A Shattered Reflection - Introduction

If you didn't read my story Through A Glass Darkly – you might want to go back and check it out, as this has been written as a sequel in the same AU. If you don't want to, I've tried to write in a plot summary below, but since TAGD was over 100,000 words, I WILL have missed out stuff and you WILL get confused later.

Summary of the plot up to this point:

In Through A Glass Darkly, Clint Barton (aka Hawkeye) fell in love with a girl named Jen who he met after crashing through the window near the end of The Avengers movie. A short, Australian tough cookie with degrees in materials science and structural engineering, she takes no shit from anyone, especially not Hawkeye.

A couple of rounds of extremely good sex later, Clint realises something is wrong with him. He has a horrible suspicion that when Loki said he "expanded his mind" he meant it literally.

Jane Foster and Tony Stark build a communications machine to get a message through to Asgard, and Thor and Loki turn up a few days later, but not before Clint gets extremely sick due to withdrawal from contact with Jen.

Loki tells Clint that he'd actually done him a favour, laying a traditional Asgardian enchantment on him that would increase his strength, intelligence and lifespan, and also passing the gifts onto his chosen mate. Said partner would then become his soulmate, reborn at his side for all time. But there's a time limit and once the transformation has begun, it has to be completed or they will both become sick.

Jen and Clint accept this and admit they love each other already, but Loki, jealous and reminded by Jen of Queen Guinevere, who he loved long ago before she married King Arthur, tried to separate them by tricking Jen into sleeping with him, wearing an illusion of Clint, before the enchantment bonding Clint and Jen together was complete. Jen twigged to Loki's deception and shot him (non-fatally) with one of Clint's guns.

Jen's concerned parents turn up at almost the same time as Queen Frigga and there is a confrontation with Loki where Loki realises that Jen's mother is Guinevere reborn. Since he'd sworn an oath on his life to protect her and her descendants, he's forsworn and his life is forfeit. Jen and her mother refuse to let him kill himself and instead force him to swear a new oath to join the Avengers as one of Earth's defenders. (One of my favourite lines in the story is when Natasha tells Loki he can't pay a debt of honour with his death, only with his life.)

At the end of Through A Glass Darkly, Clint and Jen get married and take off on a long honeymoon with no fixed destination. (There is an extended wedding scene one-shot called Into The Light). Their pilot to their first stop is Melinda May (from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), accompanied by Phil Coulson. Fury had already told Clint that Coulson lived, to try and reduce his guilt after the Battle Of New York, though the other Avengers don't know. May is Clint's former partner; she was his training officer and worked with him before retiring from fieldwork after the Bahrain Incident. Clint gave her the nickname 'The Cavalry' and is the only person who can use it without incurring violence.

Epilogue 1 of Through A Glass Darkly is also the Prologue to this story and is reproduced in the next post.

Universe Variations

There are minor variations to the plots of Thor 2, CA:TWS and Iron Man 3 which I will quickly cover here.

Thor 2 Variations

The events of Thor 2 occur two months after Clint and Jen get married.

Thor and Jane already got back together, so the scene where she is angry at him for disappearing doesn't occur.

Jen's older brother Jacques, a former Australian SAS operative, is Darcy's boyfriend and Jane's 'bodyguard' when Thor isn't around. Jacques breaks his leg early on in the events of the movie and is pissed as hell when Darcy's intern Ian makes a move on his girl (check out the short Finders Ain't Keepers, Mate to see what happens next).

Jane has already met Loki. She doesn't trust or like him though, because she and Jen had become friends. She still slaps him.

For those of you who wonder how Loki could behave as he did in Thor 2 because of the oath Jen made him swear: Jen made a mistake. She made him swear to protect Earth. Not Asgard. Oops.

While Loki is impersonating Odin at the end of the movie, we find out that he is doing it for altruistic reasons. Odin has fallen into the Odinsleep and Loki knows that Thor doesn't want the throne, he just wants to be with Jane. There's a really good one-shot called Glass Houses written by Eternal Love Song which features an interesting scene between Odin and Loki which sets this up rather well.

Grieving for his mother, Frigga, Loki tells Heimdall, Sif and the Warriors Three that he will assume the regency, pretending to be Odin, so that Thor can go freely. He asks the five of them to help him, to keep his secret until Odin wakes, and to be his hands and eyes because he can't do everything that Odin could do, especially with Frigga gone, but he reckons he can fool the rest of the Asgardians because Frigga is gone and Odin can semi-sequester himself in grief. This also satisfies the punishment Jen laid on him (read Chapter 52 and Loki's following Interlude in TAGD if you want to know more about this). This scene is covered in the short Trusting The Trickster (click on my profile to find and read it).

Consequently, when Sif turns up in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. hunting Lorelei, it's on Loki's orders, because he's sworn to protect Earth from outside threats, but he's promised to stay away for a year unless specifically summoned by the Avengers, who all think he's dead. There is a scene set on Asgard around this event called The Final Proof.

Iron Man 3 variations

The events of IM3 take place a little before CA:TWS, though after Thor 2.

Pepper and Tony are planning their wedding, though she is frustrated by his 'suit problem'.

Tony is recovering from the open-heart surgery alluded to at the end of IM3 when the events of CA:TWS take place. This explains why he isn't available to assist Steve and Natasha.

Pepper's Extremis effects have been mitigated before Tony goes under the knife. This isn't to the best of my knowledge specifically stated in IM3 but I just want to make it clear that is the order of things in my AU. I don't think Tony would have risked the surgery unless he'd made sure Pepper was safe anyway.

CA: TWS variations

Steve and Natasha are a couple. Natasha, however, still keeps her secrets. They have a discussion off-camera during the movie about her not sharing crucial information with him. Read the short Well, This Is Embarrassing for this scene and the aftermath!

Fury and Maria Hill are also a couple, but it's a secret from everyone except members of the Avengers, because Fury doesn't want to risk Maria's safety. There is a short I've called I Can't Do This Without You where first of all Fury convinces Maria to help him pretend to die, and then she thinks he might actually have died.

The post-credits scene where Bucky goes to the Howling Commandos exhibit hasn't occurred (yet).

A Shattered Reflection opens five days after the climactic battle of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and five months after Clint and Jen got married on the rooftop of Avengers Tower. It is intended to be Bucky's story, but there's still plenty of Clint and Jen in it for those of you who've fallen a bit in love with them ;)

Please note. This story is intended to have (mostly) longer chapters than Through A Glass Darkly, and consequently, I won't be posting daily. I'll try and put on the bottom of each post when I intend to put the next chapter up.

To find any or all of the stories listed above (none of them are critical to the plot, except in my own head) click on my profile or search for Into The Light: they are posted as continuing chapters to that story. And it's M rated for smut so remember to check your filters if you can't find it!