Ciel opened her eyes slightly, and blinked a couple times. It was hard to tell at first what was in focus, as everything was approximately the same shade of gray. Cold seeped into her right side as her awareness continued to increase, although her arm seemed fine, so she pushed herself up and – ow; arm was numb from when she'd been laying on it. Okay then.

She winced from the pins and needles sensation but finished sitting up, only to immediately lean over towards her other side and the wall there. Head throbbing, she slowly blinked a few more times and finally began to take in the situation.

Starting with a man she had never seen before sitting against the opposite wall of the tiny room.

Her head throbbed again, and she curled up so she could rest it on her knees, groaning as she did so.

"If it makes you feel better, I was in the same position 'bout half an hour ago," the man offered. "Nasty tranqs they've got here."

Ciel didn't bother replying until she could look up without wanting to curl right back into a ball. Still leaning against the wall, she took him in. Not a reploid, she was pretty sure, but he looked like he was trained to fight. "Who are you?"

Something in his expression shifted but it was gone just as quickly. "Fellow prisoner, it seems." He held his hands out, showing they were empty, before rising to cross the room. "You were already here when I woke up, but you've got a needle mark too." He knelt in front of her and turned his head so she could see the reddened mark in the side of his neck, even in the dim light.

As she processed that her hand rose up behind her jaw, just below the edge of her helmet but right above her tac-suit, pressing and finding the soreness there. She took a slow breath, and looked again at the room. The floor was concrete, but everything else was metal. A large door took up most of one wall, looking completely solid aside from the barred window at the top and a panel at the bottom that might open, but probably not from their side.

Another breath. She needed to stay calm. "Any idea where we are?"

"I got nothing," he said, looking for a moment at the window as if he could get any information from the wall beyond it. "They got me in New York but they could've kept me dosed up. We could be anywhere right now."

"…Where?" The instant that word left her mouth she knew it was the wrong thing to say.

His attention snapped back to her, his stare practically pinning her down. "Okay…" he said slowly, "I could buy not knowing me; I'm not in the same league as Stark or Cap. What I don't buy is you never having heard of New York City, 'specially after that mess with the aliens."

Ciel pressed back against the wall. She opened her mouth, but after a moment closed it and stayed silent.

The man stared at her long enough to make her shiver, but abruptly his gaze dropped down. "Can I see your arm?"

She blinked at the sudden topic shift, but warily held out her hand. He took it, and ran his thumb over the back of her wrist, studying the material of her tac-suit. It was only this close that she could see the bruising on his hands and wrists, and some cuts further up on his arm. He had gone down fighting, which somehow didn't surprise her.

"Thinner than our stuff…" he muttered, "Doesn't feel like it either." He looked back up at her, letting the hand go. "What happened right before they stabbed you?"

"Um…" Ciel closed her eyes, trying to make sense of the few frantic moments prior to her world going dark. "I was… trying to get a fix on a weird energy signal, and then… it's all fuzzy but there was a really bright light. I thought it was a trans at first but… it doesn't… seem right. And then someone grabbed me." She reached for the needle mark again, but pulled her hand away when she realized what she was doing.

The man let his head fall back, muttering a few curses. "Damn, I was hoping for just a weird accent. I swear if we've got someone screwing around with portals again I'm gonna stick an arrow in that someone's spleen."

He moved to sit against the wall next to her. "Well, since we're stuck here for a while," He held up the hand nearest her. "I'm Clint."

She smiled, and reached across to take it. "Ciel."

-o0o-

Clint didn't say much more to her, aside from asking a few more questions that only highlighted their different experiences. Ciel wasn't a particularly suspicious person by nature, but it wasn't until the lingering effects of the tranquilizer cleared up and she could really start examining her memory that they were on the same page, at least as far as the current situation went.

Because really, she hadn't quite believed Clint about the portals until she remembered very specifically being in her lab analyzing the latest scans one moment and a few terrifying seconds later being dumped in front of a bunch of people who had not been there last she checked. And she still wouldn't have believed another world until she got a look at the machine that had brought her there, which was most definitely not a transerver and was even then still closing, and she caught a glimpse of what looked like space (outer space, not cyberspace) behind it.

In the end, that and the exchange in the cell made it abundantly clear that one of them was not on their usual planet, and it was most likely her. She still wasn't sure if she'd fully processed that.

Clint had listened intently, and then had proceeded to mutter something about "asgardians" and a "damn cube" and leave to feel out the walls of their cell. There was no point in pretending she had any idea what he was talking about, but he hadn't elaborated nor waited for a response from her.

It was just as well, considering she wasn't sure she could even begin to think of a line of questioning that made sense. In the meantime she did some poking at the walls herself, for what little good that did. While her memory did confirm Clint's seemingly-crazy theory, it didn't provide anything useful to the current situation.

Clint's expression became increasingly tense as he worked his way around the room. He obviously wasn't getting anywhere either, and if his reaction to the bolts in the doorframe was any indication, that was unlikely to change.

But, other world or not, what else was there to do other than figure out an escape route?

Once more she took a deep breath, and resolutely ignored the fear clawing in the back of her mind.

"Mission start," she murmured, almost mouthing it more than actually giving voice to the thought. Clint almost certainly thought she was a civilian and nothing more, but she'd organized the escape from Neo Arcadia and she could definitely organize her own prison break.

She had to.

First step: figure out what the heck they were working with. As far as she knew she and Clint were the only ones in the building. With everything involved in her capture there was no way of knowing how much time had passed. No one she knew would know where to look even though they had to know she was missing by now (Alouette must be so worried…), and Clint hadn't mentioned backup.

Her knife was missing, as was the datapad she'd been holding, but… She reached up to her helmet and pulled down the visor, smiling a little as it came online.

It was something, at least.

"You got anything useful on that?" Clint asked her, and she flipped the visor back up to see him turn his full attention to her.

Her smile faded. "Not at the moment. What about you?"

"Well the guys on the outside need to fire their head of security," he said, gesturing to the empty corners in the ceiling. "No cameras." Then he tilted his head. "On the other hand, no tech here means Stark can't hack it to find us."

"Stark?"

"Yeah, one of my team. Six in total." He studied her with a measured look, not quite the same as their first conversation, but intense enough. This time Ciel met it.

Whatever Clint saw in her, it was enough to make him go on. "Cap, Stark, Thor, Bruce, Nat, and me. Stark's the resident hacker, but Natasha's good too." His brows suddenly furrowed. "Hopefully at least one of them got out. I'm pretty sure Thor did if nothing else, so someone should figure out I'm missing quick."

He looked at her and actually seemed to be turning the conversation over to her this time, but all she could do was shake her head. "As far as I know no one came through with me."

Clint grunted an acknowledgement and turned back to the bolts in the doorframe. When that evidently failed to pan out he jumped up, grasping the bars in the window and hauling himself up for a look.

"Anything?" Ciel asked as he dropped back down.

"Nope. Couple cameras but none close enough for a good visual in here. Have I mentioned these guys are idiots? Hall looks pretty blank otherwise. There's something next to the door, I think, but if it's part of a lock I can't tell what kind it is."

She sighed. "So not much to work with. Did they leave anything on you when they brought you in?"

"They took the obvious if that's what you're asking, including the comm." He fingered one of the zippers on his vest. "They got my knives too, but…"

She didn't see where his hand disappeared to behind his back, but she assumed hidden pocket when he came up with a small object between two fingers. "Arrowhead," he told her, tilting it back and forth for examination.

He sat down, placing the arrowhead next to him, and went through the rest of his outfit, delving behind straps, opening hidden pockets in the seams, and reaching into his boot at one point, until he came up with a total of four small, pointy objects. Smirking a little, he held up the last one, examining it. "They got my knives, but the bastards were never going to find all of these." He picked up the other three devices in turn, manipulating them in his hand as he looked them over. "Explosive, corrosive, stun and another explosive," he murmured, and then sat back, satisfied. "I can work with that."

Then he turned to the smooth, steel wall next to the door. "Probably."

-o0o-

She was saving power on her visor for when – if – it became useful, so Ciel had no idea how long it had been before the panel at the bottom of the door slid open with a loud click and two brown packages came skittering into the room, followed by a pair of water bottles.

"Wow, MREs, really? I feel special," Clint drawled, standing up from where he was examining the wall and making his way to the door. "I don't suppose you could spring for some decent coffee?" he asked the unseen guard.

Ciel shivered a little at the reminder of some nice, hot coffee. The chill in the cell was only just this side of uncomfortable, but she'd never been able to retain heat well. She pulled one of the packages towards her and listened to the faint steps as they disappeared down the corridor outside.

Clint folded his arms and continued to stare at the bars until the guard's presence was well and truly gone, and then scowled.

"What?" she asked. Clint probably hadn't actually expected an answer from their captor, but…

"This is weird." Clint told her, retreating from the door and scooping up the other package for himself. He kicked one of the water bottles towards her as he sat down. "I don't know how this crap works on your world but if someone goes to the effort of drugging you to get you under their control, they want something from you. No one's come aside from that guy, and no one's talked to us. They haven't demanded anything of us, and if they're trying to break us first they're doing a half-assed job of it." He examined the MRE package. "Careful; they've opened these things at some point."

Ciel paused. "…And?"

Clint waited until he'd checked the smaller packets inside before responding. "Well the food itself hasn't been tampered with, so we're probably okay there. They just… took out the heater, the gum, the matches, the drink packet, and the spoon." He counted off the packets again. "And dessert. I take back what I said about them doing a bad job of breaking us."

Ciel laughed despite herself and took another look at the food in front of her. The packaging claimed it was "ready-to-eat", but looking at the contents she wasn't entirely sure about that.

Well, it couldn't be any worse than what the Resistance had stolen for her those first few months. She reached for the crackers and peanut butter first, because those at least looked the same as usual, and went back to Clint's analysis of the situation. "Any idea who might have us?"

"You want a list?" Clint replied dryly, checking something on the bottle cap and twisting it open when he was satisfied. "Everyone on the team has enemies somewhere, and my usual line of work doesn't exactly leave people with a ton of friends. What about you?"

Ciel gave him a look. "You're the one with the portals. You think someone from my world found a way to get them too and sent me over?"

"You said you were tracking a signal, right? That portal may not have been the first one to open up."

She had to give him that, so she started working her way down the list. It didn't take all that long, because she could discount basically everyone on the basis of them being dead before she could even bring motivation into the equation: Copy X, Elpizo, the Guardians, most of the military, the Judges, Craft, Weil. Even those left in the government after Weil's takeover had been killed in Ragnarok's strike. In fact, the list of those in a leadership position effectively amounted to her after Zero-

Her breath stuttered. She shook her head, more to clear the reminder than to indicate anything to Clint but it worked out anyway. "I can't think of anyone…"

If Clint noticed her mood shift, he didn't call her on it. They ate in silence for awhile, and Ciel forced herself to focus on the mission at hand.

"Well, I guess we're better off worrying about escape first," she finally said, poking at one of the remaining trays.

"True," Clint replied, picking the conversation back up easily.

Once more Ciel surveyed the room, as if that would get her any more information than they had already. The panel was too small for either of them to crawl through the opening, but she moved over to it anyway. Idly she ran her fingers along one side, where the panel itself was inset. Then again, more intently this time. Her brow furrowed as she watched her fingers move along the rough, uneven edges. "Hey."

Clint scooted over to her side, taking in the same features. "That doesn't look like it came with the door."

The corner of her mouth twitched. "I'll go with that."

They both looked up at the door, and then at the lack of cameras.

"I'm guessing this place wasn't intended to hold us." Ciel commented.

"First thing that's gone right all day." Clint replied.

-o0o-

"So what is it you do, exactly?" Clint asked, watching Ciel as she examined the wall nearest to the door through her visor. "Or do they just hand out suits like that to any scientist where you're from?"

"They don't, but it's not like this is military-grade. As for what I do…" Where did she even start with that? "I work with reploids–" She stopped at the confused expression on his face. "Androids?" she tried, and when that got a nod she moved on. "But my research moved to… energy systems, mostly." If 'reploid' didn't make sense there was no way she was going to be able to explain cyber-elves. "Five years ago I left the city and started a resistance faction against it, and I led it up until about a month ago. Then we were trying to rebuild the city, at least until I got dragged over here."

Clint's gaze was scrutinizing, but then shrugged, seemingly to himself more than anything, and glanced between her and the wall. "Remind me to introduce you to Stark when we get out of here."

"I'm… actually a little surprised you accepted that so easily."

She wasn't looking, but she could imagine the flat look Clint was probably leveling at her to match his tone. "I work with a guy that spent a couple decades frozen in a glacier, an alien prince with a magical hammer, and a scientist that turns into a giant green rage monster. You sound positively normal by comparison."

Ciel pulled away from her object of study just to stare at him for a moment. In the time she had spent looking into the theory he had come up with, the man had removed both of his boots along with a few more assorted pieces of his outfit, and was assembling the parts in a variety of ways to balance one of the arrowheads on it.

"What's the verdict on our target?"

She sighed. "This thing" – she tapped the hinge on her visor – "is not exactly designed to detect signals through a metal wall, so… as far as I can tell there's power back there but for all I know it's going up to the lights."

Clint looked up at the recessed bulbs. "…Yeah-huh. That's where the wiring goes."

Ciel rolled her eyes and made a frustrated noise. "Point being, I can't give you a better target other than somewhere in this area." She traced her finger around a fairly sizeable area directly to the left of the doorframe.

Clint frowned, but considered the target, and then walked over and pulled himself up on the barred window again. After another moment of examination he dropped back down and picked up his arrowhead of choice, as well as one of the straps he'd pulled off his outfit, and one of his boots. Ciel stepped away and watched in fascination as he poked at the base of the arrowhead for a bit, then slid it underneath the top fastening of the boot and reinforcing it with the strap.

He'd mentioned he had a way into the wall, but she hadn't expected him ramming the arrowhead into it, or for the 'corrosive' he'd mentioned off-hand to be that effective. A metallic snap sounded, followed by a hissing noise as the wall seemed to melt away.

Ciel blinked at the hole left behind while Clint put on his other boot. "And you kept that thing where, exactly?"

A huffed laugh accompanied Clint's reply. "It's not primed until it's mounted on a shaft. Or until you hit the switch that makes it think it is." He examined the boot that held the arrowhead and grimaced, presumably at the acid burns left behind, before using the other one to kick at the edges of the newly-formed hole and dislodge the weakened areas that hadn't quite detached.

They both paused, listening for the footsteps of a guard. There weren't any, and Ciel frowned at the implications of that, but moved forward to examine the hole. Clint evidently wasn't taking the observation any better, but joined her and peered inside.

After a moment she moved aside, letting him take the lead. The hole wasn't quite big enough to put his head through, but they could probably fit one arm each in together, or use one hand and still be able to look inside.

Of course, when she had tried checking it out earlier she found herself wishing that her visor had a flashlight attached. But if there was a battery in there, it was in a place she couldn't reach.

Clint slid his arm in and looked past it, fiddling with something on the inside. When that didn't get him what he wanted he turned his face away and shoved it in up to the shoulder, feeling around and pressing.

After a few minutes he withdrew his hand and grimaced. "I can't flip the lock without more leverage."

"You could try my shoe?" Ciel offered.

Clint looked down at it, and then shook his head. "No, I'd need something…" he cast a glance about the room, "…that we don't have right now."

Ciel sighed and once more looked at the hole. "Is that lock electronic?"

"I think so."

She slid the visor back down over her eyes and peered in. Reaching straight across, her fingers hit the edges of a box mounted on the other side of the wall. With Clint's help – along with the other non-explosive arrowhead as an impromptu screwdriver – they managed to pry it off, and tracings of the circuits inside lit up on the screen in front of her.

"Alright," she said, determined, "let me see what I can do."

-o0o-

She spent enough time to make her arms sore with one hand or the other inside the wall. Her headgear had a single cable in it, and she nearly had to strip the plug to get something she could use, but it was enough.

Granted, an actual computer would be nice, but that wasn't going to happen.

They'd started quizzing each other about their respective worlds as a way to pass the time while they worked on their escape plan, and Clint had even started talking about his teammates. But then he got to Thor, and started talking about something called a 'Valkyrie', and Ciel had commented on the similarity to Harpuia, and now the man seemingly could not let it go.

"So, any mentions of a world tree in your legends?"

Ciel spared Clint a bemused glance and went back to her work. "The only legends I'm familiar with are the ones rather heavily based in fact," she told him, a particular pair of warriors springing to mind. "I can't think of any that involve trees."

"Hey, I work with one of the guys that inspired Norse mythology." Clint retorted, before dropping his amused smirk and adopting a thoughtful look. "But, really? I would think Yggdrasil would be one of the first legends to cross worlds, considering."

Ciel blinked, having to scramble to regain her thought process regarding the information in front of her, because seriously? "Sanctum Yggdrasil was a structure in Neo Arcadia designed to contain a being called the Dark Elf," she said carefully. This was… either fascinating or really creepy. Or one heck of a coincidence. She was kind of hoping for that one.

"Not a bunch of interconnected wormholes? That arguably makes it weirder."

She didn't have a response to that.

Clint mused on that point for awhile, and then asked, "So, does the term 'Ragnarok' mean anything to you?"

Ciel stilled, involuntarily flashing back to that night. Watching the pieces fall-

"Hey, I'm sorry." Clint's hand on her shoulder jolted her out of her thoughts. "I didn't know-"

"It's okay," she told him, aiming for gentle but it came out more than a bit tired. "Um… orbital cannon?" she tried.

Clint blinked. "No, and that's an alarming mental image."

She had to laugh at the sheer truth in that statement.

"Of course," Clint mused, "the Vikings had it as 'the death of the gods', which I'm not sure is much better."

Going quiet again, she took a moment to consider that statement, and turned back to the lock. "Well that's ironic…"

-o0o-

Despite her assurances that no really, it was okay, Clint had backed off almost completely on the comparisons between worlds. She had no idea what he was doing now; only that it was quiet, and it let her focus on her work.

As she delved further in she debated continuing trying to pull off the code – which for all she knew might be in a language she'd never seen before, even though the layout of the board itself looked somewhat familiar – or trying to manipulate it physically to get enough power to the locking mechanism. The problem with the latter, of course, being finding an adequate power source. Because for all of Clint's sarcasm about how obvious it was, the fact remained that the lighting system did not run wires down to her location.

Her visor was currently split-screen, a small section monitoring for any data input she happened to get while the rest continued to trace the circuit paths from the impulses the cord created. Between that and looking at the board behind it, this was definitely going to give her a headache in the near future, but again: it wasn't like there were other options.

She moved the cord to the next chip. Thank goodness for static-proof gloves, because damaging the chip would more likely trap them here completely than actually do anything useful.

She startled when someone tugged at her arm, and whipped her gaze around. Clint; who was halfway to covering her mouth if she didn't keep quiet herself.

Her jaw snapped shut, and a beat later she let out a very quiet, very controlled breath.

A small noise drew her attention back to the lock. Her visor lit up with flashes of pathways she'd never noticed before. Giving Clint a pointed look, she leaned in to investigate.

There was a relay switch there, and… oh. Of course they wired in the panel as a secondary door. Well, that was one less chip to check… so… mentally she started re-tracing the paths she knew.

The panel opened and something – more food? It had been longer than she thought – slid into the cell. Clint had taken up position at her side, an arrowhead in hand, trying and failing to engage the guard in conversation. Or at least trying to piss him off, given that he was mostly threatening to stick arrows in increasingly creative places.

Eventually the litany trailed off, though she wasn't quite sure when. There was a tap this time, and she looked just long enough to see Clint holding another MRE. "In a bit," she murmured, finding the relay switch that had been tripped earlier.

The chip next to it would have to be the one that set it off, which sends the code to the chip down there, but that was for the panel, so… Her finger traced the lines she saw on her visor and found yet another chip. That one might be the verification for the door itself; unless it was the one above it…

She lined up the cord and pressed a button on her visor with her other hand. The only signal she could generate was meant to translate into a diagnostic query for any reploid she worked on, but now it was nothing more than a generic electrical pulse that let her follow the path from chip to chip. It had yet to set off anything when she used the pins, but nothing had been easy so far, so why should it start now?

It couldn't possibly take all that long… well okay, obviously it could, because it did. There weren't that many chips – the board wasn't even that big – but every single one had at least a dozen different circuit lines coming off it, and following each one by eye was not as easy as it sounded, even with her visor's assistance.

Still, things fell into a rhythm, albeit a boring one. It didn't feel like she was making much progress, but she'd narrowed it down to two or three chips, so that had to count for something…

"So is 'working until you forget to eat' just a scientist thing everywhere, or what?"

She blinked, startled, and made sure she could locate the chips she had focused on before turning to Clint. "It hasn't been that long…" She trailed off as she checked the clock in the corner of her visor which, even if it wasn't set to local time, still indicated that it had been over two hours since she last actually saw it.

Clint raised a brow and sent her a look as if he could read the same thing she had.

She let her head fall forward with a small sigh, and mutely held out her hand for the MRE. If she stared at the circuit board through her visor the entire time she ate, Clint didn't comment on it. Much.

"You're one of the better ones at least. I've heard stories about Thor's girlfriend, and Stark and Banner do it too."

"I also had an entire organization pretty much rotating watch to make sure I actually had enough food, sleep, and coffee," Ciel said fondly. "Now give me a minute; I think I have this."

Finishing the rest of the food before escaping was probably a good idea, so she impatiently shoved the last of… whatever it was supposed to be into her mouth and got back to work. There was only one chip left that was likely to be the verification one. If she could get the voltage into the circuit past it…

A smile crossed her face, which only widened as a heavy click emanated from the door. Clint moved up next to her, grinning as well. A moment later the expression faded into grim determination and he shoved open the door.

"Idiots they may be, but I call guards in three… two… one…"

Footsteps sounded from around the corner.

"I never lose that bet." Clint said, smirking slightly as a couple guards, masked and clad in black, rounded the corner.

Ciel pressed back against the doorframe, feeling an odd sense of déjà vu. "Pretty sure that wasn't a bet."

"As far as you know!" Clint called back, sprinting to meet the guards long before they were ready. He slid under the haphazard punch of the first one and hooked an arm around their leg. Guard Number One went down hard, their head emitting a crack against the metal floor. Without pause Clint swept his leg out and caught the second one. Guard Number Two stumbled but didn't fall, and brought out a pistol to level at Clint's head.

Clint grabbed their wrist and neatly disarmed them, taking the pistol for himself and smashing the guard across the face with it. Number Two went down, but Number One was stumbling back upright. Without hesitating Clint leapt onto their back, his weight sending him to the floor again, and locked an arm around their throat until they went limp.

After a moment he pushed himself away, and after checking to make sure that both of them would in fact stay down this time, he looked up at her with a grin. "Shall we?" he asked, gesturing down the hallway the guards came from.

Ciel returned the smile and followed his lead.

Author's Notes:

I wish I could have given Clint more 'screen time', but I've never written the Avengers before, and I didn't think I could do anything from that movie justice, sadly enough. So I stuck with Ciel to avoid messing up his character too badly. I really wanted to do alternating viewpoints, but I hope I struck a balance that was at least somewhat satisfactory.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed! You all gave me a lot of good food for thought on how to improve this story and how to go forward. And thanks for pointing out all my silly typos. :)

Anyway, now that this story is complete, I just want to mention that this, part 1, was meant to stand alone for the Locked Room challenge. Part 2 is just an addition that the idea for would not leave me alone.