Chapter Text
Thanos snapped his fingers.
Wait, let me restart. That doesn’t sound scary at all.
So Thanos was this warlord who wanted the world to be better. Unfortunately, like many warlords, he saw that path through death. If he just killed half of the universe then there wouldn’t be so many food shortages!
Sounds good, right?
Well, luckily, Thanos was pretty dumb and got minions to do most of his work. He found these six stones that could ‘dust’ people. That is, turn them into dust when he snapped his fingers; but his daughter read the instructions wrong: instead of turning people into dust when he snapped his fingers it would simply remove them from the universe.
Well, you all know the Theory of Relativity. Something needs to fill the gap.
Okay, now do you get it? Sound scary enough?
So, Thanos snaps his fingers and Clint Barton, who is hanging out with his daughter, vanishes.
However, people don’t just vanish. They have to go somewhere and, luckily for Clint, I have just enough time to see where and tell him.
“Welcome to the Dungeons and Dragons Universe!”
Then he disappears. Well, at least from the Superhero Universe where I dwell, and he’s none of my business anymore because he might have been the first to vanish but his daughter is starting to vanish, too, and now a few billion more people and I need to hurry to tell them where they’re going so they’re not so scared.
And then I need to deal with all you guys coming in from the Science Universe.
So, that’s what’s happening. How do you feel?
***
Clint holds Lila tight. She wiggles a bit, but he cannot help it. Not now when all of the others are fighting against Thanos and he doesn’t know a quarter as much as he’d like about it. He doesn’t regret his choice to stay with his family, but that doesn’t make it easy.
Then, the universe vanishes. All the air is flung out of his lungs and everything hurts as much as if the Hulk flung him somewhere, but he can’t see anything. It’s perfectly dark. He can’t hear anything either, not even the constant static of his hearing aids.
He has no time to think before a voice pounds inside his head: “WELCOME TO THE DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS UNIVERSE!” and he falls down onto a stone floor. He still feels as if the Hulk threw him across Manhattan, but he struggles to stand up, one hand on some sort of stone chair, the other reaching for his bow.
“Clinton,” a familiar voice says and he nearly drops his bow. Coulson stopped talking to him after everything with the Sokovia Accords was settled. He had to according to the house arrest. But he doesn’t drop his bow. Instead he aims it at the person sitting in what turns out to be a stone throne. Someone who looks like Coulson is sitting on it, wearing the oddest clothes: all leather with a robe wrapped carelessly around him. Natasha is standing at the bottom of the throne, too, but she’s dressed normally.
“What’s going on?” Clint asks the person who looks like Coulson. “I know you’re Hydra.”
“Clinton,” Natasha says. “It’s alright. You’re safe. Filip is preparing to send us on a mission.”
“What is going on with the full names? I don’t trust anyone who does that. That’s Hydra shit.”
Natasha and Coulson exchange a look. Clint doesn’t trust it anymore than the full names.
“Go and rest, Clinton,” Coulson says. “I will tell you your mission tomorrow if you are feeling better. If not, you have a few more days to recover and after that…the mission is time-sensitive.”
Clint is silent, but the others stay silent, too, which gives him time to look around and think. The room they are standing in is a small stone room. The walls are covered with tapestries. There is a wooden desk against one wall with a wooden chair to match it, but everything feels medieval. Even Natasha’s bodysuit is a brown leather instead of black spandex.
One moment he is on his farm, the next he is nowhere at all as far as he could tell and a voice in his head tells him he’s entering the Dungeons and Dragons Universe, and the next he is standing in a medieval room.
Okay, he knows what this is. It’s one of those weird manipulative dreams supervillains love. If he plays along and doesn’t freak out about someone being in his mind he can get out of it just fine. He takes a deep breath, then another. It turns out it’s really hard not to freak out about someone being in your mind. He makes it, though. He manages to turn to the Coulson-character and say in a voice that’s perfectly steady (he’s still freaking out but spy-training is useful), “No, sir. I’m o-” ‘Okay’ isn’t medieval, quick- “alright. I can go on the mission.”
The Coulson-character raises an eyebrow at him and Clint feels a pang. He looks so much like the real Coulson it hurts.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right.” He glances at Natasha. “There’s a warlock who needs rescuing.”
“A warlock?” Natasha asks. “That’s not usually our realm.”
“I know. But we need him. He’s been frozen for the past century, by the spell he used to save his army, but he’ll be unfreezing now. You two need to find him before anyone else does.”
Clint sees Natasha’s eyes open slightly in recognition. For his own part, this all sounds too familiar.
“What is the warlock’s name, sir?” he asks.
“Ver Steffan,” Coulson says. “Perhaps you should leave tomorrow.”
Clint starts to protest, but Coulson says, “No, I insist. Now, let us look at the terrain.”
Clint listens to the plan, but as he follows Natasha--no, the Natasha-character--out of what turns out to be a small castle to an inn he thinks some more. He doesn’t know what the first word was, but the second was ‘Steven’ in a weird accent. Which means, Steve aka Captain America.
Whoever is in his mind wants to know something about him, but Clint can’t figure out what.