Chapter Text
"A headlamp, Barton? Really?" Natasha whispers as they meet back together in the recently abandoned warehouse.
"This place does not meet OSHA standards. The Minion Union apparently does not have a lot of pull these days." He talks normally, because there's no one here, and Natasha is just a sucker for formality. "I don't think that what we're going to find anything. Place looks pretty much out of stock."
There's only a fine layer of dust on the shelving, this place was being used just a couple of days ago. They are too late to confiscate the weapons being run through here, but Bruce had caught an energy signature that warranted investigation. And retrieval. In Madripoor. Sneaking is not on anyone else’s list of highly exercised skillsets, so here they are.
“Do we still have the signal?” Natasha says into her earpiece.
“That’s a positive, Widow,” Coulson answers in his steady working voice after a few moments. “Reading the signal is in your immediate vicinity.”
Clint moves his head around, scanning the last room methodically, floor to ceiling. “I’m not seeing anything here that could produce.” He stops his head and then slowly moves it over the patch of floor again. “Hold on, I think we’ve got a trapdoor.”
Natasha bends over and knocks on the floorboard, a succession of hollow rapping, and she looks back up at him through her eyelashes and an impish grin. “Floor safe. Pull up the floorboards.” It takes a little improvising with discarded materials from around the warehouse, but they get the boards up and look at the safe.
“It’s really deep in there, sir.” Clint lays down on the floor, and brushes off the dirt. “We’re not going to be able to pull It out in our timeframe. We’re going to have to open it.”
“Understand Barton. What information do you have on the safe?” Clint reads off what he can of the manufacturer information and what is left of the model number. It’s not exactly the world’s most foolproof safe. With the right tools, either of them could have it open in minutes.
“I wish I hadn’t left my plasma cutter at home.” He laments and groans when he sees that much of the model number was filed off.
“We will work with that, Hawkeye.”
As they wait, Clint imagines the scurrying of the junior agents, finding the factory combinations, finding the best way to get into this specific safe, Coulson waiting for them with contained energy.
“Let’s try the factory settings, Hawkeye.” Coulson gives the combination, feeds it into Clint’s ears. Shaking his head, because really, what sort of supervillains keep the standard settings for their top secret…the lock clicks open. Apparently, this sort of idiot does that. Natasha leans over as well.
“Ladies first.” He gestures to Natasha before drawing back his hands to the lever, resting one there, “Except I don’t see any ladies here, do you?” He opens the safe door, while grinning at his partner, and her body tenses and her eyebrow juts up and he hears what she heard first, clicking at regular intervals.
“Shit—” he starts, and Coulson is talking loudly in her ears, voice rushed and expectant, but there’s not time for words before the light that started in the safe engulfs the warehouse.
The warehouse is suspiciously not exploded when the light subsides. The warehouse is even more suspiciously not abandoned. Empty, yes, but not abandoned and it’s even OSHA compliant, if the lights weren’t half burned out. Natasha is talking into her headset until she cuts off suddenly.
“Coulson, do you copy?” Her eyebrow raises and when there is no response she repeats a little more urgently, “Coulson, do you copy?”
“EMP?” Clint suggests. He takes off the headlamp and turns it on and off. It’s working perfectly, as are some of the more high tech doodads that he and Natasha carry. “An effect of the signal we were following?”
Natasha cocks her head to the side, and her finger goes to her lips. After a moment, she motions for him to follow, pulling out her pistols as she goes into sneak mode and doesn’t make a noise as she guides him down a hallways, the sound of tapping growing louder.
“Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Madripoor?” A bitter female voice asks in a hushed tone. “Every time we’re dropped off here, we always end up getting shot at.”
“We haven’t been shot at yet, don’t jinx us,” another woman’s voice answers. “And we have backup this time. Get the info and we can call for rescue.” The first woman lets out a huff and keeps up a steady stream of chatter about idiot servers and firewalls. “Wait, shut up.”
Clint and Natasha exchange a look, because they’ve heard these voices before, just on the edge of familiarity. They split to either side of the hall, and he nocks an arrow as they slide against the wall to where the hallway turns into an open space with a bank of computers. The two women are at one of the computers, the taller typing away at both the terminal and working with a hacking kit.
“Someone’s on my tail,” she says. “Fucker. Come on baby, I just need a few things, give it up.”
The combination of her voice and seeing her, really seeing both of them, slams the realization of who they are into focus, and it does not make sense. He trips over his feet on his next step and the smaller, slighter woman looks up and hoists up an assault rifle into a ready stance, scanning the room and pin pointing exactly where Clint is standing. Even Natasha, usually so steady and unshockable on missions blinks a few times in recognition and surprise.
Jane Foster is aiming a nasty looking rifle straight at his head. Jane Foster.
“Uh, hello?” He waves a free hand while, Darcy, fucking Darcy lets out a litany of curses as she glances over before she types faster. “Jane. Darcy. It’s Clint and Natasha. You can put down the gun.”
There isn’t a single look of recognition on either of their faces. They were at the Tower just last week, visiting Thor from New Mexico. Darcy went shopping with Natasha, while Jane and Thor went…well, into their bedroom for a whole day, but the point stands, they all know each other. And yet, nothing. Something is wrong here.
“I hate Madripoor.” Darcy pinches her face as she concentrates on the screen. Every time he’s met her before, she’s worn sweaters and leggings and boots, but here it’s SHIELD issued BDU pants and tank top, her hair pulled tightly away from her face. She’s turned to the side from them, and he can see she has a jagged scar on her shoulder and her own rifle slung against her back. Jane is dressed in a similar fashion, though her shirt has sleeves.
Jane raises a hand to her ear. “Hey, we confirmed that the building was empty before we got in, right? So, then why am staring at two people with, wait, is that a bow and arrow?”
“They don’t know who we are.” Natasha says slowly, lowering her gun. “I think we’ve wandered into something new.”
“Got it!” Darcy pumps her arm and starts unplugging her gear. “So, who are we shooting?”
“We aren’t shooting anyone that isn’t shooting us.” Jane purses her lips, “Are you shooting us?”
“No.” Clint confirms, taking his arrow off the string and back into the quiver. The bow itself is still a weapon and he feels very secure about that. “Is there someplace we can go to talk?”
Darcy’s eyes dart over and she leans over to whisper to Jane. A flurry of eyebrows and hand gestures (mostly from Darcy as Jane hasn’t lowered her gun yet) and an entire calculus of things he doesn’t know that have between them later and Jane answers. “Yes. But we will need to wait for rescue, since you two are not going to blend in on the streets outside.”
“You have to be rescued?” It’s a strange thought, because the situation isn’t dire. No one’s shooting, this warehouse is far more compliant with local health and safety laws (does Madripoor even have health and safety laws?) and while yeah, he can admit that they’d cut a strange picture outside, it’s hardly unusual for this place for black-clad armed men and women to be out on the streets.
“Are you new?” Darcy stutters, “Not a verb, a noun. Proper. RESCUE. Where are you from where you haven’t heard of RESCUE?”
“Darcy,” Jane says quickly, lowering her gun and staring at Clint’s uniform, at the SHIELD emblem on his chest. “I don’t think they are from here at all.” Darcy looks dubious, but Jane presses on, “When was the last time you saw a SHIELD patch attached to anyone living? I think we’ve got something weird going on, not a shooting weird, just a weird thing.”
That is not a good sign at all.
Darcy and Jane take them to the roof, and Darcy keeps an eye on the sky, telling Clint and Natasha that RESCUE was only a few minutes out and waiting for their call. They are all holding each other at an arms length, not really sure how much to divulge to each other. Jane’s pretty sure that they’ve arrived here from something like an alternate universe.
“I don’t understand.” Engineering, he gets. He can follow plans and schematics, even the higher level math if it’s set to some practical use. This? He does not get.
Jane rummages in a pocket for a small pad of paper and a pen and starts scribbling, “It works better this way, even if it’s inaccurate.” She shows him a line, “Say this is our universe,” she draws lines coming off of the main line. “Every time that there a choice or decision that’s not made, there become another reality where it was made. So there’s an infinite amount out there.”
She doesn’t even look like this is phasing her at all. God Bless Jane Foster’s capacity for accepting the strange in life, otherwise this would have ended in bloodshed.
“So, you think that’s what happened? That that energy signature we encountered took us to another reality, universe…whatever?” he asks Natasha. Madripool below them is a loud and thriving city, not all that different from the city they entered earlier in the day. It seems unreal to think they’ve ended up somewhere else in literally a flash of light.
“I am reserving judgement, but I do not see it likely that we would have come across these two here in any other circumstance.” The sound of repulser guided flight causes them both to look up. They expect a suit, of course, but it’s obvious that this isn’t Iron Man, it’s not Stark. The suit is smaller, although similarly colored.
“Did we end up in the universe where Stark’s a girl?” He tilts his head as RESCUE lands, and Natasha smirks, and she likes that thought very much, the idea playing all over her face.
Darcy and Jane circle around RESCUE and talk together. There’s pointing, there’s laughing and then there’s serious expressions and he can just make out that they are working out logistics.
“Right, we’ll go to the Malibu Mansion for staging. I don’t want them loose in the Tower quite yet.” RESCUE says, and again, it’s a voice on the edge of familiarity, and it doesn’t sound like a feminine version of Tony, the inflection and sarcasm is all wrong. She’s speaking with sincerity.
“Here’s the plan, with that,” Darcy points to his SHIELD emblem, “You’d be dead in minutes walking the streets. SHIELD personnel are shoot on sight here. Instead, she’s going to take you to where our ride is parked, and we will meet you there and we’re going to head back to the US. If you try anything, you are dead.”
Clint nods, looking at Natasha when he hears the the faceplate move, and Nat just reacts in surprise. She breaths in harshly and her eyes go wide, her smile smug and satisfied and he turns just to see who the woman in the suit is that cause cause that sort of losing it from his partner.
The woman has flushed pale skin and freckles, vivid blue eyes and just a bit of honey-red hair escaping from the edges of the helmet. It takes a moment to put all the pieces together because, holy fuck. RESCUE is Pepper fucking Potts.