Read All About It, 2/5

[mangacat201]

Chapter One

~*~

You did well to bide your time sorting out this whole mess in your head, but you are under no illusion that it’s a step you can skip by just showing up to the party one day. You thought about that, stowing away when they fire up the quinjet next time the world needs people who are larger than life to save the day, but apart from the fact that that bird is so tiny even you would be hard pressed to find a space to hide in, that wouldn’t actually solve the problem, just transpose it. It’s about trust, about keeping up your end of the bargain, playing by the rules and not least of all breaking through the roadblocks your brain likes to put in your way these days instead of skirting around them. Announcing yourself as part of the team means that you are ready to be out there with them, because you are under no illusion that their wellbeing isn’t intimately tied to his. Watching their backs is a forgone conclusion as part of the job you’ve tasked yourself with. It also means you need a plan of action though, and that’s what you’ve been stuck on for a couple of days already. When even the conscious thought of notepads, and microphones, and cameras and faces, wary and still eager for a scoop, calls for all sorts of the breathing exercises the mild mannered doctor showed you a while back to keep the hyperventilating and the accidental breaking of things to a bare minimum, there is no doubt in your mind that any attempt at the actual thing will end in disaster. However, just when you are beginning to get so frustrated that you can’t even see straight anymore, help comes from the most unexpected of places.

The simple curve of the Tower’s personalized helipad has become one of your favored retreats. Your spot leaves lots of sightlines wide open and yet it hides you almost completely from view when you sit as you do now, back pressed against the stone surface, legs drawn up to your chest, and arms crossed loosely over your knees. And it gives you the open sky, because as much as you loathe to put yourself into a position that is vulnerable to any kind of attack, the vast open space above makes it very easy to check that you are not locked in a cryo chamber or strapped to a chair in a vault with just one glance if you did happen to lose yourself in your own head. Technically, the penthouse and the balcony are Stark’s floor, but he has never been one to beat around the bush to make his displeasure known, so you don’t think he minds you here, since he hasn’t said anything yet. You let the high winds tug at the loose strands of your hair, while you try to clear your head enough of the usual jumble of thoughts to finally parse the fragments of your life, told, blurred out, remembered into something you feel you can express to the public.

“So, figure it out yet?”

Before your mind can even finish processing the words, your body has already reacted, fluid movement bringing you to your feet, and the muscles in your arm releasing, with a force and precision that is so instinctual you wouldn’t have been able to abort the motion if you tried. Fifteen feet away, there’s a steel blade buried in the wall, right where the archer’s right eye would have been if he hadn’t leaned three inches to the left with half a second to spare. The man eyes the shining metal with his eyebrows creeping up his forehead and follows the blade’s trajectory back past your outstretched fingers until your eyes meet, muttering: “Impressive.”

You can barely hear him over the roaring in your ears though, the arm that was steady until a second ago is suddenly trembling, and your legs feel like they won’t hold your weight anymore, when the realization that you just almost killed a member of the Avengers drops ice cold into your stomach. Fear is an emotion you rediscovered earlier than most others, fear of your own defiance, of being adrift, of being hunted, of feeling human or being a prisoner in your own head. The one that runs deepest though – goes deeper every passing day – is doing something that will snap the line, that will make all the patience and forgiveness run out, that will make him realize just who and what you are and finally take action accordingly. What makes this one the greatest though is that it’s not just a possibility like the others – it’s an inevitability. You’ve lived with the knowledge every minute, every day since you came to find him and accepted it, but apparently that didn’t mean you’d be any more prepared for when the moment finally arrived.

You see the archer put it together just as fast when you stumble back towards the railing, but you are startled into weary confusion when he throws his hands up to show his open palms.

“Whoa, buddy, not so fast.”

He grips the handle of the knife and drags it out of the wall with an expert twist of his wrist, but the way the muscles in his arm bunch shows that it takes considerably more effort than he makes it look. You feel your whole body coil like a spring despite the way you’d been trembling just a second ago, unsure of whether you’ll defend against an attack or let him take retribution as he sees fit. But he defies your expectations again by walking towards you slowly, relaxed, flipping the knife in the air and catching the blade easily so he can offer it to you handle first.

“Hey, now, I shouldn’t have startled you like that. This one’s on me. I know better.”

You stand across from each other for a beat while he doesn’t move a muscle and keeps his body open and grounded while you digest his words and try to figure out whether he’s serious. He can’t really be, because the number of human people with the physical ability to spontaneously dodge your moves is most definitely tilting towards zero and you wouldn’t have counted him in, if he hadn’t just proven he could. Any other person unprepared for your reaction would have ended stuck to the wall, and they should have known better…

You narrow your eyes, and your fingers close around the handle of the knife to tuck it away where it came from in seconds flat. The archer would know better, does, seeing as he’s a spy and an assassin himself, all instincts honed to perfection, mind crafted into a tactical weapon used to lay out eventualities and contingencies in seconds. He's not someone who would make any such move without deliberation no matter the real contrition and apology apparent in his words.

Taking a calculated risk.

And even though his face stays open and unassuming throughout the exchange, you can suddenly see the ghost of a smirk playing around his mouth. The ball of anxiety in your stomach turns into white hot rage at the notion that he put you through this moment of agony, just for another test, just to play a game, and it’s all you can do to keep your fist from hitting his face to see if he likes it better that way. But before you can fully process, he crosses his arms and speaks up again.

“It’s good, you know? The way you responded just now?”

The unexpected turn jars you out, makes you take a step back before he continues.

“When you’re out there watching his back, you can’t doubt your instincts or your skills, no matter where they’re coming from. You can’t pull your punches.”

You wouldn’t have anyway, it defeats the purpose of reclaiming all that you know and all that you are for a cause you feel is right. But then they wouldn’t know that, until you’re tried and tested in battle, would they? So this is a different kind of assessment. The archer didn’t only want to see for himself what you can do, but also that you won’t be holding back. You are unsure if testing that makes sense though, because holding back is something they’d beaten out of you several decades back.

Unless… that’s still not the point.

Through the fog of anxiety, and anger and confusion, you replay the encounter and realize that you reacted to the perceived threat with deadly precision and to the possible consequences with deep, paralyzing emotional distress.

The first is the action of a highly trained soldier.

The second that of a broken, fractured psyche.

… and the decision to check his urge to go forwards into carnage or backwards over the railing and instead work through it with a rational and collected mind.

That is what a real person does.

The realization hits you like a punch in the gut, and the archer must be watching it play out on your face, because he smiles with is eyes now, visible crinkles in the corners reflecting satisfied smugness.

“There you go. Pinocchio is turning into a real boy again.”

It takes you a moment to parse the reference, but when the implication is clear, you narrow your eyes, and, somehow, the words come out with little pause, and a lot more Brooklyn than you’re used to.

“I still haven’t decided whether I’d like your face better after it’s been remodeled by my fist, so do kindly take your wit and shove it.”

Before you can even begin to puzzle out just where you found that comeback, he throws you another curveball by breaking out into a brilliant, delighted smile. You’ve never known a person to react to the tangible threat of bodily harm that way, but then you are currently staying in a tower full of people whose reaction to life is anything but the ordinary.

“That’s what I’m talking about. So, you want to go shoot something?”

You blink once, very slowly.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You’re serious.”

“As a heart attack. Come on, what better way to put all that excess adrenaline I’m sure you got pumping right now to use than a good old fashioned training exercise. I bet you haven’t done anything satisfactorily physically exerting in months.”

He’s right. You’ve been keeping up a regimen, because being cooped up inside, with a head full of shadowy corners you don’t dare go into, is a sure fire recipe for restlessness, but sparring with air is nothing compared to the laser sharp focus of breath, trigger, recoil of firing a weapon. Still, it’s not a good idea, you shouldn’t…

“Yes.”

“Yes, you haven’t done that or yes, you want to go shoot something?”

Before you can second guess yourself again, the answer has left your mouth.

“Both.”

The archer, Barton, nods and turns to head for the elevator on the other side of the penthouse, obviously confident you will follow him. And since there is nothing more to say, you do.

The doors of the elevator swish closed almost soundlessly, and Barton announces to the empty air:

“To the Playground, if you please, JARVIS.”

Barton throws you a conspiratorial grin as the man in the walls confirms his request in a posh British cadence, but you can’t really concentrate on their exchange much as you grab the railing and press your back against the cold glass. It’s still barely enough to prepare yourself for the lurch in your stomach as you hang weightless for the fraction of a second as the rapid decent begins. You pass floor to floor from one moment to the next. You didn’t arrive in the 21st century the same way he did, after decades frozen in the Arctic ice. They always updated you on mission relevant developments, advanced weaponry, television, cell phones, blanket camera surveillance, GPS,… so you have not experienced the same kind of blank slate. More like a puzzle that slots more and more pieces every time you learn something new (something old), but for some reason, nothing brings the difference between past and future into such stark contrast as the breathtaking movement of an elevator operating with a velocity that once you might have figured could be fast enough to send a man to the moon, if you could imagine such a thing.

“Are you alright?”

Barton’s obviously picked up on your unease, even though you try not to express it in your actions.

“Fine”, you consider leaving it at that, but somehow, the words are less difficult at the moment, and you want to savor it, before it passes. “Just not… overly fond of rapid downward changes of altitude.”

Barton meets your eyes without judgment.

“Hmmm, yeah, I guess you wouldn’t be.”

It’s not a discomfort you can’t work past fairly easily, but it’s also one of the very few things they’d never been able to beat, or shock or wipe out of you. You both cherish and dread it for that reason.

You are slightly surprised when the elevator passes ground level, and the glass enclosed space is enveloped by concrete, but Barton doesn’t look in any way concerned, so you figure you’re still on track to where you’re going. The display shows you passing several sublevels you know to be garages, until it finally slows, and the doors open to let you into a plain hallway with a single door about twenty feet away. Barton bids you to follow with a flick of his fingers and goes through the motions of fingerprint, retina scan and voice recognition at the security panel next to the door before grinning at you with the familiar anticipatory glint in his eyes as the door opens. The room behind it is lighting up slowly, revealing partitions, and a fully fitted range, simple cardboard targets in the distance. You take it in for a moment before striding in towards the one booth where a couple of nine millimeter semi-automatics are lying, out and ready. You stand there looking at them for a couple of seconds, hesitant, but your fingers reach out to pick them up and start taking them apart almost of their own volition, because you are never going to fire a weapon you haven’t stripped and reassembled yourself first if you can help it. Once you’re satisfied that they’re in extraordinary condition, you put them back together, and the moment the magazine clicks into place, you take stance, aim down the range and pull the trigger until the clip is empty with only a fraction of a second to adjust between center mass and head shots halfway through. When the sound of the last round leaving the barrel fades, you finally suck in a breath and come back to yourself. Your hand doesn’t tremble around the grip of the gun, but you still make the decision to put it down fast, when the familiarity of your actions simultaneously clears and clouds your mind.

You spread your hands on the dash and lean heavy on your arms, head bent low so your hair falls forward and hides your face as you take deep, calculated breaths. You are not sure what you expected, maybe his face suddenly overlaying the cardboard target – mission parameters accepted – all the names, faces, brutally efficient movement, conditioned inertia, dragging you down. And the memories are there, some blurred and indistinct, some sharp and biting, all of them leaving you raw and aching on the inside, but they are not overwhelming you. Muscle memory and superior reflexes aside, your actions are your own.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m…, I’m… fine.”

What starts as an imploring mantra turns into the statement of an exhilarating truth when you realize with startled relief that, in fact,…

“Yes, you are.”

A kind of undignified, hysterical laughter bubbles in your chest until you feel Barton come up behind you to peer over your shoulder, carefully telegraphing his movement on the edges of your field of vision. Then he whistles appreciatively under his breath.

“Actually, you are way better than fine.”

You wonder, for a moment, whether he can see the results on your target, which you know to be there, when it’s so many yards away, but given his particular skillset that shouldn’t really come as a surprise. You allow yourself a small, inward smile at the praise. Exceptional marksman was part your resume long before brainwashed covert assassin was even on the table after all. It doesn’t erase every single terrible thing that put your ledger so far into the red that you can’t breathe thinking about it sometimes. But it also reminds you that you once used those skills for the right reasons, and now you’re free to do it again. You weren’t aware just how important it was to make that issue no longer a hypothetical, even though you are absolutely confident you would have come through in actual combat.

“So, you wanna go now and take a stab at the Playground?”

You turn your head towards him, confused.

“What? I thought…”

“Oh, you know nothing, my friend.”

Barton walks over to another discreet panel at the far wall and types in a seven-digit code so that a previously invisible door slides open. You join him in the doorway to take in the hangar sized hall beyond which is filled with an assortment of building mock ups slowly being revealed by the overhead lights that looks like it’s outfitted for nothing short of urban warfare simulations. You turn to look at Barton incredulously and the archer just laughs at your expression.

“What, you didn’t think Stark would get himself a collection of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes without giving them toys, did you?”

Barton turns your attention towards a niche at the side that turns out to be a well-stocked armory with a plethora of weapons neatly displayed on racks and laid out on counters. He grabs a cylinder that unfolds into a high-tech bow with a flick of his wrist and a sleek, full quiver, before gesturing at you to take your pick.

“Come on, Tin Man, time to have some fun.”

You make a point to glare at him icily to convey just how much you don’t appreciate the nickname, no matter how scarily accurate the reference. He just laughs, not at all intimidated.

“What? Too soon?”

You haven’t really had the chance to notice since you’ve interacted more with Barton this past half hour then in the past months combined, but he and Stark seem to have a pretty evenly matched sense of humor in a way that is both comfortably cynical and brazenly daring. It’s not that Barton doesn’t express an awareness of all the different ways that goading you like that could make you snap in his every move. But where Stark is brash and abrasive with the goal of getting a rise out of his opponent for the sake of battling his ennui and savoring the adrenaline rush that courting such danger awards, Barton is just supremely comfortable among dangerous, volatile people in a world of ever-changing objectives and alliances, because that is his daily bread. Still, someone refusing to walk on eggshells around you and expressing confidence in your ability (and determination) to act like a sensible human being even in light of all the evidence to the contrary is… difficult to describe. But since it doesn’t feel bad exactly, you decide to take it without worrying too much about it. Sometimes it’s enough to just accept things are working out when they do.

Barton explains the way everything is outfitted with state of the art holographic projectors, so the antagonists have full tactical movement and how JARVIS will run a preprogrammed simulation and will record take downs and tallies even though the projections will simply vanish when they’re hit. He asks how many baddies you’d like to take on and you respond that he should surprise you, which makes him grin. When you have finished putting all your gear together and Barton has initiated the program at the computer terminal next to the armory, you stand at the entrance of the maze, stalling, balancing on the balls of your feet, fingers flexing around the handle of the machine gun you have ready at your side. And you are surprised to find the flicker in the pit of your stomach has a nervous edge. Not concerning the question of whether you’ll be able to rely on your skills and your body’s responses to handle anything the simulation throws at you, but whether you’ll come out on the other side with the ability to turn it off. There is no good reason, and all the reasons that what just happened outside, mere minutes ago, was a fluke and…

“Off you go.”

Barton’s tone is full of steely resolve, every sliver of humor gone from his voice. It’s not quite a real order, but it brooks no argument, and you let movement take over your body, sweeping away the indecision.

You cycle through familiar patterns, securing corners and entrances, climbing for higher to be able to case for movement at a greater distance and from a comfortable vantage point. But you get only glimpses, too fast and concealed to actually line up a proper shot, and if the other side has noticed your presence, they haven’t let on by firing at you, which would have revealed their position. After a few minutes of visual cat and mouse, you realize this will not be as easy as making a nest and picking them off one by one. This is going to be down and dirty in a way you don’t prefer, but that is definitely no more of a challenge. You decide to make your way back down to ground level to go looking for trouble. Trouble meets you halfway.

You turn down a corridor you’ve just checked when a flicker of movement out of the corner of your eyes makes you swing around and… freeze. Only a reflexive backflip through the entryway you just came out of keeps your chest from getting fried – virtually – by some kind of laser weapon. You throw yourself at the wall next to the doorway and breathe deliberately a couple of times to center yourself. Where you expected a soldier in full tactical gear and an automatic weapon, you found a creature of nightmares, taller than human average but slightly crouched, body plated with what looked like bone scales and a mean snarl in completely alien visage. You fight the urge to throw the game right there and go yell at Barton about his ideas of a joke. However, you compose yourself to turn down into the corridor again, shooting to find out that the thing reacts to a headshot like pretty much everything else imaginable would. After it topples and fizzles out into a kind of transparent blue static, you decide you might as well get over the shock of an alien attack and round up the rest of them while you’re at it. In the end, it’s just about stealth, figuring out weak spots in body armor and placing your shots accordingly. Before long, you roll out of the exit on the other side after leaving the last of about two dozen vanishing corpses behind. As it happens, you’ve landed right at Barton’s feet. He’d apparently been waiting for you, and you waste no time rounding on him, poking him in the chest with a metal finger, because you’re feeling petty, and air your exasperation: ”Aliens? Really?”

He just smirks and shrugs: “Haven’t you heard? It’s a thing nowadays. It was even trending that time we tried our best not to accidentally wreck half of Manhattan. Besides, I figured it might be a good thing to stay low on triggers and not to pit you against a bunch of virtual humans during your first time back in the ring.”

You take a step back, eyes wide and lost for words, as you process the careful and considerate deliberation. Not only did the simulation give a taste of the kind of threats that are really reserved for the Avengers – even though the skies have been blessedly empty of invading extraterrestrial forces since the Battle of New York as far as you know – but the emotional impact of being faced with a completely unexpected and unsettling challenge… looking back now, it kept your head remarkably clear of the fog of the Winter Soldier. There was nothing of the mindless – no, not mindless, that would have been beside the point – of the cold, indifferent pursuit of a set of mission objectives, and more of the unbalancing and kind of exciting prospect of going up against an unknown enemy and testing your skills and adaptability against theirs. Coming alive with the feeling that you are great at what you do, now that you’ve taken back the ability to determine when and why. Still, the kind of vulnerability that comes with acknowledging this was something you needed, that you let yourself be read that way… it doesn’t sit well with you at all, so you choose to scoff a little and quip:

“Well, I guess if they’re going down when they’re supposed to, that’s all the same to me.”

Barton just chuckles, eyes crinkling in a way that betrays that he caught the undercurrents just fine.

“I like the way you’re thinking, my friend. Honestly, it’s amazing, living among people whose lives are so crazy that they’re just not fazed by the weird shit. So what do you say, want to up the ante and make the second go round a race?”

Barton gestures towards the parkour with the hand still holding his bow.

“I bet you, I can match your time and beat your score.”

You haven’t seen him in action, but you know that for him to do what he does with bow and arrow as his weapon of choice, he must be good. Really, really good. Still, you know how good you are, and, no matter what, you can’t believe that an arrow will outstrip a bullet, no matter how well placed. And it’s been a long time since you played a game like this just for the fun of it and without the scales of life and death hanging in the balance at the end of it. As far as you remember isn’t even cutting it close. Besides, if there’s one thing you’ve been able to glean from the wreckage of your life, it’s that you don’t back down from a challenge. Instead of an answer you just casually exchange and check the magazines of your guns and just lift your eyebrow as if to ask ‘Well, when do we start?’. Barton just smirks, shouts the initiation code at the computer terminal behind and darts past you into the fray. You don’t lose any time following him back in, and the way your fields of expertise overlap is the similarity of your tactical approach, the way you almost get in the way of each other, acquiring and taking down your targets, shows immediately. But there is a very clear line in the sand indicating who is on what side here, and there is a mutual appreciation for the way one of you regards your opponent picking off a target ahead of the other. And he is good, falling behind a couple of times when you get two targets in your sights at once and use the advantage of firing two weapons simultaneously, but catching up almost instantly every time with an incredibly rapid succession of shots and one memorable instance of double-nocking a couple of arrows to send them into the heads of two different alien creatures trying to get the jump on them from the roofs.

As you work your way through the simulation, you find yourself genuinely surprised that neither one of you manages to establish a clear lead. Which actually makes you enjoy it all the more when you find what you are reasonably sure is the last target in your sights, and you take the shot to wrap this match up in your favor. Instead of hitting the creature dead on, though, the bullet glances off an arrow that was clearly shot to intercept it. The clash knocks the arrow off its ideal trajectory so that it hits the target with barely enough accuracy to make the simulation fade out, but by all accounts your shot went wide, didn’t even graze the target before it ricocheted off the concrete wall to the left, which means that Barton… wins. You stare at the quivering shaft stuck in the wall behind where the last alien stood in startled disbelief. It’s an impossible shot, the amount of information processing, predicting how you would be making your move, the precision of timing between your reaction and the actual firing of your weapon. That is nothing short of…

“Impressive”, you can’t help it slipping out under your breath.

You watch Barton scale down the side of the building to your right where he had been perched and turn to him as soon as he gets his feet on the ground.

“You cheated!”

The tone is equal part awe and outrage, though you weren’t even sure what you were going to say until it slipped out that way. The smug glee that settles over his face makes you briefly entertain thoughts of grievous bodily harm again, but then, you are not that petty.

“Hey, I said I would beat your score, never claimed I would do it with a perfect one.”

Your eyes go wide in surprise, because he’s completely right, it’s just what you assumed without bothering think about possible loopholes. Before you can respond anything though, his expression goes from playful to dead serious without warning.

“You know, sometimes, when you’re faced with something you know you can’t handle by conventional means, you have to bend the rules, carve out your own path, rig the game in your favor.”

The way he says it tickles something in the back of your head, as if he’s not talking about impossible shots and combat scenarios. And when you turn over his choice of phrasing in your head one more time, it clicks, and the sudden realization punches the breath from your lungs, because everything, from seeking you out on the roof terrace, to guiding you down here and breaking down another door between what makes you a thing and what makes you a man… Everything was set up from the beginning to give you this message. If you can’t deal with all the ways they’ve proposed for you to go public, you’re going to have to make your own.

Startled, harsh laughter rips from your throat unbidden, because that is exactly what you needed to hear to break through the cycle of frustration you’ve been stuck in since that disastrous PR meeting, but there’s no way you’d have trusted any of them enough to seek that advice or to take it at face value if it had been offered unsolicited and straight up. You regard Barton, who clearly followed the process of your thoughts down to a tee, with a wary kind of respect.

“Natalia has taught you well.”

He lets out a short laugh of his own, but behind his eyes something flickers, maybe curiosity, maybe a too deep knowledge of the history that is there, better left untouched.

“You don’t know the half of it. If that woman ever gets it into her head to go about fixing all of us for real, I predict the world is going to be a very scary place. Come on, let’s go back up and find something to eat. Running around the basement shooting aliens is fun and all, but it always makes me hungry.”

He clasps a hand on your shoulder to steer you towards the bay doors and back to the elevator, but for once you don’t even have to suppress a flinch at the casual contact. You feel strangely light and settled in your own head despite all that has happened in the short span of an afternoon, and you suspect you’ve somehow done more healing in this brief time than all the time before (though that’s really unfair to all the hard work it took to get yourself to where you could actually experience this in the first place).

Both of you strip and put away your gear in silence, while your mind goes a mile a minute, still trying to process, but when you’re through the range and walking down the corridor towards the elevator doors, you find yourself reaching out to put a hand on his arm, still his movement. Barton stops immediately and turns to you in query, body tense and ready, but unthreatened. Your hand twitches back abruptly. Initiating touch is very rare and reserved for…

You can feel it catching up with you after all, the window closing, but you need to get this question out, before the words go again, so you take a deep breath and battle through.

“Why would you do this?”

He cocks his head slightly: “Do what?”

You don’t know if he’s genuinely confused or deliberately obtuse, but you try again anyway.

“Help me… figure it out.”

A shadow passes over his face for a moment, but just as soon it’s gone, and his expression is open again.

“Well, the way you hear Cap tell it, one of the tricky things about dealing with what happened to you, both of you, arriving in this time, connecting with people, is about shared life experience. And I have an up close and personal knowledge of what it feels like when somebody takes a scrambler to your brain, stuffs something in that doesn’t belong, and then you wake up, and it’s a new world. Trust me, I have better reasons than most.”

You don’t know the full extent of the story, obviously, but some, and you are certain, without a doubt, that he’s telling the truth. Still, it can’t have been easy to go in with such a wild card and pick at old wounds without being sure it would pay off.

“Thank you.”

You barely manage to breathe it loud enough for your own ears, but he’s looking at you in a way that makes you think he still got it. If he did, he doesn’t comment on it; just calls the elevator and ushers you in. On the way up, all you can think about is how you are going to have to sit down now and make a plan. But that’s good, laying out a mission plan is familiar, comfortable.

Finally, it’s a place to start.

Chapter Three