To those who noticed the lack of security in the last chapter- don't worry! I hadn't just forgotten about that! … and I am actually thinking of doing a one-shot about Harry's rubbish security and their general not-there-ness, but it's only the early development stages at the moment.
Velveteenrabbit also asked for clarification on the timeline. Marvel movieverse wise, I am pretending Iron Man 3 is not part of the canon, which is why Tony still has his arc reactor. I am also wilfully ignoring the romantic relationship between Tony and Pepper… because I don't like Pepper- mostly thanks to Iron Man 2.
Great Expectations is taking place about a month and a half after Thor 2 and Agents of Shield: The Well (can't remember off the top of my head what episode that is). Thor has returned to Earth. As for the Harry Potter universe… well I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that it runs pretty much on par with the Marvel-verse.
To Nicci-Sama who gave me a beautifully in-depth explanation of room-numbering in the Navy- thank-you! It's really great to get that kind of input, and I love making things as accurate as possible. That said, as a writer, in many senses I also work like a screen-writer; I am a selective informant and will shamelessly twist facts to fit my means (however, I normally tell people when I do so). Steve getting lost was essential for the last chapter, so yes, whilst it may be unlikely he'd really manage to get lost on the Helicarrier because of the numbering system they're likely to use, I'm more than happy to pretend that all of that is irrelevant for Steve. But I'll be sure to keep in mind the system for later, don't you worry!
…. Now, I think that's it. Thanks again for reviews/favorites/follows! Read on and have a good week!
Cinna
SPOILER FOR THOR 2. LIKE, UBER SPOILER.
Part One: Great Expectations
Chapter Seven: Interesting Conclusions
The Helicarrier is as laughably easy to hack into as always.
It takes Tony all of 8 minutes, from arrival to receiving SHIELD's secrets, spread out on his tablet like some sort of super-spy buffet and he can't help but think that after his first security breach SHIELD would have learnt their lesson and hired a more capable department. Apparently not. Really, he would have like to have seen more than a 43 second improvement after his last break-in. For the good of the world of course.
Fury could go on and on and on all he liked about how it was a breach of protocol and security, yada-yada-yada, but Tony liked to think that he was really doing the closet pirate a good deed. To him, it was a demonstration of exactly how phenomenally, ridiculously incompetent his IT department really were. And, well… Fury hadn't exactly given them homework when he called them in, so what else was Tony going to do? Walk in blind and ignorant? He thought not.
And really, expecting Tony to not search for more information when summoned to the Helicarrier (especially after his tryst with Loki less than four hours ago… which he hadn't said anything about… was likely to take it to his grave in fact) was like expecting an alcoholic to say no to free alcohol.
Needless to say, Fury was less than surprised when the first words out of Tony's mouth when he and Bruce entered the conference room were: "Is this about John Doe 33678?"
Fury just sighs and motions for the pair to sit down. Tony's not sure if he should feel disappointed or victorious.
"How long?" Agent Hill asks politely, pulling out her command tablet.
"Eight minutes twenty-three seconds." He says smugly. Her lips purse.
Bruce sits down; Tony follows. Wordlessly he hands the doctor his tablet, the file on the Falling Man still open. They'd fallen into a silent agreement months ago; Bruce wouldn't complain about the questionable morality of Tony's methods, so long as he made sure to share the results with him. It worked well.
"Well?" Tony demands as Bruce scans through the document. A look of horror grows on his face. Fury sits down.
"I'd rather not have to repeat myself." He rumbles, which is as good as confirmation in Tony's books.
A minute later Natasha saunters in (and really, that's the only way to describe the roll of her hips), Clint only fifteen seconds behind, though he enters via a much less conventional way; the airvent. Tony thinks it says a lot about the group that no one so much as bats an eye at his entrance, though Fury does glare at the covering that will now have to be replaced. The archer must cost him a fortune in repairs.
Thor arrives not long after, though it would be more accurate to say his voice does. They can hear his voice rumbling through the walls well before he even walks through the door. A pretty woman in plain clothes tows along behind him, looking slightly unsure of herself.
"Friends!" he cries happily, "It has been a while! Are you well?"
Natasha sends the pair a nod, Clint waves, Bruce smiles and Tony jumps back up to grasp the Asgardian's forearm, "Thor, buddy! It's great to see you! How've you been?" Tony is not nervous, no he is not, even if he did sort-of unintentionally have sex with the god's little brother and oh Jesus he could crush me with his pinkie-
- No. Not nervous at all.
In a bid to alleviate his sudden onset of terror, Tony turns to Thor's companion, "Doctor Foster. Your work on the Einstein-Rosen Bridge has been enlightening." She smiles graciously as Tony shakes her hand.
"Thank-you Mister Stark. I look forward to seeing a refinement of your arc reactor technologies." Tony sends her a rakish smile.
"So do I."
They sit down Thor and Doctor Foster on the opposite side of the conference table to Tony and Bruce. An empty seat lies between the Asgardian and Fury. Someone is missing and Tony has a fairly clear idea of who it is.
"Say Nick," he drawls, sitting back in the ridiculously uncomfortable chair, "Seems like we've got someone missing. Where's the Capsicle?" Fury glares at him for the unsolicited use of his first name. Tony takes it as a victory. Agent Hill calls someone to pick up their wayward soldier.
The Captain arrives some nine minutes later, blushing furiously (or at least, as much as a super-soldier can blush furiously) but looking determined to not bring attention to his tardiness.
"Get lost again?" Tony asks lightly when he sits down; Steve scowls at him. Tony is tempted to do something juvenile like poke his tongue out.
"Everything looks the same." He defends quietly. Bruce offers him a sympathetic smile.
Fury clears his throat and the room's attention shifts to the Director.
"At 0726 hours yesterday the Helicarrier encountered what we first thought to be a stealth craft; possibly stolen Stark tech" Tony scowls at the implications that would have had, "It turned out to be this-" a picture appears on the screen behind him and the room draws a collective breath of shock. It is clearly a snapshot of a man, falling from the sky. He looks unconscious.
Even Tony and Bruce, who have already seen the footage, feel uneasy at the image.
"We were at an altitude of 28 000 feet when he appeared. Attempts to save the man failed."
"Where did he come from?" breathes Doctor Foster. Fury's eye darkens.
"We don't know." And oh but Tony would bet his left leg that Fury hated having to say those words, "Analysis of our sensors found trace energy readings a fraction of a second before he appeared on our radars." Graphs replace the Falling Man that fill Tony simultaneously with excitement and dread, "The tech's thought it may have been some combination of Asgardian interstellar transport and Tesseract powered wormholes. They found readings similar to both."
Tony suddenly feels ill.
"That was as much as my agents could get from it. Doctor Foster I'd like you to analyse the readings, see if you can glean anything else- Doctor Banner will assist you when needed. I want to know exactly what it was that brought him here, and if it happens again I need the ability to pinpoint its location- we cannot be caught unawares again." They nod, apparently happy to be ordered around.
Out of nowhere, Clint barks a laugh; it sounds mildly hysterical. Natasha's eyes narrow.
"Something funny Agent Barton?" Fury asks; deadly quiet. Birdbrain looks like he's struggling to hold a straight face and Fury looks about ready to hit him.
"I-" he laughs again, a faint snicker, 'Sorry- shit, haha- it's just-" he gives in trying to be serious and hides his face behind his hands.
"It's raining men!" he suddenly blurts out, laughing all the way, "Hallelujah it's raining men!" he dissolves into a fit of giggles and bangs his head onto the table. Tony smirks at the archer's display. Fury looks like he's about to have a coronary and Natasha appears sorely tempted to end her partner. The Capsicle and Thor are confused to bits, bless them. Bruce, Agent Hill and Dr Foster hide their grins behind their hands.
"That, Agent Barton, is a very astute observation," Fury finally grinds out. Clint's next giggle is borderline terrified, but he's slowly getting his face back under control, "But I fail to see its relevance to the case at hand." Of course you don't.
Clint calms down, sending Fury an apologetic look. Natasha firmly ignores him.
"Ahh, right," Bruce looks awkward after Clint's little outburst. He turns to face Doctor Foster, "Is it possible the guy's a throwback from the convergence?" Tony's not surprised that Bruce knows about it- he had after all been the one to hack into SHIELD and share with him the information about the disaster in Greenwich.
Thor shakes his head, but Doctor Foster looks thoughtful at the suggestion, "It's possible," she says slowly, "We'd noticed anomalies quite some time before the convergence, so I don't see why it wouldn't occur after the event. But it's been over a month. We haven't seen any evidence of portal activity further than about three weeks. It could be that our sensors just weren't strong enough to pick them up though."
Bruce smiles, "We'll look into it." She smiles and nods back.
Fury clears his throat and looks down at the control tablet in front of him. If Tony thought the Director had feelings, he'd say the look on his face was uneasy.
"There's another thing. We went to retrieve the body, expecting the man to have died on impact. He was not." Footage of men retrieving the body and the flurry of activity that follows show's up.
"That's impossible." Natasha states bluntly- the first words she's said all morning- as they watch in horror as a gurney rolls away from the helicopter. From between the swarms of people, they can see an arm hanging limply from the side, blood dripping steadily onto the tarmac. It may just be a trick of the light or a bump of the stretcher, but it almost looks like the man's fingers are twitching.
"It should have been, but Subject 33678 seems to be sturdier than he looks." He sends Thor a pointed look, "Despite injuries which should have been deadly, he refuses to die. I've had numerous doctors predicting that he would never wake up, if he even managed to last the night.
"He managed to do both, though he's only woken once, and was insens-"
"Twice." Steve interjects solemnly, eyes glued to the screen. Fury's eye fixes on the super-soldier like a lopsided hawk on a fat pigeon.
"Care to explain Captain?" he asks, deadly quiet. Steve swallows nervously.
"I got lost… managed to somehow end up outside his room. He was calling out for help."
"And how exactly did you get past his security?"
He looks confused, "Security? The corridor was empty; poor guy said he'd been calling out for ages."
Tony almost, almost hopes the news about more incompetent agents will send Fury into a berserker rage, were it not for the (legitimate) fear that he might be the first one the Director shoots. He turns to Hill, "Who's on guard?" he snarls in a remarkable display of restraint, though Tony's quite sure he saw Fury's hand twitch down towards his gun for a terrifying moment.
A pause as she checks her tablet, "Cage and Moore, sir."
"Discipline them."
"Yes sir."
Fury focuses back on Steve, who suddenly looks like he wishes he'd never said anything, "He ah… he said his name was Harry- didn't give me a last name. For all his injuries he seemed pretty cheery- didn't seem to mind that he didn't know where he was. He's British; or at least he had a British accent. Said something about his people coming to pick him up soon. I'd thought he might have been part of the British Special Forces or something." Fury and Agent Hill share a loaded look.
"We've had no contact from any agencies. We'll send a query out- see if it brings up anything." Hill makes a note on her screen. The room falls silent, every member apparently chewing on the information. The disturbing footage of Harry on a gurney plays on repeat behind the Director.
"Is it possible he's Asgardian?" Bruce asks intelligently.
"Blood test came back negative." Comes Fury's flat reply, "33789 is most certainly human."
"Mutant then? Could he be like…ahh" Tony clicks his fingers as he tries to remember the guy's name, "Logan? Xavier's man?" Fury shakes his head.
"The doctor's found no presence of the X-gene, nor any other anomalies known to provide humans with super-human traits."
"Technology then?" Tony asks, "Did he have something on him that could have slowed his fall and dispersed the damage?"
Agent Hills retrieves a shoe-sized box from under the table and he eyes it with interest.
"The belongings found on 33678," she offers, pushing the crate over to him. The dry rasp it makes across the glass gives him the impression that there's not terribly much in there, "We found nothing that that was likely to have been used for such a purpose."
He raises an unimpressed eyebrow, "He fell into the ocean. Kind of doubt he'd have managed to keep hold of the thing. Chances are whatever it was- if it was an it- absorbed most of his energy and was destroyed on impact. It would have just been lost to the great big blue." Hill sends him a look that says like I didn't fucking think of that; I know where you sleep Stark so shut the hell up.
He smiles at her sweetly and opens the box.
And laughs at what he finds inside. He almost feels insulted.
"What is this? Lost and found? What do you want me to do- track the owners or something? I'm sure someone's missing their stick very much." A vein pulses violently in Fury's neck.
"These, Stark," he says with an impressive level of serenity (and honestly it's just too easy and fun to stop pushing at Fury's buttons), "are the objects found on 33678's person. My agents have been unable to open the small pouch he had been carrying and had not found an explanation for its apparent indestructability. I was hoping you would be more successful in shedding some light on the matter."
Tony looks at the contents with renewed interest. An indestructible and inaccessible pouch sounded kind of cool. Presumably, it only opened for its owner (keyed to their genetics maybe?), which would be pretty damn convenient. He closes the crate and slides it to the side of him.
"I'll see what I can do." The Director nods in grudging appreciation; he stands.
"One other thing." Fury says before their inevitable dismissal, "The boy showed signs of torture," Tony shifts uncomfortably, memories of Afghanistan creeping back to him, "No one's come forward if he is an agent, but I don't want to rule out the possibility. If someone is after him, they must be stopped- if he's got information valuable to the peace of the planet, I want to know it. His room is to be under constant guard; Rogers, Romanoff, Barton and Thor, you are now effectively on babysitter duty-" Clint scowls furiously, the others seem unaffected, "- no one is to enter his room unless they are from medical, and under no circumstances are you to allow them to do anything to him if they appear in any way suspect.
"And," the menace in his voice cranks up 3000 percent, "If I find out that any of you have left him unattended, then so help me but you will wish you'd never been born." The babysitters look suitably intimidated (well, except for Natasha, but Tony would swear her face is just a concrete mask most of the time) "He is to be kept alive, if for no other reason than to explain why he is alive in the first place.
"Any further questions don't hesitate to ask Agent Hill." He strides out of the room, tails of his coat fluttering behind him. Hill hands Steve a file- presumably about 33678- or Harry.
"I'll go on first watch," he offers (surprise surprise), "five hour shifts sound alright?" Clint shrugs, Thor and Natasha nod their acquiescence.
"We in the same place as last time?" Tony asks, pushing his chair away from the table.
"Yes, I'm sure you know where the labs are, Stark." Her tone is only just this side of snarky. He tucks the box of goodies under his arm, ready to leave, before thinking better of it.
He sidles over to Thor, who's also left the table, ready to follow Doctor Foster like an overly loud puppy. He smiles at Tony's approach.
"Hey Thor, what's the news on Loki?"
The Asgardian's face falls, "My brother was slain in the battle on Svartalfheim. He fought valiantly and bravely to save the universe." I'm sure he did. Tony hasn't heard anything of Svartalfheim, but he knows enough about Thor's shenanigans in Greenwich. He didn't know about his apparent death however. He wonders how the bastard managed to fool his brother into thinking him dead.
He fakes a sad face, "I'm sorry to hear that pal… say, what did you do with the body?"
"He was given a full funeral procession and was sent over the falls in a blaze of glory. Why do you ask, Man of Iron?" Tony wonders who's body it really was they sent over the falls. And, why he had yet to say anything about his late night visitations by a dead man, because really it's not something you don't tell anyone about- he'd tried to take over the world for Christ's sake.
"Oh, no reason. Sorry, again, big guy." He pats Thor comfortingly on the shoulder and hurries down the corridor before the man can ask him any more questions.
Or he can ask himself his own.
Soo there's Chapter Seven for you. I feel like I haven't quite touched upon the scenes of last night with Tony enough in this chapter, but I don't really see anywhere that I can put it in without some serious restructuring, which I am most certainly not doing. So blergh.