Tony banged his head along with the loud, angry music that filled his workshop.

As the chorus waned, Tony settled himself enough to pull a pair of welding goggles down over his eyes. His body focused on the seam in his armor as he patched the damaged area, but he screamed along with the lyrics as he worked.

Abruptly, the music cut off. Tony's voice screamed out throughout the now-quiet workshop for a second before he stopped.

"What the hell, JARVIS?" Tony complained as he turned off his welding torch.

"Sir, I have completed the in-depth analysis of the anomalous substance you brought from New York," JARVIS replied.

Tony's eyes widened. He tossed the welding torch aside and scrambled over to his computer workstation. "The Chitauri metals?" he asked.

"No, sir. Those findings were finished two weeks ago," JARVIS replied.

Tony wiped a hand across his face. He hadn't slept well since the invasion of New York. The knowledge that they weren't alone in the universe - and that at least a few other races were hostile to humanity - weighed upon him heavily. "Right, right," he muttered. "I remember. We included some specs in the Mark XXIV plans. So whaddya got now?"

"This is..." JARVIS hesitated. "The unknown and unlabeled semi-organic metallic scan readings you had me save."

A spark of interest fought through Tony's fatigue. He kept all his recordings of Ricochet vague on purpose; the kid couldn't help what had happened to him, after all, and while Tony was confident that no one could hack his systems- well, he'd been burned by someone he trusted once before.

"So what do we got?" he asked JARVIS.

"This is unlike anything I've ever seen before," JARVIS explained.

Three-dimensional diagrams flickered to life in the air in front of Tony. At first glance, it looked like a polymer chain - but one far more dense and complex than anything normally found in a human being. Intrigued, Tony leaned forward and rotated the structure as he looked through it.

"What the hell is this, JARVIS?" Tony finally asked.

"Unfortunately, without a physical sample, I can merely speculate," JARVIS demurred.

"So speculate."

"I believe what you see here are some sort of nano-machines, created from a metal I can only hazard to guess the origins of, which have symbiotically bonded with various human tissues," JARVIS replied. "They appear to be present in all scanned tissue, although at differing densities and structures. What I believe to be bone has the greatest concentration, far greater than the bone tissue itself; dermal tissues have the smallest concentrations, with tendons and ligaments in between.

"The readings on the metal itself are less clear, but it appears to match the known properties of a mythical alloy called beskar."

Tony frowned. "Beskar? I've never heard of it."

"It was rumored to be in the possession of an East Berlin scientist in the late eighties, but-"

"Let me guess: it went missing when the wall fell," Tony interrupted.

"Quite so, sir."

Tony pursed his lips as he spun the polymer chain diagram around in his hands.

"This…" Tony trailed off for a moment, then sighed. "My initial belief was that the metallic bonding was only done to the skeletal system and connective tissues. But you believe it's literally everywhere."

"All data points to that conclusion, sir."

"And with a nanotech delivery and bonding system - could it be done in, say, two weeks?"

"Again, I would hate to speculate, sir-"

"Speculate," Tony ordered.

"I don't see any reason to believe otherwise, sir."

Tony closed his eyes. "Shit."

"Sir?"

"Nothing, JARVIS." Tony wanted to help the kid, he really did, but he didn't know what he could do. This didn't really change anything for Ricochet's circumstances.

However, it might change things for Tony himself.

"JARVIS, this nanotech - is this something we could adapt for the Iron Man suits?"

"Certainly not now, sir, but in the future it could be a great..."

"There's no one by the name Gabriel Gray who matches that description," Natasha told me gently. "Not in Social Security, not with the New York DMV, not even in SHIELD's databases."

I stared at her. "He existed," I insisted.

"I believe you."

"He crucified me against a wall and cut my head open!" I shouted.

Natasha's eyes narrowed slightly and she tilted her head a fraction of an inch.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. For Natasha, with her reserved self-control, that was an equivalent reaction to another person yelling and chewing me out. "Sorry. Sorry. Just - I've never felt more helpless than he made me feel, and now there's no trace of him…" Even a month after that night, Sylar still scared me.

"I understand completely," she said.

After almost two months of knowing Natasha, I felt like I had a handle on the nuances of her speech. She rarely put any inflection on her words, and when she did it was subtle - but she chose her words very deliberately. If she said she understood completely, then she did, and it was because she'd felt the same way before.

It was hard, almost impossible, to imagine Black Widow helpless and at another's mercy. Yet clearly that had happened. I felt like I understood my friend and mentor a little better after that revelation.

I took a long, deep breath and let it out. "Okay. No Gabriel Gray. Fine, that's fine, I didn't want to see him anyway. Did you find anything on the Petrelli brothers?"

After Sylar was Returned, we received a message from The Director. At the same exact time as Sylar's Return, two brothers ceased to exist: Nathan and Peter Petrelli. Only the Historians whose records were created between discovery of Gabriel Gray and the time he was Returned had any recollection of the brothers. Sparrowhawk theorized they came from the same reality was Sylar, and Returned when he did.

Natasha shook her head. "Nothing. No SSNs, no educational records, no fillings for public office. SHIELD's offline server didn't have anything, either."

I blinked. "That…seems like it would be hard to hack?"

"Try next to impossible," Natasha corrected me. "It doesn't get rewrites. If we find something on there is incorrect or obsolete, it's marked as such and the new information is appended."

I was tempted to follow the thread of this information - what all was on that server? Was I on that server? - but we were there to talk about the Fractures. "What about the others they've sent us after? Dawson Leery and Pacey Witter, those two kids from Massachusetts?"

Natasha's lips thinned. She shook her head.

"Felicity Porter, Ben Covington, and Noel Crane?" Those were three NYU students the Travelers sent me, Chris, and Elle after one day with no notice.

Natasha shook her head again.

"Blair Waldorf?" I asked - but I already knew the answer. Blair was a wealthy, beautiful teenage socialite we nabbed from her uptown penthouse. If there was record of her, the news would've been all over her disappearance. Instead, nothing.

Natasha could tell I knew the answer, and didn't respond.

I dropped my head into my hands, overwhelmed. Sylar was a psychopath, but the rest were just regular people. And now they were erased. (Okay, Blair was kind of a psychopath, too, if she'd meant any of the crazy stuff she'd threatened us with - but considering she'd just been kidnapped and had to deal with Chris, I didn't particularly blame her for her vitriol.)

Natasha grabbed a chair and dragged it over to sit by me. We'd set up an impromptu workspace in the training area for the day, just a folding table and some metal chairs. "We need to check for one of these Fractures before they're Returned," she said. "Then we can see if the erasure is just a combination of electronics and blackmail, or if actual memories and records are being altered."

I looked up - the latter idea had never occurred to me. I assumed the erasure was digital, with some good old blackmail on top to keep the people quiet. "What, like magic or something? Really?"

She winced. "Call it sufficiently-advanced technology, please. And I'm not going to discount anything without evidence. You've seen someone overwritten into a whole new person, after all."

"Fair enough. Still, they don't give me information until the operation starts and they don't send me out alone." I shrugged. "I don't know how we're going to get around that."

Natasha leaned forward. Her eyes flashed with concern. "Do you think you're compromised?"

I opened my mouth to say no, then paused to think about it. Did I? After a moment, I said, "No, I don't - but I'm clearly not one of them, either. I didn't get the protocols and the other stuff I was supposed to so I don't know all their secret handshakes or whatever. Plus, I argue with them all the time." Wryly, I concluded, "Honestly, I think they just think I'm incompetent."

Nat snickered. I grinned back. Compared to her - compared to most of SHIELD, probably - I was pretty incompetent at this spy-life, battle-warrior stuff. Without the healing ability the Travelers built into this body, I'd be dead - at least forty times over. Probably more.

"Well," Nat said.

"Yeah, I know. You don't have to say it, though."

She grinned, then her good cheer faded. "Still. You need to be careful with them," she said.

"Ha," I chuffed without humor, "I've learned that one now. Just because I can't be killed doesn't mean I have nothing to worry about. Hell, I might have more to worry about because of it."

"You do," Natasha stated firmly.

"Point taken," I reassured her, as earnestly as I could. After a second of direct eye contact, she believed me and nodded her approval. "Okay. So we'll have a few hours between when I learn details of the next mission and when the Fracture is Returned. How am I going to get you that info when I'm with the team the entire time?"

"You're not," Nat said. "So we'll have to find a way to take it from you."

The weekend before high school started up again for me, we got our next Fracture mission.

Chris shoved open the door to my bedroom and tossed a small gym bag at me. "Load up," he ordered. "Road trip. Got another Fracture." He closed the door behind him before I could ask anything.

I rolled over and opened both the blinds above my bed before I started to pack some clothes. I messed with the blinds and two windows all the time. It was one of my ways in and out of the apartment, especially as Ricochet, and Chris and Elle knew that - so no one thought anything of it when I messed with the blinds. Natasha used that to adapt a system of signals based on maritime flag code that allowed me to communicate time-sensitive information.

Today's signal was one that only Clint and Natasha knew, one that was not written down anywhere. After I packed, I slid the blinds down quickly and sloppily, so that the bottom of the blinds formed a V (I called them angry eyebrows, but Nat just rolled her eyes at that). This meant I knew I was on a Fracture mission, and Clint or Natasha - whoever was available - would follow discretely. I was to act normal, and trust the spies to get the information they needed.

Elle waited in the living room for me. "Good timing," she greeted me. "Chris is bringing the Suburban around right now. We'll pick up the rest of the team and head out."

I slung my bag over my shoulder and followed her to the elevator. "Headed where?" I ventured. Elle usually treated me like part of the team when Chris wasn't around to be a dick about it.

"Stars Hollow, Connecticut," she answered easily enough.

I shrugged. "Never heard of it," I said. I decided to push my luck since Elle seemed in a pleasant, talkative mood. "So who are we going after, and what got them on our radar?"

Elle gave me a sidelong look, and I figured she'd refuse to answer. After a couple floors, though, she spoke. "I suppose I should tell you now, if for no other reason than so you don't freak out when we get there," she said reluctantly. "It's a mother and her daughter."

"More fucking kids," I growled.

"I don't pick our missions," Elle said. To her credit, she didn't sound pleased at the mission, either. "I don't always understand our missions, and that's okay. My job isn't to understand - that's the Director's job. It has more information than I do, and it can see the big picture and patterns I can't. I trust the Director."

She sounded earnest, quietly passionate in her zeal. Still. Trust nothing, Natasha's voice echoed in my head.

"How do they even find these people?" I disguised my interrogation as a teenage gripe to the best of my ability.

"This one?" Elle asked rhetorically as the elevator doors opened in front of us. "One of them becomes a journalist and writer, wins some awards." We stepped in, the doors closed, and she shrugged. "Chris has more details than I do."

I snorted. I wasn't asking him, that was for sure.

We walked outside just as an oversized black SUV pulled up at the curb. The back gate opened as we approached, and I followed Elle as we tossed our bags in the back on top of three others already there.

Elle moved to the shotgun seat, whereas I went to the back. The other two members of our Traveler team sat in the captains' chairs in the middle section; I moved past them to sit alone on the bench seat in the back.

Tyler Morris, the Traveler I saw arrive my first night away from the Avengers, sat on the left behind Chris. He looked like an ordinary teenager, but the personality inside was decades older, an experienced engineer and tech specialist. He had a complex radio of some sort on the floor in front of him.

Damon Quaint was our medic, a mid-thirties Vietnamese-American librarian; or, at least, he was before a Traveler overwrote him. Damon was quiet, easy-going, and tended to simply follow Elle's orders. I rarely interacted with him.

Chris pulled away from the curb as I buckled myself in. "Settle in, everyone," he said. "ETA is just over two hours." I looked at the clock on the dash - that would put our arrival around nine o'clock.

After a few moments of silence, I heard Chris whisper to Elle, "Are we being followed?"

She tilted her head to look at him for a brief second, her face expressionless. "It's been two blocks," she said.

The question and answer continued all the way out of the city, with Chris asking every few blocks and Elle reassuring him on an exponentially-decaying scale of patience. Every so often he glared at me in the rearview mirror, until Elle finally snapped at him that she had an eye on it and if anything required his attention she would let him know. After that, Chris just glared at me as a part of his progression of mirror checks.

I wondered if this was general paranoia on his part, some sort of weird disinformation ploy to try to draw me out, or if he had a reason to believe I was up to something. I mean, I totally was up to something, but did he have any actual evidence?

Whatever, I decided. I pulled out a pair of headphones, leaned my head against the headrest, and closed my eyes. There was nothing for me to do, now; the ball was in someone else's court, be it an Avenger or a Traveler.

I couldn't sleep, so I watched the land roll by as we drove.

We arrived in Stars Hollow a little past sundown on Saturday night.

The car pulled up to a charming two-story house with a large front porch, white trim, and somewhat overgrown vegetation in the front. The lights inside were out. We parked the car and everyone sat in silence for a moment.

"So, let me get this straight," I said. "Your plan was based upon a sixteen-year-old girl and her young hottie mother sitting around at home on a Saturday night near the end of summer, instead of going out somewhere?"

They all glared at me. "Oh my God, just shut up," Chris muttered.

"Y'all really are from a dystopian future, aren't you?" I said.

"Okay, new plan," Elle said. "We'll head into town and spread out, look for them separately. Stay in contact and keep everyone in the loop, no one try to be a hero."

"I am a hero," I interjected.

"Can I shoot him?" Chris asked Elle. "I want to shoot him."

"I'll get better," I said in my best Monty Python accent.

"Ignore him," Elle said firmly. "Focus on the mission."

I ducked into Luke's Diner to get away from the smell.

Stars Hollow smelled horrible. At first I thought it was just me - I smelled a lot of things in New York that the rest of the people there never seemed to notice - but a lot of the locals had on masks or held cloth up over their faces.

The diner was pretty empty when I entered. A man at the counter waved a towel at me and called out, "Sit wherever you want." I grabbed a stool at the counter right by the door; no sense in taking a table up all by myself. The man behind the counter brought over a menu. "Know what you want to drink?"

I looked up at his brusque manner. He wore a flannel shirt under his apron and had on a backwards ball cap. He wiped down the counter while taking my order.

"You Luke?"

"Yep."

I couldn't get a read on him. He could've been from anywhere, so I wasn't optimistic, but I asked anyway - I'd been three months up north, and that was too long to go without. "Any chance you got sweet tea?"

The man paused in his work and gave me a flat look with one eyebrow slightly raised. "We got coffee."

"I reject your bean water in favor of my leaf water," I said.

"Your sugared leaf water," he countered.

"My sugared leaf water," I allowed. I glanced at the menu. "Got Coke?"

"Pepsi."

I made a face. "Dr Pepper," I ordered. He nodded and immediately turned to grab a cup. A man of action and few words. I could get behind that. He placed my drink on the counter and I pointed at a board behind the counter. "Is the four slice French toast good?"

He shrugged. "Pretty sure it hasn't killed anyone yet."

The yet added in at the end made me grin. "I'll take it. And don't worry, you'll get somebody one day."

"But not today?"

"I'm functionally immortal," I confessed.

He rolled his eyes. "Teenagers."

"Yeah, that, too."

I people-watched until my food came. There was a lot of foot traffic in Stars Hollow, with only a few cars. Even after a few months in New York City, I wasn't fully used to that yet.

The food was really good - Luke really liked to undersell the product, that was for sure. I got about three-quarters of the way through before someone interrupted me.

"Excuse me, young man, but why are you not out looking for eggs?" a somewhat pompous voice asked from behind my left shoulder.

I looked back to see an older man wearing a button-down shirt and sweater vest. He had a salt-and-pepper beard and a disapproving scowl on his face. Luke was at the far end of the bar, but he immediately headed over.

"What?" I said.

"Eggs," gray beard snapped. "Eggs, young man. Why aren't you out looking for them?"

"Taylor, he's eating," Luke grumbled.

"I know, but I just want to know-"

"Is that code?" I asked. Taylor looked confused, so I lowered my voice and whispered, "Are you trying to sell me drugs?"

Luke snorted, and Taylor looked even more offended than I'd hoped for. "What- I- You-" he sputtered. "I do not sell drugs!"

"Technically you do," Luke pointed out. Taylor's outraged eyes snapped to Luke. "Your store has aspirin, ibuprofen-"

"That is not what he was talking about!"

"Are you sure?" I drawled. "I am rapidly developing quite the headache."

Taylor harrumphed and crossed his arms, but didn't respond. He glared at me for a moment, then looked down at my almost-empty plate. "I certainly hope that, when you finish your meal, you will do your civic duty and look for the eggs," he pronounced, then turned and flounced out of the diner before I could respond.

I looked up at Luke. "Does his store not have eggs?"

Luke snorted. "No, it's-" He closed his eyes and winced. "-an Easter egg hunt."

I blinked. "What."

"Uh huh."

"It's August."

"Uh huh."

I stared at him, but he wasn't bothered by that. Finally, I cracked first. "Please tell me this story."

He sighed. "Fine. So Kirk-" he spoke the name like it was a dirty word, "- was in charge of the Easter egg hunt back in April. But he got attacked by a moose and-"

"He got what by a what?"

"-and all the eggs got ruined," Luke talked over me. "So they decided to do a makeup egg hunt this past Wednesday. But Kirk hid too many eggs and he hid them too well, so a lot of them are still out there. And he also forgot to hard boil them. So now they're going bad and making the town stink."

"So everyone's looking for them," I concluded.

Luke nodded. He looked so completely and utterly done with this event, I couldn't help but feel horrible for him. Naturally, in time-honored masculine tradition, I teased him about it. "Man. Do you need a hug?"

He glared at me as I grinned unrepentantly. I could see his lips twitch as he tried to keep a smile off before he grabbed his towel. "Finish your French toast, maybe it'll kill you," he grumbled as he walked away.

"I'll get better," I said in my Monty Python accent before I stuffed the rest of the toast in my mouth all at once.

The door behind me opened as I chewed. I heard the click of heels on the floor before a large purse dropped onto the counter beside me. "Coffee, please, to go," she called out. Luke brought her coffee in a large to-go cup and she immediately drank some. She pulled her phone out and scrolled through it as she continued on, "Rory's looking for you, something about some eggs too high for her or Lane to get to, she's probably going to be annoyed you hid in here and ate without her."

I looked up at Luke, confused. He just shrugged.

"Oh, and Kirk's being even more Kirk-ish than normal," she continued, oblivious to our growing confusion. "Oh, and Lane met some new boy she's-" the woman cut herself off, wide-eyed, as she looked up and saw me. "You're not Dean."

"I know," I agreed.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

I indicated Luke. "I thought you were talking to him."

"He's not Dean, either."

"I didn't know you thought you were talking to Dean."

"Well, I was."

I grinned. "Are you Dean?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

She glared at me. "Yes. I'm Lorelei."

I blinked. This was the mother we were looking for. The Rory she mentioned must be the daughter.

"So where's, uh, what's his name?" Luke asked before I could keep up my side of the banter.

Lorelei gave Luke a flat look. "Waiting for me," she said. "And I should get back to him. Nice to meet you, uh-?"

"Logan," I supplied.

"Logan," she said. "Luke." She grabbed her stuff and left.

I grabbed a slice of bacon from my plate and took a bite. "Got some interesting folk in this town," I said.

"Uh-huh." Luke kept wiping down his counter and straightening up around the diner. I could tell he was the sort who didn't sit still well.

I'd almost finished my bacon when the bell over the door jingled again. "There you are!" an exasperated young woman huffed. Luke's eyes widened, but before he could react a thin hand grabbed my left wrist with a surprisingly strong grip and yanked me out of my seat. By the time I turned to face my abductor, all I could see was the back of her head. "I can't believe you ate without me, Dean," the girl continued. Her long brown hair swung as she dragged me wherever it was she wanted me to be. The girl - who I assumed to be Lorelei's daughter Rory - continued on with a constant stream of words that I knew, from my time parenting and teaching teenage girls, would prove exceedingly difficult to curb.

So I just allowed myself to be dragged.

We walked several blocks before a group of four turned the corner up ahead. I recognized Lorelei from earlier; with her was a short Asian girl, a skinny guy in an orange hoodie with the hood pulled up, and a tall guy, maybe an inch or two taller than me, with floppy brown hair similar to mine.

"Lane!" Rory yelled. She sped up and dragged me along; I could have resisted, but I didn't want to hurt her.

"Rory!" the Asian girl, presumably Lane, replied.

Together, both girls said, "Look, I found Dean!"

"Hey, Dean!" Rory said. Dean opened his mouth, but Rory talked over him. "Ohmygod you're Dean!" She spun around to face me, still holding my arm. "Who are you? Ohmygod did I kidnap you?"

"That's Logan," Lorelei said.

"Hey, Lorelei," I said.

Rory's poor, confused face was hilarious. "Wha- You know each other?"

Lorelei nodded. "Oh, we go way back."

"So if that's Dean, where's the guy you left me for?" I asked.

"Wait, you dated?" Lane exclaimed, then immediately clapped her hands over her mouth.

"Ah, yes, our affair was as short as it was torrid-" Lorelei began.

"And tawdry," I interjected.

Lorelei nodded in my direction, "-and tawdry, but it was long ago."

"He's, like, our age," Dean said. "How long ago could it be?"

"It was the summer after I graduated college," I said. "I was unsure of what I wanted to do with my life, and I just felt overwhelmed by it all. I met Lorelei's mom at a party and she seduced me, but-"

Everyone else exploded with a cacophony of complaints.

"Okay, whoa, no, no, no," Lorelei said after everyone else died down.

"What? Come on, that's The Graduate, it's a classic," I protested.

"Is that what that was?" Dean muttered.

"Yes, it is, but just trust me - if you'd met my mother, you'd get it," Lorelei said.

"I don't know," I argued. "The more awful it is, the funnier it is."

Kenny nodded, but everyone else just cringed and shook their heads. After a moment, the silence got uncomfortable. We stood around, looking at each other awkwardly, before Dean asked, "Rory, why are you still holding his hand?"

She dropped my arm like it was hot and jumped away. "Ohmygod, I'm so sorry-"

Silently, my Traveler team stepped out of the shadows. They all held tasers; Elle had two, one in each hand. They fired without hesitation. Rory, Lorelei, Dean, Lane, and Kenny all dropped to the ground.

Across the street, a group of three teenagers stopped and pointed. "Oh my God, they killed Kenny!" one screamed.

"You bastards!"

After we evaded the state-wide manhunt, we took the Gilmore girls to the Traveler's laboratory to be Returned.

I tried hard to ignore the two Fractures, I really did. I hoped that either Hawkeye or Black Widow was on the case - maybe both, if I was lucky - and would have information on them waiting when we rendezvoused after the mission. My job was to go along with the Travelers, keep my cover, and work from within. I could do the most good there. Busting up just one operation wouldn't stop the rest of them, just drive them underground where they'd be hard to find. I kept telling myself this, over and over.

But it was hard to keep that in mind when two sobbing women begged me to help them. Sylar was a psychopath, an evil man who killed others to try to gain powers for himself. He tried to kill me, multiple times, and tortured me to get my healing factor.

Even with all of that, it was difficult to watch him get Returned.

Once we arrived, the other four Travelers dragged the Gilmores out of the SUV and brought them to the Returning mechanism. The room was dimly lit, with shadows all over, and the buttons and dials in the room gave it an eerie, menacing feel. I hated the room.

After the Gilmores were situated in the chairs, hooked up to the mechanism, the rest of my team walked past to head out. They saw no reason to stay, as their job was done. Elle, the last to leave, stopped beside me. "Come on, Logan," she said softly.

I shook my head. The least I could do for these two, selected to be turned to dust by some Director that I never met or even interacted with, was to bear witness their final moments. There was a small radius, about two dozen feet, within which everyone would still remember the Fractures that were Returned. Outside of that, no one remembered. I stood just inside the radius - the Fractures deserved someone to remember them, someone to remember the pain they went through, what was done with them.

Elle grimaced, but after a second she accepted my decision and walked past me. I watched the technicians work. Behind me, I heard a brief conversation between Chris and Elle about me. Elle sounded resigned; Chris, no surprise, sounded frustrated and angry. They went quiet for a moment, and I assumed they left-

Until Chris grabbed my arm and tried to spin me around. "Come the fuck on," he growled.

I smacked his hand off my arm. "What the fuck-"

Chris angrily shoved me forward.

I spun and backhanded him across the mouth, then push-kicked him. He flew back about ten feet, out of the radius of the mechanism's effects, and tumbled to the ground. Elle, her eyes wide in shock, scrambled down beside him to check his pulse.

I turned back again in time to hear the mechanism's whine reach a crescendo. I locked eyes with Rory; her long brown hair was a mess, her eyes wide with terror, and tears streaked down her face. I blinked, and she was replaced with another girl about the same age. This girl also had long, dark hair, almost black, and big brown eyes. My daughter, somehow, caught in the mechanism - and through her gag, I could hear her, Dad, help me! Please help me!

I blinked, and it was Rory in the mechanism. Still, I knew what I needed to do.

I leaped forward as fast as I could. I grabbed the strap around her left hand, pulled it up off her as far as I could and cut it with one of my claws. One of the technicians screamed something, but I ignored it. I moved to Rory's other hand, grabbed the strap-

And she crumbled to dust beneath my fingers.

"No, no, no!" I hit the chair, kicked it, cut it to shreds with my claws, but it didn't do any good. Rory was gone. I failed her.

I sank to the ground.

After a few minutes, the lead technician crouched down in front of me. "I'm going to see that your team is taken off Fracture retrieval duty," he said gently. I looked up at him, unable to summon up any emotion or feelings. "I can see how difficult this is for you. There's no need for you to torture yourself when others can do the work just as well."

I blinked. I was too emotionally overwhelmed to deal with this - my switch had flipped like an electrical breaker this time. I couldn't process what he said. I just stared at him.

"We're not monsters," the tech continued. "Or, at least, I hope we're not. We have hard choices to make, though. Many times they're between options that are just varying degrees of awful. The future we come from is a terrible place. It's hardened us to pain and suffering, but the entire purpose of the Travelers program is to prevent others from having to be that hard, to be that scarred emotionally. I want to help prevent you from being that way - from being like us."

I looked over to my Traveler team, three of whom crowded around Chris where he lay on the ground.

"They were outside the mechanism's radius," the technician explained. "They will not remember the confrontation or what spurred it. There will be no reprisals. Go, now. Do the best that you can for this world."

The tech helped me to my feet, then walked away. I watched him go. Trust nothing, trust no one, Natasha taught me. I couldn't trust he was honest. Still, I knew I would gratefully take what he offered. I didn't care if I was being manipulated, I was too grateful to no longer have to hunt down teenage fractures.

Hawkeye had nothing.

He had no recollection of why he ended up in Connecticut. He had a stack of blank paper that he said had all the signs of having gone through a printer. The names Lorelei and Rory Gilmore were meaningless to him. He swore that Stars Hollow was not a city in Connecticut, and Google Maps confirmed it.

I felt numb. I'd hoped this wouldn't happen, but after my team had no recollection of the Gilmores - despite being only thirty feet from them when they were Returned - I expected it.

Hawkeye and I sat at the table for several minutes before he clapped his hands and tried to be optimistic. "It's okay, we can keep going," he said. "I'll meet up with Nat and we'll brainstorm, you can put up your blinds for the next mission-"

"I'm off the Fracture missions," I admitted.

Clint blinked and his face dropped. "Are you in danger? Do they know what we were doing?"

I shrugged. I explained what went down with the latest Return and the scientist's words. "I honestly don't know whether to believe him or not," I told him after the story. "I just- I can't help but be relieved." I wiped a hand down over my face. "I know that makes me selfish and horrible-"

"No, it doesn't," Clint said firmly. "Look, you didn't sign up for this. You haven't been trained for this. And frankly, you're doing a hell of a lot better than I ever thought you would that day in the hospital."

I blushed a little, embarrassed, but I managed to look up at him and meet his eyes. "Thank you."

He nodded. "Use this opportunity to get out."

I shook my head. "And do what?"

"Live." There was a weight of something I couldn't identify in his voice, and he looked as intense as I ever remembered him being. "Have a family. Be safe."

I waved my hand in circles at my face. "Don't forget all this is a lie, Clint. I've been married for over two decades. I have a wife. I have kids."

"I don't mean to dismiss your family or your vows, but I'm pretty sure this could fall under 'until death do us part'," Clint said gently.

I shook my head. "That's not what we swore. My wife's Hindu, first-gen from India. Her family was pretty cool about her marrying a westerner, but we still had a big Indian wedding. You familiar with how those work?" I asked. Clint nodded, and I chuckled. "I had no idea what I was getting myself into," I confessed, and he laughed, too. "It was insane. I rode in on a horse. A horse! Unfortunately, I neglected to learn how to ride a horse, first." We laughed together again. "So when it was all over, all three days, we're sitting together alone after seventy-two hours of chaos and insanity, and she asks me if it was worth it.

"And I turned to her and I said, of course it was. I loved her, and I always would, in this life and the next, as many times as there are. And I do. And I will.

"So I can't get out. I won't get out. I won't stop trying to get back to her, in this life or the next."

Clint nodded. He looked at me for a few moments, then smirked. "God, you're pretty sappy, huh?"

We both laughed. I balled up one of the papers and threw it at him, but missed.

"Man, you're a dick," I laughed.

My laughter died down quickly, though. Thinking of Mendi was hard. I missed her and the kids more than I could possibly explain. Clint's grin faded, too, and he turned serious again. "All right. I don't have a clue what to do for you next, but I'll keep thinking and talk about it with Nat and Fury. We'll train you while we're around, but…" He trailed off and shook his head.

I got it, though. With the Fractures missions gone, they wouldn't be around nearly as much. They'd be assigned to other missions, in other places throughout the world.

For the first time in this world, I would be on my own.