Chapter One: In which there is much confusion
She was face down in the dirt and gasping for air. Which she thought was rather odd as she had been upright and putting her kettle on for a cup of tea. She rolled over onto her back, her chest heaved as she fought off a sense of terror that she didn't have a cause for. Her body felt strange, raw and strangely insubstantial. She found herself blinking up at a blue sky when it should be early evening. She tried to put together what had happened. She had been in the kitchen, filling the kettle, when she had felt-something awful. Like a piece of herself, something deeply vital, had been inexorably dragged out of her. She thought she had seen dust or something floating through the air out of the corner of her eye before blinking and finding herself prone outside somehow. Whatever had happened had been that quick. A mere blink and she was suddenly here. Wherever here was.
Rowan grunted as she rose wobbly to her feet. Her legs trembled and for a moment she felt as if she was going to collapse back to the ground before taking a deep breath and firmed her stance. Taking in her surroundings provided more questions rather than answers. It looked like a garden, the kind of garden that would be referred to as grounds, that had obviously been well tended to at one time before suffering from what looked like years of neglect. A pathway of pale pebbles was almost choked to non existence by weeds and overgrown flower beds. A wrought iron bench had turned to rust to her left and a decorative wall had collapsed to her right. She spotted a slate roof over the top of a copse of trees which hopefully was the house belonging to the garden, and despite all signs pointing to the contrary she hoped there would be someone there who would be able to help her. If not she could chuck a rock through a window and perhaps find a working phone or something that would tell her where she was at the least.
Twenty minutes later and she had to concede defeat. The place was locked up tight so it looked like it would be the rock and breaking and entering option. Judging from the dust sheet covered furniture she could see through the grimy windows the place had been unoccupied for a long time, which didn't fill her with hope insofar as a working phone was considered. She had walked down to the huge gate at the end of the sweeping driveway but had seen nothing nearby that indicated people. The road only led away from the House and there had been no traffic when she had lingered for a minute or two just in case. Shivering a bit in the breeze, a cotton tank top and shorts combination was alright for pyjamas but not so much for wandering around lost in someone's driveway, she had made her way back up to steps leading to the unnecessarily ornate front door. Rubbing the chilled toes of her right foot over the top of her left she contemplated her next move. Breaking in could land her in trouble if the place was alarmed, but that might actually be a good thing too if it was one of those ones that meant a security service or the police turned up to investigate. An awkward conversation would no doubt follow but she would at least have some help eventually. Or she could chance going down the road to see if there was a village or something, anything, with people. But she had no idea how far she would have to walk and her bare feet and snoopy pyjamas were no protection against the elements.
Her ears pricked as a noise reached them. It was muffled but she thought it was coming from inside. It sounded like someone was crying, possibly a child. She darted onto the lawn and peered upwards. There was a broken window on the second floor she hadn't noticed on her first circuit of the house and it sounded like that was where the crying was coming from. Not in that particular room, another one nearby though. It took a moment or two but she managed to scale the conveniently close trellis and heave herself up and over the sill. A hiss escaped her as a glass shard scored a nasty scratch across her upper arm but she was lucky enough to avoid standing on any of the ones littered on the floor and the decayed carcass of a pigeon which was probably the reason for the broken window in the first place. She gingerly picked her way through the detritus of leaves that had been blown in and littered the carpet and pulled open the door to peer into the gloomy corridor beyond.
The crying was clearer now and almost certainly coming from a young child. She padded passed several other closed doors before reaching one near the rear of the house. She tapped her knuckles gently against the wood.
"Hello. Are you all right in there?" The sound of sobbing ceased immediately. She strained her ears in the sudden silence but didn't get a reply. "My name is Rowan. I'm lost and need some help." Another pause with only the sound of her own breathing as an answer. "I'm not going to hurt you. I just heard someone crying and wanted to make sure nobody was hurt in here."
"Wasn't crying." A young boys congested voice sniffled resentfully. "Dad says big boys don't cry."
"My mistake." Rowan couldn't contain a grin at finally getting an answer. "Can I come in?"
"Jarvis says not to talk to strangers."
"I suppose that's fair." She wondered who Jarvis was. Usually it was a kids parents who were the ones to give them the Stranger Danger lecture. "Maybe Jarvis would be OK with it just once though seeing as I'm lost and asking for help?"
There was a pause as he gave that some thought. "Jarvis says I'm a really good helper." The door creaked open and she found herself looking down into a red rimmed brown eye that stared back curiously.
"Hello there." She smiled at him, hoping she looked harmless.
"Why are you in your underwear?"
She tugged on her ponytail self-consciously and fought down a blush. "Its my pyjamas actually. And I'm afraid I woke up in the garden like this. I don't know how I got here or even where here is."
"Maybe you were kidnapped. I hate it when you wake up in a new place." The door opened further revealing a boy of about six with dark brown eyes and curly brown hair. She blinked rapidly against the mental dissonance of someone so young talking about being abducted in such a matter of fact manner. "Though I've never been just left in a garden. Usually I'm locked up in a room or a closet. Jarvis always comes to get me, sometimes Aunt Peggy helps too. If you're kidnapped I bet they'll help you too. Though I don't know where they are. I can't find anyone in the house."
"I-uh don't think I was kidnapped." She offered a bit faintly. "I haven't seen anyone else either."
"You talk funny." Rude. "Jarvis and Aunt Peggy talk different too. Jarvis says that its because they are from England and they have an accent. Is that why you talk funny, is it an accent? I like the way you go rrrrrr. Its kinda like Tigger only not as much."
"I'm from Scotland originally." Her family had moved to America when she was eleven. She didn't think she had much of an accent left but she did have to admit she tended to roll her r's still. The kid was an observant little thing. And now she knew Jarvis and this Aunt Peggy were English. Nobody is perfect. "Are you going to tell me your name?"
"So how did you get to my house if you weren't kidnapped? Are you sure you weren't? You said you woke up, maybe you were drugged and it happened while you were sleeping. Do you taste spearmint? Drugs that make you sleep taste like spearmint."
"I hate spearmint." She informed him faintly while screaming internally at the thought of this tiny boy having been drugged and abducted regularly enough to talk about it with an air of authority. What kind of place was this? "And you still haven't told me your name Sweetheart. Or where we are."
"My name is Anthony but I like Tony better. Only dad calls me Anthony anymore and that's only when he is mad now. Even Jarvis calls me Master Tony." So using context Jarvis was the Help in this House of Whatthefuckerry. "And we're in my house in New York State."
She was suddenly overwhelmed by a vertiginous swell of dizziness. She was in New York. She had closed her eyes in San Francisco and opened them on the other side of the country in New York. "I should maybe sit down."
"You are sitting down."
"Excellent! I love it when a plan comes together." She was just going to take a second to properly freak out then she would do- something. "So. Um-uhhh-" A giggle burst through her teeth, high and thready enough that it couldn't really be considered a giggle at all. "It's nice to meet you Tony."
He smiled sweetly shy and stepped out into the corridor. "Nice to meet you too Rowan."
A great explosion rent the air. The ground shaking and the lights rattling. Another and another. Tony shrieked as he threw himself into Rowans arms. She wrapped herself around him as plaster shook loose from the ceiling. It felt like the house was going to come down around them before the cacophony suddenly diminished and the world went still once more. She could hear what sounded like battle in the distance. Explosions and possibly gunfire.
"I am not having a good day." She informed Tony.
Junior SHIELD Agent Terrance Howe was fairly sure he was dying. He lay semi-prone on the rubble that had once been the Avengers compound. A Chitauri had gotten in a parting blow before it and all the rest of them had turned to familiar looking dust. He had felt a savage sense of satisfaction at the thought of the aliens suffering the same fate as so many people had five years ago but it had left him quickly. He was left feebly trying to hold his own innards with numb fingers. Understandably preoccupied he didn't notice a ostentatiously silver Bentley driving up and idling for a moment in the space that had once held the gates of the compound. He would never know how the driver had hesitated, her wide eyes taking in the destruction all around him and his terrible injury before flicking away to stare down the road leading away from it all before being pulled inexorably back to Terrance. He would never find out how close she came to prioritising her own safety and that of the child in her care and turning the vehicle away from it all.
He thought she was an Angel. Not really noticing the Snoopy pyjamas at first and then deciding that it was not his place to question the sartorial choices of one of the Heavenly Host. Firm hands moved his own away and took over the task of returning his loosened intestines to their proper place. He thought briefly about how it was such a bad sign that none of this hurt at all.
"They won't fit." He practically wailed in her face.
"Don't be daft man. Of course they'll fit!" His Angel barked back. "This is going to feel weird. Don't freak out!"
Her eyes started to glow a warm orange-red colour reminding him of campfires, autumn leaves and candy apples. Something inside him started to move and he felt a strange pain. A clean, healing sensation like when you picked a scab that had been hot with infection but felt the certainty that it would heal properly now. Except instead of a scab he felt it all over. Faintly he noticed signs of discomfort on his Angels face. She was clenching her jaw, while her nostrils flared and she squinted slightly, as if she was bearing down under a sudden weight. Neither of them noticed the large form that was looming over her shoulder, but Tony did.
Bucky had been searching for survivors and wounded when he stumbled across one of the stranger things he had seen recently. Obviously not as strange as the foul mouthed, gun toting racoon but it was up there. A young woman dressed in nightclothes was kneeling over a SHIELD Agent who had clearly been gutted. He had moved to tell her there wasn't much of a hope for the poor guy when he had noticed the glowing eyes. She was wrist deep in the guy and a matching glow was coming from the wound. His hand dropped to the butt of his gun but he held back. It looked like she was healing him. Even the wonders of Wakanda couldn't have prepared him for watching the mans flesh slowly but surely knitting back together through the glowing energy. He yearned to be back with his goats for a moment. Something simple to take him away from all the weird bullshit that he had woken up to in this future. His attention was pulled back to the present by the sound of a car door being opened and little feet marching towards them.
The little boy marched right up to him with his chin raised pugnaciously. Reminding Bucky of another tiny boy who had never had the sense to back down from those bigger than him. The midget sneered up at him with his hands fisted on his waist.
"Don't you point that gun at Rowan you jerk!" The little guy snapped. Bucky supressed something that had almost felt like a smile but he wasn't sure if his face remembered how to do that anymore. When he failed to respond quick enough for the little guy he stomped his foot and the scowl became a pout. Which had the unfortunate side effect of Bucky's lip twitch becoming more pronounced. It might even be turning into a smirk. That he knew he could still do properly.
"I wasn't pointing my gun at anyone Short stuff." He assured him.
"I'm not short." Was the immediate and outraged response. "And you were thinking about it!"
The glow disappeared from his peripheral vision and he saw the woman rise to her feet flexing her hands like she was trying to rid them of stiffness. The young agent was poking incredulously at the smooth skin of his stomach. The only sign of the devastating wound was his torn clothing and the blood soaked ground. He wasn't even showing signs of the massive blood loss he had been suffering from moments ago. "You really are an Angel!" He breathed as he gazed awestruck up at his saviour. Who had just noticed Tony and was therefore ignoring her former patient.
"An-tho-ny." Bucky had to marvel how she managed to drag out the kids name like she was using the full Sunday on him. Briefly, the echo of another voice which was older and rich with Brooklyn twang drifted though his mind. Calling for James Buchanan Barnes like he was in trouble for something. Again. "I told you, very clearly, to stay in the car." Tony shuffled his feet and ducked his head in guilt.
"Actually, he was looking out for his big sister." Bucky figured he should stand up for the little guy. He noted her eyes were a pretty hazel when she wasn't doing her voodoo on folks.
"Pardon?"
"He was gonna shoot you!" Tony shouted with his eyes as wide as they would go.
"Was not." Bucky argued.
"You were too, I saw you!"
"No I wasn't"
"Were too!"
"Not."
"Too!"
"Nobody is shooting anybody today." Rowan admonished as she tried to hustle Tony back to the car. "We'll be going now. Please and Thank you. Buh-bye."
"What's going on here?" The commanding voice of Captain America boomed out as the man himself strode majestically onto the scene. Bucky sighed as the tension went up by a factor of three. A punk the size of a redwood was still a punk he thought. Stevie eyed the scene warily, particularly the young man still supine and stroking his own stomach while muttering about angels. "Buck?"
Bucky just shrugged at him too busy exchanging glares with Tony. The kid stuck his tongue out. Bucky smirked again as he reached out and pinched the cheeky appendage.
"Ack! Web'e gaw a bik jewk!" Tony smacked at his wrists.
Rowan huffed loudly before pulling Tony away and lifting him up onto her hip.
"Miss?" Steve stepped closer. "Do you need help?"
"No indeed. We'll just moving along. Thanks, have a nice day. Tata and Cheerio!"
"Rowan Spalding?" The chief of the wizards was suddenly in their midst.
"Dr Strange?!" She looked the man up and down. Giving his cape a second look as it waved at her. "Who dressed you?"
"I could ask you the same thing." He drawled back.
"You know this person, Dr Strange?" Stevie had his judgement face on. Though Bucky wasn't sure if he was judging the woman or the wizard at the moment. Judging from the looks being sent Stevie's way neither were the two people in question. The kid had found a new nemesis from the looks of it too. Bucky was devastated that he had been so easily replaced. "Did she do that?" He pointed at the guy who was now on his feet bending back and forth and side to side while giggling softly.
"She just saved the morons life!" Rowan snapped.
"The younger sister of a former student when I was still practicing medicine." Strange explained. "Last I knew Ruairidh was furious at you for dropping out of medical school." He directed the last to Rowan, who went white in outrage.
"That's what he told people was it? Far be it from me to contradict the sainted Golden Boy! We're leaving!" Turning on her heel with the intention of returning to the car she drew up short when she came face to face with a seething Scarlet Witch.
"You monster!" Maximoff hissed as malevolent red mist began to gather round her hands.
"Wanda?" Steve asked warily.
"You dare! YOU DARE!"
"I dare a lot!" Rowan quipped as she shuffled back uneasily. "Pretty sure I don't know you from a hole in the ground lady so what say we just happily go about ignoring each other yeah?"
"Viz is dead! How can it be you that lives? What more can you take from me?"
"You're out of your goddamn mind. I don't know you so back off already!"
Bucky stepped up to Rowans side, his rifle ready but not yet pointing at the Witch. Stevie mirrored him at the other side though with a hand reaching out as if to soothe. Green energy sparked to life around the wizards hands and even Terrance was paying attention now.
Snarling viciously Wanda lashed out clashing with the wizards magic. The resulting explosion knocked everyone off their feet. Scrabbling to his feet again Terrance could only gape at the charred peace of ground where the two super soldiers and his angel and her child had been standing. The Sorcerer Supreme was cursing as he used his magic to subdue a triumphantly cackling Wanda.
"They didn't cover this in Basic." He told them.