Alright, then, I'm back again with another update for this silly story, and hopefully this chapter will be when everything makes sense. We've decided that there's not a snowballs chance in hell that we own anything recognizable here, but then we learned that Hell is actually a city in Norway that freezes over all the time, so we need a new metaphor if anyone's interested. Also, for the life of me, I couldn't find a song for this chapter. Damn it…
All Steve could do was stare. Because standing in front of him were Jolene and Rosie, owners of the Yesterday's Adventure, and neither looked a day older than 25.
Bruce entered the next bar he saw, knowing that Tony and Clint, and then by association Natasha and Pepper, would have done the same. The first thing he saw was Pepper laughing and shaking her head. Next to her stood Natasha, who was holding up her phone as if recording something. And then he heard two familiar voices shouting, "Happy birthday, dear uh... so-and-so! Happy birthday to youuuuuuuuuu."
And there were Clint and Tony, sitting at the bar, singing happy birthday. To no one.
"Hey, Pepper, Natasha!" Bruce called. "Steve wants to show us something he found. How whipped are those two?" He nodded at Tony and Clint. The two women gave him matching smirks and slowly turned to look at their men. When they saw, the two dunks' faces dropped, and they practically sobered up in a heartbeat. Natasha jerked a thumb over her shoulder, and the boys scrambled off their barstools and out the door. Unfortunately, when they got outside, Clint and Tony started up their song again.
"It's not anyone's birthday," Pepper said, loudly enough that it got their attention. Both looked at her wide-eyed, their faces devastated.
"So, it's our...unbirthday?" Clint asked. His entire demeanor changed, and he grinned at Tony.
"No! That's not what I-" But Pepper was too late to stop it.
"AAAAA very merry unbirthday!"
"To me?"
"To you!"
They continued the song as Bruce led them back to the small bar where he and Steve had seen Thor. Seeing Steve now inside as well, he opened the door and held it as everyone walked in.
Tony frowned. "This place is emp-ty!" he said. He looked around him, noticing all the pictures on the walls and the patriotic décor. "Ugh! Leave it to Steve to find an old people bar!"
"Dang it," Clint whined.
"Guys," Natasha stated. "Knock it off." Her voice, threateningly low, was enough to shut them up and bring sobriety for another few brief seconds. She pointed to Steve, who was still frozen in shock.
"Friend Steve," Thor said, obnoxiously loud for the small room. "What is troubling you so? And Lady Jolene, why must he leave? I assure you, the Captain bears no ill will."
The shorter, blond bartender, apparently Jolene, looked between all of them. "I'm sorry, we're closed," she said. "You really need to go."
"The sign out front says you're open until two," Clint said. "It's not even midnight." He may have had a few too many, but he still didn't miss a thing.
"So?" she challenged. "It's our bar, we have a right to close it when we feel like it!"
"Look, Sweetheart, you're obviously hiding something, and it obviously has to do with Captain Freeze-Frame over here, so can we please just move this along to the point when you start begging us not to tell anyone?" Tony said. She jumped forward and Pepper was entirely convinced that the little woman was going to come over the bar and murder her fiancé. Tony backed up and the other bartender, the redhead, grabbed Jolene by her waist, keeping her restrained.
"Jo here doesn't beg, Mr. Stark, and we're not hiding anything," she said. Jolene stopped fighting to maim the billionaire in question. "We'll tell you everything, but you have to swear not to tell anyone."
"Rosie!" Jolene shrieked in shock.
"The gigs up, Jo. It's not like we haven't done this before. Besides, we can trust them," the taller of the two, Rosie, said.
"How do you know?" Jolene said.
"I can feel it," Rosie hissed. Jolene fell silent, looking at Rosie with a degree of reluctant acceptance. Whatever that sentence meant, it was important. Rosie turned and faced the group of people staring at her and her friend, but her eyes fell on Steve. "I'm sorry," she said, and that was enough to shock him out of whatever state he was in.
"How?" he demanded, his immediate feelings being anger and confusion. He stepped forward, towards them, and Rosie stepped back cautiously. Jolene was immediately between the two.
"We're about to tell you, but you need to calm down, and then you need to swear on your life that you will never tell a soul," she growled, obviously displeased with this plan of action. Steve looked suspicious, but stepped back in acquiescence.
"Well?" Pepper asked. "Who are you?"
Before either Rosie or Jolene cut in, Steve answered. "They're Rosie and Jolene, I never learned their last names. But they own this bar, Yesterday's Adventure. They're the bartenders here, and apparently they have been since WWII. Because that's when I came in here, and nothing has changed."
"The pictures are in color now," Jolene grumbled off-handedly, slightly offended. She turned to the sink and began angrily cleaning glasses, purposefully alienating herself from the conversation.
"We've been the owners of this bar since way before that, Steve," Rosie said, ignoring her. "We're mutants, as people call them these days. Timebenders. We can move through time, and neither of us has aged since we turned 25. This bar has been our hideout, of sorts, since..." she trailed off, trying to remember the exact year they had established the bar.
"1870. It was the same year Henry and John established Standard Oil," Jolene commented without turning around.
"Henry and John? As in, Henry Flagler and John D. Rockefeller?" Tony asked.
"Yeah. They came in at least twice a week before they left," Rosie said. "You'd be surprised how many people we know."
"Is this important to the backstory or can we continue?" Natasha asked impatiently.
"It's not, we're moving on," Rosie said. "We've operated this bar since 1870, like Jolene said. Since then, it's changed very little. But staying in one place has had its drawbacks. It's made us more vulnerable, in a sense. People who want to hurt us have an easier time finding us. But with the guard dog over there," she said, pointing at Jolene, "They usually let us alone after a while. When they don't, we fall off the grid for a year or two. We always come back, though. You can count on that."
Jolene threw down the glass and rag in hands, causing a loud shattering noise. "Rosalie, shut the hell up!" She shouted, startling them all. Rosie looked offended at first, but when Jolene turned around, she saw the fury and plain hurt across her face, and her own face fell. "Yes, I know that you have a feeling that we can trust them, but we just met them, and you literally just told them our entire freaking plans. For all we know, they could be with her. They're the Avengers, for Christ's sake, they work for SHIELD. She's a freaking SHIELD associate or whatever! When are you going to wake up? They could sell us out to her before we could even turn around, and this time we'd have to leave and not come back."
"They're the Avengers?" Rosie gasped. Jolene just stared at her.
"Well there goes the disguise," Clint muttered, taking off his hat. The rest of the team followed suit, removing various hats and glasses. "How do you know what SHIELD is, and who are you talking about?"
"You don't need to know!" Jolene snapped. "You need to leave."
Rosie shook her head. "Jo, I know we can trust them," she said again, making a placating motion with her hands. "Just...just listen. Do you guys know Emma Frost?" she asked them, looking at them each in turn.
"Yes," Natasha answered after a period of silence. She had finally put together what the girls were implying. "And I'm guessing you met her before she joined the X-Men."
"She wanted us to join some Massachusetts School or something. It was all mutants, she told us. Well, it was. And she wanted to train us to kill, and told us that humans were the bane of the Earth, and all that. And then she tried to separate us. She had some master take-over-the-world plan, where she wanted Rosie to go into the future and try to control it, and she wanted me to go change the past. That's when we ran," Jolene spat. "We had to keep moving and changing names for years. She just kept after us. Finally, we went to the past and hid there for a year. It almost killed us; we can't stay in the wrong time for too long. But she finally gave up after that."
They all remained silent, knowing what Emma had done in the past. "Look," Tony said, breaking the tension. "Emma's not all bad anymore. I won't try to convince you otherwise, because I honestly am not sure of that myself. But I do know that we won't be selling anyone out to her anytime soon. SHIELD does not officially trust her, and we sure as hell don't yet."
Rosie turned back to Jolene. "See?" she said. "They're on our side. They're not gonna tell!"
Natasha stepped forward. "We didn't say that," she said calmly. Both girls stared at her, then at the others, who all looked like they were agreeing. "Look, we need to tell SHIELD about you. It's the only way to keep you safe."
"No," Jolene said, fire lighting in her eyes. "You will not tell anyone that we're here, and if you do, so help me God I will-"
"Ma'am," Steve said, interrupting her and bringing the full force of her fury down on him.
"What?" she snapped.
"We do need to tell SHIELD. But I can guarantee that they will leave you alone. Until you agree to be part of a team, you won't be placed on one. SHIELD will give you a lot of options, and one of them will be to stay right here and keep doing what you're doing. Should you choose that, SHIELD will offer you full protection. Just because we've had alliances with Emma Frost in the past, doesn't mean that we automatically sell out every mutant we see to her. Normally, we offer mutants a place at the Xavier School, but you're both too old for that, even in physical standards. But we do need to inform SHIELD of your whereabouts. It will be safer for everyone in the long run," he said. His voice was cold and unfeeling. Jolene met his eyes, and while she saw no caring or kindness there, she also saw no hatred or deceit. It took her a long time to look away, and even longer than that to have a silent conversation with Rosie. Finally, her shoulders slumped. Rosie stepped forward, smiling softly at them.
"Alright," she said. "We'll agree to you telling SHIELD. But if Emma Frost shows up at our door, I'm not going to keep Jo off of you."
"Thank you," Steve said flatly. A heavy tension fell over the room, and everyone looked awkwardly between each other.
Tony clapped his hands. "Well, now that we're all sure no one's going to kill anyone, how about some drinks?" he asked, trying to lighten the atmosphere. Rosie grinned brightly, glad to have a familiar trade off of bar tender/patron actions.
"Our pleasure," she said. "What can I get'cha? We've got pretty much anything you can think of on the small scale, but not anything real fancy."
"Define fancy," Tony said, wrinkling his nose.
"I dunno, fancy. What do you want? I'll tell you if we have it," Rosie said.
"Do you have any form of Macallan scotch?" Tony asked.
"Oh, it's gonna be a long night," drawled Jolene.
Well, that's it for now. See ya later, drop us a line on what you think and all.
BA&A