Chapter 4: What Exactly Is This Thing?

The Doctor laid down on the bed in his SHIELD provided room, his sock covered feet propped up by the end of the bed and his head pillowed by his hands. Phil had told him that he could leave to go the mess hall, and that he could use the bathroom attached to his bedroom, but, for his own safety, it would be best if he didn't go wandering about in or outside of the base.

The Doctor understood that this meant they wanted to keep him contained, and that he wasn't really being 'let free' so much as he was being given certain freedoms. After all, they hadn't given him back his coat or the rest of his things yet, and they hadn't let him know where they were keeping his TARDIS.

Fortunately, this fit into the Doctor's own plans. He wanted to see who SHIELD's alien contact was before he left the base, and it seemed they wanted him to meet this alien as well. After that, as long as he could get a hold of his sonic screwdriver, getting the rest of his things and getting to his TARDIS wouldn't be a problem.

All in all, not the worst situation he has ever been in. Plus, maybe if he was lucky he'd get to meet the Avengers. He couldn't quite recall who had been on the initial response team except for the former weapons manufacturer Anthony Stark, who'd become a pioneer in clean energy and had made revolutionary discoveries in the field of engineering.

After Stark though, his memory became a little faulty on the who made up the rest of the Avengers. There had been many similar groups running around during this time, especially when the population of super- and meta-humans increased dramatically. Although, he was pretty sure that Captain America was a part of the response team too, but the Doctor's knowledge of American and military history just wasn't up to par with his knowledge of engineering, science, or British history.

Tony Stark, the Doctor recalled, had stuck out in his mind because he had managed to involve himself by sheer technical and engineering brilliance alone. Stark had also managed to completely dismantle his weapons manufacturing department at the risk of running his own company into the ground. Truly, this was a man that the Doctor could at least admire for his mind and morals. If the Doctor managed to meet , perhaps they'd even get along on a personal level.

The Doctor was startled out of his musing by a knock on the door, and he turned to sit up straight on his bed.

"Come in," the Doctor called.

The door opened to reveal the red-headed Agent Romanov that he had spoken to before Agent Coulson.

"Ah!" the Doctor said cheerfully as he jumped up to greet her. "It's nice to see you again!"

The Doctor stuck out his hand to shake hers, and Agent Romanov rose one well defined eyebrow at the gesture, but she accepted the out-stretched hand in front of her to shake.

"The same, Doctor," Agent Romanov said almost tonelessly. "We just wanted to return some of your things to you."

"Fantastic!" the Doctor said, while noticing that she'd only said they'd be returning some of his things. Well, the Doctor only hoped that it would be the things he wanted.

Agent Romanov made a gesture behind her back, and a blond man wearing a vest and strips of leather on his arms walked in holding the doctor's coat with some of the things they had taken out of it laid carefully on top.

"I have a question, actually," Romanov said as the man placed the Doctor's coat down onto a table that was positioned between the bed and the doorway. "What exactly does this thing do?"

She pointed to the biggest object of the bunch. The Doctor squinted at what she was looking at until his eyes lit up in recognition.

"Ah!" he said as he jaunted over to pick the machine up. "It's my Timey-Wimey Detector! I almost forgot I had this!"

The Doctor turned the machine on and watched the mechanisms spin into life.

"Timey-Wimey Detector?" the man who had lingered to stand by Agent Romanov finally spoke up. He raised an eyebrow at the object in question and at the name its creator had given it.

"Well, long story," the Doctor admitted. "Had to create this little work of art in a bit of a bind."

"But what does it do?" Romanov pushed.

"It goes 'ding' when there's stuff, basically," the Doctor shrugged. "It can also cook an egg at thirty paces."

"Um," Agent Romanov looked confused, an expression that was obviously not meant for this woman's face. The man behind her just looked like he was smothering the urge to laugh as hard as he could.

"Of course, I had to learn to stay away from hens when I use this," the Doctor went on, his voice deepening enough to make it gravelly as he looked her dead in the eye. "It's not pretty when they blow."

The male agent finally lost the battle to control his laughter, and he let a bark of amusement escape him before he his face behind his hand in an attempt to smother his chuckles. It was probably the fact that the Doctor had said the last sentence with such seriousness that had broken the SHIELD agent's iron clad control over himself. However, Agent Romanov just took the information in stride and nodded.

"Right," she said.

"Oh," the Doctor said, once he realized their was someone else in the room besides the pretty red head. "Who's your friend?"

"Agent Barton," the man said, and the man held out his hand for the Doctor to shake.

The Doctor shifted his Timey-Wimey Detector from his right hand to his left and shook the offered hand.

"Pleased to meet you," the Doctor said.

"And you," the newly named Agent Barton said in reply.

The Doctor felt a little more at ease with the other man than he had when meeting both Agent Romanov and Agent Coulson. All of them had a military air about them, but Agents Romanov and Coulson felt especially closed off to him while Agent Barton was the most open, or at least honest, person he had met in this base that was willing to talk to him.

"Any other questions, class?" the Doctor said with a grin as he put the Detector back on the table with the rest of his things. The Doctor noticed with a slight frown that they hadn't given him back his sonic screwdriver just yet. Well, if they kept it for too long he'd have to start asking. Until then he doubted they would get much from it. Half the settings were meant for telepaths and the other half would look like gibberish to anyone from the 21st century. And, of course, even if they did manage to get it working, the worst that they could do would be to turn their own computers on or off. Not too much to worry about.

"One question," Agent Romanov said, obviously taking the Doctor's offer seriously. The Doctor just raised an eyebrow at the woman, indicating that she could ask her question if she really wanted to.

"How can you fit so many things into your pockets?" she asked, and the Doctor just smiled.

"That's an easy one," he said. "They're dimensionally expanded."

"Uh, so..." Agent Barton cut in. "Your pockets lead to another dimension?"

"Er," the Doctor said, his face contorted slightly into a bit of a grimace as he thought about the new question. Did the idea of dimensionally-expanded pockets normally bother 21st century humans? He swore he could never tell what would set them off. "Yeahhhh?"

"How does something like that even work?" Agent Barton asked incredulously.

"Well," the Doctor said. "I'd explain, but I'm afraid the explanation might go over your head a bit."

He even made a over-the-head gesture with his hand as he said this.

"Right, probably. Thanks anyway," Agent Romanov said, thinking to the gibberish Stark and Banner liked to spout whenever they got together. Perhaps she could convince the Doctor to explain his pockets to someone from Research and Development.

"S'alright," the Doctor said.

"We'll talk to you later," she said as she herded Barton out of the door.

"I'll just hang out here then, shall I?"

"Just for a little while, Doctor," she said over her shoulder, an eyebrow raised at the forlorn-looking Doctor they were leaving behind in his room.

Well, the Doctor just hoped it wouldn't take too long for their awaited alien friend to show up. He already missed his TARDIS.

"Any sign of Thor?" Natasha asked as she walked into the lab.

"Not yet," Coulson said. He was overlooking the new scans a tech was running on the small metal wand they had picked up from their new alien visitor.

Coulson had talked to Director Fury and, thankfully, the director had approved of their actions so far, especially when they'd told him about the contacts and pass codes the Doctor had given them for the hard-to-contact UNIT and Torchwood. However, he'd demanded that they run some more tests on the blue crystal wand they'd picked up. After the series of disasters they'd experienced a couple of months ago, SHIELD was not going to take any chances. Coulson had told the science team here to search for any traces of gamma radiation or any of the other frequencies the Tesseract and other similar devices (aka Loki's spear) had shown up on.

Fortunately, they hadn't been able to pick anything up, but they still didn't have a clue what the purpose of the device might be. Coulson consideredasking Stark or Banner to come and check it out, but he wasn't sure if he was overreacting just yet. In the end, he decided to put off any decisions until Thor arrived. Having Thor talk to the Doctor and figure out what the Doctor was hiding from them would be their number one priority. After all, it was one thing to have the approval of Earth-based experts, it was another thing entirely to have the approval of the Norse Thunder God, Crown Prince of Asgard.

"All right," Coulson told his team. "Keep running any scans you can think of, and try testing out some more settings."

An exasperated scientist nodded and changed the setting on the metal wand yet again. They'd been doing this for a while now, with little to no success.

"Maybe we should just ask him what this one does, too," Natasha said as she looked at the experiment results. All of them told them nothing they couldn't figure out by manually inspecting the alien object.

"Did you ask him what the lunchbox-tape recorder hybrid was?" Coulson asked curiously as they stepped out of the lab and into the hallway.

"He said it was a..." Natasha paused for a second, trying to keep her facial muscles from contracting. "Timey-Wimey Detector."

"Pardon?" Coulson asked, for once the shock blatantly obvious on his face.

"Timey-Wimey Detector," Natasha repeated. "Apparently it goes ding when there's stuff."

"That's its purpose?" Coulson asked, voice even more dead pan than it was usually.

"It can also cook an egg at thirty paces. He said it was important to stay away from hens when using it," Romanov said. She wasn't even sure if she was dreaming or asleep at the moment. She could have sworn she'd had a dream like this once after she'd read Through the Looking-Glass.

"Ah," Coulson said. "Makes sense."

"If you say so, sir."

Coulson and Romanov continued down the hallway, a slightly stunned silence settling between the two of them.

"How did he get along with Barton?"

"He took to him better than either you or me," Natasha admitted. "It might be because Barton doesn't have nearly as much emotional and mental training as the two of us."

"He does seem like the kind of guy to respond better to someone more open," Coulson said, thinking about his own time with the alien. "Maybe we should ask Barton to spend some time with the Doctor. See what he can get out of him that he might not feel comfortable telling us."

"I'll tell Barton to escort the Doctor to the mess hall in an hour or two," Natasha said.

"Sounds good," Coulson said. "Make sure to meet up with them later so that they don't get too suspicious, but give them at least five minutes together."

"Understood."

Barton let out a small sigh of breath as he knocked on the Doctor's door. Natasha had told him to go pick up the new alien guy, and even though he wasn't that crazy about aliens in general (Thor excluded), he had to admit that he'd enjoyed the Doctor's company. The guy certainly had a sense of humor, or he was at least able to provide unwitting entertainment for the professional archer.

"Coming!"

Barton smirked as he heard the yell from behind the door accompany a thumping sound. Barton guessed that he'd startled the Doctor out of bed or where ever else he might have been laying. Suddenly the door swung open to reveal a frazzled looking Doctor.

"Hello?" the Doctor greeted the agent, looking a little confused to see only Barton standing outside of his door. He peeked his head out a bit and looked to the left and the right, scoping out the rest of the hallway, before turning back to look at Agent Barton again. "Can I help you?"

"Uh, Natasha sent me here to help you get some food," Barton said, using the old blame-the-third-party tactic to avoid a little awkwardness.

"Natasha?" the Doctor repeated, blinking at the other man, his wide eyes betraying his confusion.

"Agent Romanov," Barton clarified.

"Oh," the Doctor said, his mouth making a perfect 'O' shape. "Well, that's very...Russian. Natasha Romanov."

"You don't say," Barton said wryly in response.

"What's your name then?" the Doctor asked as he stepped out of his room and closed the door behind him. "Your given name, I mean."

"Clint."

"...Interesting name."

"Right back at you, Doctor."

The Doctor chuckled at the quick response. Of course, his name, or not-name it would seem, would be the weirdest one here.

"So what choices do we have for food?" the Doctor asked.

Barton started walking down the hallway and made a gesture for the Doctor to follow him. "Well, that depends on what you want."

"Do they have bananas?" the Doctor asked, hopefully. "I love bananas! Apples, too. Can't stand pears though..."

Updating from work, boring's the name of the game here. But thanks again for all the great reviews! They really cheers me up! However...

ლ(ಠ益ಠლ) Immortalis Cruor Elf, Y u no listen to my demands? Tell me to update soon again, and I won't do it for a week.