Chapter 7: The Other Other Hawkeye


Kate woke up to the sounds of a lot of hurried movement — it was clear this universe's X-men were in a rush to do something. She rubbed her eyes and sat up, looking across the room to find that K wasn't in the bed she'd been using, though where she was had been answered pretty quickly when there was a shout from Storm that they needed to move. Now.

The group was rushing out … and as Kate fell into step with the clearly evacuating group, the one thing that she noticed to be entirely out of place was the simple fact that the only K she saw was the anxious and ready to run K that belonged in this reality — tightly restrained and slung over Hank's shoulder as the group ran to get out.

"Move faster," Logan half snarled Kate's way, pushing hard himself to get going. He looked more ticked off than he had been before — and only after Kate did a quick once over of the people around her did she realize that K wasn't with them. At all.

"What happened?" she asked, though she poured on a bit more speed as the group went deeper into hiding.

"Your buddy stepped outside for a minute … Sentinel picked her up. Must have her DNA on file," Scott said over Kate's shoulder, his jaw unreasonably tight.

"We have to get her back," Kate said before she could even think about it, though Scott simply gave her a look that she was all-too-familiar with for that one, the kind of look that said he was already a step ahead of her.

She swallowed and let out a breath before she pointed a finger Nate's way. "If anything happens to her because of this, you get to explain it to Logan."

Nate gave her a look that was clearly genetic, considering the one Scott had just given her. "We're getting her back, Kate."

Kate huffed his way but simply turned to keep up with the rest of the group as they made their retreat. Hank had a hold of the other K to carry her out and away from the danger, but Kate didn't miss the fact that Logan was sticking close by as well to make sure that nothing else happened.

And she also didn't miss the way Scott, despite the fact that he was clearly still sore and hurting from his earlier stint as bait, was keeping Jean in front of him, carefully watching her in a protective way that Kate recognized.

She had to get K back to Logan — their Logan. He'd only just stopped making that face around her.

They traveled underground, through what was clearly a series of escape tunnels, until Storm finally signalled them to turn down a smaller path that seemed to lead slightly up, and they spilled out into what looked like a disused restaurant.

Kurt and Kitty quickly checked to make sure that they hadn't been followed, and Scott did a quick check of the perimeter before they even thought about relaxing — though with K still missing, that was a relative description.

"We have to go back for her," Kate breathed out as soon as she'd caught her breath.

"As soon as we know where they've taken her," Scott said. "We just destroyed their last holding place. This isn't like last time where we knew exactly where to go."

Kate let out a frustrated noise and paced a small path before Jean reached out gently to brush her mind. No one's giving up on her, Kate.

She wouldn't have been outside if you guys hadn't been treating her like crap, Kate snapped back, though when she saw Jean's wide eyes, she quickly backtracked. Jean, no… you've actually been really nice to her…

Jean took a moment to close her eyes before she shook her head lightly. You're right. Logan has left us for that kind of thing. It's just sometimes hard to differentiate.

Yeah. I get that, Kate said, not even bothering to hide the fact that she was thinking of the hard time she had when it came to dealing with the different Kurts. She took a breath and looked over to where it looked like the other X-Men were having a meeting of the minds. "So… what's the plan?"

"Now, we wait to see where they'll take her," Scott said. "I'll let the other X-Men know to be on the lookout. Warren was closest to our position; he might have seen more than we did."

"And then what?" Kate said, her hands on her hips. "It's not like you've got K to walk you into the place this time!"

That earned her another dry look from Scott, though it was enough for Kitty to stop and pause, chewing on her bottom lip as she looked toward the K that they did have. "Maybe… we do," she said slowly, getting the rest of the group to turn toward her. "I mean, she was in this universe's facilities, right?"

"Hey, she's not wrong," Kate said, touching the side of her nose before she pointed at Kitty.

"With one crucial difference," Scott said with a serious frown, complete with his arms crossed. "Your K has your trust, and Nate went specifically to a universe where she was on our side."

"What makes you think this K won't help?" Kate asked, gesturing to the still-bound woman with one hand. "I mean, she's not with them anymore. You got her out. So…"

"So we still haven't determined everything that they did to keep her under control, and beyond that, we don't have any guarantee that she'd choose to be on our side," Scott said.

"Well, here's a novel idea," Kate said, matching his crossed-arms posture with her hip cocked. "How about instead of talking about her in the third person and assigning motives, we ask her?"

The look was back in full force as Scott shook his head at her. "I know that where you're from—"

"Scott, this isn't even about the differences in our universes and our Ks at this point," Kate said in a clearly frustrated tone. "This is about you guys being too scared to even try giving her a shot!"

"That's not—"

"Yeah?" Kate tipped her chin up. "Prove it."

"For what it's worth," Nate said, cutting in before the argument could go further downhill. "Of all the alternate realities I've seen, there were only a few where she honestly wasn't on the right side. And in none of those was she working for Weapon X."

Kate gestured wordlessly at Nate. "Yes. Good. Thank you, Cable."

"Of course, we'll need to get the controls out before we could even consider it," Hank added. "And I'm not sure how to do that on a healer with no inhibitor at our disposal."

Kate bit her lip and had to admit that it was a problem, so she simply sat down in one of the chairs at a table nearby. She wasn't happy with any of this, but at least she could tell that the rest of them were upset too. Too bad K wasn't there to see that they did, actually, care.

"Well, regardless of how that happens, we need to move," Kurt said, watching out of one of the windows warily.

"That's fine; we still have a few solid spots to lay low while we come up with a better plan," Scott said, gesturing for Kurt and Logan to lead the way to the next spot. It took some time — more than it would have if they hadn't been carrying their K and trying to avoid the ramped up patrols — even if the number of Sentinels out was drastically down.

"I guess there was more damage done than we thought," Ororo said with a satisfied kind of smirk.

"And you could fry them again if we weren't trying to be inconspicuous," Nate said.

"Of course," she replied with an understated sort of smirk.

When they did finally reach the small safe house, Kate was relieved to see that it was a little better reinforced than a closed-down old restaurant. In fact, she couldn't quite help the smirk when she recognized the place in Bed Stuy that almost felt like home again — only without all the people in it and distinctly devoid of Russians.

She was smiling to herself by the time a familiar blond archer poked his head out of the door — though Clint was younger than he had been when Kate met him. He didn't seem to notice her as he waved the group in — until they were all in the entryway and he gave her a disbelieving sort of "Katie?"

Kate blinked. "Clint?"

"I thought I told you not to come down 'til the coast was clear," he said in a tone that Kate just wasn't used to hearing from him. Almost parental. Which was so beyond weird. To make things weirder, he gestured to K. "This is above your head right now!"

"Oh, I don't even know where to start on the list of things that are so wrong here," Kate said, shaking her head. "Starting with probably don't call me Katie."

"Do you mind havin' your little lover's quarrel somewhere else?" Logan deadpanned.

Kate and Clint both pulled spectacular faces, though Clint took it a step further with, "Can you not? This is my little sister."

Logan stopped and turned, his eyes narrowed as he looked them both over. "Oh sure. I should have seen the resemblance."

"Foster care," Clint said, waving a hand before he turned back to Kate. "You said you'd wait upstairs."

"Okay, first of all, when have I ever done what you say?" Before Clint could answer, Kate shook her head. "And second of all, wrong Kate — I came with Cable. Hi!" She waved with the tips of her fingers.

"You got an open room we can use?" Logan said, ignoring the look of confusion on Clint's face. "We have work to do."

"Right, yeah," Clint said, blinking for a moment before he turned back to the group at large. "Got a few rooms set aside. Stark wired one up for her." He tipped his head to K. "No transmissions in or out. You know. Paranoid Stark, always the same, keeps us alive."

"Sounds like the one we want," Logan said. "Point me."

Clint led the way to the third floor, where as promised, Tony was waiting to greet the group and make sure everything — and everyone — stayed aboveboard. He frowned at the restrained K as she passed and shook his head.

"You having a word with her? Because I kinda want to know how she got into half my systems."

"You can ask her," Logan said. "But I doubt we'll get through to her until we deal with the control system in her head. Got any bright ideas, short of takin' it off?"

"Well, what kind of control are we talking here? Macro? Micro?" Tony leaned forward with his hands in his pockets.

Logan let out a noise of irritation. "Hell, I don't know; ask Hank." He gestured to Hank, who was already pulling out the simple X-rays they'd taken.

And while Tony and Hank put their heads together, Kate slipped over to stand by Kurt with a troublemaking smile. "Found Kate," she sang out half under her breath. "Voila."

Kurt had to shake his head at that, though he was wearing an even more troublemaking expression than Kate's, if that was possible. "If you had told me you were Hawkeye's younger sister—"

"Oh, no. See, no. Not in my universe. No. He's like… my annoying older mentor? But not… no," Kate said, pulling a face with one eye closed in a wince.

Kurt had to laugh at her expression — and then even more when he noticed Clint watching the two of them with a suspicious sort of glare. "I don't think he believes you're not his sister," he teased.

"Well that's his own stupid overprotective problem," Kate said before she let out a sigh and crossed the room to hit Clint in the shoulder. "Stop looking like that. I'm not your sister, and even if I was, I'd have every right to talk to cute boys, so just put your face away."

Clint crossed his arms and glared her way, and Kate let out a sigh before she grabbed him by the arm. "Come on. Let's go find your Kate so you can see with your own Hawk-eyes that there are two of us. And then you should really let her come and play with the big kids because excuse you why aren't you letting her be part of the fun?"

"What part of this is fun?" Clint had to ask.

"Kicking butt, taking names, and doing it in Hawkeye style. Come on, Clint," Kate said without missing a beat. "You're less fun in this universe, clearly."

"Probably because I have to spend most of my time watching out for my kid sister," Clint shot back, though there wasn't any real heat to it.

Kate couldn't help but smile his way for that one before she waved Kurt over. "Come on, Kurt. Come meet the other me!" she sang out, shooing Clint forward with both hands.

Clint still didn't exactly look like he trusted the situation, but at Kate's insistence, they headed upstairs to where the other Kate was doing some stretches that looked a lot like what Kate had seen Clint do when she asked him about growing up in the circus. Which, she supposed, made sense if this Kate had Clint for a brother.

The other Kate straightened up when she saw the newcomers and scrunched up her entire expression. "Okay. So. There's a second me? Did we decide to play with, I dunno, telepaths or shapeshifters or something because this is kinda weird."

Kate couldn't help but nod her agreement. "Yeah, it's much weirder in person than when it's happening to other people," she decided.

But on the plus side, Clint seemed decidedly more relaxed as he gestured between the two Kates. "So. Katie, meet Kate, I guess. Cable brought her over from a different world."

"Cool," Katie said, smiling up at her doppleganger.

"And this is Kurt," Kate put in helpfully, not even bothering to hide her little crooked grin. "He's a dashing X-Man, and we get along great where I'm from, so…"

Katie tipped her head to the side before she stuck out her hand to shake Kurt's. "Okay, well, nice to meet you, Kurt. Nothing like people trying to push you into something, huh?" she said with a smirk.

But at that, Kurt simply laughed and took her hand — though he didn't shake it, instead kissing the back of her hand in a deep bow. "I'm delighted to meet you," he said, barely looking up from her hand with a grin that showed his teeth.

Clint took a step forward, but Kate put out a hand to block him. "Oh, calm down. He literally does that to any pretty girl. He's a sweet little Catholic boy; I wouldn't inflict someone horrible on myself. Get real."

Clint gave her a dry look. "You can't just show up here and turn everything upside down."

"Clearly, I can," Kate said before, just to make things worse, she called out to Katie: "Oh, did I mention he grew up in a circus?"

Katie's eyebrows shot up, and her smile turned more genuine. "No way. Clint and I joined up when we were kids!"

Kurt's tail was clearly showing how thrilled he was with this turn of events. "I was in the circus since I was a baby — why don't you tell me how you found it?" he asked, leading her by the hand to sit on the couch and grinning widely as the young woman all but bounced over with him.

Kate couldn't stop grinning as she watched her other self and the other Kurt as Katie relayed how she and Clint had run away when she was barely old enough to remember it — how Clint had protected her through all of it: the circus, the Swordsman, the Sentinels…

"I'll get you back for this somehow," Clint muttered Kate's way.

"Oh, get over it, Clint," Kate said, waving her hand his way. "You should be thanking me. I am saving you so many headaches if she was headed toward my dating decisions. I mean, I had an intergalactic conqueror of worlds and Magneto's grandson…"

"That does not make me feel any better about your taste," Clint said, his eyebrows nearly to his hairline.

Kate grinned outright and then held up her left hand to show him the ring. "Married an X-Man though. Figured it out in the end."

"Aww, Katie…"

Kate laughed outright and then popped up on her toes to kiss Clint's cheek. "Aww, love you too. Even if you are a weirdly protective big brother in his universe."

Clint shook his head at that, clearly with no idea what to do with Kate, before he jerked his head to the side. "Let's catch up with the others before they plan this whole thing without us, then."

Kate nodded sagely. "Yes. Best to leave these two to their own devices."

The look that Clint shot her was absolutely worth it, Kate decided as she fell apart laughing.