I apologize for the amount of time it took to publish this chapter. I've been buried under a pile of course work for the past couple of weeks and didn't have any time to write.

Also, I was wondering what you guys would think about a companion story to Mathematical Proofs that would involve Clint. The idea has been running through my mind for a while now...

Enjoy!

Chapter 21. Ashes

"He has to be here, then." Stephanie said to herself as she absentmindedly turning the watch over in her hands.

"Or someone from your world is." Tony acknowledged.

"Your world?" Natasha raised an eyebrow.

"It's him."

"Are you sure?"

"It has to be. It's his watch. He never went anywhere without it."

"But the explosion."

Stephanie hesitated. "He was testing the original Oryx when the explosion occurred. It was the first time that it was used with actual people."

"Must've worked."

"Must have."

"I am confused." Thor said while looking between Stephanie and Tony.

Stephanie stopped fiddling with the pocket watch and looked up to face the rest of the Avengers. "I think that it's time I tell you a little more about myself."

"Sir?" Jackson faintly knocked on the door. He could hear the muffled sound of Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor playing in the office. A chill crept slowly up his spine when he remembered that Rachmaninoff had composed the song to depict a man being buried alive.

"What?" came the harsh reply from the other side of the door.

Jackson opened the door a crack, casting a silver of light from the hallway to fall upon the man's desk.

"We're ready when you are, sir."

"So you're from an alternate universe." Natasha reiterated for the tenth time after Stephanie had revealed her secret.

"Yes." Stephanie confirmed. "I'm not crazy, just a physicist."

While she was revealing her secret, Stephanie had glanced at Bruce to see his reaction. Surprise and then hurt had flickered on his face before he managed to compose himself, causing her to feel a pang of sorrow for not telling him earlier.

It also didn't escape her notice that Steve had yet to speak to her or acknowledge her presence.

"And your brother, who was a physicist, tested out the device-thingy." Clint said aloud to try and grasp what Stephanie had just told him. "But the device worked, and that's why he survived -because it brought him here."

Stephanie nodded. "Exactly."

"Wait, you said that it was the first time that you tested it on humans?" Bruce spoke up, looking disheveled but still adorable with his stubble, and wrinkled white t-shirt and jeans.

"We tested it on other animals at first. Mice mostly, but we worked our way up to larger animals."

"Larger animals?"

"Did you ever have a lion loose in Manhattan?" Stephanie answered with a question.

"So what was the purpose of it?" Pepper finally spoke up from her spot beside the right side of the bed.

"It was supposed to be for nuclear warfare."

"How?"

"It was suppose to get rid of the weapons of other countries, to put them in a black hole so to speak. We had plans to alter the device so that if we just knew the coordinates of something, we could send it to the other dimension. But something changed -the technology firm I worked for, Pyper Industries, wanted to see if we could travel to these alternate dimensions."

"So how come your brother volunteered to go?"

"He didn't, but it was decided that I would go. A military escort was going to go as well since we didn't know what to expect in the dimension. On the day before testing, I came down with food poisoning. Atticus went ahead with the testing without telling me. He had never wanted me to go in the first place."

"But why send one of you when you were the only two who knew about the device?" Pepper further questioned.

"We were the only two who understood the device, so we should have been able to figure out how to get back."

"If you didn't die." Natasha sarcastically said.

"We weren't stupid. Some of the animals that we tested later on had electronic chips implanted in them. We learned that they survived the switch to this dimension without their health or brain activity altered."

"What about the military guy that tested out Oryx 1.0 with your brother? Why haven't you mentioned the possibility that he's here?" Tony questioned.

A look of sadness washed over Stephanie's face for a brief moment.

"Bone ash was found at the lab. DNA analyses confirmed that it was his."

"But they never found any ash belonging to your brother?" It was evident to everyone that Natasha remained skeptical about Stephanie.

"Yes, they said that they never recovered any bone ash that matched my brother's DNA profile," She looked at Natasha directly in the eyes when she said this. "I was sure that he had died -the explosion caused a fire to break out. The testing facility burned to the ground…It makes sense now why they never found anything. He ended up here."

"But why has your brother been living in the woodlands?" Thor asked.

"I…I don't know."

Clint opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it.

"What?" Stephanie directed at Clint.

"What?"

"What were you going to say?"

"Nothing."

"Yes. You were going to say something -you opened your mouth and then closed it."

"I was just yawning."

"That wasn't a yawn."

Clint hesitated.

"Tell me, Clint."

"Do you…do you think that that your brother wants…to hurt you?"

"What? Hurt me? Why would he want to hurt me? You've got to be joking!"

"He's been stranded here for three years."

"So?"

"He might resent you for that since you were the one who was suppose to go..."

"Atticus isn't like that!" Stephanie defended her brother, raising her voice. "There has to be some reasonable explanation why we found his pocket watch in the forest. An explanation that doesn't involve Atticus wanting to seek revenge on me!"

"You can never really know someone completely." Natasha quietly remarked.