Avengers (2012): "The Breaking Light" (1/?) (Clint/Natasha)
Title: The Breaking Light (1/?)
Author/Artist: Koren M. (cybermathwitch)
Disclaimer: Not mine, as per usual. Characters are Marvel and Beacham and DelToro. Lyrics are Vienna Teng.
Pairing: Clint/Natasha, Jane/Thor, Tony&Bruce (see notes)
Rating: Adult, 17+
Warnings: brief references to suicide, general canon-typical violence/badness/etc.
Spoilers: n/a
Type: Pacific Rim AU (fusion)
Word Count: 4031
Summary:
"What we're trying to say is, everyone here? We're all screwed up. We're all valuable, and we're all damaged goods as far as the rest of the program, hell, the rest of the world is concerned. But we're too valuable to throw away. So whatever it is you did, or whatever's wrong with you, it doesn't matter here." He stuck out a hand. "Let's start over. Tony Stark, resident engineering and computer genius. You must be Barton."
Author's Notes:
Yes, there really is a Jarvis Island in the Pacific Ocean. No, it's probably not possible to build even a small Shatterdome there. Call it poetic license.
Please forgive me: a. for this being unbeta'd. (There's a reason it's not up on AO3 yet.) b. for this being a work in progress. I actually do have the endgame already planned, I promise. c. for any errors or inconsistencies with the Pacific Rim canon or timeline. I tried my best to slot it in without jacking up either the story or the movie canon too much. I hope.
Thank you, thank you, thank you to sweetwatersong for turning what originally was a vague musing and general interest in Pacific Rim into a rabid thing with sharp teeth that demanded to be written, and thank you for "doodling" all over it and making it better. ;)
Bruce and Tony can be read as either gen BFFs or as background/pre-shippy. They're being contrary, vague brats and haven't deigned to tell me which they want it to be.
So come out.
You have been waiting long enough.
Your done with all the talk talk talk
And nothing on the table.
It's time to come on out.
There will be no sign from above.
You'll only hear the knock knock knock
Of your own heart as signal.
Clint Barton looked up at the ceiling over his bunk, about a half a second away from literally twiddling his thumbs from the sheer boredom. Or frustration. Maybe both.
The room was too empty. As a kid, the idea of having a room all to himself would've sounded like heaven, but the reality now was awful. The quiet was nice, but the echoing room was a constant reminder that he was alone.
Fuck Barney.
He'd known something was going on with his older brother when he'd started keeping secrets. It shouldn't be possible to hide things in the drift, but Clint deferred to Barney, had always let him take the lead. When Barney would nudge him away from certain thoughts and memories, it was second nature to just let them float away, not look too hard. He'd known about the black market Kaiju dealing, superficially, but it was easier not to ask questions. Just like when they were kids.
He wished he'd looked harder. Maybe he could've stopped things before they'd gone to far. Maybe...
But it was over and done now. Barney was facing a court-martial, and Clint, while technically cleared of any accessory charges, knew it wouldn't be long before he was discharged. They'd always had a rep for being difficult and taking stupid chances; now coupled with Barney's criminal activity and Clint being the one to rat him out, Clint was persona non grata with all the other pilots.
So he spent a lot of time in his room, waiting. For nothing.
There was a sharp rap on the door and he turned his head but didn't bother to get up. "Yeah? Might as well come on in, it's open."
A Marshal Clint had never seen before stepped inside, and Clint slid off his bunk quickly, coming to attention. "Sir. Sorry, sir."
"At ease, Barton." The man was taller than Clint, and the small space made him seem even more imposing, although he wasn't actively trying to be intimidating like some Marshals and PPDC officials did. Clint relaxed, just a little but was still wary.
"Can I help you, sir?"
"Actually, I think I might be able to help you."
Fury looked around for a minute, then took a seat on the small built-in couch like he owned the place. "I assume you know you're damaged goods."
Clint managed to keep his mouth shut, because he couldn't disagree with that assessment.
"Most people think you were dealing Kaiju parts on the black market. Even if you weren't directly involved, your brother was, and you knew about it. Then, you made an even bigger mistake when you turned him in and got him court-martialed."
"He killed an innocent man, sir. I couldn't let that go."
Fury's expression shifted. "I can understand that. But it doesn't change how everyone else sees you now, or the fact that no one wants to drift with you. They don't want to take the chance you'll see something in their head they don't want anyone else to know. It's an unspoken rule, but it's a damn important one."
You don't talk about what you see in the drift.
"So here's the thing, Barton. You don't have a lot of options, Ranger. I figure you're smart enough to realize that either you work with whatever I throw at you, or you go home. And home isn't a very pretty place right now."
Fury had him there. Never mind that he didn't actually have a place to go back to. "Home" in this case would be a work line if he was lucky or the refugee camps if he wasn't. "I have to ask, sir, what exactly am I getting into here?"
"Think of us as an R&D facility. We're working on updating Jaeger tech and trying to solve the problem of where exactly the Kaiju are coming from. Command thinks this damn wall they're making noises about will keep the Kaiju out and they're moving to shut down all the official research facilities. So that's our job now, off the record. We have an... alternate source of funding, so we can do the work other departments would need years of approvals and oversights to do. On paper, we're just the first responders for the smaller islands scattered throughout the Southern part of the Pacific Ocean, and we're supposed to try and head off any Kaiju going towards the mainlands when we can spot them. We've got three active Jaegers, plus a fourth that’s coming in needing a co-pilot."
"Which is where I come in?"
"Which is where you come in."
He was itching to ask what Fury was planning, why he wanted him (or someone in his situation): what it was that he didn't think anyone else would be willing to do? Instead, he clenched his jaw and resigned himself to waiting for the other shoe to drop. He'd gotten good at that over the years. He'd met people like Fury before, and he'd tell him what he needed to know when he damn well felt like it. Hell, he was used to working for people like that. "Well then, sir, I guess you've got yourself a new Ranger."
*****
Two weeks later, he found himself stepping into an elevator in a Shatterdome perched precariously on the smallest island he'd ever seen, and started rethinking his life choices.
The helicopter ride had been choppy as hell, and while Clint certainly didn't get motion sickness and had been out on the ocean in worse weather than that, he'd gotten used to having a hell of a lot more metal between him and the wind and water. All you could see from the approach was a tall, dark gray box that stretched across most of the visible land (there really wasn't much), and the simplistic barely marked landing pad. The woman that met him at the door introduced herself as the facility Director, Hill, and all but shoved him inside out of the storm and into the elevator.
A disembodied voice announced their arrival on the basement level, and Clint considered it a victory that he didn't jump.
Hill chuckled, so something must've shown on his face. "That's JARVIS. He's named after the facility and the island and he's one of Stark's toys. He's got over half the facility linked up to some kind of central AI he's been designing."
"An AI?"
"He's a genius. He's got an ego a mile wide, though. You'll figure that out soon enough. Until we can get a co-pilot and a Jaeger in here for you, Stark gets you. He oversees all the construction and R&D we do on the Jeagers we've got and they can always use extra hands out in the bays."
Clint felt a hollow spot in his chest at the mention of the Jaegers, and wondered again what they were going to do with Upshot Advance. Last he'd heard, she was being overhauled for a new team and being moved to the Lima facility.
"This is your bunk," she said, drawing his attention. "The mess hall's down that way," she pointed to a set of double doors down the corridor. "You can drop your stuff off, and get a hot meal if you hurry. Then try and get some sleep. They'll need you on the deck in bay four tomorrow morning at eight. Breakfast's usually around seven, maybe a little earlier. If you've got any questions, just ask JARVIS."
"Er... how?"
"Just talk. He's usually listening, unless you specifically ask him not to." She had a wicked grin, like she knew something she wasn't telling him, or maybe just that she was enjoying his discomfort at the idea of being constantly surveyed by some kind of computer system. "Good night, Ranger."
"Good night," he managed, but she was already leaving. He sighed, just a little bit, and opened the door.
******
Clint had only really taken the time to drop off his bags, because as soon as she'd mentioned food, he'd realized he was starving. Breakfast back on the mainland had been over twelve hours ago. The cafeteria was smaller than he was used to, but self-explanatory, and most everyone had already gotten food so there wasn't a line to speak of.
He took the tray the server offered him and then searched for a place to sit down. There were a couple seats right in the middle of what seemed like a lively conversation to one side, and on the other side, there was a long, almost empty table with just one occupant, reading a book. Clint waited until he glanced up, then gave him a look that said "okay?" and gestured with his tray towards one of the empty spots.
The man looked surprised, but nodded, and Clint took a seat, closer than the one he'd originally been eyeing.
"Lt. Clint Barton," he introduced himself. "But I guess you knew that, seeing as how I'm the new guy around here."
"Dr. Bruce Banner," the man finally replied, and shook the hand Clint offered, though he still looked surprised. "Sorry. We, uh, don't get that many new people out here."
"They didn't mention I was coming?" Clint wasn't sure why that should've surprised him.
"Ah, no. But the Marshal tends not to mention things until they're necessary."
"Yeah, I got that impression." They lapsed into silence for a little while, Bruce going back to his book and Clint digging in to the (remarkably) not terrible dinner on his tray.
"So, are you a medical doctor, or a scientist?"
Bruce set down his book and smiled. "I'm a PhD. I was a nuclear physicist, before. Now, I work on researching both Kaiju and the possible weaponry needed to stop them."
"What he's not telling you, is that he'd be a Nobel Laureate if things had gone just a little bit differently, but instead he got roped into this madness by me." A third man had come over to the table while they'd been talking and taken over the seat next to Bruce, kicking it back far enough it looked like he was about to tip over.
In a sudden flurry he tipped forward so that it came clattering back down onto all for legs and stuck his hand across the table at Clint.
"Tony Stark. Welcome aboard. I hear you're my new lackey."
"Tony-" Bruce started to intervene but Clint shook the hand offered.
"Yeah, I guess I am. 'S what Hill told me, anyway. I'm decent enough with mechanics if you tell me what to you need me to do."
"Well, that shouldn't be a problem. What brings you to the Island of Fury's Misfit Toys?"
"Huh?"
"'We're all misfits!" Tony quoted. He crossed his arms on the table and rested his chin on them. "Seriously though. What'd you do? Psychological break? Bum knee? Terrible kleptomania habit?"
"I- no. That is, my co-pilot... he, uh, killed someone. So he's being court-martialed. And I ended up here." He watched Tony's eyes widen as understanding dawned.
"You're that guy. I heard about this. He was, what, working the black market? Some pretty high-level shit, too, from what I saw."
Clint felt a part of himself shut down. He'd done this dance a hundred times since the story had broken. "Something like that, yeah."
"You involved?"
Well. No one had ever been quite that blatant about it.
"Tony," Bruce cautioned again, giving Clint the impression that he had to do that with Tony a lot.
"No, it's okay. It's kind of refreshing, actually. To be asked, I mean. Most people just assume one way or the other. No, I wasn't involved, not directly. I knew it was going on, but you gotta understand that in the Drift, you're deliberately pushing memories away. You don't look too close, not at the good things, or the bad things."
The two men exchanged a look that Clint couldn't quite follow, then Tony nodded at him to go on.
"I knew he was selling, but I didn't know he was gonna kill anyone. He didn't plan it or anything, not that that makes the guy any less dead."
"And you reported him."
"Yeah."
"Because of what you saw in the Drift?" There was a hesitancy to the question that Clint understood all too well. For a lot of pilots, their biggest fear wasn't Kaiju, it was what their co-pilot might find in their heads and how he or she might react to it. The idea of someone deliberately sharing what they'd seen was horrifying.
"Yes." He wasn't going to try to justify that decision to anyone anymore.
A flash of some kind of light caught his eye then when Tony shifted in his seat, and he tried not to stare at the glowing circle he realized he was seeing under Stark's shirt, but obviously failed. Tony looked down, then shrugged.
"When the Kaiju attacked LA the second time, I was in a subbasement workshop of my R&D department. There were some explosions and there was shrapnel. A lot of shrapnel. I survived the blast, barely, but there were tiny fragments they couldn't get out. Another researcher cobbled together a magnet to keep it away from my heart, and once I was awake, we started going through the scrap and I built this. Well, an earlier version of this anyway. It's an arc reactor. Clean energy tech I'd been working on before the Kaijus started showing up. We've scaled it up, and it's running some of the new prototype Jaegers."
"How many did you lose?" Clint asked quietly.
"Forty. We had a department of forty-two researchers before the attack. We also had family on the base. Friends. All told, out of a base of over three hundred people, only ten survived."
Then Bruce took over, and pointed to a scar across his forehead. "You'll hear about this, too, if you haven't already. Frontal lobe damage, from working with an experimental PONS unit. Officially they call it "anger management issues", but what they mean is that I've got a violently destructive temper. They should've dumped me, retired me, something, but Stark... I wasn't in the office, but from what I can infer, he threatened to leave if I was fired. They need him too badly to chance it. Especially the way the Kaiju are starting to adapt."
"You don't give yourself enough credit, Doc." A new voice announced, and when Clint looked up, Stark was standing there with his own lunch tray. "What he isn't telling you is that he's the foremost mind on Kaiju physics in the world. Fury would've made them keep you regardless, Bruce, I just got you into a pilot's seat. We pilot the old Iron Hulk out there when need be. It's a little like therapy," he continued. "Let's him bleed off some of that anger, keeps him from wrecking the lab too much, lets me get behind the wheel and really get a handle on how what we're designing works."
"Ah, yes," Banner agreed, wiping his glasses self-consciously with the tail of his shirt. "Something like that."
"What we're trying to say is, everyone here? We're all screwed up. We're all valuable, and we're all damaged goods as far as the rest of the program, hell, the rest of the world is concerned. But we're too valuable to throw away. So whatever it is you did, or whatever's wrong with you, it doesn't matter here." He stuck out a hand. "Let's start over. Tony Stark, resident engineering and computer genius. You must be Barton."
"Call me Clint," he replied as he shook the offered hand.
"You can call me Tony, or just God will be fine," he said it with a cocky grin that Clint could tell got him into trouble. Probably got him out of trouble, too.
They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes, but as more people came in, Tony gave him a very colorful rundown. "That terrifying woman over there with the comm unit surgically attached to her ear is Hill - Fury's second in command."
"Yeah, I met her on the way in."
"Terrifying, I tell you. Hill's the no-nonsense take-no-prisoners by-the-book type, which is also how we stay running. Command thinks she's so hidebound and uptight that she's loyal to them. They'd be wrong."
"Fury, huh?"
"He kind of inspires that kind of thing. You'll see."
"Now, the guy in the suit next to her is our communications and logistics guy. He's pretty much the paperwork machine on the base, and helps cover our asses with the central command. He's also your go-to guy for supplies and funds if you're doing anything that needs them. Or, you know, if there's something you just can't seem to find on your own, if you get my meaning. Not illegals, or anything like that, just... difficult. Challenging. He knows everybody, and everybody owes him, and he's clever about cashing in." Tony craned his head around to see who else might still be in the cafeteria, and quickly ran through a list of names Clint was pretty sure he'd never actually remember the following day. "Most of them are deckhands, a few are tech-types, and those on the end, Ray and Talia, they're Drift techs working with Dr. Ross."
Bruce flinched, just the slightest bit, but Clint noticed and filed that away for later.
By the time the dinner shift was over and the cafeteria crew was all but chasing them out with brooms so they could finish clean up, Clint's head was spinning with information and shattered pre-conceptions about was happening around him. The Island of Misfit Toys, indeed, he thought to himself just before he drifted off to sleep much more easily than he'd thought he would.
*****
Natasha Romanov's dreams were often ugly, twisted things, but they were hers, and she'd been deprived of them often enough that in a strange sort of way, she cherished them. Her newest co-pilot, Shostakov, a highly decorated officer who'd flown fighters during the early days of the Kaiju attacks, didn't seem to appreciate them nearly so much.
Natasha sat on her bunk and rested her head back against the wall between her room and his. If she'd sorted out the moments correctly, it had been a mission to stop a political rival from leaking information about the Red Room's programs. She'd used a very bloody method of convincing him.
The banging on the door brought her focus back to the present, but she didn't get up to let Alexei in. He raged at her, called her a monster, then another voice cut through trying to calm him down. It sounded like he'd managed to wake up the entire hall. She wondered if he'd enjoyed how it had felt to do those things, like she'd been programmed to enjoy it. She could look back now with horror and disgust, but the mission persona they'd put inside her head hadn't minded the horrible things at all.
In the dreams, she still didn't.
Natasha felt a literal tugging at her mind as he walked away, probably towards the command offices. What drew them together was like the annoying buzz of a gnat and she wondered how far away she'd have to go to get rid of it. On the heels of that thought was the realization that if he wasn't willing to pilot with her anymore, the PPDC might give her back to the Red Room, and she found herself chilled by a wave of fear sharper than anything the nightmare ever produced.
*****
Marshal Emere Vidiri didn't seem at all surprised to see her first thing in her office the following morning.
"Ranger Romanova," she said by way of a greeting, but didn't look up from her paperwork.
"I believe Lieutenant Commander Shostakov has already been to see you this morning," she began, and Vidiri put down her pen, folding her hands before her on the desk.
"He did. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that he camped out in front of my office and was waiting here when I arrived. It seems he doesn't want to pilot with you anymore, Ranger."
"Yes, ma'am. I also was... given that impression."
Vidiri was older than most of the other marshals Natasha had worked with. She'd been reassigned from the Sydney Shatterdome, and was noted for running things with both efficiency and a great deal of diplomacy. It was a quality the PPDC appreciated in Hong Kong, where it wasn't uncommon for the Russians, Americans, and Chinese members of the oversight committees to butt heads.
"He’s requested an immediate transfer to another team, and has refused you as a co-pilot. It's unprecedented, to say the least. I explained to him that the probable result of such a request would be that he would no longer be able to pilot a Jaeger, and he accepted that willingly. I would ask what it was you did, but somehow, I don't think it was deliberate."
"No, ma'am."
"I haven't been fully briefed on what you were doing before you came to us, Ranger."
"I'm not entirely sure what I can say about that," Natasha hedged. She wasn’t surprised that the Russian government hadn't given the PPDC an explanation of where they had come from.
Vidiri waved it off. "I don’t expect you to. I'm sure I don't have the proper clearance. Regardless, I'm given to understand there is some very disturbing things in your mind, and Lieutenant Commander Shostakov reacted badly to them."
"That would be a fair assumption, yes ma'am."
"What's to stop it from happening to someone else?"
"Excuse me?"
"I could put you together with another co-pilot, but what's to stop this from happening again? Am I also correct in assuming that this stems from the same root cause that led to Zakarovna and Udikov’s deaths and Vitsin's ‘retirement’?"
"Yes, ma'am. And to answer the first part of your question, I don't know. I'm afraid I'm not equipped to guess how a hypothetical person might handle being inside my mind. It’s not pretty. Or nice. My memories are unsettling at best, horrific at worst, and I can't change them. But I am exceptionally good at what I do, and it is something I very much want to continue doing."
"I have it on good authority that when I put in Shostakov's request, the next step on the part of your government will be to request you be sent back to them for reassignment elsewhere, outside the PPDC." Back to where you came from, was what she didn't say, but Natasha knew what she was trying to imply.
"That would not be my preference of assignments," Natasha managed, while inside she was screaming please don't send me back.
"I figured as much. Which is why I'm not filing these papers until later today. In the mean time, I have someone I would very much like for you to meet."
*****
Marshal Fury, it turned out, was nothing like what Natasha was used to from most Marshals, but had been very like the people she'd grown up around. She had a definite sense that whatever he wanted her for, whatever game he was arranging, it was far wider reaching than simply using her as a tool to get his hands on the Russian tech. It was more disturbing to realize that he knew she was actually a key component of that highly sought after and rumored tech, and not just a simple pilot.
Still, Marshal Vidiri, who Natasha had come to like and respect quite a bit, and who she had never seen act with cruelty or unfairness in her command, spoke very highly of Fury and seemed to trust him. It wasn't enough to make Natasha trust him outright, but it helped. And anything - anything - was better than returning to Russia and the Red Room.
*****
Author/Artist: Koren M. (cybermathwitch)
Disclaimer: Not mine, as per usual. Characters are Marvel and Beacham and DelToro. Lyrics are Vienna Teng.
Pairing: Clint/Natasha, Jane/Thor, Tony&Bruce (see notes)
Rating: Adult, 17+
Warnings: brief references to suicide, general canon-typical violence/badness/etc.
Spoilers: n/a
Type: Pacific Rim AU (fusion)
Word Count: 4031
Summary:
"What we're trying to say is, everyone here? We're all screwed up. We're all valuable, and we're all damaged goods as far as the rest of the program, hell, the rest of the world is concerned. But we're too valuable to throw away. So whatever it is you did, or whatever's wrong with you, it doesn't matter here." He stuck out a hand. "Let's start over. Tony Stark, resident engineering and computer genius. You must be Barton."
Author's Notes:
Yes, there really is a Jarvis Island in the Pacific Ocean. No, it's probably not possible to build even a small Shatterdome there. Call it poetic license.
Please forgive me: a. for this being unbeta'd. (There's a reason it's not up on AO3 yet.) b. for this being a work in progress. I actually do have the endgame already planned, I promise. c. for any errors or inconsistencies with the Pacific Rim canon or timeline. I tried my best to slot it in without jacking up either the story or the movie canon too much. I hope.
Thank you, thank you, thank you to sweetwatersong for turning what originally was a vague musing and general interest in Pacific Rim into a rabid thing with sharp teeth that demanded to be written, and thank you for "doodling" all over it and making it better. ;)
Bruce and Tony can be read as either gen BFFs or as background/pre-shippy. They're being contrary, vague brats and haven't deigned to tell me which they want it to be.
So come out.
You have been waiting long enough.
Your done with all the talk talk talk
And nothing on the table.
It's time to come on out.
There will be no sign from above.
You'll only hear the knock knock knock
Of your own heart as signal.
Clint Barton looked up at the ceiling over his bunk, about a half a second away from literally twiddling his thumbs from the sheer boredom. Or frustration. Maybe both.
The room was too empty. As a kid, the idea of having a room all to himself would've sounded like heaven, but the reality now was awful. The quiet was nice, but the echoing room was a constant reminder that he was alone.
Fuck Barney.
He'd known something was going on with his older brother when he'd started keeping secrets. It shouldn't be possible to hide things in the drift, but Clint deferred to Barney, had always let him take the lead. When Barney would nudge him away from certain thoughts and memories, it was second nature to just let them float away, not look too hard. He'd known about the black market Kaiju dealing, superficially, but it was easier not to ask questions. Just like when they were kids.
He wished he'd looked harder. Maybe he could've stopped things before they'd gone to far. Maybe...
But it was over and done now. Barney was facing a court-martial, and Clint, while technically cleared of any accessory charges, knew it wouldn't be long before he was discharged. They'd always had a rep for being difficult and taking stupid chances; now coupled with Barney's criminal activity and Clint being the one to rat him out, Clint was persona non grata with all the other pilots.
So he spent a lot of time in his room, waiting. For nothing.
There was a sharp rap on the door and he turned his head but didn't bother to get up. "Yeah? Might as well come on in, it's open."
A Marshal Clint had never seen before stepped inside, and Clint slid off his bunk quickly, coming to attention. "Sir. Sorry, sir."
"At ease, Barton." The man was taller than Clint, and the small space made him seem even more imposing, although he wasn't actively trying to be intimidating like some Marshals and PPDC officials did. Clint relaxed, just a little but was still wary.
"Can I help you, sir?"
"Actually, I think I might be able to help you."
Fury looked around for a minute, then took a seat on the small built-in couch like he owned the place. "I assume you know you're damaged goods."
Clint managed to keep his mouth shut, because he couldn't disagree with that assessment.
"Most people think you were dealing Kaiju parts on the black market. Even if you weren't directly involved, your brother was, and you knew about it. Then, you made an even bigger mistake when you turned him in and got him court-martialed."
"He killed an innocent man, sir. I couldn't let that go."
Fury's expression shifted. "I can understand that. But it doesn't change how everyone else sees you now, or the fact that no one wants to drift with you. They don't want to take the chance you'll see something in their head they don't want anyone else to know. It's an unspoken rule, but it's a damn important one."
You don't talk about what you see in the drift.
"So here's the thing, Barton. You don't have a lot of options, Ranger. I figure you're smart enough to realize that either you work with whatever I throw at you, or you go home. And home isn't a very pretty place right now."
Fury had him there. Never mind that he didn't actually have a place to go back to. "Home" in this case would be a work line if he was lucky or the refugee camps if he wasn't. "I have to ask, sir, what exactly am I getting into here?"
"Think of us as an R&D facility. We're working on updating Jaeger tech and trying to solve the problem of where exactly the Kaiju are coming from. Command thinks this damn wall they're making noises about will keep the Kaiju out and they're moving to shut down all the official research facilities. So that's our job now, off the record. We have an... alternate source of funding, so we can do the work other departments would need years of approvals and oversights to do. On paper, we're just the first responders for the smaller islands scattered throughout the Southern part of the Pacific Ocean, and we're supposed to try and head off any Kaiju going towards the mainlands when we can spot them. We've got three active Jaegers, plus a fourth that’s coming in needing a co-pilot."
"Which is where I come in?"
"Which is where you come in."
He was itching to ask what Fury was planning, why he wanted him (or someone in his situation): what it was that he didn't think anyone else would be willing to do? Instead, he clenched his jaw and resigned himself to waiting for the other shoe to drop. He'd gotten good at that over the years. He'd met people like Fury before, and he'd tell him what he needed to know when he damn well felt like it. Hell, he was used to working for people like that. "Well then, sir, I guess you've got yourself a new Ranger."
*****
Two weeks later, he found himself stepping into an elevator in a Shatterdome perched precariously on the smallest island he'd ever seen, and started rethinking his life choices.
The helicopter ride had been choppy as hell, and while Clint certainly didn't get motion sickness and had been out on the ocean in worse weather than that, he'd gotten used to having a hell of a lot more metal between him and the wind and water. All you could see from the approach was a tall, dark gray box that stretched across most of the visible land (there really wasn't much), and the simplistic barely marked landing pad. The woman that met him at the door introduced herself as the facility Director, Hill, and all but shoved him inside out of the storm and into the elevator.
A disembodied voice announced their arrival on the basement level, and Clint considered it a victory that he didn't jump.
Hill chuckled, so something must've shown on his face. "That's JARVIS. He's named after the facility and the island and he's one of Stark's toys. He's got over half the facility linked up to some kind of central AI he's been designing."
"An AI?"
"He's a genius. He's got an ego a mile wide, though. You'll figure that out soon enough. Until we can get a co-pilot and a Jaeger in here for you, Stark gets you. He oversees all the construction and R&D we do on the Jeagers we've got and they can always use extra hands out in the bays."
Clint felt a hollow spot in his chest at the mention of the Jaegers, and wondered again what they were going to do with Upshot Advance. Last he'd heard, she was being overhauled for a new team and being moved to the Lima facility.
"This is your bunk," she said, drawing his attention. "The mess hall's down that way," she pointed to a set of double doors down the corridor. "You can drop your stuff off, and get a hot meal if you hurry. Then try and get some sleep. They'll need you on the deck in bay four tomorrow morning at eight. Breakfast's usually around seven, maybe a little earlier. If you've got any questions, just ask JARVIS."
"Er... how?"
"Just talk. He's usually listening, unless you specifically ask him not to." She had a wicked grin, like she knew something she wasn't telling him, or maybe just that she was enjoying his discomfort at the idea of being constantly surveyed by some kind of computer system. "Good night, Ranger."
"Good night," he managed, but she was already leaving. He sighed, just a little bit, and opened the door.
******
Clint had only really taken the time to drop off his bags, because as soon as she'd mentioned food, he'd realized he was starving. Breakfast back on the mainland had been over twelve hours ago. The cafeteria was smaller than he was used to, but self-explanatory, and most everyone had already gotten food so there wasn't a line to speak of.
He took the tray the server offered him and then searched for a place to sit down. There were a couple seats right in the middle of what seemed like a lively conversation to one side, and on the other side, there was a long, almost empty table with just one occupant, reading a book. Clint waited until he glanced up, then gave him a look that said "okay?" and gestured with his tray towards one of the empty spots.
The man looked surprised, but nodded, and Clint took a seat, closer than the one he'd originally been eyeing.
"Lt. Clint Barton," he introduced himself. "But I guess you knew that, seeing as how I'm the new guy around here."
"Dr. Bruce Banner," the man finally replied, and shook the hand Clint offered, though he still looked surprised. "Sorry. We, uh, don't get that many new people out here."
"They didn't mention I was coming?" Clint wasn't sure why that should've surprised him.
"Ah, no. But the Marshal tends not to mention things until they're necessary."
"Yeah, I got that impression." They lapsed into silence for a little while, Bruce going back to his book and Clint digging in to the (remarkably) not terrible dinner on his tray.
"So, are you a medical doctor, or a scientist?"
Bruce set down his book and smiled. "I'm a PhD. I was a nuclear physicist, before. Now, I work on researching both Kaiju and the possible weaponry needed to stop them."
"What he's not telling you, is that he'd be a Nobel Laureate if things had gone just a little bit differently, but instead he got roped into this madness by me." A third man had come over to the table while they'd been talking and taken over the seat next to Bruce, kicking it back far enough it looked like he was about to tip over.
In a sudden flurry he tipped forward so that it came clattering back down onto all for legs and stuck his hand across the table at Clint.
"Tony Stark. Welcome aboard. I hear you're my new lackey."
"Tony-" Bruce started to intervene but Clint shook the hand offered.
"Yeah, I guess I am. 'S what Hill told me, anyway. I'm decent enough with mechanics if you tell me what to you need me to do."
"Well, that shouldn't be a problem. What brings you to the Island of Fury's Misfit Toys?"
"Huh?"
"'We're all misfits!" Tony quoted. He crossed his arms on the table and rested his chin on them. "Seriously though. What'd you do? Psychological break? Bum knee? Terrible kleptomania habit?"
"I- no. That is, my co-pilot... he, uh, killed someone. So he's being court-martialed. And I ended up here." He watched Tony's eyes widen as understanding dawned.
"You're that guy. I heard about this. He was, what, working the black market? Some pretty high-level shit, too, from what I saw."
Clint felt a part of himself shut down. He'd done this dance a hundred times since the story had broken. "Something like that, yeah."
"You involved?"
Well. No one had ever been quite that blatant about it.
"Tony," Bruce cautioned again, giving Clint the impression that he had to do that with Tony a lot.
"No, it's okay. It's kind of refreshing, actually. To be asked, I mean. Most people just assume one way or the other. No, I wasn't involved, not directly. I knew it was going on, but you gotta understand that in the Drift, you're deliberately pushing memories away. You don't look too close, not at the good things, or the bad things."
The two men exchanged a look that Clint couldn't quite follow, then Tony nodded at him to go on.
"I knew he was selling, but I didn't know he was gonna kill anyone. He didn't plan it or anything, not that that makes the guy any less dead."
"And you reported him."
"Yeah."
"Because of what you saw in the Drift?" There was a hesitancy to the question that Clint understood all too well. For a lot of pilots, their biggest fear wasn't Kaiju, it was what their co-pilot might find in their heads and how he or she might react to it. The idea of someone deliberately sharing what they'd seen was horrifying.
"Yes." He wasn't going to try to justify that decision to anyone anymore.
A flash of some kind of light caught his eye then when Tony shifted in his seat, and he tried not to stare at the glowing circle he realized he was seeing under Stark's shirt, but obviously failed. Tony looked down, then shrugged.
"When the Kaiju attacked LA the second time, I was in a subbasement workshop of my R&D department. There were some explosions and there was shrapnel. A lot of shrapnel. I survived the blast, barely, but there were tiny fragments they couldn't get out. Another researcher cobbled together a magnet to keep it away from my heart, and once I was awake, we started going through the scrap and I built this. Well, an earlier version of this anyway. It's an arc reactor. Clean energy tech I'd been working on before the Kaijus started showing up. We've scaled it up, and it's running some of the new prototype Jaegers."
"How many did you lose?" Clint asked quietly.
"Forty. We had a department of forty-two researchers before the attack. We also had family on the base. Friends. All told, out of a base of over three hundred people, only ten survived."
Then Bruce took over, and pointed to a scar across his forehead. "You'll hear about this, too, if you haven't already. Frontal lobe damage, from working with an experimental PONS unit. Officially they call it "anger management issues", but what they mean is that I've got a violently destructive temper. They should've dumped me, retired me, something, but Stark... I wasn't in the office, but from what I can infer, he threatened to leave if I was fired. They need him too badly to chance it. Especially the way the Kaiju are starting to adapt."
"You don't give yourself enough credit, Doc." A new voice announced, and when Clint looked up, Stark was standing there with his own lunch tray. "What he isn't telling you is that he's the foremost mind on Kaiju physics in the world. Fury would've made them keep you regardless, Bruce, I just got you into a pilot's seat. We pilot the old Iron Hulk out there when need be. It's a little like therapy," he continued. "Let's him bleed off some of that anger, keeps him from wrecking the lab too much, lets me get behind the wheel and really get a handle on how what we're designing works."
"Ah, yes," Banner agreed, wiping his glasses self-consciously with the tail of his shirt. "Something like that."
"What we're trying to say is, everyone here? We're all screwed up. We're all valuable, and we're all damaged goods as far as the rest of the program, hell, the rest of the world is concerned. But we're too valuable to throw away. So whatever it is you did, or whatever's wrong with you, it doesn't matter here." He stuck out a hand. "Let's start over. Tony Stark, resident engineering and computer genius. You must be Barton."
"Call me Clint," he replied as he shook the offered hand.
"You can call me Tony, or just God will be fine," he said it with a cocky grin that Clint could tell got him into trouble. Probably got him out of trouble, too.
They ate in companionable silence for a few minutes, but as more people came in, Tony gave him a very colorful rundown. "That terrifying woman over there with the comm unit surgically attached to her ear is Hill - Fury's second in command."
"Yeah, I met her on the way in."
"Terrifying, I tell you. Hill's the no-nonsense take-no-prisoners by-the-book type, which is also how we stay running. Command thinks she's so hidebound and uptight that she's loyal to them. They'd be wrong."
"Fury, huh?"
"He kind of inspires that kind of thing. You'll see."
"Now, the guy in the suit next to her is our communications and logistics guy. He's pretty much the paperwork machine on the base, and helps cover our asses with the central command. He's also your go-to guy for supplies and funds if you're doing anything that needs them. Or, you know, if there's something you just can't seem to find on your own, if you get my meaning. Not illegals, or anything like that, just... difficult. Challenging. He knows everybody, and everybody owes him, and he's clever about cashing in." Tony craned his head around to see who else might still be in the cafeteria, and quickly ran through a list of names Clint was pretty sure he'd never actually remember the following day. "Most of them are deckhands, a few are tech-types, and those on the end, Ray and Talia, they're Drift techs working with Dr. Ross."
Bruce flinched, just the slightest bit, but Clint noticed and filed that away for later.
By the time the dinner shift was over and the cafeteria crew was all but chasing them out with brooms so they could finish clean up, Clint's head was spinning with information and shattered pre-conceptions about was happening around him. The Island of Misfit Toys, indeed, he thought to himself just before he drifted off to sleep much more easily than he'd thought he would.
*****
Natasha Romanov's dreams were often ugly, twisted things, but they were hers, and she'd been deprived of them often enough that in a strange sort of way, she cherished them. Her newest co-pilot, Shostakov, a highly decorated officer who'd flown fighters during the early days of the Kaiju attacks, didn't seem to appreciate them nearly so much.
Natasha sat on her bunk and rested her head back against the wall between her room and his. If she'd sorted out the moments correctly, it had been a mission to stop a political rival from leaking information about the Red Room's programs. She'd used a very bloody method of convincing him.
The banging on the door brought her focus back to the present, but she didn't get up to let Alexei in. He raged at her, called her a monster, then another voice cut through trying to calm him down. It sounded like he'd managed to wake up the entire hall. She wondered if he'd enjoyed how it had felt to do those things, like she'd been programmed to enjoy it. She could look back now with horror and disgust, but the mission persona they'd put inside her head hadn't minded the horrible things at all.
In the dreams, she still didn't.
Natasha felt a literal tugging at her mind as he walked away, probably towards the command offices. What drew them together was like the annoying buzz of a gnat and she wondered how far away she'd have to go to get rid of it. On the heels of that thought was the realization that if he wasn't willing to pilot with her anymore, the PPDC might give her back to the Red Room, and she found herself chilled by a wave of fear sharper than anything the nightmare ever produced.
*****
Marshal Emere Vidiri didn't seem at all surprised to see her first thing in her office the following morning.
"Ranger Romanova," she said by way of a greeting, but didn't look up from her paperwork.
"I believe Lieutenant Commander Shostakov has already been to see you this morning," she began, and Vidiri put down her pen, folding her hands before her on the desk.
"He did. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that he camped out in front of my office and was waiting here when I arrived. It seems he doesn't want to pilot with you anymore, Ranger."
"Yes, ma'am. I also was... given that impression."
Vidiri was older than most of the other marshals Natasha had worked with. She'd been reassigned from the Sydney Shatterdome, and was noted for running things with both efficiency and a great deal of diplomacy. It was a quality the PPDC appreciated in Hong Kong, where it wasn't uncommon for the Russians, Americans, and Chinese members of the oversight committees to butt heads.
"He’s requested an immediate transfer to another team, and has refused you as a co-pilot. It's unprecedented, to say the least. I explained to him that the probable result of such a request would be that he would no longer be able to pilot a Jaeger, and he accepted that willingly. I would ask what it was you did, but somehow, I don't think it was deliberate."
"No, ma'am."
"I haven't been fully briefed on what you were doing before you came to us, Ranger."
"I'm not entirely sure what I can say about that," Natasha hedged. She wasn’t surprised that the Russian government hadn't given the PPDC an explanation of where they had come from.
Vidiri waved it off. "I don’t expect you to. I'm sure I don't have the proper clearance. Regardless, I'm given to understand there is some very disturbing things in your mind, and Lieutenant Commander Shostakov reacted badly to them."
"That would be a fair assumption, yes ma'am."
"What's to stop it from happening to someone else?"
"Excuse me?"
"I could put you together with another co-pilot, but what's to stop this from happening again? Am I also correct in assuming that this stems from the same root cause that led to Zakarovna and Udikov’s deaths and Vitsin's ‘retirement’?"
"Yes, ma'am. And to answer the first part of your question, I don't know. I'm afraid I'm not equipped to guess how a hypothetical person might handle being inside my mind. It’s not pretty. Or nice. My memories are unsettling at best, horrific at worst, and I can't change them. But I am exceptionally good at what I do, and it is something I very much want to continue doing."
"I have it on good authority that when I put in Shostakov's request, the next step on the part of your government will be to request you be sent back to them for reassignment elsewhere, outside the PPDC." Back to where you came from, was what she didn't say, but Natasha knew what she was trying to imply.
"That would not be my preference of assignments," Natasha managed, while inside she was screaming please don't send me back.
"I figured as much. Which is why I'm not filing these papers until later today. In the mean time, I have someone I would very much like for you to meet."
*****
Marshal Fury, it turned out, was nothing like what Natasha was used to from most Marshals, but had been very like the people she'd grown up around. She had a definite sense that whatever he wanted her for, whatever game he was arranging, it was far wider reaching than simply using her as a tool to get his hands on the Russian tech. It was more disturbing to realize that he knew she was actually a key component of that highly sought after and rumored tech, and not just a simple pilot.
Still, Marshal Vidiri, who Natasha had come to like and respect quite a bit, and who she had never seen act with cruelty or unfairness in her command, spoke very highly of Fury and seemed to trust him. It wasn't enough to make Natasha trust him outright, but it helped. And anything - anything - was better than returning to Russia and the Red Room.
*****