Chapter Text
Clint hugged the wall as he crept in, confident that he'd left enough time for the room to have emptied. A quick glance confirmed that it appeared deserted, but long habit caused him to flit from the cover of one pieces of furniture to the next. At last he reached the relative safety of the doorframe, and let out a shaky breath of relief before smacking straight into Kate.
He shrieked and almost dropped Sam's jacket. Hurriedly he bundled it back around his hand.
"Okay, what did you do?" asked Kate through a mouthful of pizza. He attempted to dodge, only to have Darcy loom out of the shadows and block his escape. He considered the ceiling vents, but wasn't sure he could make it without exposing his hand.
"What did you do this time Hawkboy?" she asked, waving her pizza crust at him.
"What makes you think I did something?"
"One, you're sneaking into the Tower trying to avoid everyone. Two, Thor and Bruce didn't come back from the mission but Nat said they weren't hurt. Three, Nat only ever gets that pissed at you or Tony and Tony doesn't look scared."
"Four, we know you." added Kate.
Clint sighed and surrender to a superior foe. "Okay, well, it's a long story..."
***
The woman was petite and blonde, with a Roman nose and a determined set to her jaw. She ran and dodged with an athleticism that belied her apparent age, as the building's security staff chased her across the rooftop. She didn't break her stride as she approached the parapet but simply vaulted off the eighteen storey building into empty air.
With casual aerobatic grace Sam swooped and caught her as she plummeted, pulling up from his dive and furling his wings with perfect timing to let gravity slow their arcing flight into the cloaked quinjet hovering nearby. Their landing on the metal deck was as light as a footstep.
"Damn girl, that was a hell of a trust fall!" grumbled the Falcon, peeling off his goggles as the bay door closed behind them.
The woman smiled. "You haven't let me down yet Sam."
"Were you able to extract any of their data while you shut it down?" asked Hill, all business.
The woman nodded and handed her a USB stick as Clint gunned the jet and set it to autopilot to take them home. Beside them Bruce was sleeping off his exertions as the Hulk, wrapped in Thor's cloak.
"I've got their portal data at least, maybe Jane'll be able to figure out where they found the cosmic forces to power that thing."
Thor nodded gravely, the cuts on his face still not healed. He and the Hulk had born the brunt of whatever arcane energies had animated the construct, while the other Avengers had evacuated civilians, shut down the portal channeling power to it and gone in search of its controller.
Tony crossed his arms across his chest. "Okay, I think I speak for everyone here when I ask, who the hell is this?"
Thor turned to him, surprised. "The Lady Natasha of course!"
"You were out in the suit fighting that thing when we caught their second-in-command, so Natasha went in in a photostatic veil of her to try and switch it off." Steve explained as Natasha peeled the illusion from her face. "Wait, you were fighting it too Thor. How did you recognize her?"
"That...mess of electrical fields upon her face was supposed to be a disguise?" asked Thor.
"That's our best veil technology! Our own scanners can't see through it!" exploded Hill.
Thor looked embarrassed. "Sorry?" he offered awkwardly.
Natasha gave him a quizzical look and put the veil back on. "So what can you actually see Thor?"
"The electromagnetic interference patterns that distort the appearance of your face. I suppose it does look rather like a different face from some angles?" Thor offered, trying to be helpful.
Hill groaned and buried her head in her hands. "Two and a half years and a quarter of the goddamned R&D department trying to bust HYDRAS veils and he can just see through the damn things!"
"May I see it?" asked Thor, when he was quite sure Hill wasn't going to hit him. Natasha removed the veil, trying very hard not to laugh. He draped the flimsy looking film over his hand, flexing his fingers. Tiny vortices of electricity sparked on his palm.
"It won't do anything on your hand, it needs to detect the nerve signature of a face..." Hill began, and abruptly stopped when Thor found the right arrangement. The woman's face flickered into existence on his hand, his wrist forming the neck.
"Oh that is grotesque!" giggled Natasha. Tony simply turned white and backed away.
"That's like something out of a horror movie! Can you make it talk?" asked Clint.
"This really looks to you as though I have a head where my hand should be?" asked Thor, raising his arm. Steve swallowed uncomfortably. Tony darted backwards and fell over Sam's leg.
"It's seamless." Clint was awed.
"Does it have to be your hand? Could you do it on the back of your head, like that dude from Harry Potter?" asked Sam.
"Of course, it is simply a matter of manipulating the electric fields."
"So could you do it on your ass? Like, one on each cheek?" Clint demanded to know. Thor doubled over with laughter, the eerily blank face apparently attached to his arm resting on his thigh.
"I think you should stop before you make Maria cry." said Tony, who had discovered a whole new phobia and was keen to ensure the others never found out about it.
Thor recovered, with some effort. "Do you wish to try Clint, as your creativity far exceeds mine?"
"Okay, monsters I can handle but Barton's ass is above my pay grade." said Sam.
"On my hand! Let me try on my hand!" yelled Clint, as Maria closed her eyes and reflected that these people were Earth's greatest heroes. Thor peeled off the veil and laid it across Clint's hand, then wrapped his larger hand around the archer's and created the face. It remained, apparently growing out of Clint's arm, when Thor removed his hand.
"Gottle of geer! Gottle of geer!" squawked Clint, waving it at Natasha who rolled her eyes. Tony looked away.
"Let's see if she can fly the jet with her teeth!" he shouted undeterred, heading for the cockpit. In his haste to dodge Tony kicked the slumbering Bruce, who woke to the sight of Clint having apparently grown a second head where his hand should be.
***
"...so then he hulked out and Thor had to grab him and drop him in the ocean, and they're still out there and till Thor gets back I can't get this thing off my hand." finished Clint.
"So can we see?" asked Kate. Reluctantly Clint unwrapped his hand. "Whoah, that is supper-gross." she said appreciatively.
"And the worst part is that Hill seems to have forgotten she was angry with Thor and now she's gunning for me...Hey! What are you doing?" he yelled at Darcy, who was trying to feed the veil pizza. "That's not a real mouth, you're just smearing greasy cold pizza all over my hand!"
"But I guess you learned your lesson about playing around with SHIELD tech, right?" asked Kate.
"Are you kidding? Sam's a genius! No more sad tp costumes for me, next Halloween I'm dressing as Professor Quirrell!"