A/N I've started writing this a bit slower to make sure I'm less blocked, which means that I may have a week or two when I don't update in the near future. This is just a possibility, though, so don't worry.
Thanks to Byrneshadow, mudkipz, Idiosyncrasy, RedbirdJones, and Guest
Disclaimer I don't own Sherlock/Doctor Who/Supernatural/the Avengers/Jekyll, or any associated characters, events, etc.
CHAPTER VII. Return
"Do you think you can transport us to SHIELD, as well?" Natasha questioned of Castiel as soon as they were all outside. Dean stood several yards away from the rest of them, his arms crossed tight over his chest and his breath misting in the cool morning air, but none of them approached for the time being—they didn't have to; and, besides, he needed the meager space that he could get for the time being.
"I could," Castiel murmured. His large, dark eyes were fixated on Dean, not so much as blinking as he spoke steadily. "It would be easier for me, however, than for you. Too much flying can have a… taxing effect on humans."
"It's fine," Natasha replied easily, and felt Clint nod behind her.
"What about non-humans?" the Doctor queried, sounding much more serious than usual.
"You are already adjusted to traveling through the time vortex on a regular basis. It shouldn't be harmful to you in the least, Doctor, though perhaps some caution should be exercised anyways."
"Eh, it'll work," he shrugged. "What's the alternative? Waiting six hours for a helicopter?"
"At least," the angel agreed.
"Right, I'm in for the flying."
"If it isn't a problem, I believe I should take Dean first, alone," Castiel half-whispered, his voice low and rasping. "It will be better for him if he's not separated from others for any long period of time… it's in isolation that he tends to… boil over."
"Not a problem," the Doctor agreed readily.
"Absolutely," Natasha seconded. "Whatever's best for him."
Taking her words as a cue, Cas strode along the sidewalk towards Dean, then reached out a tentative hand towards him. The hunter reflexively flinched away, a scowl visible even in distant profile, but then Castiel's lips moved, framing indistinct words, and the tension in the leather-coated shoulders slowly dissipated, finalizing itself in a quick sigh of acquiesce and an extended hand. Moments later, the two of them were gone.
"…He may be dangerous," Natasha commented after a few seconds, folding her arms and frowning after the mist-laced air where the hunter and the angel had disappeared. "If he really has that much anger bottled up inside of him…"
"Oh, now, it wasn't that bad," the Doctor counted, though the barely-detectable tremor in his voice made it all too clear that he didn't believe his own words. "Just a bit… fed up, like all of us are with the whole wild goose chase, I'm sure."
"You saw him, Doctor." She didn't waver—there was no use, after all, in denial. "That tension, that… power, it's… a lot more than frustration. Not that he can really be blamed for it, I suppose. The death of his brother took a much larger toll than we ever expected—and we were stupid not to expect it, really. And everything he said… it is true, that Castiel is all he has left now."
The Doctor made a small, noncommittal noise, his head ducking slightly. Natasha's brows sunk ever so slightly in careful consideration—he, too, had a dark past, probably more so than she knew. Fury had mentioned a couple of times that the Time Lord had played a large role in some ancient war, far before the age of humans or even their planet. And yet it was endlessly hard to believe, when actually confronted with the bright, spirited alien's young form, that such a seemingly innocent creature could be responsible for so much.
People, really, were all absurdly layered—herself included, Natasha admitted grudgingly, rewarded with a small twist of her stomach. To judge them on as much would be absurdly hypocritical, so she kept any such thoughts to herself, her lips pressed tightly together, bottling up any words inside until Cas appeared again, his eyes landing on the Doctor as soon as he materialized before them.
"Doctor, I'll take you next," he clarified.
"How's Fury?" Natasha checked, curious as to what the SHIELD director had thought of their impulsive and somewhat order-defying departure to England—and, admittedly, searching quickly for new information that could take her off of the subject of Dean.
"…A bit disgruntled," Cas admitted, taking a few moments to select the proper words from his surely exhaustive vocabulary. "But nothing beyond that. The news of Tom Jackman is certainly intriguing to him, if not rewarding. He should be telling the rest of the team what happened right now."
"Good, good." The Doctor placidly extended one of his hands. "No time to waste, then."
Castiel accepted the gesture, his rough fingers closing around the Doctor's smooth, thin ones, and then they were gone, too, leaving only Clint and Natasha to stand on the desolate street.
She wondered briefly whether Tom Jackman was watching from his window, curious as to the behavior of the intrusive strangers—whether, indeed, he had seen their far-from-natural departure. With this thought suddenly burning in her mind, she glanced around, scanning the windows of the house. They seemed bare enough, though, and she consoled herself with the idea that he had instead chosen to bury himself as deep in as possible, not wanting any farther association with them.
"Nat, you okay?" Clint questioned, his hand moving slightly towards her at the nervous movement.
"It's just… Jackman," she offered by way of explanation, sweeping her eyes back to the street once she was assured she hadn't seen anything. She didn't face Clint, but instead squinted down into the sea of dark forms that made up distant houses, ignoring the crisp breeze that forced a few gingery strands of hair into her face. "We're becoming lazy… he might have seen Castiel's… method of transportation."
"Doubt it," was the immediate reply. "He was jumpy—even if he tried to act calm, there was something about him. Probably not the type to risk his luck by hanging around and watching us after we left—it was pretty damn clear that he just wanted us out of there, as soon as possible."
"I suppose so." She suppressed a shiver, knowing what action Clint would take if he thought her to be cold and unwilling to accept as much at the time. "Do you think that he really was innocent?"
"Everything seems to point to it," the archer confessed. "Really, what do we have against him? Similar looks to our killer. Not even identical—"
"Practically identical," she cut across. The similarity really had been astounding—the image very easily could have been of the same man, perhaps with a few alterations that would be all too easy to feign with the use of makeup.
"Right, but then there's the adoption thing. We've honestly got nothing against him."
"I suppose." She let a sigh escape her lips, watching as the warmth of her breath coalesced into a thin series of silvery puffs in the frozen air. "It's difficult, I suppose. To give up our only lead."
"We've both been through a hell of a lot worse than this," was his almost puzzled reply.
"Not with this many people. It's just… a team like this. It feels… almost too complex to function, you know? There are so many of us, and so contrasting… it may be the most powerful thing that Fury could come up with, but that's what we are. Just raw power, really. There's no stability—there's no reason for loyalty to each other, aside from shared experiences, and those can't always be relied on. I suppose it's just—" She hesitated for a second at the pure absurdity of it, of spilling out all her thoughts and doubts to her coworker in broad daylight, in the center of an empty English street barely past dawn. "I'm not used to it. The team thing. Even after Loki, and his second time, too—I work best alone."
"I think almost all of us do," Clint replied dryly. "Sometimes all we need is raw force, though."
"Not for something like this!" Her doubts began to rise up all at once, until they were all she could think of, and even as she tried to bite them back, they relentlessly insisted on pouring themselves into the air, louder and clearer than she intended them to be. "We're not fighting an army, here! We're soldiers, and that's not what this job needs. He's doing it all wrong, but who is there to tell him?"
"Best not plot any sort of rebellion against SHIELD," he shot back teasingly, and she huffed in frustration, brushing aside his attempt at humor. Despite his acute intelligence, Clint Barton did have a distinct tendency to entirely miss the point of things. Before she had the time to criticize him for it, though, she was interrupted by the appearance of Castiel, flitting into existence on the sidewalk square beside her.
"I believe I can take both of you at once, if it isn't a problem," he informed them, his gaze flitting from one to the other.
"Not in the least," Clint declared.
Nodding, Natasha held her hand out, and the angel grasped it moments later. There was one second of blinding light and pressure, rushing by her from all sides, erasing her surroundings and filling her ears with an intense roar, then her feet were settling onto solid ground again.
She blinked and looked around. They were back in SHIELD—in fact, in the same room where they had first convened. Fury stood at the front once more, and everyone else was scattered about in chairs, draped across them in poses that expressed varying degrees of frustration and exhaustion. Dean was surrounded by a clear space of empty seats, and looked rather as if he wanted it to stay that way, but Natasha didn't miss how Castiel remedied his isolation immediately, a gesture which softened Dean's brow ever so slightly.
"Finally," Fury growled, turning around to face them again with a rustle of dark fabric. "And what the hell kind of time do you call this?"
"Enough time to learn something new and quite possibly important," Natasha shot back immediately. Her slight irritation with Fury's controlling air caused her to not hesitate before marching up to the front of the room, turning on her heel to face the room. The faces around her sharpened, their attention drawn to her presence.
"I've already explained everything that you and your team discovered, Agent Romanoff," Fury began.
"I'll review it, then, just to make sure we're all on the same page," she replied primly, making sure not to let her tone grow overly rebellious. His single eye narrowed, but he made no farther move to stop her, and her next words were louder, amplified so that the entire assembly could hear.
"The creature that we're pursuing seems to have an identical twin," she began. A few rustles were prompted by this, as well as a confused murmur or two, but nothing spoken outright. "Tom Jackman."
"Don't assume that so fast," Fury cut in. Natasha opened her mouth in confusion, but he went on over her. "After Castiel and Winchester initially returned with the news, I ran a check through the rest of SHIELD. No other face duplicates have been spotted, and nearly forty hours have passed since the initial message from Torchwood. If there was another man on Earth with that creature's face, then our cameras would have caught him by now."
That was new. Natasha went entirely silent for a long moment, and the room was noiseless save the low buzz of the lights hanging far above their heads. Then, slowly and haltingly, Clint began to speak, his eyes cast towards the ceiling as his ideas formed audibly.
"Maybe there isn't another one on Earth. It wouldn't be the first time we've dealt with aliens, would it?"
Thor's features seemed to tighten slightly, as did the Doctor's, both clearly not missing the passing reference to their own species. Fury contemplated the idea, his lips pressed tightly together, then moved to agree.
"It's a possibility—"
"But he must be related to Jackman," Natasha interrupted insistently. "There's no other explanation for the resemblance—it's blinding, really. And that man was definitely human."
"Human, indeed," the Doctor agreed, and Castiel made a small noise of positivity, as well.
Fury's brow creased once more. "Then it's impossible. We have access to every camera—the only remotely plausible way he could be hiding is if he's in some underground cavern, and we can all agree that something like that is highly improbable, to say the least."
"He's not underground," Sherlock growled, voicing his clearly active thoughts for the first time. His voice, low and strong, carried throughout the room with an ease that even Fury's didn't capture. "Tom Jackman and Torchwood's killer must be the same person."
"Then how the hell are they different people?" Dean demanded. His tone, Natasha noticed, was still rawer and rougher than usual, though he seemed to at least have tamed the fire blazing behind his moss-green eyes.
"Multiple personality disorder?" the detective suggested idly. "The easiest explanation, of course—there are several others that come to mind."
"List them!" the hunter spat, clearly disbelieving.
"Demon possession, for one." Sherlock couldn't have been more visibly unimpressed by the anger of the man who had stood to confront him, held back from pacing over to glare in his face only by the hand of the angel placed silently on the small of his back, a wordless attempt at placation that, surprisingly, seemed to work. "Or several other types of vessel use. Drugs. He could also, of course, just be a stunningly good actor." His tone lingered on the brink of sarcasm, not quite tipping into it but carrying just enough to come off as annoying.
"All possibilities worth consideration," Fury cut in before Dean could verbally retaliate. Seething, the hunter slowly lowered back into his own chair, leaning forward and gripping his knees hard enough for his knuckles to shine white, visible even to Natasha, who stood several rows away. "And none of which are important right now. Before we make another move on Jackman, there's something that I need to do."
Natasha stepped away slightly, allowing Fury more of the crowd's attention, and raising a delicate eyebrow in the process. She had no idea what he could be talking about this time, but she was confident enough from his tone that she wasn't going to be much of a fan of whatever topic he was moving onto.
"Half the team's departure, amongst other things," the Director continued, "has made me painfully aware that—well, that perhaps team isn't the right word to be using."
This definitely didn't sound good. Natasha's opinion, it seemed, was shared by the majority of the other Avengers, as well—Tony managed to simultaneously wince and roll his eyes, while Sherlock pressed his lips together to an impossibly thin line, Bruce's eyes widened in rather upset disbelief, and Rose tightened her jaw slightly.
"Yes, yes, I can see perfectly well that you're all unspeakably repulsed by what I'm going to say," he growled, more than a bit exasperated. "I can't say I care, though. So I'm splitting you into groups of two, and you're going to work together, to see if you can build a bit of… well, let's treat you like the high school kids that you so often seem to be, and say team spirit."
"You're fucking kidding me," Dean cut in, and Natasha wondered if he was even aware of the instinctive way that he leaned in towards Castiel, like a schoolgirl reaching for her best friend when the teacher issued the classic "partner up" command. Apparently the subconscious motion didn't pass under Fury's radar, either, because he went on to elaborate in a way that elicited a visible scowl in Natasha, who'd been hoping to snag Clint for a partner for whatever bizarre training Fury had decided to give them.
"Of course, I'll make sure you're paired with someone you're unfamiliar with, who will help you to expand on your talents rather than dumb them down." Before anyone could protest, he began ticking off names in pairs, as if he had them memorized from some previous list—which, Natasha realized with a sinking stomach, he very well could.
"Banner and Holmes, you two are on research. Come up with anything you can about this creature, and who or what it could be."
The two dark-haired men both looked rather relieved, though the strain was clear in Bruce's expression—he was not, it would seem, particularly looking forward to spending the day in the company of the rudest and bluntest member of the team, preferable though it may be to some of the alternatives.
"Thor and Tyler, there's a gymnasium built that I'll show you to, which should test both of your powers. It's specially reinforced, and should be able to withstand supernatural strengths. Compare Asgardian ability to vortex controlling—I want to see how you can combine your forces to create a more powerful product."
Thor seemed more alarmed than Rose, who at least attempted to pull on a slight smile in his direction. The Asgardian was simply confused-looking, as though he couldn't understand what Fury was attempting to achieve—neither, honestly, could Natasha; such a thought was only reinforced when the Director's next words put her in her own pair.
"Romanoff and Winchester, see if you've anything to offer each other in the physical ability department. SHIELD has a few guns for you to test out, as well."
"Hold up," Dean began, his eyes widening in disbelief. Natasha was all too willing to join his protests, but Fury allowed no time for her, instead ticking off the rest.
"Rogers and Watson, the same for you. Doctor and Barton, you two are going to be more tactical—discuss ideas, plans of attack based on what you know about this creature. Try to balance necessary violence with peacekeeping wherever possible. Stark and Castiel, find ways to work with the combination of electric power and angel Grace. There should be enough empty rooms throughout this place for you all to work with enough space to remain undisturbed. Am I clear?"
"What the hell is the point of this?" Dean demanded immediately. "Team-building exercises? We're not third-graders, you know, I think we have a few more important things to do than this. Are you trying to, what, trying to test us or something?"
Fury gazed at him for a long moment, and it suddenly struck Natasha just how tired the Director looked—being in charge of such a team, and responsible for the stopping of a crisis as big as this, had to take an unbelievable toll, especially when so much of the weight was forced onto the shoulders of a single man. And so she found herself sympathizing more than anything else at the exhaustion clear in his final words—which, despite that, didn't fail to twist her stomach ever so slightly.
"Yes. I suppose I am."
