Chapter One – The Mission Briefing
"Where are you off to, missy?"
She froze. How did he know she was awake? She was in her own room. And being quiet. Unfreezing, she yanked the zip up her black jacket and turned to the open door where the light from outside was being obscured by a man's silhouette leaning on the frame.
"Secret." She explained, leaning over her bed as she threw a few items into a discreet duffel bag.
"It's Fury isn't it? You know, I could probably pull a few strings and stop him from calling you in so late." He paused, his head disappeared as he glanced at the ridiculous Elvis clock she knew was on a wall outside. "Make that early." He corrected himself, rubbing his face. "Kit, it's 3:14 in the morning."
"Then why are you up?" She shot back, trying to change the subject off of her. He didn't answer and she looked at him properly. Despite the light from the arc reactor in his chest, from his silhouette alone, she could see that his hair was dishevelled, his trapezius muscles in his shoulders were tensed and the hand that wasn't resting on the frame had a slight tremor in it, even as it grasped a tumbler of what looked like scotch.
"Go to bed, Tony." She sighed, concern pricking at her. His panic attacks weren't getting better and he refused to talk to a shrink. 'Everything they know, I can teach myself.' Tony liked to remind her whenever she mentioned it. And when she'd told him that he could benefit from the company, at least, he'd just scoffed. 'That's why you're here.'
"'Tony'." He mimicked her. "Since when do you call me Tony? And anyway, my mind's too active for that." He commented flippantly, lightly tapping the glass of scotch on the door as if he was toasting it. "What does Fury want?"
Kit rolled her eyes. "I can't tell you."
"Ah, give me something! I'm an Avenger, I'm on the inside." He tried to convince her, knowing she'd never give it up.
"Can't do it. He was very specific that nobody know." She said, zipping the bag up and turning to him, still blocking the doorway. She didn't tell him that she didn't even know.
"Well, I'm not nobody, so you can definitely tell me." He countered.
"Nope, can't do it." She shook her head, sitting on the bed.
"Then… do it for your favourite dad?" He asked, voice getting higher as he spoke.
"You're not-" She started, but he interrupted.
"Your papa?" He said papa in a stupid voice and she exhaled through her nose.
"You're not my dad." She chided good-naturedly.
"Close enough." He replied before muttering, "Surrogate dad."
"Surrogate pain in my butt." She muttered. He appeared to jump on it.
"See, I taught you how to speak like that! When I first met you it was 'Yes, sir', 'No, sir', 'Can I be of assistance, Mr. Stark?'" He rattled the words off and they hit her in a spot she'd buried. "You owe me."
She knew she did, but she wasn't about to inflate his already mountain sized ego.
"Sorry, DW, but you're making me late." She used her nickname for him and it worked like a charm. His shoulders relaxed slightly and his weight shifted from the doorframe to one hip.
"What time will you be back?" He asked, his voice relenting.
"No idea." She said, jumping off the bed and looping her arm through the duffel handles.
"You had breakfast?" He pushed, and he took a step backwards as he allowed her through.
"Nope." She popped the 'p' as she turned to face him and walked backwards towards the garage.
"Grab a…cronut or something on your way out. And take one of my cars. I don't like your S.H.I.E.L.D one, it needs new breaks."
"Yes, dad." She grinned, shaking her head as she turned again, still walking towards the door to the garage.
"You know it!" He called back snarkily. "Drive safe!"
"I'm a better driver than you!" She called over her shoulder.
"No shenanigans!"
She ignored him.
"What's out of place?" He asked, his routine question for her. She rolled her eyes and pulled her pant legs up as she kept walking, revealing her purposefully chosen odd pink and red socks.
"Good girl!" He chirped, pleased.
"Bye!" She called back.
"Love you!" He replied
She kept walking.
"Say it back!"
"You're ridiculous, DW!" Her face breaking into a laugh, closing the door behind her and catching a glimpse of him leaning against the wall, watching her go with a slight smile on his face. It had been like that ever since she'd moved in last year. She wasn't sure if he did it to cover his own feelings with a sense of bravado or if he did it for her. Probably a mixture of both, knowing him. He liked to tangle up his emotions in a web of false and genuine so you never knew which one he was being and couldn't use it against him. His own personal way of preventing emotional blackmail. Too many people had hurt him in that sense, whether it was purposeful or unintentional. It was a constant emotional wall that had confused her, especially when she'd first met him and had the emotional complexity of a brick. But after almost a year, she understood it, and also that underneath the narcissism and the showiness and the flippancy, Tony Stark was a deeply caring man who was just trying to protect himself. And he'd not only let her into his life, but his home and eventually, his heart.
Surrogate dad, indeed.
She hurried down the steps to the garage, taking them two at a time, grabbing a pair of keys off the wall as she went, and clicking the unlock button, she rushed to the consequent overly expensive new car that's headlights blinked in response. Popping the door open, she threw her duffel onto the passenger side seat, jumped in and closed the door behind her. The car turned on with the tell-tale unsatisfying hum of an electric car and she pulled smoothly out of the property. She honked the horn sharply twice, despite Pepper probably still being asleep, but knowing that it would comfort Tony.
"Good morning, JARVIS." She greeted, knowing that the A.I. would be installed in all of Tony's cars. And was also one of the reasons Tony preferred her not to take her S.H.I.E.L.D issued black sedan in which he couldn't find her so easily if god-forbid, something happened.
"Good morning, Kit." JARVIS replied in his pleasant British-accented voice. "I trust your three hours of sleep were satisfactory?"
Kit laughed. She loved the A.I.'s personality. Being present all through the house meant he was aware of all the personal comings and goings of the inhabitants. Their schedules and appointments. But what she'd also realised was that he was somewhat in tune with the mental states and changing physical states of the people he watched over as well. It, or him, as she thought of JARVIS, was no longer as weird as she'd once thought it was to be aware of her sleep cycles. In fact it was one of his less impressive abilities in the scheme of things she'd seen.
"It was alright while it lasted, JARVIS." She chuckled, turning onto the highway that would take her directly to S.H.I.E.L.D's Headquarters.
"I'm inclined to deny all future incoming phone calls from your employer until you've acquired at least eight hours of sleep in one sitting." He responded surprisingly curtly and she smiled to herself.
"You're so good to me, JARVIS." She said, passing the occasional car.
"It is my pleasure, Kit. Would you like some music for your journey?" He asked and she nodded.
"That would be lovely, thank you." She responded and the monitor on the dash lit up as Jarvis chose a playlist for her. A soft acoustic song began to play and she smiled again. JARVIS could always tell what music she was in the mood for. It fit the atmosphere, the bay water on her left and the lit up city on her right. The occasional streetlight passed over her, showering the interior of the car with a burnt gold. She liked it like this. A contemplative quiet. She could truly appreciate where she was, not just physically, but in her life. Where she'd come from. A nice car that she could borrow with trust and not a million warnings. The knowledge that even then, her safety was more important to the owner of the car than the car itself. A nice house with nice people waiting for her. A job that challenged her, but made her feel important, needed. That she actually had a purpose. She had good friends. A few years ago she hadn't had a single one. She felt wealthy. And not the kind of wealth that came from money, though that wasn't a problem with her job and a billionaire calling himself her surrogate dad. She felt a wealth of…happiness. Or contentedness. It was hard to pinpoint as it was an all-over feeling.
It certainly wasn't perfect. Her past liked to rear its ugly head too much for her to be able to call it that. But it was the closest she'd ever got.
Something was off.
"JARVIS can you turn the music off please?" She asked warily.
"Of course, Kit." He replied and silence greeted her as she drove into the underground carpark. Even on a quiet day, at a quiet time, this car park should have held more cars than this. She could count on both hands how many cars there were. She could imagine that the owners were only the most necessary of personnel to keep the complex running smoothly over night.
The carpark was…empty by S.H.I.E.L.D. standards. This wasn't just lax, this was…borderline dangerous. There were situations that needed to be monitored, people to be surveilled. What was going on?
She pulled her car up beside the two black SUVs at the front with number plates she recognised and unzipped the duffel, looking outside the car warily. Even though it was 3:27am, there should be people walking around. Fury's message had been cryptic, but this was just…suspicious. Checking her phone for any messages, she saw there were none and frowned. Zipping the bag back up, she slipped the phone into her breast pocket. The bag was just preparedness, so she left it there. Fury hadn't said to bring anything, and she had various members of the Avengers on speed dial. She was being overly paranoid, but it was hard not to be in this job.
Climbing out, she locked the car and made her way inside the room that held the elevators, passing a card over a security clearance as she did so. Pressing the up button, the elevator ding went off uncharacteristically promptly, likely due to nobody using it to get to another floor.
"Director Fury's office." She told the voice-operated control as she stepped inside the glass enclosed elevator.
"Provide additional clearance." A robotic female voice replied.
"Finley, Katherine. M." She responded, giving her full name and the screen on the wall flashed with a loading green circle as the doors hissed closed automatically. She turned around to watch the empty foyer of the facility be revealed through the glass pane as she was transported upwards and she stared as she saw there was no one there. Not even at the reception desks. The elevator continued to rise and she could see the dark landscape outside growing smaller through the windows. It looked like it might be an overcast day. There were a few clouds on the horizon.
The elevator made a ding noise again as it slowed its ascent and the doors hissed open, revealing a clean corridor with walls made of reflective double-sided glass. Fury's office was at the end of the corridor. The door was closed and she couldn't see any light coming from it and she frowned.
Walking up, her shoes made a satisfying clicking noise on the white tiled floor and she slowed as she approached the door. The elevator ding-ed again as it was called away and she turned to watch it. The space was now completely silent. And quite dark too, except for the minimal light coming through where the elevator shoot backed onto the windowed side of the building. Turning back to the office door, she reached out and hesitantly gave two light knocks, not sure what to expect, if anything.
She definitely wasn't expecting Fury in all his bald, eye-patched, long coated glory to whip open the door almost immediately, revealing his office fully illuminated and Clint Barton sitting in front of the large desk in the middle of the room.
"In, in." Fury ushered her, checking the corridor behind her and gobsmacked, she stumbled in the room, Fury locking it behind her.
"Take a seat, Finley." Fury said, passing her and sitting in the big chair behind the desk. She gaped, looking at him before switching her gaze to Clint who just shrugged at her, obviously as clueless as she was. She lowered herself into the wheelie chair and it squeaked audibly. She glanced at Fury but he appeared to be settling himself and she finally noticed just how torn up and empty the office looked. She'd been in here before and there was usually several bookcases, filing cabinets. A monitor should have been mounted on the wall, but instead there was just the mount and a hole big enough to see inside the wall. All that was left were two turned over boxes and various pieces of tossed paper and trash.
"What…happened in here?" She asked and Fury looked up at her, appearing to notice as well.
"Me. Had to make sure there were no bugs. I've called you both in for something important. Very important." He said, looking between them.
"Yeah, I noticed the ghost town out there." Clint said in his offhand manner and Fury nodded.
"I had to make sure that no one would be able to infiltrate this room even out of curiosity. The conversation I'm about to have with you, the knowledge I'm about to impart… it could easily be catastrophic – more catastrophic than we can probably imagine, if it were to get in the wrong hands."
"Right." Clint said, glancing at Kit who was feeling more confused than when she'd walked in. They waited for him to say something, but he was just staring at them.
'Are-" Clint started to say, but Fury's words stopped him dumb.
"Time travel." He said pointedly. Kit's jaw had already been open but it damn near hit the floor then.
"I-I'm sorry…what?" Clint said, eyebrows raised as he leaned forward in disbelief, like he hadn't heard what he'd just heard.
"Time travel." Fury repeated, nodding his head around as if he couldn't believe it either. "I was… going through some of the older material in the archive and found some of Howard Stark's papers on it. I believe it might actually be possible with our technology."
"But…what…what would you do with it? Even if it worked?" Clint, at least, was on the ball. Kit felt like she'd fallen through to another alternate dimension. But then again, wasn't this what their universe was turning out to be? Maybe it wasn't so crazy. Portals opening up over New York, Norse gods summoning lightning in a closed room, your doctor turning into a green rage monster, aliens in the streets. "Isn't that dangerous for someone with the best intentions to even consider?" Clint continued, interrupting her thoughts.
"It's a dangerous time we're living in without considering it." Fury said darkly. "Loki's sceptre has been stolen. By HYDRA."
"What?!" Kit squeaked in disbelief, surprising herself. "How?"
"One of the scientists working with it was…converted to the cause." Fury explained before adding a last thought. "Failed his psych eval'."
"Oh wow, well that's great." Clint drolled, obviously annoyed. "So you screw that up and you instantly think, 'Hey! What about time travel?!'"
Fury gave the agent a very unimpressed look.
'The fact is," Fury explained, taking on an informative air, "That since WWII, HYDRA hasn't made their locations easily accessible. At all. We haven't found a new one since. We've run through all the old bases that were discovered and not completely burnt to the ground. There's nothing. Which must mean there's more. And if there's one…"
"There'll be two more to take its place." Kit muttered to herself, staring at a tray of paperclips.
"Exactly." Fury nodded. "And probably more than that. Captain Rogers acquired the last legitimate intel on HYDRA locations back in 1943. Since then they've kept it very hush-hush to prevent it happening again. Which means the last place known that the rest of the HYDRA locations were accessible was that base in Austria in 1943. And since HYDRA are such creatures of habit, we figure that the castles and forts they used back then are the same they use now."
Kit took a long shaky breath in, realising the logic of what he was saying. And what that meant for her.
"This'd all be a pipe dream of course," Fury said his voice taking on a whimsical quality, "'I wish we could go back and find out where those bases were and then we could find the location of Loki's sceptre before it was used for whatever nefarious purpose HYDRA intends it for.'"
Clint rolled his eyes.
"Except it's not a pipe dream." Fury said, his tone changing. "The technology is there. We just have to construct it. The repercussions of HYDRA having their hand on the Tesseract technology…Well we already have evidence of it back in the 40's. What could they do with it now? It must be recovered."
The agents were both looking at their director with varying senses of gravitas.
"I take it we're here for a reason then, aren't we?" Clint said, scrubbing his face with a hand. "You haven't emptied the facility and called us in at three in the morning just to tell us some exciting news."
"No." Fury said simply.
"And you don't want us to build it for you." Clint added, dread in his voice.
"Though I appreciate your intelligence, I'm not sure you'd be up to the task. I was hoping to coerce Stark and Banner into helping." Fury noted.
"So that leaves us…" Clint trailed off, not believing what he was about to say.
"You want to send us…back in time?" Kit said, looking at Fury. The older man glanced at her.
"Yes."
"When-" She started.
"Depending on how specific we can calibrate it…October 1943." Fury told them sombrely.
Clint frowned. "Isn't… isn't that…"
"Right in the damn thick of it, yes." Fury nodded. "Our intel on this particular timeframe reports that it was quite narrow. The locations would have been brought there and taken away by Schmitt and Zola who visited the facility, which occurred between October and November of 1943 before Rogers freed the 107 and the facility self-destructed."
"This all seems…very risky." Clint remarked. "More so than usual."
"We won't send you in unless we can be assured that it will work properly." Fury looked at Kit. "And I doubt Stark and Banner will let you go before they've tested every possibility."
Clint snorted suddenly.
"You're going to have a fun time convincing them to do this, especially with her on the line." He remarked. He was right. Since she'd gotten close to the Avengers over the last year, they were all significantly less thrilled about letting her go on missions. Everyone except Steve, who seemed to be the only one who had faith in her – had since the moment he'd met her. The common excuse they gave her was because she was so young, but she'd been trained her whole life for the things she did.
"I'm relying on that fact to keep them completely invested in getting you there safely and bringing you back." Fury noted.
"Right." Clint arched an eyebrow and glanced at Kit, her mouth in a grim line. "And it's only us?"
"Only you." Fury confirmed. "The more people, the more likely it is to mess with the present and that is of the utmost priority to not do. You'll receive training on this, but do not mess with the timeline. Stay away from Rogers if for whatever reason, you cross his path, though you shouldn't. I cannot stress this enough."
"Do we get time to think about this?" Clint asked. "I have a family. How long is this going to take?"
"You can, but in the present, I'm hoping barely any time at all." Fury said matter-of-factly. "It is time travel, after all. And not too long in the past. A month window, in all likelihood."
"That's…do-able." Clint said, looking to Kit for confirmation and she nodded slowly.
"As the machine is built, as I said, you'll receive training. But you are to speak to no one of this in that time. And I mean no one. If I hear you've said something, I'll be using that time machine to go back and shoot your ass before you do." The agents weren't sure if he was joking or not.
"After you leave here, Barton, you will collect Banner and get him to Stark's. Finley, you'll inform Stark that Banner, Barton and I will be joining you and that he needs to search the house for eyes and ears. I will impart the information. You are to say nothing until I'm there. Are your orders understood?"
He scrutinised them and Clint gave a lazy, "Yessir." Finley nodded.
"Good! I'll be seeing you later today then. 8 hours." Fury said, glancing at his watch and Kit did the same. 4am. So at 12pm, then. "Dismissed." Fury said before adding, "Don't tell a damn soul."
Clint and Kit stood up together and made their way to the door, Clint opening it and letting her through before him.
The dark, silent hallway greeted them.
"I…don't know what to think." Kit said softly, breaking the silence.
"You're telling me." Clint said, letting go of the door handle and clapping a big hand on her shoulder supportively.
"Into the blue, huh?" He said, guiding her towards the elevator.
"Into the blue." She repeated, nodding to herself. She barely new anything about the 40's. Would it even work? What would Tony say? What if it did work? What if something went wrong? What if they got stuck? What if…what if they got hurt and she needed medical attention-
She didn't realise Clint was talking.
"What are you gonna' tell Tony?" He was asking. She tried to collect herself a bit from her jumbled thoughts.
"I…I dunno', I'll just put it off till Fury gets there." She murmured.
"This is sort of above our pay grade, huh?" He commented, scrutinising her before fist bumping the down button on the elevator.
"Our job description seems to be continuously fluid as of late, if you ask me." She chuckled contemplatively and he snorted in agreement.
The elevator ding-ed and the doors hissed open in front of them revealing a figure already inside.
"Oh hey, Brock!" Kit greeted happily, shoving her worries aside as she recognised the man in the dim light.
"Tic tac! Clint, hey. What are you guys doing here?" Their colleague enquired casually as he stepped out of the elevator.
"Words with Fury." Clint supplied vaguely. "How's the abandoned fairground, huh?"
"Yeah, you know what's up with that?" Brock asked, brow furrowed as he rustled in one of the baggy pockets of his cargo pants.
"Nah, but it's freaky isn't it. Whoop-" Clint caught the doors of the elevator before the shut.
"Rumlow." An older man's gruff voice clipped from down the hall. The three turned to see a head in shadow poking out of one of the offices. He must have been a higher up to have an office next to Fury's.
"No time for chatting." The man said. His voice sparked something strange in Kit. She couldn't quite peg it. Like it was…false. It was hard, in this instance. But it had a rumble to it that sounded like a father's voice. A friend's voice. And yet it wasn't being used like that right now.
"Sorry guys, gotta' fly. I'll see you around. Might have a mission soon, huh, Tic Tac?" He smiled warmly at the younger girl.
"Yeah, hopefully." She replied genuinely, nodding. He always went out of his way to be nice to her. He'd been patient and taught her a few things when she'd first started. He held up a hand in goodbye before jogging up to the man in shadow and disappearing into the office, still scrabbling in his pocket. The man who'd called him remained though, and seemed to be surveying them, though they couldn't see his eyes. He just didn't go back in the office. Clint frowned, watching back for a second before abruptly turning and with a bit more force than he intended, grasped Kit by the shoulder and steered her into the elevator behind him, blocking the man's view of her before punching the close button several times over where the guy couldn't see what he was doing.
"Clint." Kit tried to get his attention as the doors finally hissed closed, the man in the distance still staring. "Clint. What's up?"
"Provide level request." The automatic elevator lady's voice projected in the tense box when no one told it what to do.
"Uh… T-Top Parking Lot." Clint stuttered distractedly.
"Clint." Kit hissed and he turned to look at her.
"Bad vibes." He said vaguely. "Really…really bad vibes, kid."
Kit frowned. She hadn't seen him like this before. Clint was the don't-sweat-it guy. And he never called her kid.
"Jesus." He exhaled, leaning against the wall and rubbing his face.
"Clint, seriously, you're scaring me a bit." She said warily.
"What?" He said, peering at her between his fingers. "No, it's just…You know in basic training…they tell you 'trust your instincts' before they teach you skills? And then in the more advanced classes they go back to that. How important your gut feeling usually is. Like… I dunno, that just sent off my damn…dad alarm or something. That just…screwed me up a bit. You didn't think that was shady? In the slightest?"
"A…bit…but…whoever it was…they're S.H.I.E.L.D., right? They're one of our superiors?" She reasoned. S.H.I.E.L.D. was the good guys and she didn't think she was just being naïve. The amount of background checking, psych evaluation, training, reports and more that she'd had to go through to get to where she was now…Shady people didn't just slip through the cracks and have an office next to Director Fury's that easily. It would be…practically impossible. And they would know Fury. Quite personally, too, in all likelihood.
"That's what's making me feel so…" Clint's face scrunched up. "And I don't like Rumlow either. It just feels justified now that he's messing around with whoever that guy was."
"You don't like Brock?" She was surprised. They worked on a lot of missions together and they were always quite friendly. Not let's-catch-up-after-the-mission-friends but generally chummy.
"No." Clint said decisively. Like he'd thought about it before and already decided. "He's alright on a mission. Trust him with your life but not…I don't know, other things. It's just been a feeling I've had since I met him. Not a guy I'd take home to meet my family. I don't want you hanging out with him outside of missions. Especially after what we just saw."
"What…did we just see?" Clint was making her feel like a scared child that had just been told her life was a lie. Good is now bad. She suddenly thought of Phil. Clint glanced at her.
"Ey, don't look like that, Kit, you're an agent. Buck up. As Nat says, regimes fall every day. Don't cry about it." He said off-handedly but he looked like he was thinking about it much more in depth than he was making it seem.
"Are you saying…S.H.I.E.L.D is going to fall?" She asked uncertainly. His brow scrunched, an immediate 'no' but then he hesitated and she saw it.
"Just…" Clint said, turning to her properly and he exhaled loudly before punching the button that stopped the elevator. Some alarm started to blare obnoxiously. Clint leaned down to her and put his hands on her shoulders so she was looking straight at him.
"Trust me. Trust Nat. Trust Tony. Trust Pepper. Trust Steve. Trust Bruce. The rest can do what it likes. It can stand, it can fall, it can blow in the wind. But we're your rocks, okay. Don't put your faith and your trust in an organisation. Put it in your family. We're your family, Katie." The corner of his mouth quirked and he squeezed her shoulders. She nodded dumbly and he clapped her arm with one of his hands and gave it an encouraging rub before reaching behind him and starting the elevator up again. The annoying alarm stopped and they were immersed in silence again. Clint stepped beside her and tucked her smaller frame under his arm as he liked to do. They only called her Katie when they were being very serious. They knew the significance.
"Sorry if I scared you." He said a few moments later, his arm still around her.
She shook her head.
"This…feels important." She murmured.
"I'll always be here." He said after a second. "Present…or past." He snorted. Gave her a little squeeze just to make sure she knew he was serious.
The elevator ding-ed and the doors hissed open, revealing the parking lot they'd both parked their cars.
"That doesn't look like a S.H.I.E.L.D. issued car, Katie-Potatie!" Clint announced boisterously as they made their way towards where the cars were parked beside each other.
Eyes and ears everywhere, Fury had said. She felt sort of cold.
"You're just jealous." Kit joked, punching Clint in the arm lightly. Everything's normal.
"Damn right, I'm jealous!" He said, gingerly touching the car with his index finger. "How expensive is this?"
"I really don't tend to pay attention when it comes to him, anymore." She replied genuinely, raising her eyebrows as she looked at the slick car.
"Well, tell him if he ever needs to do a trade, my car is ready." Clint shook his head, moving back over to his own SUV and opened the door with a beep-beep.
"See ya soon, Kit." He said, clambering inside the high car and shutting the door behind him before rolling the window down. The car started with a rumble and he smiled at her.
"You gonna be alright?" He asked suddenly and she looked up at him as she opened her own car door.
"Yeah." She nodded, looking down, trying to seem significantly less bothered than she was.
He nodded as he started to reverse. "You got me on speed dial!" He called as he pulled out. He held up a hand in a silent wave, tapping it against the side of the window as the car took off for the exit, slightly over the speed limit.
She waited until he was completely gone to turn back to her car. The parking lot had a few more cars in it but was still significantly under-staffed and she wondered how Fury was going to explain this one. Hopping inside the car, and closing the door, she turned it on, listening to the faint hum. Every time she borrowed one of Tony's newer cars, she couldn't help the disappointment when it didn't growl to life like some of the cars she'd learnt to drive in. One of the few good things from her late childhood, revving those engines.
JARVIS suddenly spoke up, unbidden.
"Are you alright, Kit? Your heart rate and epinephrine levels are slightly elevated." He noted and she swallowed.
"All good, JARVIS." She said, putting on a lighter voice. "Might just stop by a Krispy Crème or something on my way back, if you know what I mean?"
"Very good, Kit. Is there anything I can do?" He asked, trying to be helpful. He was picking up on high levels of stress in her system, something he wasn't unused to on occasion with the girl.
"Uh…actually, can you uh, let Tony know that we're gonna' have visitors at 12pm?" She asked, her voice cracking. "And could you tell him to clear a room of anything that could be used as…eyes or ears? I think he'll… know what I mean."
"I'm sure he will Kit. Is there anything else? I could brew you a tea at home in preparation for your arrival?"
"That…that'd actually be very nice, thank you, JARVIS." She smiled, inspecting her fingers on the steering wheel.
"Always a pleasure, Kit." He responded and then after a second, "Just let me know if you require any additional assistance."
"Thanks JARVIS." She said, knowing what he was referring to and deciding it was probably time to actually pull out of the car park. The monitor blinked that it was 4:41am as she passed the security gate and she noticed that the clouds she'd seen earlier on the horizon looked to be heavier and darker than they'd been an hour earlier.
The events of what had just transpired clogged her mind. The idea of time travel. It's implications. What would it be like? What would it feel like? It was almost too much to properly comprehend at this point in time, it was so unreal. And the machine wasn't even built yet, the builders not aware of their future task. But it all felt slightly less in comparison to whatever Clint had made her aware of. She hadn't realised just how much trust she had in S.H.I.E.L.D. and Clint's words that it was just an organisation, even a corporation in some respects was hitting her hard. Unbidden, she thought of Phil again. He'd been the one to train her when she was first inducted. He'd instilled the values of S.H.I.E.L.D. in her. His death had been the catalyst for the Avengers to become a real team. She'd almost worshipped him. And she'd worshipped S.H.I.E.L.D. because of him. But maybe he was just…the ideal of an organisation. How they'd like to be seen. The clean work. Was she really being so naïve to think that S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't have a dirty side? Maybe she'd just been lucky until now. Sheltered. That was a difference, for once. She didn't know how to feel about it. The idea that she'd gone from one manipulator to an organisation of manipulators pricked at her mind.
'Trust me. Trust Nat. Trust Tony. Trust Pepper. Trust Steve. Trust Bruce. The rest can do what it likes. It can stand, it can fall, it can blow in the wind.'
She'd hold onto that, but if something like S.H.I.E.L.D…something she'd seen as such a rigid example of the fight against evil, founded on hard-workers and tenacity – the very backbone of America's core values - if that could just fall…could The Avengers, too?
As she picked up a donut and a chocolate milkshake on her way home she couldn't shake the storm of thoughts brewing so much doubt within her. It made Fury's worries about being overheard about time travel somewhat pale in comparison.
Because if there was no S.H.I.E.L.D…then what was there?
Sorry if the whole time-travel thing comes across as corny at any point. It's really just a means to an end, but I'm trying to make it semi-viable so it's readable. I wanted to write a story where the OC got to have a current relationship with the present and 40's Bucky. I can't wait to get to him. Also, Howling Commandos.
Pretty much gonna start on the next chapter now, so I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you thought, any tips, anything you'd like to see more of in future chapters, chuck 'em at me, I'll eat it.
I'm constructing a playlist on Spotify as I write this, so if you search 'The Years Go By Like Dreams Fanfiction' you might be able to find it. Certain songs will pertain to certain scenes, some that I won't write for a while, but they're spot on for those scenes. A few will be more generally appropriate background listening.
I'm trying to make this fanfiction more thoughtful than previous ones I've done. I also haven't really done too much 3rd person while still trying to connect you to certain characters, so * puts hands up in the air * roast me. Or be nice. That would be lovely.
Thank you to that one person – Kasai Chickie – who favourited as I wrote this chapter and the only thing I've got up is that scrap of a prologue. Hope you enjoy this one too.
See you laters, everybaady.