At what age was appropriate for special ops to retire? Clint had been dreaming of retirement for years now. It was Natasha's fault. His life had been easy before he'd decided to bring in the Red Room operative he'd been charged with executing.
Scanning the chamber where the nerds were busy fussing over the glowing box they called the Tesseract, Clint determined that Natasha ought to know he was bored out of his mind. Technically the number he had for her was for essential communications only. Hah.
What kind of cake will you bake for my retirement party?
She must have been equally bored, for she replied instantly.
Ice cream cake, duh.
Duh.
What type of cake would you pair with pineapple cilantro sorbet, then?
Lemon. With strawberries on top.
Weirdo.
No one else would eat it.
Shut up.
Who cares? It's your retirement party.
Planning to quit, again?
I want balloons and puppies at the party too. Yes.
And pizza with pineapple on and nothing else. I know.
Yum.
I think I threw up in my mouth a little just thinking about it.
Rude.
I'm so bored.
Really? Couldn't tell.
Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.
One of us lacks a sense of humour. It's not me.
A nerd asked me why my call sign was Hawkeye. I told them it was because I usually watched my targets from a distance and they told me that I could access the rafters from the stairwell.
I told you that you need to start lying to these idiots.
This idiot has two PhDs.
Lean into it. Make a nest. Start telling people you were raised by hawks. They'll believe it.
Fuck you.
Okay but if a human was raised by hawks, do you think the hawks would eventually reject them because they couldn't fly? Or do you think they'd look after the pathetic baby human for the rest of their relatively short lives?
The hawks would peck the baby's eyes out and feed its remains to their real chicks.
DUDE.
Gross!
Why are you like this?
I was raised as a murderer from a young age.
You don't just automatically win all arguments because your childhood was awful.
In Soviet Russia, argument wins you.
Really?
Really.
GTG, TTYL.
Don't die x
After sending their customary sign off, Clint deleted all sent and received messages, closed the app, and checked the time. That had killed… eleven minutes. Great. Only several more hours of monotonous observation to go. He closed his eyes and listened to the scientists babble on about doorways and power sources. They'd be better off sinking this gizmo to the bottom of the ocean, if he had anything to say about it. But he didn't. He was there to watch nerds do nerd shit and shoot anything that he was told to shoot at.
He wasn't sure if this was better than watching Captain America fail to bake brownies, or not.
The smell of Maria's coffee woke Phil and he sighed with disappointment as his dream faded, something about giant, sapient cannoli fighting kaiju. The scent lingered even as he showered. Perhaps the kitchen had finally learned how to make a proper espresso?
Dressed in slacks, socks, and his undershirt, Phil walked into the kitchenette included as part of his accommodation in this dusty base and blinked.
He blinked again.
On the counter was a coffee cup. From Maria's. Folded into a napkin were two raspberry and cream cannoli. Phil scooped them up with appropriate caution and rolled them onto a plate. As the napkin unfurled, he noted that a number had been written on it.
Maria's was over two thousand miles away. There was only one person Phil knew who could potentially bring him a fresh cup of Maria's coffee and cover the distance in the blink of an eye.
"Harry?"
No answer. A disappointment, but a reasonable one. The last time Harry had met with Phil, he'd inadvertently walked Harry into a trap.
"Thanks," Phil said, not bothering to subdue his smile. The coffee was bliss, the cannoli joy. The tart burst of raspberry paired with the sweetness of the cream and the crunch of the pastry… "Thank you," he said again, talking to an empty room like a moron.
He waited, expectant, but there was no answer. Of course there was no answer. There was no one there. He finished the cannoli and smiled into his coffee.
"You're a better friend than I deserve," he murmured.
The napkin, which he'd placed aside after making note of the number written, shifted as if in a breeze. Phil snatched it up to see a message scrawled where it had been blank before.
You're welcome ~ H
Phil snorted a laugh and finished his coffee.
"Next time, bring a cup for yourself, too," he said. "I'd love to see you." There was no answer, but he hadn't expected one.
Instead, he hoped.
"JARVIS!"
"Sir."
"JARVIS!"
"Sir, I am here."
"JARVIS!"
"Sir, I shall be forced to call Ms. Potts down if you insist on repeating my name without instruction."
"... JARVIS, if you call Pepper into my workshop I'll never speak to you again."
"I live in anticipation."
"Why are you so cheeky?"
"You'd be bored if I weren't."
Tony threw a sceptical glance at JARVIS's nearest camera and resumed his analysis of the data before him.
"I just don't get it. It makes no sense. Potter, according to this, according to all our scanners, is a baseline human. There's nothing special about him. Nothing! So how can he do what he does?"
"Magic?"
"Very droll. Now give me a scientific answer."
"Has it ever occurred to you, sir, that there isn't one?"
Tony snorted. "No. All magic can be explained by science."
"'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.'"
"Arthur C. Clarke, baby."
"I realise this might challenge your worldview, sir, but perhaps you ought to consider that he may not be right."
"I refused to accept that."
"How narrow minded of you."
The blunt corners of a spanner dug into Tony's palms until he set it aside. He took a breath, let it out, took another, released. He'd now recorded multiple instances of Potter's so-called magic. He'd gotten results, too, different types of energy spikes that seemed to follow no pattern. But it was data. It could be interpreted. He just hadn't yet worked out how.
"Rude. Now, JARVIS, try to isolate the infrared frequency. Let's see what that tells us."
30th April - 2nd May 2012
Thoroughly investigated underground toilets in Whitehall. Suspect UNSUB flushed toilet and subsequently teleported. Investigate: why Whitehall? Is the UNSUB investigating London plumbing?
Followed trail of rumoured magic to Covent Garden. Crowds gathered to watch magician swallow swords. Can't be healthy. Was not UNSUB, however round the clock watch should be implemented to determine how he could guess the amount of money in my wallet based on its weight. Suspect mind-reading.
Visited local druid hotspot. Stonehenge much smaller than lead to believe. No evidence of any magic performed here, but cultists could be disguised as tourists. Recommend interviewing all civilians who visited Stonehenge in the past thirty days.
Investigated local brewhouse 'Leaky Cauldron' on suspicions of hags. Disappointing lack of leaky taps. Served excellent side of leeks and bacon with the roast dinner, however. Hags thankfully absent. Sadly, UNSUB absent too.
Nick closed the email and pinched the bridge of his nose. Rigel's report was useless. This was why he wasn't one of Nick's go-to operatives. He was unreliable and he was never serious. If the man could make a joke, he would. He'd obviously felt his time was being wasted chasing after Potter.
Well, tough shit. Nick had assigned him to the job and he better do his damn best, or else he could spend the next six months on crime scene clean-up.
He crafted an email.
Do your goddamn job, Lucky. We need Potter.
"Why are we here?" Steve complained.
"Old times' sake," Harry replied, staring down into the bowl of the toilet. It was surprisingly clean.
"That explains… nothing," Steve said.
Harry bit back a smile. He wasn't purposefully screwing with Steve, of course not. But he'd already exhausted all means of investigation into his old life, bar this. This was probably unnecessary, but he couldn't leave any stone unturned. Or so he'd say, if asked.
And Steve's reactions were just so fun.
Harry stepped into the toilet, ignoring Steve's exclamation of horror. He flushed the toilet and was disappointed to note that all he achieved was soaking his feet and ankles.
"Um… Harry… are you feeling okay? I'm going to scoop you out of the toilet, now…"
Water dripped from the cuffs of his trousers as Harry stepped from the bowl. With a flick of his wand he was clean and dry.
"Don't worry, Steve. Just checking one last thing. It seems that the only similarities between our worlds are superficial."
"Can we stick to comparing take-away foods?" Steve asked faintly.
With a glance about, Harry determined they were alone. He grasped Steve's elbow and Apparated them to the flat in Central London that they were staying in.
"Sit down, Steve, and load up Netflix… today I've got a special movie planned for us."
Steve frowned at Harry, perhaps noticing the amusement in his tone, but did as he was bid.
"What are we watching, then?"
Harry grinned. "It's a classic… called Flushed Away."