Title: The Set-Up
Author: SLynn
Summary: Three months after Clint Barton's death and what remains of the Avengers is still struggling to make sense of it all as the threat to SHIELD, and to them all, looms larger.
"You're serious, aren't you?" Pepper said with a laugh.
"I am," Tony answered. He'd already finished with the suit and was still trying to make the damn SIM card work. It was being a stubborn piece of crap.
"I'm not pushing," she said with halting words. "Not really. They're practically dating without my help."
"So you just asked JARVIS to not disturb them because..."
"Okay," she admitted. "That might have been a tad sneaky, but come on, Tony. Tell me you wouldn't do the same? That you haven't? You're a bad influence."
"Apparently," he said with a grin. "But, seriously Potts, back off. Let them handle it in the slow and awkward way as to which they are accustomed. You're making Steve jumpy. And Hill is starting to glower more than usual. Which... really? You really think that's a thing?"
"Yes. Don't you?"
"I thought... maybe," Tony admitted with some reluctance, "but Bruce said -"
"Bruce lies, Tony," Pepper laughed. "And he is very good at it. He probably didn't want you messing it up."
"First," he said, after he'd finished some of the more delicate work he'd been performing, "I do not mess things up. That's just not true or fair. If anything I bring people together. I'm a people pleaser. Second, Bruce doesn't lie. You lie. You are lying right now. And third, Steve has asked me to ask you to stop. So, stop. Please. Before I'm forced to pass notes under the table at dinnertime."
"Why didn't he ask me himself?" she asked with a laugh.
"He didn't want to hurt your feelings."
"That was sweet of him."
"So you'll stop interfering in his love life?"
"When he asks her out I will."
"What, are they supposed to date?" Tony laughed, his eyes still on the project at hand. "How would that work? Where would they go? To the gun range? To the soda fountain? How would that even happen?"
"It could happen."
"You need a hobby," Tony said with a smirk.
"I've got plenty to do, thank you very much."
"I would think so but..." Tony started, but trailed off as he concentrated harder on the work at hand.
"What is it?" Pepper asked, leaning in closer to see what Tony had discovered.
Tony didn't answer her immediately, just swiveled on his stool and began to rapidly type on the terminal the card was hooked to.
"I got it," he said after a few moments of intense silence.
He looked at Pepper and smiled. Relieved and a little anxious. Unsure of what his next step should be but ultimately deciding a quick peek wouldn't hurt. He was still going to show everyone else, but if he saw it first, at least he could warn them if need be.
"Do you want a look?" he asked.
Pepper appeared hesitant, but finally nodded. Pulling up a stool next to his own, she waited, both of them facing the display screen as he opened the file.
"Oh my God," Pepper said, bringing her hand up to her mouth and staring at the image.
"You're not feeling the need to stab me, are you?"
"That's not funny."
"No, it's not," Tony agreed solemnly. He was just shocked. "Holy shit. What is this?"
"Do you think it's real?" Pepper asked in a quiet voice.
"I don't know," he admitted, "but it's making more sense to me now. I always wondered why Clint didn't notice Natasha was basically losing her mind right beside him. But this..."
"He was probably too focused on what this meant to catch her reaction," she agreed.
"They were close," Tony stated, knowing it was true. Everyone who knew Clint knew he'd been close to Agent Coulson. Seeing him alive again after believing he'd caused his death would be traumatic. It also went a long way towards explaining why Clint hadn't just gone to them all. Likely he'd wanted Natasha's opinion first.
Someone wouldn't have had to have known Clint very well to guess at that part, but they'd have to have more than a basic knowledge of how the two of them had operated. They'd have to have been on the inside, something they'd all assumed.
"That's enough," Pepper said, pulling her eyes away and getting to her feet.
Tony agreed and clicked the picture shut on the monitor.
His day got infinitely longer.
Tony wanted to wait until they were all around and, more specifically, Morse was not. He only wanted to go through this once and waiting was difficult.
The afternoon passed slowly. Dinner felt eternal. For some reason Morse decided to stick around for the meal and Hill had tried to bolt. Tony got the feeling Morse knew something was up, but that could just be him being paranoid. And he knew, given Pepper's recent matchmaking attempts, Maria simply hadn't wanted to fan the flames.
It had been tricky, but between Tony and Pepper, they'd managed to not only get Morse out of the Tower relatively early in the evening but also keep Maria in place.
As soon as JARVIS informed Tony that Agent Morse had left the building, he got to his feet and clapped his hands together startling most of the group still left gathered in the lounge.
"Okay, everyone up. Let's go."
"Go where?" Steve asked as he got to his feet almost instinctively.
"Conference time," Tony said as he moved rapidly to the elevator. He positively could not wait another single second.
"Me too?" Darcy asked, clearly confused.
"No," Tony decided. "No, I don't think so."
"No," Pepper agreed. "We'll stay."
"What are you up to, Stark?" Maria asked as she followed, carefully picking her spot on the far side of the elevator, away from Steve.
"I fixed the card," he said, as calmly as he could, as the elevator rushed to the correct floor. "Got it working this afternoon and got some interesting things out of it. Thought was should talk it over someplace private."
The conference room had been updated since the last time they'd really used it. They all now, more or less, had claimed specific chairs as their own. Tony had added card readers, for their Avenger IDs, that they could use as an electronic attendance record and also displayed the holder's name on the table; it was mostly for show as they all knew one another, but it looked nice. It also activated the individual computer screen in the table in front of each chair. As a final touch, Tony had one of Barton's bows, a rather nice looking recurve that was a deep purple, mounted on the wall in what he hoped would be the last memorial they'd need to make.
His eyes darted to it when he entered the room. They always did.
"Didn't get much off of it," Tony said as he began to pull up the information. "The text messages Barton had told us about were all there and almost exactly as he said they would be. I took a chance and traced the number they were coming from but it was a dead end."
"Did we ever find out how his brother even got that number?" Bruce asked.
"It was Barton's back-up cell," Maria answered, checking her own communicator and turning it off as she sat. "It was on file but under restricted access. Someone fairly high up the chain had to have given it to him or to his then employers."
"Have they found him yet?" Steve asked.
"No. Or if they know where he's at, that information has been suppressed," she answered. "Given what I was able to dig up on Barney Barton, he probably fled back to South America. He's knowledgeable with that part of the world and the languages and it's where he spent a lot of his time over past ten years."
"What about the trigger?" Bruce asked, anxious to see the image for himself. "You did get it, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"But?" Steve asked, because they could all sense it. Tony wasn't acting like Tony. He was stalling and that was not normal behavior. Steve had half expected the picture to already have been on display in the room when they'd arrived.
"I just want to prepare you for this. I've done some preliminary scans and... and as far as those go this picture is real and unaltered. That doesn't mean... Well, okay, I don't know what that means... Let me just show you it and you can tell me for yourselves."
They'd all gone silent as the image filled the screen.
What could they say?
"It has to be fake," Maria finally voiced what they all instinctively felt, albeit in an abnormally quiet tone.
The photo was both hard to look at and hard to look away from. It wasn't grotesque or even that strange if you really looked. It was just Phil Coulson, alive, awake even, hooked up to an IV and some kind of machine in what could have been any hospital in the country. He didn't look great but it certainly looked like him.
"Is there a chance it's not him?" Bruce asked after another moment of silence.
"It's possible," Tony admitted with a shrug.
"There are ways of making that happen," Maria agreed. "It's not outside the realm of probability. Not after everything we've seen lately."
"Then it's equally probable that it is Agent Coulson," Bruce surmised.
"No," Maria said with a shake of her head. "No, Agent Coulson died. Director Fury told us that himself."
"He told us that medical called it," Tony said immediately. "And he was cremated, same as -"
"No," Maria snapped. "I know what you're going with that and normally I'd agree. This is damning. This looks... But I was there both times. Pepper was there for the last... Coulson is dead, same as Barton. We both saw it. I had to go back in the room and... They're dead, Tony."
"Let's not confuse the issue," Bruce said, hoping to calm the storm before it arose. "Let's focus on Agent Coulson. Is it in any way possible that he could have been taken from the Helicarrier?"
"In the air? During an attack?"
"After then," Tony amended.
Maria looked conflicted. It was clear she wanted to say no, but her conscious would only let her answer, "Yes."
"Then the same could be said -"
"No," Maria interrupted. "Possible is not the same as likely, and the most likely scenario here is that this is just a man who happens to look a lot like Agent Coulson."
"Because we all have doppelgangers walking around out there," Tony said sarcastically. "Am I right?"
"Quiet," Steve said, but the word barely made it off his lips.
Tony and Maria continued to loudly argue their positions, but Bruce couldn't pay them any mind.
Steve, who normally would have stepped in by this time and diffused the tension between the two of them, was starting to worry him.
"There's something... wrong," Steve said, but only Bruce heard him.
Steve's eyes slid out of focus.
"Hey!"
Maria, Tony and Steve all turned towards Bruce, surprised by his outburst.
"Are you okay?" he asked Steve.
"I'm fine," he answered, but he didn't look it. "I just... there's something wrong with this picture."
"Yeah," Tony returned. "There's a dead guy in it. But he's not dead."
"Not that."
"Well then... it's got to be the newspaper," Tony said with a shake of his head. "Where the hell did they even find one of those? Do they still make them or was it printed special?"
"No," Steve said angrily. He was so close to seeing it but... "Look at the damn thing. It's wrong. There's something... staged or off..."
"It is staged," Maria said, considerably calmer than before. "The question is who did it?"
"Wait," Steve interrupted. "Just... I've almost...Look here," he said, suddenly animated as he approached the screen. "This is wrong. The focus of the picture should be Agent Coulson," he explained, "but he's not. He's off center. He's in the background. He's an afterthought here."
Tony and Maria exchanged puzzled glances, but Bruce appeared to be following along.
"He's not an afterthought to us," Steve continued off the looks he'd received. "We'd be drawn right to him. He's the only person in the shot. He's someone we know but look... The composition. The composition is all wrong."
"So the person who took this was, unlike you, probably not an art major," Tony said, not getting it.
"If it's a photo that is designed to be a trigger it had to be perfect," Steve said evenly. "Everything would have to be exact. The composition of this photo suggests that Agent Coulson is not the focus. It's the Rule of Thirds. JARVIS, can you superimpose a three by three grid on the image?"
"Of course, Captain Rogers."
"Thank you," he said, moving closer and pointing to the screen. "Nine boxes. The Rule of Thirds says the best focal point for a composition is in these four spots where the lines intersect on the..."
"Hashtag," Tony said.
"I was going to say number sign," Steve continued, "but okay. Those four intersections, or along the lines themselves, that's where I'm talking about. Judging by that, the focus of this picture isn't Agent Coulson. Look, even the color scheme suggests... It's this vase, this photo, this machine and this strange shadow here up above Agent Coulson. That's got to be what's crucial to whatever triggered Natasha."
"What is that?" Maria asked, indicating the shadow. "Is it a person?"
"Kind of looks like one," Tony agreed. "JARVIS blow that up, will you?"
"At once, sir."
"It does kind of look like a person," Bruce said with a nod. "Hey, JARVIS, do me a favor. Crop those four focal points for me and save them as individual pictures."
"The images are saved, Dr. Banner."
"Got a plan?" Tony asked.
"Yeah, I can show those to Tasha first. See if she recognizes them or if they cause any kind of reaction individually before showing her the whole image."
"Good plan."
"Is this really going to help her?" Maria asked, turning to face the three men directly.
"Let's hope so."
Notes: My apologies to actual art majors, I am clearly not one of you, but I tried!