Chapter 5

"The Gateway has four hundred two-man crew cabins built into the lower decks, from Levels 4 through 9. Level 10 starts the scientific labs, and they continue up the bow-end from Level 10 to 13. The other half of those levels are devoted to the medical wings. We have a full diagnostic lab running in conjunction with the science lab throughout Level 10, so we can keep on top of any new disease outbreaks once Galactus hits. And, speaking of which – " Bruce pulled up to a halt in his whirlwind ship's tour of the Gateway outside the Level 10 lab corridor. "We've cracked the gene sequence for UIC-1. Today marks the end of our four year clinical trials on the vaccine we generated."

Steve whistled through his teeth and folded his arms. The ship was impressive, incredibly so. He had no idea how the dwarves, Nova Corps, and Vanaheim combined managed to complete so much in only eight or so years. The structural integrity of it all seemed sound. Obviously, Bruce was satisfied, and that never came easy.

"You really made it? And it works?" Clint said, flabbergasted. He'd seen, and felt, firsthand the devastation of the original viral outbreak. It was a pain he never wanted to relive.

Bruce smiled like a father showing off a new baby. He ushered them inside to give them a tour of the work stations. "Asgard lent us additional medical minds. Ever since the first war, Xandar has been trying to break the sequence single handedly. With everyone working together, it came relatively easily. And, we were right." Bruce indicated Tony with a shake of his index finger and directed their attention to the monitors. "Tony, you thought it was a viral complex, and that was correct. I thought it was a sentient life form, and that was also correct. It's a microbe, like a bacteria, that uses a complex of viruses like a defense system. It infects the host symbiotically, but certain beings simply can't withstand its viral package, and the ones who can't, die. We had over four thousand susceptible races actually volunteer to inoculate themselves with UIC-1 after vaccination, and none of them showed symptoms."

Clint held his hand up like a school boy. Once attention turned to him, he said, "Ok, for someone that didn't just get a GED because the Princeton Neurosurgeon forced him to, can you repeat that in English?"

Bruce sighed, looking to Tony for translation.

"It means, we shoot you with a drug, you don't die." Tony simplified.

"Well, that's definitely an improvement." Clint said. "Because we all know that would be inconvenient if I died too soon."

Bruce's mouth dropped open in shock at Clint's candor, but Tony nudged him and waved a hand across his throat in a motion that meant "drop it". So, Bruce went on instead.

"Before I show you the rest of the ship, we'll vaccinate you. And don't worry, only four people turned blue after we did this."

:(:):(:):

The Gateway was a feat of engineering marvels; like stepping onto the deck of a real Starship Enterprise. Clint couldn't resist the giddy skip his heart did when he strode out onto that top deck and looked over the world of Vanaheim cascaded in a back drop of stars. The wall behind him was lined in clocks, twenty-three of them all together, with different times and dates and names of planets listed under each. All of their allies, keeping to the same Earth schedule placed in the very center. The bridge itself resembled the Helicarrier. Areas of open space and multiple levels allowed an unobstructed view forward where the two-story windows of the outside world hovered before them. Overhead and in-floor lighting attempted to banish away the constant coldness of space with amber and red hues. All of the consoles were brushed steel, gold, and black polished to an impossible sheen.

What Fury would do to take this baby for a spin, Clint thought to himself, admiring the work of it. He could see the little influences the individual races had on its completion. The architecture screamed of Xandar's precision, and the gold was definitely their touch. The sturdy black bases to the work desk, and the occasional rock ore, attested to dwarf taste, and on he could go. He had to applaud Bruce on the accomplishment.

Now that Captain Rogers had arrived, the mood of the ship changed all at once. The veritable leader of Earth's forces hit the ground running. He ushered the Air Force pilots to the planet's surface first, introducing them to all the mutants and heroes who'd signed on for training. They had six Earth months, which acquainted to nearly six Vanaheim years, in order to get their training down before the borrowed specialists would return to Earth.

"Clint?"

He turned at the sound of his name, and saw the Captain standing just behind him.

"Ready to get to it?" Steve asked. Technically, it wasn't a question.

Clint shrugged. "If you're going to be as good as me and jump into a pit of death, then yeah. I'll make a sacrificial lamb out of you. Got your stuff?"

"In the training center." Steve replied, falling into step beside the archer.

"When's the last time you practiced?"

"Yesterday morning, before we took off." Steve replied.

"For how long?"

"Two hours."

"How many center targets?"

"Four."

Clint paused before they left the bridge to stare up at the Captain. This was a strange dynamic they built. Clint the teacher, and Steve the pupil. He didn't like it. "Only four?"

"It's better than none." Steve replied with a shrug.

Clint thought of the word hopeless, but declined to say it. Steve was trying, he handed the guy that much. But whatever he tried, just didn't seem to work.

His chest was too big, and he liked to catch the string on it. So they adjusted.

Then he started smacking his arm with the string. They adjusted.

His aim was deplorable with anything that didn't have a barrel and a bullet, so they adjusted.

All of their adjustments made Clint want traction afterwards. He could only tolerate so much more. If Steve wanted to be as good as Hawkeye, to be better even, then he had to try harder. Maybe today was the day to hammer that reality home. This wasn't going to be pretty.

The training center was as essential to the Gateway as the medical bay or the science lab. With three hundred passengers on board already, and even more on the planet's surface, they needed a place for everyone to get focused on the task at hand. This wasn't a vacation for everyone to enjoy. War was coming, and the universe needed an armada that it currently did not have. They weren't just training for themselves, they were training soldiers.

Steve directed them to a corner of the room that he'd set up as a practice range. Clear walls rose up on four sides to give them a private space that arrows couldn't escape from. At the same time, the floor had the ability to rise and fall in boxes or towers three stories in height, creating an obstacle course littered in digital targets. Steve's specially made bow rested against one of the walls, with a quiver full of arrows. He'd had the forethought of bringing Clint's own quiver along with him.

"Didn't Bruce say something about this place being climate controlled?" Clint asked.

Steve nodded. He hiked a thumb to one of the clear walls. "Everything is digitally integrated, just touch it and the settings will come up. Why?"

Clint strode over to the wall, tapped it, and, sure enough, the screen came to life like a JARVIS tablet. He scanned along the settings until he came across "climate" and hit the sensor. A drop down menu of hellish choices appeared, of which he found a tantalizing combination and instantly set them. Half a second later, the ceiling dropped twenty gallons of water per minute in rain over them. The heat cranked up to a balmy 105 degrees fahrenheit, and the floor shifted into a three dimensional deathtrap.

"Really?" Steve said, wiping the water out of his eyes uselessly.

"No one said what world this is all happening on, so yes, really." Clint slung his quiver over his back. A faint, familiar magnetic pulse floated over his fingertips, like the caress of a soft hand. He flexed his fingers, and suddenly a black and silver bow appeared from thin air to rest comfortably in his grip. The weapon, designed by Alfheimr, commissioned by Odin, and gifted to him with a string made of an eight-legged horse's mane, the Sleiphner bow was a beautiful sight to behold. It was also Clint's most prized procession. So far, similar to Thor's hammer, no one else had the ability to wield it.

It was tough love time. Steve was an old hand at that from his days in the military. He knew what it took to break men, and now he was getting it back in spades. Clint might enjoy this, a little, but as an Avenger who looked up to Steve, he knew there were some things he never wanted to see in his leader. Weakness, was one of them.

"Here's the scenario, Cap. You have two minutes to hit every target I've laid out on the field. Every one of them. I should really tell you they better all be center shots, but I'll take anything at this point. Your two minutes starts – "

Steve scrambled to grab his bow, found an arrow, set it on his nocking point, and got ready.

"Now."

He ran. Clint stepped back with the Asgardian bow in his hands, and watched the mayhem to come. He didn't need to time it. Leaning against the wall, he watched as Captain America made leaps and bounds over the double basketball court sized area. He climbed the highest tower first, got a good lookout point, and angled his shots down like Clint trained him to do. Then he went down to look for the hidden targets. The rain made the towers and landscape slick and almost impossible to maneuver in without sliding. He hit one platform, skid forward, and fell over the smooth end. He dangled in free air, two stories straight up.

Clint glanced across the training field to see the countless others practicing were taking a keen interest on the captain's pace. Barton fussed with the controls on the wall for a while, but eventually found a way to close them in. So he did. Just as some men and women approached for a better look, the clear walls became opaque, and hid the two men from view. If Steve failed, at least no one else needed to know about it.

Steve reclaimed his grip, dropped down to the next level, and pulled arrows as fast as he could. He missed the first two, and bounded closer to get the edge of their blue rims, two colors outside of the center gold circles. Sweating, drenched, Steve threw himself across the field. Clint saw the string of his bow connect with the captain's arm two, then three times. Each one would leave a traditional archery bruise that would heal within a few hours for the super soldier. Within the first minute, Clint switched off the rain, dropped the temperature on the training field, and let a cool 10 degree wind blast the field. What rain clung to the solid metal towers froze with time. The handholds became impossible to grip. Steve picked up his pace and started firing arrows like a mad man determined to prove a point. His entire body began shaking as his clothing clung against him and stiffened.

When he had enough, Clint hit the pause button on the simulation. The boxes and towers sank back into the floor like stackable Tupperware dishes. His digital targets moved across the now flat floor and lined up in four rows of twelve targets. Steve's arrows snapped free from the targets when the floor retracted, but the digital models remained for Clint to scrutinize. While Steve approached, catching his breath, Clint turned the ambient temperature back up for the two of them to thaw out.

"I got all of them." Steve said proudly.

"You missed two." Clint corrected, indicating them.

"You said anywhere on the target." Steve replied.

"The white part on the outside isn't a target, it's reminiscent of the paper mock up. The blue ring is the furthest portion you can get. And you missed. Twice."

"I got the others."

"Did you?" Clint posed. He turned back, and looked at the clock he expanded on the wall. The timer read a very clear five minutes.

"I thought you said two minutes." Steve said, his pride dwindling a little.

"I did. I just didn't stop you when you went over. If we take out the targets you hit after I called time…" Clint hit a key, and over half the targets disappeared. "So, you got these twenty. Two of them, I said you technically missed. So that leaves eighteen. In those eighteen, two of them were actually any good, meaning that's what I would hang the survival of twenty billion lives on." Clint took the rest of the targets away, leaving two lone ones left. "I calculated how much time it takes for a man to fall forty feet. The same forty feet that's apparently far enough to break bones. That's about one and a half seconds. And I'm being generous with the half a second."

Faster than Steve could see, Clint pulled an arrow out of his quiver and set it on the string to his Asgardian bow. Steve blinked, and the archer was in front of him, arrow drawn back, muscles taught, and the razor tip faced off with the end of Steve's nose. "Six months of a few hours here and a few hours there won't turn you into me." Here it came, Clint thought. the tough love part. "I spent eighteen, twenty, thirty-six hours at a time with a bow in my hand, and an arrow on my string until my fingers bled. I did that for ten years. You're good at what you do, Cap, but unless you devote yourself to this, can you really rest the weight of those lives on your shoulders? What if you lose ten of them? Or a thousand? What if you fail and everyone dies because you wanted to spare me some death. That's not the sacrifice play, Steve, and you know it."

Barton reached into his quiver, pulled a second arrow and fired both simultaneously into the opaque wall. Both ricocheted around the room until, half a second later, imbedding into the center of both targets. He never even looked at them.

"Sometimes the sacrifice isn't yours to make. Sometimes you have to let the other guy fall on the grenade." Clint said. He walked away, opened up a doorway into the wall and passed through the other side. Steve needed some time to consider what he really planned to do with his fate.

:(:):(:):

Hawkeye sat on the ledge of the forty foot metal tower, looking down at the floor beneath him. He thought about the angle of the jump, how he should fall, the way he might have to twist and shoot upward rather than fall down and shoot at the same time. He wondered what his target was, why he might make that jump, and whether or not he would run from his responsibility.

Discovering the multiple functionalities of the training room made it one of Clint's new favorite places to hide. He liked the smoky, tall walls which hid him from the view of all those others who strove to train with him. Years of being a spy didn't just turn off the moment he settled into life, though his sharper attitude had seemed to mellow. He needed to get that part of him back. The one that had died away with failed relationships and lost loves. If this was happening again, if the universe once again faced the coming destruction of a stronger Galactus, then he needed to get back to the roots of what it meant to be Hawkeye. He'd lost that part of himself in some ways. Age, years working under the harshest job conditions, took a toll on him that the mercy of an ancient race banished away. He had two functioning bow arms again, no brain tumor, his hearing, his eye sight, and lacked the death sentence of stomach cancer. He had a life left to live, and some of it was going to be very happy.

Maybe Steve resented him for that aft-end trip through the portal. Tony sure didn't appreciate his showing off, but Clint had to push some boundaries again. He wasn't a rule-follower. At least Clint Barton, spy for SHIELD, wasn't. He never had an exit strategy, flew solo, and handled the hardest missions because he knew he could face it. He needed that back again.

"Clint, I'm coming up, so don't shoot me."

Barton was never surprised to hear Tony's voice even in the places he cordoned off as private. Stark sailed up the metal telescoped tower and landed at Clint's back. He took a few strides forward, and sat beside him with the metal legs of his Iron Man suit swinging over the ledge.

"Planning to jump?"

"Already did eighty times. Where were you?"

"Checking the containment mathematics, and watching some sad video footage of Cap getting his butt handed to him by you. If you wanted to make a point, you could have just shot him in the leg and told him no."

Clint smirked and shrugged. "You saw it?"

"No one else did, but yeah I hacked in." Tony leaned forward and looked down at the inflatable catcher below them. He could see the indent of Clint's body smacking into the dead center, and a little groove where the archer must have scrambled off the wide side of it and re-climbed the tower for another jump. "High enough?"

"According to the computer, it is. I land on my back every time." Clint told him, looking down. "That's how I jump. I jump out, twist, fire straight up. Like that time in New York with the Chitauri. I never land feet first. I'm not sure how I end up breaking my legs."

"Maybe you don't jump. Maybe you fall." Tony supplied.

Clint had considered that already. He'd have to be dangling by his hands over the open space and drop straight down. He wouldn't have the chance to turn in place and hit his back.

"Are you saying this is going to be like that scene from the Lion King. Tony, am I really Mufasa?" Clint joked.

Tony shoved him, nearly right off the tower. "Stop that! If you are, then I'm Simba, and that makes T'Challa Scar, so . . . no. Just no."

Clint chuckled.

"He's not going to be ready, is he?" Tony asked, turning the joviality back to the heart of the matter.

"He'll never be ready." Clint said flatly. He turned to see how the news might hit. Tony lifted the faceplate on his helmet to face him.

"He goes down to Vanaheim for a while, he'll have the time."

"I'd need to go with him. By the time we leave, I'll be in my eighties."

"He could go at it alone."

"He's distracted, busy, and leading an armada we don't yet have off the ground."

These were words Tony knew but never voiced. He didn't want to face that reality, and his endless enthusiasm for altering the fate of the worlds mirrored only Star-Lord and Steve Rogers. Most had already consigned to the fact that Barton would be dead in almost six years, even the archer himself. Tony decided to leave the argument for now.

"Alfheimr sent an emissary with support for the dwarves." He said.

Clint expected the conversation shift. "Who did they send?"

"Pointy."

"Haladarrel? He came himself?" Clint asked, surprised.

"He brought some special metal from some dying-something to make something else that only elves can deal with. Yeah."

Clint thought about his bow and the metal the elves collected to form it. The Blue Mountains of Alfheimr had a considerable trove of such precious commodities, but sharing them happened only rarely. In the previous universe wars, Alfheimr was always left to its peace. They occasionally lent support, but the private elven race, for the most part, didn't travel far beyond its corner of the Nine Realms System. Since the announcement of Galactus, the borders of that secret realm opened for the first time, and the inhabitants poured out support for the infant warships in production. The Nova Corps, Asgardians, and many others teamed to create the now four-hundred ship strong armada established on the Vanaheim surface.

Haladarrel himself was the king of the Elven realm. He succeeded another, Rinon, who held the title a mere six hundred years with Queen Fehreh. Very suddenly, they announced their decision to pass the throne to another. The Avengers met Rinon on various occasions throughout their history, and Haladarrel was an outrider for him, or a scout. Elves very rarely had children, due to the nature of their long lives and the very small window for which they might accomplish such a thing, so the regency was often passed to a close supporter of the current king. Haladarrel proved his worth once when an uprising of evil Elves, called Southlings, came and attempted to uproot the entire Alfheimr society. His actions saved his people then. It came as a shock when King Rinon let go of his throne so quickly, but none doubted the right for Haladarrel to lead. With a new wife stood at his side, and, as a pair, they ushered the realm into a new age. Elven tradition remained intact. This personal visit was something of a nuance.

"He didn't send Reylano? Or Linnor?" Clint asked, surprised. Both were well known as right hands to the king.

"Rey's still back in Alf world. Lover-boy came with his brother, who assured Steve that Linnor's not going to make a play for every woman Vanaheim has to offer."

Clint snorted. He'd believe a lie like that when he saw it. Linnor was a notorious flirt, and any elf who planned to keep him bridled would only meet with his own despair. Linnor did have a keen respect for his brother, Faraday, however. Most elves were single children. To have such a family bond held a great deal of rarity. "For all of our sakes, I hope he succeeds."

"You going down to meet him?" Tony asked.

"Haladarrel? He isn't coming here?"

"Not for a few days, at least. He brought over a thousand elves with him to help with the construction. He wants to make sure everyone is settled in before seeing the Gateway. At least the pointy-ears can reach things on tall shelves."

"Dwarves aren't short, and you know that." Clint said.

"They're shorter than me."

"The one you met just happened to be a midget."

"Which validated everything I ever thought of dwarves before this all started."

"They should really be called Earth Giants. They're bigger than Thor, for crying out loud."

"I think they'd object to the term "Earth". They prefer the term 'Waterblubber' I think."

Clint turned to him. "That isn't even remotely close to Liqui-Terra."

"Loose translation."

Figuring he had enough of the back and forth with the likes of Tony Stark, Clint shoved the Iron Man suit sideways and off the edge of the tower. The satisfying yelp from Stark as he fell brought a smile to his lips, right before the suit's repulsers kicked in and he stopped himself before hitting the ground. Clint stood, pulled out his bow, set an arrow on his string and stepped of the ledge. He fell straight down, feet first, head facing skyward with the arrow pulled back. He fired at the digital target in the ceiling above him, and heard the satisfying SMACK as it hit gold, right before his legs collapsed into the inflatable cushion waiting for him instead of the cold metal floor.

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