S.H.I.E.L.D. HEADQUARTERS

NEW YORK CITY

3:26 P.M.

TWO MONTHS LATER

The cafeteria was all but empty when Barton trudged in from the hangar. The few agents who remained glanced up curiously as he approached the drink dispensers and poured himself a steaming coffee.

"Agent Barton?"

He turned, gulping down the coffee as a tall, balding agent approached, lugging a valise, a duffel bag, and a briefcase that he immediately recognized. He stopped, suddenly attentive.

"I'm Agent Hawthorne from down at Forensics," the man introduced himself in a heavy southern drawl. He brandished the briefcase. "This here's Agent Romanoff's luggage. We finished strippin' it for evidence a while back and it's just been sittin' gatherin' dust in storage. Ordinarily we'd'a returned it to the owner by now, but… under the circumstances…" He grimaced apologetically.

Barton merely nodded, too exhausted to reply.

"Anyhow, we can't really hang onto it any longer, seein' as it's private property and doesn't really qualify as evidence, so the deputy director said we oughta give it to you, soon as you got back from Okinawa."

Barton set his cup aside. "Yeah, I'll take care of it."

He stuck the proffered briefcase under his arm and slung the duffel bag over his shoulder.

Hawthorne passed him the handle of the valise. "Well, I sure appreciate that."

"Yeah, no problem," Barton said. "Thanks."

He headed out of the cafeteria, dragging the valise behind him.

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, and few agents walked the halls as Barton plodded through. He briefly considered taking the luggage back to his apartment, but as the locker rooms were considerably closer, he found himself moving in that direction instead.

Like the hallways, the men's locker room was empty save for a few stragglers. Barton passed only one or two half-dressed men as he headed toward the niche where his locker was located. A couple more were chatting nearby with towels around their hips, and he could hear the shower running.

He reached his locker and eased the heavy duffel bag onto the floor, propping the briefcase against the dusty green lockers. He mindlessly twiddled in the combination and pulled open the metal door.

The inside of his locker was a jumble of t-shirts, socks, hoodies, and sneakers, mostly in purple, as well as a few spare arrows, a backup collapsible bow, a stick or two of bowstring wax, and a half-empty water bottle. Barton began scooping up armfuls of the mess and cramming it into the upper cubby; with any luck, he could fit the luggage into the lower compartment.

He cleared out a space and turned around. He paused, looking at the luggage, and found himself reflecting vacantly on all the times he'd seen her carrying these very same items into hotel rooms and through airports and onto waiting quinjets. A pang of sadness tugged at him. These were likely the last things she'd handled before she'd vanished, and though they'd been touched and examined and prodded by forensics agents since, this thought made them feel almost sacred.

He crouched by the duffel bag and unzipped it. Inside was the assortment of weapons he'd rummaged through at the safe house: pistols, knives, rifles, incendiaries. He lifted her Glock from the bag and turned it over in his hands; she was undoubtedly the last person to have used it. He distinctly remembered her using it in the shooting range mere days before Operation GOLDFIRE—the recurrent bang as she'd fired at the moving targets, the satisfied smirk she'd tossed his way after hitting them all perfectly. Something stirred in his chest at the memory. He missed that smirk.

He put the pistol away and tugged the valise toward him. While she was never without a wide variety of weapons, she always packed lightly when it came to personal belongings. The valise was smaller than the duffel bag, and Barton opened it to find only a few articles of clothing and a few toiletries.

His gaze fell on a blue button-down shirt. He gently took it out and unfolded it, the material soft in his hands. And suddenly an image sprang to his mind, dazzlingly clear, of her wearing it—arms crossed, brow furrowed as she listened to whatever Coulson had been saying. He remembered exactly how her fiery hair had looked against the pale blue, and how she'd tugged her lips to one side, thinking. And then she'd looked right at him, her green eyes searching his face, reading his response without his needing to say a word.

The quiet, twisty feeling in Barton's chest wound itself around his heart and squeezed. He stared down at the shirt and swallowed hard.

He glanced up swiftly to check that no one was in view. Then he pressed his face into the shirt and inhaled. But after sitting in a storage closet for four months, any scents that might have clung to the material had faded. Subdued, he carefully folded the shirt again and settled it back into the valise.

Finally, he pulled the briefcase toward him and opened it. He lifted out her laptop and placed it on the bench beside him. This, too, he had seen her use countless times on missions; he could clearly picture her bending over it, hair falling forward, eyes focused on the screen, conversing with him even as her fingers danced across the keyboard.

Barton powered up the laptop and it blinked to life, already unlocked. He supposed a SHIELD technician had disabled the password protection; no one could be expected to guess Romanoff's password. He lightly ran his fingertip across the keyboard, preoccupied by the thought of his hands touching what hers had touched…

Barton's gaze was drawn by a notification icon in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, over which was superimposed a red number one. Curious, he clicked the icon and a bubble popped up: Line 04998070910 has been disconnected. Learn more

He clicked 'learn more', and a dialog box appeared in the center of the screen.

SECURITY KEY:

A cursor blinked expectantly in an empty input bar.

Barton hesitated. Whatever this was, it might be important; he wondered whether he should take it to the Technology Unit. The laptop had undoubtedly been searched for evidence, and it seemed unlikely that this would have been missed. But if it had…

A flashing message suddenly appeared in the dialog box. FAILED TO INPUT SECURITY KEY. PROGRAM SELF-DESTRUCT IN 60… 59… 58…

Barton froze, staring at the screen. Then he grabbed the laptop and sprinted out of the locker room.

By the time he careened into the Technology Unit, the timer had ticked down to 35.

The main bullpen was scattered with people at computers, and he skidded to a stop at the nearest desk.

"Hey, could you stop this countdown for me?" he asked tersely, setting the laptop in front of the technician.

The technician switched her attention from her screen to Barton's and immediately started typing, her fingers racing the countdown as a steady stream of characters poured through an info box that had appeared.

"What application is this?" she asked without looking up.

"No idea," he said urgently, eyes fixed on the countdown. 26… 25… 24… "But I think there's evidence on it."

"Evidence of what?" she demanded.

Barton scowled at the timer. "Evidence of why Agent Romanoff left."

18… 17… 16— The countdown stopped abruptly, the number 16 blinking in place, and Barton's chest lightened hopefully.

"Is that it? Did you—?"

SECURITY BREACH DETECTED. DATA TERMINATED.

"Shit," the technician snapped, and she seized the laptop and raced toward a door in the back. Barton sprinted after her as the door drifted shut behind her, and when he pushed it open, a second door was swinging on its hinges at the end of a short hall.

Barton rushed down the passage and at last stepped into a small, windowless office, edged with overflowing file cabinets and tall, cluttered bookshelves. A thin man with stringy blond hair slouched behind a desk, squinting at Romanoff's laptop through wire-rimmed glasses, his fingers already flying across the keyboard. Amidst the disorder on the desk, Barton glimpsed a nameplate upon which was embossed CHARLES MAXWELL.

"...but as soon as I tried to overflow the buffer, I got this error," the technician was saying, peering over Agent Maxwell's shoulder at the screen. "I was just hoping you could restore the data."

Barton circled around and leaned onto the untidy desk, watching intently as the man's rapid typing brought up window after window of scrambled characters.

"Okay." Maxwell's calm, soft voice contrasted the urgency of his fingers. "Let's see what we're working with here."

A page appeared into which an unbroken stream of zeros and ones was rolling. Even Barton, by no means a technological expert, could recognize it as binary code. Maxwell's fingers stalled on the keyboard.

"My god," the technician breathed. "Is that the ghost drive?"

"Yeah, unfortunately." His fingers continued just as quickly, matching the speed of the incoming digits.

"Well where's this coming from?" the technician asked tensely, leaning onto her palm.

"I think it's part of the programming; I can't countermand it," he replied.

"Can you translate it?" Barton spoke up.

Maxwell punched in a command with his fourth and fifth fingers, and an error message flashed briefly across the screen. "Nah, looks like it's just random input."

There was a pause during which Maxwell drummed his fingers rapidly on the desk, watching as more digits streamed in.

"Could you run a data scan?" the technician asked.

Maxwell raked his fingers through his long hair. "Yeah, but that won't necessarily be very helpful, the rate the overwrite's coming in. Unless…" He slapped the desk. "Unless I slow the input!" His hands returned to the keyboard, typing furiously.

"Well, if you've got this covered, Max, I gotta get back," the technician said, turning to leave. "Got a fire to put out. Agent Barton, I'm leaving you here with Agent Maxwell; he'll help you figure this out."

"Alright, thanks, Leary," Maxwell called after her without looking up.

Once she had gone, a moment or two of typing passed before Maxwell half-glanced back at Barton.

"You can pull up a chair if you want," he offered.

There was a swivel chair pushed back against the wall. Barton pulled it up to the desk and sank into the leather seat. For the first time since entering the office, he began to study his surroundings properly.

The office was small, snug, and lit dimly with the aid of a desk lamp. The walls were lined by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and metal filing cabinets. Directly across from Barton hung several peeling posters depicting skinny green aliens with enormous eyes, flying saucers rimmed with glowing lights, and a slippery sea-serpent emerging from a lake.

Barton swiveled his chair around and found himself facing an enormous world map that was hanging behind the desk, littered with colored thumbtacks and newspaper clippings and blurry photographs, lengths of red yarn connecting pinpoints. His gaze slid between scribbled memos on multicolored Post-it notes: 'see "Cryptid" documentary for Nessie proof', '"The Fact in the Fiction" ch 4, Black League parallels', '"Creatures of Myth" podcast ep 12, discussion of Bigfoot'. A stockpile of evidence that Maxwell was a conspiracy theorist.

At last, Maxwell flopped back into his seat and let out his breath, hands slipping off the keyboard.

"Well, whoever rigged this sure knows their shit," he said, pushing up his glasses to rub his forehead. Barton turned to face him. "That program was set up to completely erase itself from the drive if it sensed any unauthorized access—that's why it self-destructed when Leary tried to hack it—and not only that, they actually programmed the ghost drive to… basically overwrite itself, which I have to admit is kind of awesome. So the imprint the data made on the internal memory when it was created is being filled in by the binary, meaning we couldn't even get a feel for what the program looked like. I can't stop the overwrite process, but I slowed it down, which is gonna give the data scan I'm running enough time to give us at least a partial snapshot of the negative space that's still there. Anyway." Maxwell suddenly laughed, looking sheepish. "Wow, I just realized you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. Sorry. Hope I didn't bore you to death." He stuck out his hand. "I'm Special Agent Charley Maxwell, by the way. Everybody calls me Max. Probably should've led with that."

"Agent Clint Barton." Barton shook his hand, amused.

"Glad to meet you." Max sat back in his chair and gestured to the laptop. "So do you have any idea who set that up? 'Cause I'm not gonna lie, that's some pretty sophisticated programming."

"Well," Barton said quietly. "My guess is that Agent Romanoff did it."

"Agent Romanoff? Oh." A broad smile crossed Max's face, and he nodded slowly. "Yeah, no, I could see that. No, that makes sense." He fell silent, smiling down at his knees.

Something in his knowing grin prompted Barton to wonder whether he knew her. Before he could ask, however, Max sat forward in his chair and said earnestly, "You know, Agent Romanoff's just phenomenal with this sort of thing. I mean, plenty of field agents learn basic hacking skills, you know: disabling surveillance, deactivating security systems—you know, practical stuff. But Agent Romanoff… she really knows her way around tech. You know, I've always said if she wasn't such a darn good field agent, she could come down here and put me out of a job." His voice rang with admiration.

"So you know her?" Barton asked.

Max chuckled. "I'm not sure I can claim that privilege. I have met her, though. We've talked, you know, a few times." His tone was proud yet humble, like a groupie who had met a celebrity and was trying to sound casual about it.

Barton was beginning to sense something of an infatuation in Max's vacant half-smile, but supposed he couldn't fault him for it—Romanoff tended to have that effect on people, he reasoned. He was on the point of remarking, rather spitefully, that he'd never heard her mention Max, but restrained himself, unsure why he'd had such an impulse.

Max blinked. "Wait. So is this her computer?"

Barton nodded. "Yep."

Max turned back to the laptop, frowning. "Not the one she used on Op Goldfire, surely?"

"Same one."

Max's frown deepened. "Hm. Weird. You know, we searched everything for evidence after Harbin, laptop included. This should've come up."

Barton didn't reply. That Max had overlooked this seemed highly unlikely; the fact that a SHIELD technology analyst had consulted him suggested that he was a veritable expert—sort of an I.T. for the I.T., Barton thought. He was therefore unsurprised when Max, the barest hint of skepticism coloring his tone, asked, "How'd you find this, anyway?"

"There was a notification when I booted up the computer," Barton explained. "It said a line had been disconnected; Line oh-four-nine-nine… eight…" He shook his head. "Can't remember the rest."

"A line," Max repeated, rubbing at his stubbly beard. "You know, that could make sense," he said slowly. "Because if Agent Romanoff had terminated the connection on her end, and erased it… but the other person, for whatever reason, didn't close off their end until recently, then it wouldn't've come up when I ran the search, but it might still send her this notification."

"A connection?" Barton raised his eyebrows. "So by 'line'…?"

"Communications line, yeah," Max confirmed, nodding.

"So she was contacting someone," Barton murmured, his mind already running through a list of people she wouldn't have wanted to reach over the phone. An informant, perhaps; someone whose trust she'd gained while working undercover? Maybe someone from Russia? A KGB turncoat?

"Sure looks that way," Max was saying. "And, I mean, again, we'll know more once the scan's complete. It wouldn't surprise me, though. Fits my theory, too," he added, almost to himself.

Barton looked up, curious. "You have a theory about all this?"

"Oh—yeah, I do." Max dropped his head and chuckled. "You'd probably say it's insane."

"Tell me," Barton urged, edging his seat closer. After months of searching and theorizing, he was eager to hear a new perspective—a new potential lead.

Max hesitated and licked his lips. "Well—it's like this," he began, his tone hushed and excited. "When I first heard that Agent Romanoff had gone missing, I knew something was off. Agent Romanoff wouldn't just up and leave like that; I figured there had to be something else going on."

"Yeah." Barton nodded. "I thought the same thing."

Max nodded back. "So I wanted to know more," he said. "And as it happened, Commander Hill asked me to double-check the security footage from the night Agent Romanoff disappeared—just make sure my colleagues hadn't missed anything, see if anything else had been tampered with, try and restore that thirty-second chunk that was missing."

"And you saw something," Barton breathed, his heart rate picking up.

Max sighed and looked down. "I wish," he said. "But as it turned out, their initial assessment was right. There was nothing on that tape, and that chunk of the footage was gone for good."

Barton's heart fell, but he remained silent, waiting.

"But because of my involvement with the case, I was able to pitch to Forensics for a look at the data they collected in Harbin," Max went on. "It was high-security stuff, but in the end, they agreed to let me take a look at the photos they got of the safe house."

"So you saw something in the photos."

Max nodded seriously, his glasses flashing in the lamplight. Barton's pulse quickened again.

"What was it?" he demanded.

"Well, this much won't be news to you," Max began, "but the number nineteen-sixty-three was written on the wall in pencil."

"Right," Barton said. His excitement wilted slightly.

"And it got me thinking." Max glanced surreptitiously at the door, then back at Barton. "We've all been so focused on where Agent Romanoff went, where she is now," he said. "What if we're asking the wrong question? What if it's not where, but when? What if Agent Romanoff is trapped in the year 1963?"

Barton blinked, his anticipation sliding down into his stomach. He stared at Max a moment, trying to determine whether or not he was joking.

A soft ping issued from the laptop, and Max's face brightened.

"Ah!" he said, rolling his chair back to the computer. "Alright. Let's see what we got." Seeming quite unconcerned about whether Barton had taken his hypothesis seriously, he typed in a one-handed command and a window popped up, full of neatly-ordered information.

Barton moved his chair closer, anticipation rising again.

"Hm." Max highlighted an item on the list: Fn: DComm (sig=?) "Definitely a communications line. Scrambled. Agent Romanoff could've used this without SHIELD Comms picking up on the signal."

"So a private line," Barton murmured.

"Completely private. And score again: Looks like Agent Romanoff shut the line down on… December 27th of last year."

"The day before she left for Harbin," Barton said quietly. The date was emblazoned on his memory—it was the last time he'd seen her.

He'd been down to SHIELD medical that day for his weekly physical therapy session (he'd still been out of commission due to his leg injury at the time). She had been in for her Operation GOLDFIRE briefing, and afterwards they'd walked together to the parking garage. It had been a cold December night, and she'd walked close to him as he'd hobbled awkwardly down the sidewalk with the aid of his crutch. They had chatted about this and that; he'd questioned her about her mission, she'd asked after his injury, and he'd ribbed her about having to miss SHIELD's annual New Year's party (though in truth, his own anticipation had been dampened by the prospect of attending without her). Once they'd reached the garage, they'd simply said goodbye and headed off to their respective vehicles, and he hadn't seen her since.

He remembered her touching his arm as she'd told him goodbye; he had noted it as slightly unusual at the time, but had thought little of it. But every time he'd pored over that conversation afterward, every time he'd searched it for some look, some word, some gesture that hinted at her upcoming departure, that little touch had stood out to him: the only possible clue that she had known she would not be seeing him again.

December 27th. The last time he'd seen her face, the last time he'd heard her voice, the last time she'd touched him.

"Wait," Max said suddenly, catching Barton's attention. He looked back at Barton. "Agent Romanoff disappeared pretty close to the China-Russia border, correct?"

"Yeah, pretty close." Barton frowned. "Why?"

"Hm." Max turned to the laptop again. "Well, whoever Agent Romanoff was communicating with was close to the border, too."

"How close are we talking?" Barton asked intently, leaning toward the screen.

"Pretty damn close," Max said. "A few hours off the border, in Vladivostok, Russia."

Here is the longest chapter so far! Forgive my totally made-up technobabble haha, I have no idea what I'm talking about :D (And Max isn't loosely based on Fox Mulder at all hahawhatareyoutalkingabout)

By the way, I wanted to give a special shoutout to Rushmanoff and weepingangelofnewnewyork for reviewing chapter 1. I'm glad you liked the chapter and I hope the rest of the story lives up to your expectations!

And thank you so much to everyone who has followed and favorited! I hope you're enjoying the story:)