Was it too much to ask for Clint's life to be normal?
Apparently, it was, considering a magical anomaly in the atmosphere above New York City was his new normal.
He let out a rough, exasperated sigh as he thought about what he'd give to just go on a regular SHIELD mission again. A mission that didn't include aliens, robots, or magic. But at least he wasn't mind-controlled this time. Or thrown in a dumpster.
Yet. The night was still young.
Within minutes, he, Steve, and Tony were suited up and moving out from the Avengers Tower toward where Tony's scanners had picked up the anomaly while Tasha stayed behind to coordinate with them and, should they need it, with the Avengers that were upstate at the Compound or with SHIELD. She also just didn't want to go after spending all week with Yelena tracking down investors of the Red Room, but Clint didn't point that out. He liked not convulsing on the floor with electricity coursing through his nervous system.
They touched down on a lower rooftop in Midtown Manhattan to find two suited young men laying on the rooftop. Clint thought for a brief moment that both were unconscious, but that guess was shot to hell when the one dressed in black and blue jumped up, whipping out something that reminded him of Daredevil's billy clubs only it was black, a little longer, and had a section of blue toward the end. Clint spotted another stick discarded a good fifteen feet away.
The man in black and blue stood protectively over the other figure who Clint realized was definitely unconscious as he didn't react at all. Clint analyzed Blue as Steve readied his shield next to him and Tony raised his hands in a peaceful platitude.
Blue's suit was well-made and form-fitting, like Tasha's, and looked like it was made from a mix of Kevlar and spandex, also like Tasha's. The chest and arms were lined with a royal blue bird shape that reminded Clint of the SHIELD logo, with it standing out against the black of the rest of the suit. He had a domino mask shaped like a bird with white lenses covering the upper part of his face. His black hair was messy and tousled and complemented an olive complexion and lean musculature.
If Clint had to guess, the man couldn't have been older than his mid-twenties.
Below him laid what Clint had to call a kid. He had to. The boy Blue was hovering over was exactly that, a boy, not a man based on what Clint could see aside from another domino mask.
Have they heard of something better than a flimsy, small mask?
Anyway, Clint would bet money on him being no older than eighteen. A kid dressed in a formfitting, caped, red, black, and yellow suit who also had a symbol of a bird on his chest within a circular insignia and was bleeding from a head wound. He didn't seem as tall or as well-muscled as his defender, but he didn't seem to lack any either.
Blue's stance shifted protectively over the kid even as he hugged his ribs with his free hand. And there didn't seem to be any recognition in his expression toward the three of them.
At a minimum, the two were partners, and Blue had a hard-pressed loyalty or responsibility for the kid. Even though he was clearly on his last legs, pushing through pain and exhaustion if the quiver in his wrist was any clue, he wouldn't leave his friend behind, and he'd fight should he need to. Clint respected him for that.
"We come in peace, kid," Tony greeted, his suit adding a mechanical sound to his voice. "Just wondering why you're at the source of some magical B.S."
"Didn't mean to," Blue gritted through his bloody teeth. "We'll be going now."
His accent was clearly not New Yorker, Clint noted. If Clint had to bet money, he'd say it sounded like urban New Jersey mixed with a smidgen of Eastern European, but the latter was well-battered down and likely only sprouted in the presence of exhaustion. Clint seriously hoped there wasn't a male version of the Red Room, especially so soon after Tasha and Yelena had taken it down.
No more European assassin training centers, goddamnit.
"That isn't a good idea," Steve said, taking a careful step forward as he held out his hand placatingly. He had noticed much of the same things as Clint, namely the injuries, but Blue didn't seem to like the implication of them not being allowed to leave or someone moving closer to them.
Blue's grip shifted around his weapon as he focused the majority of his attention on Steve, so Steve stopped moving, still watching Blue with a wary but prepared expression.
"A light breeze will knock you over," Clint tried. "Let us help you, and you can answer some questions for us." He also wondered if the pile of vomit belonged to the one standing or the unconscious one.
Either way, they needed medical attention. Whatever had happened to them, whether because of the magic that drew the attention of the Avengers or perhaps something prior to the magic, they were still kids in need of aid.
Blue shook his head, too quickly if his grimace was anything to go by. "No, we need—" He shifted on his feet, wobbling lightly. "We need to—"
He didn't finish that thought before collapsing face-first against the rooftop, the weapon bouncing and rolling away.
As Clint and Tony rushed forward, Steve reached up to his ear and said, "Nat, we need a med-evac for two."
"En route," Tasha's voice echoed through the comms.
Tony scanned the two and said, "They're alive, but Friday detects multiple fractures and points of injury. I'll call in Banner and Cho from upstate."
Clint recalled that the two were working on Dr. Cho's Cradle technology as a pet project together. They'd get to the tower faster in one of the Avengers' jets and provide more discretion for vigilantes and secret identities than anyone else would.
With the two anomalies loaded up into a medical transport, Clint grabbed Blue's escrima sticks before hopping in along for the ride.
Whoever the two newcomers were, the Avengers were in for an interesting ride.
Then he wondered when Doctor Strange would pop up at the tower considering the Avengers just hijacked something from his wheelhouse. Ah, whatever, Strange and Tony arguing would be entertaining.
Bruce Banner wanted to go one week without an emergency. Just one.
But no, the universe had other things in mind when it came to Bruce's downtime and stress levels.
After spending the last three weeks with Helen Cho in the lab at the Avengers Compound as they worked on advanced applications of her Regeneration Cradle, hoping to streamline the process among other things, Bruce had been lulled into a sense of tranquility with the only "emergencies" in recent days being accidentally transforming his cousin into a Hulk, typical young Avenger shenanigans in the Compound, and complications with running tests with Helen.
Tame in comparison to recent years.
Then he got the call from Tony about two kids in superhero costumes at the source of a magical anomaly. And they were injured.
Great.
Okay, Bruce and Helen were well-versed in handling patient care. They could deal with that. But then he backtracked upon realizing Tony had said 'magical anomaly.' What the hell did that mean? And why weren't they calling that Strange guy?
The answer was easy: Tony didn't like him. Bruce knew Tony just couldn't handle someone who had the exact same personality.
And then it got worse.
Bruce almost got himself electrocuted trying to take off one of the super suits before Friday interjected, informing them of the electromagnetic signature coursing through the body suits. That would have been bad for everyone involved, since the shock, based on the voltage indicated by Friday, would have caused the other guy to come out.
It took some workaround, but they were able to undo the fail-safes that kept the wearers protected from people who would unmask and de-suit them. Well, at least it would have worked for normal people.
Then, of course, it got even more worse.
Bruce, Helen, Clint, Steve, Nat, and Tony all stood in front of the body scans taken from the two patients before they had been settled and hooked up to IVs. To get a complete picture, they had gotten MRIs and CT scans from both of them plus Friday's own scans, but no one liked what they discovered.
Both young men were riddled with bodily scars inside and out. Surface-level skin scars, repairs in muscles and tendons, healed breaks and fractures. Jesus, the younger one had a scar from being slit across the throat, and the older one had taken a bullet to the head.
Bruce wanted to throw up.
"What the hell have these kids been through?" Steve asked quietly, a look of horror across his features.
Tony couldn't even muster a half-hearted teasing use of 'language.'
"Those are crocodile teeth marks," Helen pointed out, gesturing to the younger man's shoulder.
"To get this degree of variation in fading and healing, this is over the course of years," Bruce said. "Based on their bone growth and wear, I'd estimate twenty-five or twenty-six for the older one. For the younger one. . ."
"Eighteen," Clint said.
Bruce made no move to confirm nor deny Clint's own estimation, so the others knew he was right.
"Fuck," Tony muttered.
Helen was trying her best to remain purely professional as she continued with the assessment. "The younger boy has far more injuries, but they're in a shorter span of time. Based on the regeneration, the oldest of the injuries for him dates back to about four years ago, while the older boy has injuries dating back to at least fifteen years ago."
"Is it better training? Better suit protection? The younger boy hasn't been in the life as long?" Nat speculated.
"That'd be something to ask them," Helen reluctantly said.
"When do you think they'll wake up?" Steve asked.
"A few hours at most," Bruce answered, turning away from the scans on display in the viewing room. He couldn't look anymore. "The younger boy had a head injury and signs of a concussion, but it doesn't seem severe. We gave him something for the pain and the internal bruising, but I don't think he has it as bad as the other one. The older boy has two broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, a fractured ankle, and a broken nose on top of torn sutures from a knife wound on his side that is a few days old."
Steve frowned, his eyebrows furrowing. "A few days?"
"No more than two or three based on the congealing and scabbing," Helen clarified.
"I'll have Friday monitor their vitals and let us know if anything changes," Tony said. "Otherwise, I'll be in the lab having a look at their suits."
Nat shifted her weight. "I'll run facial recognition."
"I'm gonna go make a sandwich," Clint added with a weary shrug, as though he knew he was hungry but didn't know if he'd be able to actually eat it.
Steve's eyes settled on the scans once again, and he said, "I'll be here."
Everyone filtered out of the viewing room, leaving Steve behind, and Bruce watched from the hallway as the door shut, seeing the way Steve's eyes studied every healed injury that was highlighted by the scans. He didn't want to be in Cap's position of having to decide how to proceed from there, so he and Helen focused on tending to the injuries of the older patient.
Steve sat in the guest chair in the room of the younger boy. Since Bruce and Helen both agreed that he would likely be the one to wake first, despite the head injury, Steve felt more secure in watching over him in the hopes of keeping him calm and talking one in one in a less formal interrogation setting.
Nat could be intense on her best days, so he wanted to avoid that.
He didn't know how long he had spent simply looking over the scans, but he wanted to strangle the people responsible for not only causing those injuries but also the people responsible for looking after the two since they clearly hadn't done a good job at keeping them out of harm's way.
If Helen was right in her assessment, which Steve didn't doubt, then the older of the two had combat injuries dating back to around the age of ten. No ten-year-old should have combat injuries. He'd understand a broken bone from kids being kids, but neither Helen nor Bruce had attempted to point out how the injuries were caused. Everyone already knew based on the kinds and locations of the injuries.
Based on their suits, they were professional vigilantes who had been in the life for quite some time. The two kids had been fighting for years. Steve just hoped it had been their choice.
Steve couldn't fault someone for striving to make a difference. To fight for that goal. It's precisely what he had done. He knows that his teammates would have had the same looks of horror if they had seen his own scans from when he was younger and always getting into fights with bullies and subsequently the injuries he sustained during the war. It looked like the two had each other at least, like he had Bucky.
As Steve nestled into the chair and drew in his sketchbook, he worried for the two boys' safety and thought about the first impressions he had.
Tony had a tracking algorithm set up to detect magical anomalies ever since the whole thing with Thanos. It made him feel better about being on top of things like magic portals or surprises with Wanda's temperamental chaos magic, and Steve didn't fault him for it. This was just the first time something had popped up with it.
They had gone to the coordinates indicated through Tony's systems, and instead of finding a terrible, world-endangering army of aliens or something of the like, whatever the anomaly was had already dissipated by the time they arrived, and directly below it were two masked men.
Though using the term 'men' was generous since they were both so young. It was a bit hypocritical of Steve to think that, he knew, but looking back on when he joined the war effort, he certainly wouldn't consider himself to have been grown or a real adult. That feeling came with more than something as arbitrary as numerical age.
Steve recognized the determination and ferocity in the older one's stance and expression as it was the same way Bucky had watched over Steve once upon a time. Bucky still seemed to don the expression every chance he got, even if it wasn't as hell-bent as it used to be. He wondered what Bucky would think about them. Same with Sam. But they were both in Europe working on something for the time being, so Steve was left to ponder.
He didn't know why he felt the need to sketch out the scene he remembered from the roof, but that's what he found himself doing.
The shadows across their faces. The details of the suits. The trained yet pained stance. The light of the moon shining down from above and the light from the city shining up from below.
Steve was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of a strained groan.
He looked up from his sketchbook, pencil stilling in his hand, and he saw the kid's eyes opening but remaining narrow from the ceiling light.
"Kon," the kid murmured in a quiet, slurred tone.
Steve stood from the chair, setting his art supplies down, and he moved to the kid's bedside. "You're alright, kid," he said softly, careful not to be too loud to startle him. "You're safe."
The kid's eyes shot open in a panic, and he jumped out of the bed, the IV torn from his arm as he put space between himself and Steve.
"Woah, woah, you're okay," Steve tried again, holding up his hands. "I'm not going to hurt you."
"Who are you?" the kid asked harshly. He held his own hands up as well, though his were forming fists as he prepared himself for a fight. "Where am I?" He paused, one hand untensing as it touched his cheekbone. "Where's my mask? And my suit?"
"You're in the infirmary in Avengers Tower," Steve answered slowly. "My name is Steve Rogers. I don't know where your things were taken, but we had to take them off to assess your condition. The doctor said you have a concussion and some internal bruising. You need to rest."
"I need to leave," the kid corrected.
Steve shook his head. "I can't let you do that."
"What are you gonna do? Stop me?" There was a glint of mischief and amusement in the kid's eyes.
Accompanied by a sigh, Steve reluctantly said, "If I need to. But I'd rather talk this out. You were at the source of a strange set of magic. We don't know anything about it."
The kid gave him a curious look. "Who's 'we?'"
"The Avengers."
The kid blinked. "Who?"
Steve's head tilted. This kid didn't know who the Avengers were? "The Avengers," Steve repeated awkwardly. "Uh, Earth's Mightiest Heroes?" He felt so odd saying it out loud.
"You mean the Justice League?" the kid asked carefully.
It was Steve's turn to be equally confused. "Who?"
The kid dropped his hands, standing up straight. "Shit. Why is it always me?" His head tilted up toward the ceiling for a moment before looking at Steve again. "What do you know about the Multiverse?"
Steve already had a headache.