicated part about the whole situation.

At least he’s not wearing a collar, he thinks sourly. Outside of his cage, besides the gray-clad guards, are other cages, lining the walls of the dimly lit room. Some have prisoners, others not. And they’re kids.

Shit, he thinks as a hot spike of anger shoots through him and lingers. The reports were mostly on adults, so they must be around here somewhere – or worse – but the fact that so few of the children were reported missing speaks ill of the people in this world’s society. Prejudice against what they fear. Not new, but still bitter and disappointing.

The kids are wearing collars, the kind that looks like they repress powers. Their faces are gaunt and dirty, and the room reeks of unwashed bodies and waste. Some eye him with wary curiosity, but most don’t pay him any mind, drawn in on themselves.

Jason grits his teeth and breathes sharply through his nose. Okay. So: escape. What does he have? Not his armour, not his boots. He’s been stripped down to his undershirt and socks, and thankfully he still has his pants, though they’ve divested him of his belt. A cursory pat on his pockets show they’ve been raided as well. So summarily: not much. But he’s not wearing a collar, for which he’s infinitely grateful. It might not even work, given his abilities are more magic based than science, but better safe than sorry.

So he’s not weaponless. Nor even tool-less because the Ankh really is as versatile as Death said it was.

Jason studies the not-tattoo on his bare arm. The cold non-matter seems to draw him in, as it has been every night since he got it. It’s a draw that finally got him to start practicing with it, but it’s unsettling nonetheless. Begrudgingly, Jason is grateful for that practice he did have.

He looks around the dark, concrete room again. Two guards by the door and another patrolling up and down the aisle. All three have automatic guns.

Should be a piece of cake.

He slips his wrists from the cuffs with ease, then grabs them before they clatter to the floor and hides his hands in his lap, tracking the lapping guard as he shifts closer to the lock. With a little concentration, the not-tattoo on his arm slinks off his skin and hovers above his hand, and a little tug in his chest makes known the fact that he’s using little chips of his soul for this. Ah, well. Death said it regenerates, and practice has shown the truth of that.

He presses the Ankh against the high-tech lock on his cage as the guard passes him. High-tech or not, the sheer energy overload smokes the wiring inside the lock, and with a soft sizzle-pop, the barred door unlocks.

The noise doesn’t escape the guard, and as the man turns, Jason shoves the door open, rolling to his feet. The Ankh lengthens in his hand into a sweet, sharp-edged dagger and just as it finishes forming and the guard finishes turning, Jason’s shoving the black blade into the man’s chest.

The guard’s face reads shock then nothingness as red warmth blooms from his wound and stains his uniform and Jason’s fingers. Around him, the room seems to burst into activity. The guards by the door are swearing. The kids in the cages have either pressed themselves as far from them as possible or are pressed against their doors, faces hungry for the possibility of escape.

Just as the guard begins to collapse on top of him, Jason yanks the dagger out his chest, holding up the body and using it as a shield as the guards by the door start firing. He peeks around the corpse, arm flinging back and forwards. The Ankh flys through the room towards the guard on the right.

It hits him dead-center and he collapses with a scream. Even before he hits the floor, Jason can see the Ankh dissipating and can feel it reforming as a throwing knife in his hand. Jason grunts as bullets hit the dead-weight in hand, but then the Ankh is being thrown again and the second guard collapses with a gurgle, gun clattering to the ground. He drops the corpse in his hand as the Ankh reforms once more in his right.

“Right,” he says, looking around the room at the kids whose faces span everywhere from fear to disbelief to hope. “How about we get y'all outta here?”

Chapter Text

After taking the boots from guard number three, Jason lines the kids up behind him like little ducks in a row. An older girl – only two or three years younger than Jason, really – with a navy blue pixie cut and hard, amber eyes takes the lead behind him as an older boy who flickers in and out of existence tails them off. The two of them were crammed in the same cell and apparently decided mutually that they were the de facto leaders and watchers for the ducklings, being the apparent eldest.

Seeing the kids’ faces as their powers came rushing back to them was… hard. It hurt in a way that was familiar but that he never got used to, twisting and ugly behind his ribs. He takes a deep breath before leaving the room, raking his gaze over all the little people he swore to himself to protect, long before he ever set foot in this universe.

He puts himself through the door first, splitting the Akkh between each hand as daggers. A single guard waits outside, rocking his head to the music plugged into his ears from a long, white cord. No wonder he didn’t come storming in at the gunfire. Jesus.

Jason comes up behind him and slits his throat. He finds it hard to have any real regret.

“Kay, ducks. Clear!” he calls, wiping the blood off the blades on the guard’s gray uniform.

Pixie-cut sticks her head through the doorway, eyeing the corpse dispassionately. Her eyes flick up to Jason and away, and she raises her arm to gesture to the people behind her. Each little duckling’s eyes inevitably flicker to the cooling corpse, and for that, regret does bloom, a thorn-rose in his sternum and throat. These kids had lost their childhood innocence, this horrible, rotten place made sure of it, but at the end of the day they were still kids.

And Jason was just another fucker who exposed them to horrifying violence.

He swallows the feeling and pushes it to the back of his mind. He can not afford to let anything distract him now.

He turns, assessing the hallway before leading them down the gray-washed corridors, stopping at each intersection to look for more guards.

They’ve cleared three hallways — and Jason’s killed three hallways worth of guards, just out of sight of the ducklings behind him, and each time he takes them around the corner thorns scrape against his throat — when a faint boom echoes throughout the building and the ground underneath him trembles. An alarm goes off throughout the building in response.

“Fuck,” he mutters looking back behind him and thinking rapidly. There’s been obvious signs of a third party from pretty early on. The man with claws, the fact the guards were tipped off. Now this– presuming that this is the mystery third party. He turns to face the kids, squaring his shoulders before saying, “Okay. Looks like we’re about to have company,” he clears his throat, “If we run into it, hide. If it’s safe, I’ll say so. Clear?”

He gets wide eyes, nodding heads, and mumbled agreements. He’ll take what he can get, he supposes.

They continue making their way through the compound as quietly as possible, Jason always at the head and dealing with anybody in their way.

He levers himself around another corner, and instead of finding another guard, he finds a yellow and black leather clad man with red, wrap-around sunglasses who has a guard groaning at his feet.

What the fuck.

As Jason comes into view, the man jerks his hand up to the sunglasses, then hesitates. And it’s then that Jason gets it, eyeing the yellow decaling that makes up the ‘x’ on the man’s costume. He’s a fucking X-Man. But the explosion from earlier finally makes sense, and quells some of the paranoia that had been running rampant along his nerves and through his bones since the distant thunderclap and quake.

“You shoulda’ killed him,” Jason says, nodding at the very much not dead guard at the X-Man’s feet.

The guy’s head tilts down, likely taking in Jason’s blood flecked clothes and skin and the suspicious lack of blood on his weapons.

“There are better ways to do things,” he responds evenly. “You escaping?”

Jason flicks his eyes towards the line of kids pressed up against the wall just to the side of him, a tell he knows the other man is going to catch, mostly because Jason decided to look at all. “No,” he responds, looking the pixie-girl in the face, then looking over the rest of the injured and worn down kids, “but these guys are.” He clears his throat, “Duckies, X-Boy’s come to save your hides!”

Pixie-cut narrows her eyes at him as he waves his hand to guide them towards the X-Man. Said man takes a step forward, but stops after Jason sends him a sharp look. “He ain’t gonna bite. Gonna lead y'all outta here, right?” he asks pointedly.

The man’s face twitches down into a frown. “It’s a two-pronged attack–”

Jason rolls his eyes, interrupting, “I got it. You know the way out.”

“Yeah,” he responds warily.

“Then lead ‘em,” Jason retorts, just as pixie-cut peeks her head around the corner. “I got this.”

Just to make a point, he flips the daggers in his hands, watching them elongate into swords and fall heavily back into his palms. He swings the left one in an arc, a soft whisper that cuts through the air. They feel right, in a way the daggers do not, a mirror to the much more picky swords that rest somewhere other.

With a faint ping of remorse, he shrinks them again. Daggers are more efficient than his preferred dual swords in the tight space -- and easier to summon than guns and bullets.

Sunglasses raises his brows and before he can make any sort of response, Jason sighs loudly and says, “Fancy eyes! You may got ‘em, but I have actual,” he holds the Ankh up pointedly as his throat closes on him, “‘Sides, he starts again, “Figure this way you can see ‘em out yourself.”

Shades looks over the scruffy row of kids that have emerged from behind the hallway wall. Jason can see the moment he chooses them first. “Okay,” he takes something off his belt that looks vaguely radio-esque and holds it towards him, “but call in if you need help or when you’re done.”

“Yeah,” Jason says gruffly, grasping the radio and dagger in his right hand together before dropping the device in a pocket. “Now get ‘em outta here.”

Even through the red-tinted lenses, Jason can tell when their eyes meet. They nod at each other, then Sunglasses is waving the kids through the hallway just behind him. With one final look at Jason, the man turns away, quickly guiding the kids back the way he came.

—--

From then on, Jason is on his own, quicker and more efficient. It occurs to him that he could liberate the fallen guards’ guns, but he’s fallen into a rhythm at this point, and he’d prefer to have a weapon in each hand anyways.

Eventually, he makes it to the outside of the central command room. The main office is behind two sealed, metal doors from what he can remember of the schematics, and the dying and dead guards at his feet do not have any keys on them outside of what is clearly their house and car keys. Jason looks directly at the camera situated outside the door, shifting his face to sharpen his glare and greaten his scowl.

“Open it and maybe I won’t murder you.”

The hallway is quiet and still, so unlike the carnage of just minutes before. All Jason can hear is his breathing and the faint hum of electricity. The lights glare down at him, the camera does not move, and the door does not unlock.

Jason shifts, angling himself towards the door. “Don’t say I didn’t warn ‘ya,” he mutters in a near growl, before flinging one of the daggers at the camera to knock it out. The Ankh in his hands shifts and spreads, a borderless mass that presses itself in the door’s slimmest crevices and shorts out the systems. He hears the faint click of the door unlocking and raises his brows. The idiots can’t even put in a backup system to ensure that system failure or a blackout wouldn’t leave them vulnerable.

He taps the door open with his stolen boot and repeats the process for the second door. Instead of opening it immediately– which would be suicide in such a small place, even those with the worst kind of aim could not miss the mass that is Jason –he presses his back against the door and tilts his head to listen.

It is not near as quiet as it was earlier. Besides himself, Jason can hear the faint breathing patterns of two different people. Someone’s rolling back and forth in one of those rolling chairs, and the other person is pacing, if the heavy footfalls are anything to go by.

He listens for a few more moments. Back-forwards, goes the wheels. Five steps, turn, five steps, turn. When the footsteps near Jason again, he throws his weight against the door, feeling the heavy metal impact the pacing guard.

The guy stumbles and Jason turns himself, deftly sinking a reformed dagger underneath his ribcage and another across his throat. Blood, red like spoiled rubies, spills and sprays, warm and sticky. The guard spasms and drops, but before the man even hits the floor, Jason is already at the guy who is in the chair. He is not even out of his seat, gun abandoned by the unlocked computer, when Jason uses the same dagger to stab up past his sternum to where his heart lies. He can tell the violent action hits home because the man is dead before he ever hits the ground.

The whole thing was at most thirty seconds.

Jason breathes out deeply through his nose. His kill count for this universe has by far passed doubled. These fuckers deserved it, no doubt. And Coulson will definitely not give him the boot, despite the annoying, nagging voice in his head that says he will. It was even self defense, arguably. It was eye-opening, really, how easily he could fall back into such heightened violence, even without the Green.

He can’t quite get the kids’ faces at the dead bodies out of his mind, though.

With a shake of his head, Jason puts the thoughts to the back of his head and moves over to the computer.

He moves the mouse over the blue background, quickly pulling up the ring’s files on anything they have. He’s looking for client lists, preferably, because all that money has to go somewhere.

What Jason gets is not client files.

He stares at the pictures before him in dawning horror and disgust and deep, bubbling anger.

The client base was very… wide. He knows that. Sex, fighting rings, experimentations. Anything and everything you could want from a powered person, these people were selling.

And they took pictures of it. Mostly kids, gaunt and dirty and terrified, stare wide at flashing cameras. They took pictures, to advertise or for themselves, it doesn’t matter, because Jason is going to erase them all. With a few extra taps against the keys, Jason is taking off all copies of the children off the computer. A few more, and Jason’s in the dark web. But the internet is… vast, horribly vast, and once something gets on it, it can practically never leave.

He scowls. He needs to turn this over to SHIELD tech. He knows that. He still grinds his teeth as he sends a tip to SHIELD servers about the latest of society’s shittiness.

That dealt with, he gets to tracking down the bastards that think it’s okay to buy people like they’re nothing more than products. It’s pitifully easy with the fire in his veins pushing him to wreak vengeance upon them. Looking around, he shuffles through drawers for a flash drive. With success, he downloads any names, or bank account numbers, or anything relevant he can get his blood-stained hands on onto.

All the while, the pictures burn on the back of his eyes: the kids are wearing horror-struck faces, terrified and so very, very alone.

Jason is going to take immense pleasure in burning the whole thing to the ground, a very real flame in his mind’s eye to match the steadily burning inferno that spreads through his chest into his blood and down into his bones.

He growls as the computer dings ‘done,’ yanking the flashdrive out harshly before shoving it into his pocket.

He breathes once. Twice. Reminds himself that he’s not fighting the fight alone and that the information he just downloaded will be turned over to SHIELD so that any bastards even remotely connected to the trafficking ring – customers, workers, anyone -- will not get away with it.

It doesn’t really help the tumultuous feelings inside him.

He breathes deeply one last time and turns back to the computer to pull up the camera feeds. Between him and the secondary cell block is the same rota of two guards a hallway, but more pressingly, a main hub full of guards on high alert. It looks like it was the cafeteria. Jason reckons when the alarm was triggered by the X-Men’s arrival, everyone took up their weapons as they awaited orders.

Jason grins, all teeth and dark, (green) rage humming down to his bones. “Alright, boys. Let’s play.”

—--

Blood coats his skin, seeping into his hair and into his clothes, sticky and warm. It’s nothing new. It’s not particularly comfortable. People’s life clings to his skin, most of it isn’t his, and all Jason can really feel about that is cold, burning acceptance at a job well done.

The fight is not going well.

Or rather, it was. The Ankh was two dark whispers of daggers slicing through his opponents, a song in his hands that reverberates through his soul. They were efficient on his first-floor opponents, but there were a myriad of guards upstairs that had him pinned and were now sending down a rain of bullets. The daggers, efficient they may be, were no shield to the hail of ammunition. Of course, he could make the Ankh into a shield or anything else, really.

It’s just, all his current focus is split between not getting shot and not giving into the green, green, green licking like flames on the edges of vision.

Once it was clear that the daggers were no longer going to be useful to him, he had picked up the fallen guards’ guns. Wasteful bastards they were, Jason didn’t get much use out of them before throwing them to the side.

Another round of bullets strike the metal table protecting him, loud bang-bang-bangs that reverberate around his skull. Adrenaline spikes and he can feel his already worked body pump blood throughout his veins. With each beat of his heart, anger pulses, hot and loud and real in his veins. Another beat, the anger resurges, and resurges, and resurges, bubbling, and toxic, and oh-so alluring.

Jason has no love for the Pit Madness, the Green, the Lazarus Pit bestowed upon him. The rage colors his every action already, but when it takes over– he can’t control himself, and he doesn’t care, and he hates it. All it’s good for is blind murder; it’s a primal thing run on bloodlust, and in Jason’s body, it always gets just that.

But he can’t get the images of the kids out of his head. Dirty, scared, terrified children, being sold, and abused, and experimented on, all for money and power. And Jason hates that, too.

In between the moments of gunfire, one particularly cocky bastard throws comments and slurs at Jason. It wasn’t bothering him.

Then the fucker opens his mouth again, “There was a little bastard here that was as angry as you!”

Jason stills in his crouch. Now the fucker has his attention.

“So I decided to teach him a lesson,” he laughs, and Jason tenses as he tries to pinpoint his location. “Should’a left the little brat alive, just so you could'a seen him die screaming.”

The fucker is laughing, high pitched, and crooked, and—

The bastard killed a kid. The bastard killed a kid, and is proud of it, and is fucking laughing.

Jason’s mind greens out with staticy anger.

He lets go.

(It overtakes him in his moment of blind rage, toxic, hateful, and Green.