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Entry tags:
Avengers - Kansas by Way of Alderaan
Have been dithering about posting this one for too long, which is usually I sign I should just do it already.
Title: Kansas by Way of Alderaan
Genre: Gen, Friendship
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~10,000 words
Warnings: Language, Interrogation
Synopsis: They wanted information. Too bad he didn't have any to share.
Author's Notes: For the "alien abduction" square at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hc_bingo.
Disclaimer: I do not own theses characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available on AO3.
Clint was battered and bruised but, more importantly, had survived yet another battle. He hopped down from a less than stable perch atop a less than stable building, thoughts of a hot shower and a night of bad television occupying his brain. He heard the chatter of the others, most voicing similar requests, and then he heard something that just did not sound right at all.
There was a rush of noise and a blinding light and the edge of whatever it was nicked the already crumbling building and caused a crap ton of bricks to cascade towards his immediate vicinity. That was all well and good and he might have even gotten out of there relatively unscathed, but one of the bricks managed to clip the side of his head and send him down into an inelegant sprawl. That was less than good, but still better than the hands, unknown and far stronger than they had any right to be, that grabbed on to him, tugged him somewhat upright, and then dragged him towards something large and shadowy and yeah, he probably had a concussion from the knock on the head because nothing made sense, the least of which being the blinding light returning and the feeling of being ripped apart for half a second, only to be shoved back together again in the other half and then for the whole process to repeat with dizzying cyclicality.
The hands still held him, unyielding despite his truly pathetic attempts to break free. His head pounded and his vision swam and the only thing he could make out were walls shiny and shining and the lumbering figures beside him. One of those figures tugged on him again and he tried to follow, tried to stay on his feet and at least pretend he had some dignity, but there were steps, steep and slick, and he tumbled downward, head smacking into something decidedly not soft. There was noise and the hands shifted and he knew he was about to be relocated and he should probably pay attention to where on the off chance he figured a way out of wherever the hell he was, but consciousness was a fleeting thing and the darkness was oh so very welcoming and he collapsed into it more than a little willingly.
He next awoke in a place decidedly not shiny or shining. It was dark enough that he worried he had either gone blind or been blindfolded, but there was no pressure of cloth, no tightness aside from the ache in his head. He caught the slightest glint of light off of a cuff around his wrist and followed that to a tiny crack that seemed to delineate a doorway of some sort. He tried to push himself up to go to it and found that he was really and truly unable to do so. For the first part, he was chained in place, the links loose and light and incredibly sound, granting him enough range of movement to raise his arms slightly and shift his legs, but not much else. For the second part, even trying to sit upright made his head throb and stomach churn and reignited the memory of falling masonry connecting with his skull.
“He wakes,” a voice declared. He could not tell where it came from, only that it was loud and bold and echoed off whatever walls that surrounded him.
A light shone down from seemingly nowhere, bright and blinding and blocking out everything save for the circle it cast around him. It was enough to see the pallet-like thing he was bound to, but cast the rest of the room in shadows. He felt as much as heard the footfalls of one of his captors approach, the floor reverberating with each step, the thin pallet bouncing in time with the action. It was definitely sound that he heard though, a voice clear and deep and oddly ominous as it declared, “Let us begin.”
He had absolutely no idea how much time passed from that point forward. There was simply questions, endless questions, with stomping feet and enraged voices when he didn’t have the information they required. There was no torture, aside from one of the looming figures tripping on a chain while he paced and inadvertently tugging Clint’s aching shoulders taut and jarring, but there was also no food, no water, no relief to the questions being asked again and again and again.
They started simply, as though verifying who they held. They wanted to know where he was raised, who his parents were, who his family was, and where he had trained. He couldn’t tell if they liked those answers as he received exactly no feedback from any of that. Then again, his usually flippant mouth was at work, so his answers were less than proper and perhaps they were reining in their rage until he crossed some line known only to them.
When they asked about the tesseract, he knew they had gotten down to business. They called it by a myriad of names, some of which he had heard before and some that made him simply guess they were still on about the glowy box of doom. He was tired by then, so desperately tired, and his head pounded with their footsteps and his throat croaked out its smartass replies.
“He’s lying,” one of them accused.
“He worked with the Liesmith, of course he has learned the trade,” another responded.
It took him far too long to sort that out and, when he did, he wanted to bang his head all over again. Loki. It all came down to Loki. The guy fucked with his mind and fucked with his life and he thought everything was done and gone and of course it wasn’t, it never would be, things like this didn’t just fade away or die, they lingered, tendrils wrapped around everything and anything, suffocating the life, the light, out of anything that remained.
“Less worked with and more was his puppet,” he admitted bitterly, providing a truth he didn’t even like to admit to himself. He remembered those days, the bone weary exhaustion, the being shoved to the back of his own mind and forced to bend to another’s will. He had fought then, and found it just about as effective as his current battle. He’d push, he’d pull, he’d thrash about, and it made abso-fucking-lutely no difference to anyone on the outside. Then again, he had managed to take the body shot versus the head shot with Fury, aim at systems versus people on the hellicarrier, make the guy pulling the strings think the puppet was faulty instead of becoming sentient instead.
There was a difference in the air around him now, he could feel it as a tangible thing. He swore he heard the smile in his captor’s voice when he said, “His lies lessen; progress is made.”
The questions changed then, focused more on what he knew of Loki, what he knew of his plans, what he knew of not just what happened, but what the long game was in the grand scheme of things. The problem was, he simply didn’t know. Loki wasn’t exactly big on sharing with his minions, providing things more on a need-to-know basis and, frankly, he hadn’t needed to know, so he didn’t. He had his suspicions, the logical outcomes of what he was provided mixed with what he knew of what everyone else was doing - he spent the time in his mind watching and and waiting and reasoning - but there was nothing for certain and most definitely nothing he was going to share with the assholes holding him now.
His head had gone from throbbing to a constant pain, teetering between a heavy weight too great for his neck to hold and lightheaded from the lack of food and steady bloodloss from the wound that still oozed into his eyes. His captors were on about verse thirty of why Loki was a bad man and why Clint should just give him and all of his secrets up when the words stopped making sense. And by words, he meant both what was said to him and what he slurred back. He was too tired, too weak to keep this up without a break and still have a chance of making it out in one piece, and so he stopped. He closed his eyes and risked another accidental near dislocation and just sank into the hardness of the thin pallet to let the hell of the world he currently was in drift away.
There was shouting, there was yelling, there was a slap to the face that hurt like fuck but still did nothing to keep his eyes from fluttering shut. He caught a glimpse though, the barest hint of the shape of the hand that struck him before it darted back into the shadows. It was then he suspected he wasn’t just not in Kansas anymore, he was in Alderaan levels of trouble. He giggled at his own joke, which just confused them more, but confusion meant pausing, meant talking amongst themselves instead of at him, and he took advantage of that to try to drift off again.
He honestly wasn’t sure if he succeeded or not because the next thing he knew, there was a noise even louder than their bickering, and the thin line of the door exploded inward, crashing against the far wall after slamming against the edge of his pallet. His chains rattled and he tried to push himself up to see the new arrival, managing to at least turn his head slightly instead, and found an all too familiar outline backlit from the golden glow of the passageway beyond. Even without the hammer currently in hand, he would have recognized the massive form of his teammate and friend and he managed a garbled, “Hey, big guy, how’s it going?” before he flopped back to contemplate the light above him and hoped Thor kicked some major ass.
The shadowed figures weren’t so shadowed anymore, but he didn’t pay them that much mind, nor did he pay mind to the hammer sailing back above his head, knowing that if Thor was there, all hell was about to break loose and he kind of wanted to enjoy the show, but he also kind of wanted to pass out, so he settled for staying where he was and listening to the entertainment instead, head tilted to the side to catch what he could when he could manage to force his eyes to stay open for more than a second or two.
What he heard was impressive.
Thor laid into them verbally, casting absolutely no doubt on his status as warrior and prince of an entire fucking planet. He used words like "abuse of station" and "brother in arms" and "under sovereign protection" and something that sounded suspiciously like an accusation that taking Clint was an act of war, not just against Midgard, but against Asgard itself as they had forged an alliance and Clint wondered if SHIELD actually had something formal with the planet, or if Thor simply meant the times they had sided against the others on Game Night. It was that of all things that seemed to make an impact though. Well, an impact beyond that Mjolnir made as it was thrust against a wall during a particularly dramatic gesture.
The people who took him, his captors, trembled, as in visibly shook. They were nearly equals in size to Thor, yet not a one would challenge him or raise a hand to him. Two cowered back, another stood his ground, and yet another was dumb enough to speak. "We have the right to answers," that one said. "We have a right to know what fate may await us should we not act now to stop it."
Clint felt the need to speak up at that. It may have been a stupid need, but it was a need nonetheless. "Dude, I told you I don't know what Loki had planned," he slurred. "He never told us and I'm honestly not sure if he knew the endgame himself, or just hoped for the best."
Thor's head snapped to him then, and if he thought the guy was enraged before, it was nothing compared to now. "Fandral, see to his care," he ordered tersely, and a man that had been standing in the doorway stepped forward, another smaller figure at his side. More shadows came forward, blocking the exit, and he thought he made out the shapes of the guy even bigger than Thor and the girl with the long ponytail who had visited during the New Mexico incident, but he could have just been seeing things at that point.
It was definitely the Pretty Boy from New Mexico that knelt at his side now, massive hand cradling his face while he spoke over Thor's bellows to ask, "What injuries do you bear?"
Clint was rather enjoying listening to Thor rip the others a new one, something about violating a direct edict from some sort of court that was possibly royal in nature, and so he found it hard to pay attention to Pretty Boy, even when he repeated the question. It was, however, impossible to ignore the voice of the smaller form beside him, and his head cranked to attention when Natasha demanded, "Barton, focus! You obviously have a head wound, but did they do anything else to you?"
He tried to shake that head, but found that movement truly sucked so he stopped the effort pretty damn quickly. "Head's from the building falling on me. They haven't touched me 'cept to drag me around and to try to wake me," he reported hoarsely.
Natasha grabbed his chin and tilted it towards the light, exposing what he was fairly certain was a decent sized bruise left over from his attempt to doze. "I doubt buildings collapse in the shape of handprints," she commented with barely controlled rage. "What else did they do?"
"Nothing!" he insisted, his own voice doing nothing to help the ache in his head. "Seriously, Tasha, they grabbed me, locked me down, and started asking questions - nothing more. Well, nothing more than a single slap which, let's be fair, you know me, I probably deserved at that point." He tried to grin to lessen the seriousness of the situation, or at least make her quiet down enough to let him enjoy Thor's continuing diatribe, but that seemed to be a failure on all points.
The Pretty Boy looked even more pissed than Tasha, as in edging towards Thor levels. "They did not treat your wounds?" he growled. "They did not offer you aid or nourishment?"
This seemed to be a big thing to him, and Clint tried to think back to the cultural sensitivities seminar he had been forced to take, but could only remember the exact number of tiles on the ceiling, and the trajectory needed to get a pamphlet page folded into a dove to lodge itself in the rafters. Even Thor had quieted though, waiting for his answer, so he offered a semi-meek, "Um, no?"
The huge guy from the doorway stormed in at that point, and it looked like they were in for diatribe 3.0, which normally he'd enjoy or maybe ask for popcorn but now was almost too much noise and he really wasn't used to laughing, lovable Thor being quite so serious for so long, and so he cleared his throat and tried to ignore the way Nat's weapons were already clearly armed, and asked, "So, what's the chance of unlocking these things and getting a glass of water?"
There was a cracking noise that sounded suspiciously like a bone breaking, unless maybe the discharge of static from Thor getting all worked up sounded different in this world because he was fairly certain Earth was a place far, far away at this point, and then something vaguely key-like was dropped into Pretty Boy's waiting hand. The chains were off soon enough, and he tried to push himself fully upright for the first time since everything had started far too long ago. The room spun around him in a truly dizzying way though and he felt himself lurch to the side, only to be stopped by Natasha's quick reflexes.
He let his head drop to her welcoming shoulder, wincing at the impact, and muttered, "What the hell? I can usually take much more than this."
She shifted slightly to twist and meet his gaze as she explained, "Nearly fourteen hours without food or water, plus a head injury, plus a trip on the Bifrost, and that was after a full battle - it's a wonder your still conscious, Barton."
That seemed reasonable, or at least her expression said she thought so and he was willing to go with that for now. "Give me a minute or two and I can disprove that wonder," he offered.
She shook her head and her soft curls tickled his nose and he really hoped he wasn't getting blood on her because they had been on enough missions together for him to know how much a pain in the ass washing that out of her hair was. "Let's get you out of here so Thor and his buddies can have some fun," she said instead, hands sliding into a more supportive position.
Those hands were gently but insistently pushed away though, replaced by a set much larger and impressively stronger. Pretty Boy lifted him to his feet, and then took one side while Ponytail took the other. "Let us make amends for his treatment," Ponytail said, supporting him easily enough that he suspected she could have carried him bridal style all on her own. He was kind of glad she refrained.
"You are his Shield Sister, and have full rights, but we ask that you grant us this penance," Pretty Boy requested from Clint's other side. He couldn't tell if it was diplomacy or smarm he was spewing, but had to give the guy credit for trying.
Natasha stood with her usual controlled grace, hands up but gauntlets still armed. "I hauled him all over Marrakech the last time he had a head wound like this - you two enjoy," she told them both. Her tone was glib, but even Clint caught the way she hovered, the way her hands twitched as though ready to either catch him or start shooting at a moment's notice.
"Take him to the Healing Chambers," Thor ordered. "I will meet you there once this matter has been settled." Clint had the feeling that the "settling" would not take long, and had a brief regret of missing the good part, before he decided concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other was more important. Each step awakened more aches and pains - some from the battle, some from the building, and some from laying relatively still for so long - and he really hoped these Healing Chambers held something of the analgesic or eighty-proof nature or that he could be brought back to SHIELD Medical instead where he could get one and sneak out for the other.
They got him out to a hallway seemingly made of solid gold with touches of marble and fires burning in burnished holders along the walls, flickering and gleaming and setting his headache up another notch. The last of Thor's buddies from New Mexico were there and one immediately headed for the room they had just left, while the other handed Natasha something with an almost ceremonial bow before leaving to join in the head bashing fun. Clint craned his neck to the side, which made his unsteady steps falter even more but his personal crutches easily compensated for it. When he saw what she now held, he sighed, "Oh, thank fuck."
Natasha, for her part, rolled her eyes and explained to their new friends, "He's a little attached to his toys." She shouldered the quiver though, and held the bow in a relaxed and ready grip, and it was enough to put Clint's mind at ease, or at least a great deal of it if nothing else.
"The bond between a warrior and his weapon is legendary," Pretty Boy defended him, already worming his way into more of Clint's good graces. "Would you not feel incomplete without the gauntlets you wear, or the blades you keep at your sides?"
Natasha looked at him consideringly before she archly told him, "I have far more than that at my disposal."
Her tone was less than impressed, but it also held a hint of humor. It was this humor that Ponytail picked up on and she grinned, "Well said, Sister."
Pretty Boy spent the next few minutes playing the mock victim, lamenting the women teaming up against him and slipping in more than a single entendre that was doubled. It all seemed in good fun though, and it took Clint's mind off of his aches and pains for a bit as his attention was split between following their conversation and continuing to stay relatively on his own feet.
The conversation stopped and so did they and Clint looked up and expected to find transport of some kind but instead found himself standing in front of a set of huge and ornate doors. There were guards on either side and they looked less than impressed at their offering, right up until Ponytail said in a truly admirable and commanding voice, "We bear the Archer from Midgard, Ally to Thor, Son of the AllFather. Grant us entrance to treat the wounds grievously gifted to him by our own kind."
The guards nodded and the doors swung open with barely a touch to reveal a room deceptively simplistic despite the continuation of the shiny. He looked around, unsure of himself for a moment until his eyes caught the row after row of runes carved into every pillar and slab. He thought back to the trip and realized the hallway had also been carved in a similar manner, as had pretty much everything else he had seen so far. "Oh, hey, we're on Asgard," he muttered more to himself than to anyone around him.
Natasha, of course, heard him, and congratulated him with, "Good job on those keen senses there, Barton. So glad to know you're the one that watches my back." To Pretty Boy and Ponytail, she offered a far more serious, "His concussion must be worse than I thought. If your doctors aren't accustomed to our physiology, I'll need to take him home to ours, regardless of the effects of the Bifrost."
"Out technology can be adapted for your kind," Pretty Boy assured her. He guided Clint towards some sort of slightly raised dais and, when Clint stumbled on the stairs, bodily lifted him with embarrassing ease and set him atop a bed-like thing that seemed to wrap around him as soon as he was settled.
He was going to ask where the doctors where, or what the thing he laid on did, or even where the rest of the team was, but the moment he lay back against a really comfortable pillow, the bed lit with a soft glow and made an equally soft hum and he really and truly could not find it in him to keep his eyes open. He was just going to blink, or maybe do that thing where he closed one eye and then the other, taking turns so half of him got to sleep while the other half was totally awake for real, but instead found it incredibly difficult to pry himself conscious enough to do so. Natasha leaned down over him, ruffled his hair in a way both comforting and slightly pulling on his head wound, and promised, "I have watch." That was enough for him, and he let himself drift off, dreams of battle and beer dancing about his damaged skull.
He eventually woke reluctantly, far too comfortable to move yet with an overwhelming feeling that there was something else he was supposed to be doing. There were voices nearby, not quite hushed, though quiet enough that he probably could have drifted off again if he tried. He would have tried too, except that feeling was just too damned strong - the bed he lay upon was cushy in just the right places, the room the near perfect temp, but the light that pressed against his eyelids was odd, and the voices only slightly familiar, the feel of the fabric that his arms rested on far too smooth to be even the fancy sheets Stark insisted they all needed let alone those of Medical.
It was probably that which woke him fully. He questioned why he would even think he needed to be in Medical given that absolutely nothing hurt, and then the memories of the battle, the interrogation, and everything else came rushing back. He shifted, remembering the way the bed had closed around him and expecting to be held in place, but the sides fell away neatly and he found absolutely no resistance to be had.
"He wakes," a voice said, unfortunately one only recently familiar.
He pushed himself up to a sitting position and quickly found Pretty Boy sitting on a ledge nearby. "Is that a thing with you guys? Like the Asgardian version of 'Good Morning, Sunshine,' or something? 'Cause your friends said the exact same thing." He looked around, trying to get the lay of the land, and found he was in exactly the same room as before. There was no natural light, no hint of sky, and the torches burned merrily on at precisely the same levels, giving him absolutely no clue as to how much time had passed.
"They are not our 'friends,'" Ponytail insisted from his side. She looked truly disgusted by the prospect, which he supposed was fair considering their behavior. Not all humans were sunshine and puppies, so it was only fair that the same we true of Asgardians.
He was going to ask what happened to them, suspecting a great and artful tale if Thor's past sagas were anything to go by, but found it was entirely unnecessary when the god-like prince in question told him, "Your captors have been dealt with within the fullest extents of our laws."
He gave the big guy a little wave in form of hello, and found it enthusiastically returned. It made him feel a little bit better about the serious tone his friend used, but also made him wonder if anyone was going to elaborate on that or if he was going to be left in the proverbial dark.
Natasha got up from where she was seated, leaning up against the side of his bed, and turned to face him. Despite the fact that Asgardian senses were about a thousand times better than theirs, she whispered, "Sore subject. The men broke several dozen cultural taboos and personally offended Thor by taking you." That at least explained the lack of storytelling, though hinted that she herself knew enough of the tale for him to get it out of her later, when there was less chance of offending their hosts. Louder, she asked, "How are you feeling?"
She reached forward and gently touched where he knew he should have a giant lump on his head, but he found his anticipatory flinch was for nothing. He took a moment to take stock of himself, doing an internal inventory of injuries as well as visually looking to where he knew he should have marks. He found absolutely nothing. Well, that wasn't true. He found the dirt and grime still remained, the flecks of dried blood that clung to his skin and hopefully would wash out of the fancy fabric he was surrounded by, but there was no pain, no discomfort, and no actual physical wounds. "I'm... fine?" he asked, more surprised than articulate. While he understood technology was a wondrous thing, this surpassed anything he had seen in the past, including things SHIELD had stolen from dubious sources.
She eyed him doubtingly and he submitted to her scrutiny while she tried to disprove him, even going so far as to hold out his arms to show her that the slight bruising from the cuffs and chains had faded to nothing. The ache in his head was gone, as was the accompanying dizziness, even the hip that had been winged by debris during the fight felt fine. His vision was sharp, his muscles tensed and relaxed on command which boded well for his reflexes and, honestly, all in all, he felt like he had just woken up from a decent night's sleep after a week of doing nothing more strenuous than challenge Stark to create a machine that would heat his Toaster Strudels without making them all burnt and crunchy on one side. His stomach chose that moment to rumble though, possibly at the passing reference to food, so he amended his assessment to, "Er, maybe a bit starving though?"
Thor laughed at that, deep and booming and rather proving that even he had been toning down the volume while Clint slept. "Many are famished after a Healing; it is a sign of success!" he advised, earning nods of agreement from the others gathered. Clint tried not to think of the audience he had while he slept, especially one involving not just his teammates but people he had either never spoke to before or barely shared a sentence with, and was thankfully distracted when Thor promised, "A feast awaits as soon as you say the word."
As good as food sounded, a feast sounded even better. He had been willing to settle for a Power Bar from the emergency pack Nat usually carried if she was going anywhere with a potential timeline of over an hour, but the prospect real and actual food and maybe even something more than bottled water was more than he could have hoped for.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and said, "The word?" which earned him a chuckle from Thor and his buddies and an eye roll from Natasha. "On the condition someone tells me just what the hell happened to bring me from Jersey to another planet and how you all figured out where I was because, really, I've got nothing."
Ponytail tilted her head at that and he really should probably find out her name at some point, if for no other reason than he'd probably slip and call her by the moniker sooner rather than later. "You do not remember your transport?" she questioned.
He shook his head and pointed to where his wound should have been, feeling the trail of dried blood beneath his finger. "Beaned by a brick," he explained. "I didn't even really see the guys who took me until they started asking questions."
There was a collective round of frowns by the Asgardians, though Natasha looked thoughtful, as though some missing piece of the puzzle had slid into place. He briefly wondered if he had crossed that invisible cultural line she had warned him about by even mentioning the guys who took him, but was disproven in at least that when the guy that made Thor look tiny smirked and commented, "Perhaps that is why he was captured so readily - they took advantage of his existing injuries."
Clint thought he was being given far too much credit at that as there was no way, no how, that he could have stood up to a handful of Asgardians on his own, but the others were nodding as though this was a thing, an actual possible thing, and Natasha was severely hinting he should go with it, so he did. At the very least, he stayed quiet and let them draw their own conclusions. For all he knew, denying it would make it seem like Thor had weak allies or had chosen poorly or was a lying liar who lies about the strength of humans, and there was no way he was going to not have the back of the guy who just totally had his.
There was a procedure and decorum to be had in all of this though, so he was promised that much of the tale would be told at the feast where others could hear the saga, and was directed to wash first because it was rude to show up covered in blood when there was a water source readily available. His audience didn't leave, which was odd, but he had changed in worse situations in the past so he tried to give it no mind. He rinsed his arms, neck, and face and was going to call it good to go, but Natasha unbuckled his vest and pried off his undershirt and made him swipe his torso down too, and then damn near dunked his head as a whole under the running water to get the dust and debris from there as well.
He toweled himself dry with a sinfully soft cloth, and made a few ineffectual sweeps across the legs of his uniform pants, refusing to strip down completely despite intimate knowledge that Asgardians, or at least Thor, had absolutely no qualms about wandering around public areas less than fully dressed. His watchers seemed satisfied with that though, and he really tried to ignore whatever Ponytail and Nat were whispering about while gesturing in his half naked direction when he walked back over to eye his dirt encrusted armor warily. He might be clean, but his gear most certainly was not, and he wasn't sure how that was going to fly, gathering-wise.
Thor solved that by presenting him with a tunic in hues of purple, black, and gold. He took it because even he knew you didn't turn down such things when offered by a prince-god of millions of people, and found it to be of course of the highest quality. It was sleeveless like his usual vest, and wrapped snugly around him, securing at the side with a catch that looked more like his bow than a standard buckle. The fabric itself was like the stuff the sheets had been made out of but somehow stronger, and he had the overwhelming feeling that it would put Kevlar to shame if given the chance. Natasha handed him his quiver and bow and they slid into place like the missing limbs they were, and he finally felt more like himself than he had since this whole thing had begun. He would have questioned the armament for feasting, but the others still had their swords, spears, and iconic hammers, so he figured this at least was deemed acceptable, and went with it.
He did question why Natasha was not gifted with anything and still wore her usual jumpsuit, even though she seemed perfectly fine with the situation. It was Nat herself who explained to him, possibly because he was smart enough not to actually say anything to the others and risk offending them, that her suit and gauntlets were seen as her personal armor and weaponry and, as they were undamaged in the current debacle, there was no need to replace them. He did notice that her hair was pinned back from her face with something far fancier and shinier than anything he had ever seen her use on her own, so perhaps she was not ignored after all.
Suitably dressed, they left the Healing Chambers to head towards wherever the feast was to be held. The pathway was partially inside, covered by artistic arches and surrounded by inlaid columns, and partially outside, where it seemed as though space itself bore down around them wherever his vision was not filled with looming buildings and waterfalls the size of small countries. They passed the guards along the way that might have been the same as before, or might have been their identical twins or some sort of equivalent of clones for all he knew. There were similar figures stationed in various areas along the way, armor pretty much identical and faces mostly concealed, the barest hint of individuality or perhaps job-specific markings along the trim.
The fifteenth set of columns that they happened across supported a doorway to a truly impressive chamber. Gold and gleaming like everywhere else, this one was filled with tables overladen with food and drink of all sorts, some of which he even recognized. There were people milling about, some carrying platefuls of food or a tankard of something he could not quite discern and some seated with the same, already digging into the feast. And feast it was - he seriously doubted he had ever seen so much food in one place before, and that included the multitude of shindigs Stark had hosted since Clint had moved in at the Tower. There were meats and fruits and things that looked candied and sweet and breads and rolls and a thousand and one bowls and platters to serve it all.
"Wow," he said, truly under-expressing himself. "This... this is... wow."
"We apologize that we have not had time to ready a true event in your honor," Ponytail told him. "Thor has spoken of your likes and dislikes and, hopefully, we have provided more of the former than the latter in our short notice."
Clint turned to Thor questioningly and asked, "Am I missing something here?"
Thor lowered his head slightly, and his voice with it, and replied, "This is an apology, or at the very least, the beginnings of one. We hope that you accept it in the good grace it is given."
Clint was going to protest that, really, a few hours of being questioned wasn't that bad, and then it hit him. This was not just for the transgressions of a few misguided Asgardians; this was for the transgressions of one that was once considered a prince and the prime example of his people. This was those people's attempt at making amends for what Loki had done, even though they had absolutely nothing to do with the wrong that was committed against him in the first place.
He tried to remember his diplomatic training, or least something beyond the "don't shoot your hosts unless you really need to" that Coulson had always drilled into him. He also tried to ignore Nat at his side, who was undoubtedly waiting for him to turn to her for prompting. He decided he could manage this one his own, or at least should be able to, and replied, "Your gift is most welcomed, even if it is unwarranted."
That seemed to do the trick as Thor smiled widely and clapped him on the shoulder in a way that damn near shoved him right into the room. Several people stopped what they were doing and offered a bow in their sovereign's direction, and others did that respectful nod thing that Clint was starting to get used to. As they walked deeper into the chamber, he had a brief second of wondering if at least the one guy on the left had actually bowed at him instead before deciding that there was no-way no-how that would happen and that they were simply giving Thor his props or the Asgardian equivalent thereof, and he focused on looking ahead and not tripping and making a fool of himself and his teammates by default.
Thor led them all the way to the head table which, yeah, should have been expected. There was a man there with a white beard and hair to match and an eye patch that looked like it was riveted directly to his skull. Beside him stood a woman draped in fabrics that made the nicest thing he had ever seen on Earth look like rags in comparison. And he did mean stand as both rose at their arrival and he had a sneaking suspicion that these were Odin and Frigga and, wow, okay, there's one for the journal he never got around to keeping.
Thor and his father had some sort of unspoken conversation that ended with Thor calling the room's attention which meant all noise and action ground to an utter and complete halt pretty much the moment he opened his mouth. "My friends," he boomed, even louder than he usually did at the Tower. "I give you two of the Midgardians Avengers, the Archer known as Hawkeye and the Warrioress known as the Black Widow. I know them as comrades and as Brother and Sister in Arms; I ask that you grant them the respect they have so earned."
Clint was mortified having so much attention on him, and took comfort in the fact that Natasha was frozen in place beside him. They were used to skulking in the shadows, hidden from view for a reason, not set on display for all to be seen. This was new. This was different. This was making him question breaking his training and make a run for it even though he was fairly certain Tasha would take him down if he tried. If she didn't join him, that was.
The room seemed to bow as one, save for Thor's parents, whose tilted heads served as an end to it a moment or an eternity later. Thankfully, that was it. No further grand speeches given or expected, only food and drink to be had. The masses began to mill about again, the god-king and god-queen sat back down and began to converse amongst themselves, and Clint let out a relieved breath, only to have a secondary one knocked out of him when Ponytail patted him on the back and urged, "Now we feast!"
The food was good and plentiful and the drink strong enough that he knew he should limit himself if he was to make it through to morning. Any time he paused, it seemed more was heaped upon his plate, until finally he waved his hands and insisted he simply did not have room for more. He knew he had a decent appetite, just as he knew Thor put him to shame on a near daily basis. This though, was impressive. Apparently Thor had a usual eating mode, and a feasting mode, and he was clearly in the land of the latter for the time being.
Between Thor and Natasha, he finally heard just how the hell he was brought to the other side of the known universe. The bright light that he vaguely remembered had been the Bifrost, his captors miscalculating by roughly a foot without the usual operator's guidance and assistance and damaging the already ravaged building upon their arrival. They grabbed him and took off again, apparently having only distracted some guy named Heimdal who apparently was a gatekeeper or ticket-taker or whatever for a few minutes so time was of the essence.
The team had thought Clint had been crushed by the falling building. Hours were wasted as they dug and searched and Tony upped his sensors to new and frightening levels and yet still only found a handful of rats and a cat they decided to name Trouble. It wasn't until they reached what would have been ground level that they found the telltale imprint of knotwork left behind by the Asgardian system. Thor tossed out some feelers homeward while the others still searched and the Heimdal guy confirmed there had been an activation without his approval. Natasha was chosen to travel with Thor as Clint's Shield Sister, though it was possible the Asgardians had confused the meaning of SHIELD at that point, and it took mere hours to find him after that.
Clint knew the story from that point forward, or at least as much as was going to be shared in front of inquisitive ears, so instead the conversation switched to talk of the battle itself and how it compared to those Thor and his friends had fought in the past and what they thought each other should have done versus what they actually had done and achieved.
He picked at the remains of his plate, torn between making himself sick and being rude by not finishing it all, and listened to the tales being told around and about him. He blamed the near food coma for why it took him so long to realize a lot of the conversations were petering off, and the ones that remained seemed to feature his own name more often than not. It shouldn't have been a surprise, and yet it still was, when a huge brute with a brownish beard gestured in his direction, and even stared directly at him while he muttered something he couldn't quite make out from his position.
Natasha was to his right, and so he leaned over and asked, "What is that all about?"
She shrugged, just as much in the dark as he was, so he turned to his left and asked Ponytail instead. "He wishes to see a demonstration of your expertise with your weapon," she explained readily enough.
Clint made a face, certain he had misheard. "Here? Now?" he verified, pretty sure she meant later with far fewer people, a far lower alcohol content, and a hell of a lot more open room. "Besides, aren't-" he started to ask, but stopped himself when he realized Odin and Frigga were long gone.
"If you wish," she said, perhaps a tiny bit too eagerly. She gestured to where several people were arm wrestling, and several more were tossing knives at a target at the far end of the room. "Others are already showing their prowess in feats of mastery in hopes of gaining either glory or a bedmate on this night."
Clint didn't want a bedmate, not right now and not with Natasha narrowing her eyes at him knowingly, but he also didn't want to let Thor down. He looked over to his friend, who smiled and shrugged without a care in the world. "I already know your worth. I believe they question my version of the tales as much as they question your ability."
That may, possibly, have been worse. Clint knew how good he was and no longer constantly felt the need to prove it to himself. Technically it was his "worth" that was being questioned but, really, from the way Thor phrased it, it was also the validity of Thor's own word. He had worked with the guy, read his file, done an entire report and more on him. Honor was beyond important. His word was his life. His word was what at stake. He sighed, and resigned himself to a show even as a not so small part of him wondered what it would be like to have the chance to challenge a warrior of legend, drunk as he may be, and smack him down.
"There are targets already here," Ponytail baited. "We can move to the training grounds or clear an area suitably back should you prefer."
"I should be able to make it from here," he offered, giving them an out to give him one of his own.
Ponytail smirked as if that was what she had been going for all along. Nat rolled her eyes and sniffed his cup, but notably didn't try to stop him.
A surprisingly little amount of finagling latter, and a path was clear from where he sat to the target. He debated going around to the other side of the table and pacing it out, but heard one loudmouth audibly scoff that clearly one of so small of stature would fail this task at such a distance. So he stood and pulled an arrow from the quiver at his feet, and readied his bow.
"Three shots?" Pretty Boy suggested.
Clint didn't even look his way when he replied, "I only need one." One shot, one show, one victory, or something like that.
He took his shot and hit his target and knew before the resounding thud and answering applause that he had hit his mark. He moved to sit down again, but the loudmouth was still at it and strongly implying it was luck, pure and simple. The loudmouth took a shot of his own, from nearly seven paces closer than Clint had done, and the bolt landed close enough to his original arrow and with enough force to make it wobble.
"Barton..." Natasha warned.
Big Guy held out his quiver for him and Ponytail and Pretty Boy smiled eagerly while Thor simply sat back and guffawed. The final guy was quiet as ever but looked contemplative, though that may have been a default state for him. "Three shots?" Clint verified.
The loudmouth had changed to outright mocking now, including commentary on how he would be able to please "The Archer's woman" if given the chance. Natasha snorted and shook her head and dryly suggested, "Think Dubai."
He let off two more shots in quick succession, forming a perfect triangle around the man's own bolt and maybe, possibly, winging the guy's mustache along the way. "That good enough?" he asked with forced boredom, a hint of adrenaline in his veins along with the pride of accomplishment.
"That should do nicely," Ponytail confirmed.
Clint expected the man to be enraged but, after firing two more arrows that barely got near the center of the target, the loudmouth simply laughed and conceded it was a good show. He set another tankard of mead in front of Clint, bowed dramatically to Natasha with a parting lament of never being able to show an entirely different prowess with her, and was on his way.
"Are there going to be any more challenges like that?" Clint asked, lifting the mug to cover his lips from any wayward watchers. It was apparently the right thing to do, as if accepting the offering was accepting an apology or proper recognition for winning or some such thing. Multiple people nodded and smiled and went on with whatever else they had been doing before the impromptu show.
Thor shook his head. "Few question my tales and fewer still now that you defeated Balyard." He raised his own mug and glanced it off Clint's, the liquid sloshing slightly with the action. "The night is yours to enjoy!" he promised.
He would have preferred it to be his to enjoy at home in his own bed, but it was not to be. Apparently Asgardian feasts were not short affairs and even he knew it would be rude to walk out before Thor as his host was satisfied. So he drank his mead and ate the food Natasha put in front of him to counteract said mead and still questioned if he would need that miracle healing chamber to take care of the hangover he would undoubtedly have come morning.
That too was not to be, however. After Thor and his buddies had drank a sizable amount more than he would ever dare and were no worse for wear for it, he was led not back to the Healing Chambers or even a place with a normal, non-magical, bed. Instead, he was brought to a precipice of seemingly space itself. Across it stretched a bridge of crystalline glass that either reflected or was made up of every color of the rainbow and, on the other side, stood a building considered small by Asgardian standards, but still with an ornate and domed roof.
Thor strode across as if it were nothing, and Clint attempted to do the same even though it was incredibly unnerving to see only the darkness of the universe itself closing in around him. The bridge was sturdy though, and he assumed it had to be if made for non-human standards, and he found it lit from within as much as it reflected the light when he was able to focus on it and not the vastness of space.
There was a large, unmoving object of a man with a truly impressive sword standing guard to the little building. Thor greeted him jovially yet he remained stoic save for the slightest of nods. They were allowed to enter though, and inside he found a relatively simple dais, a mild light show of random energy bursts, and not a whole lot else.
"The Bifrost will return you to Midgard," Ponytail explained before he could even voice the question.
"Any place in particular? Midgard is kinda big," he quipped, earning a smile from her and an eye roll from Natasha.
"Heimdal will always ensure your safety and that you shall arrive where you need to be," Thor assured him. He clapped him on the shoulder and he was once again proud that he didn't topple over from the force of it. Those things were going to be bruised soon and waste the effect of all that healing if Thor kept it up.
Ponytail gestured to the dais and Natasha readily stood atop it. "You sure about this?" he whispered as he stepped up beside her.
She nodded and replied, "How do you think I got here, Barton? How do you think you did?" Then, with a grin, she added, "Try not to lose that fancy meal you just ate."
Considering he was known for jumping off of both great heights and various moving objects that were usually traveling at great speeds with little to no effect as to the contents of his stomach, he figured she had to be joking. At least he hoped so. He also hoped his weird memory from earlier was either a hallucination or the effects of the thing had been amplified by his concussion. He didn't have much time to think about it either way though as, soon enough, he was encased in light itself, anything and everything streaming past him at speeds too great for even him to make out the specifics, his body pushed and pulled and torn apart and rebuilt all at once. He didn't know if he should hold his breath but that was okay because it was too late to draw one anyway and he had the feeling the bending of time and space was probably not an oxygen-rich environment.
A jolt that rattled his very bones and nearly made him faceplant on whatever surface Heimdal had decided upon signaled their arrival. He blinked to clear his vision and shook his head a few times to right his equilibrium and decided there was a damned good chance Nat hadn't been joking even as he decided he was now completely and totally sober.
The sobriety turned out to be a good thing as the touched down not outside of the Tower or one of SHIELD's various bases or even some random park somewhere. They landed in the middle of what should have been a busy city street, save for how anyone and everyone seemed to have fled to anything and everything that might possibly provide shelter. He was about to question why until a Mazda flew by his head and his attention was drawn to a very large, very angry, somewhat furry monster of indeterminate origin.
A man in a black suit ran towards them and he stepped forward out of instinct, vaguely recognizing Agent Lowell in the process. He handed them each a comm and ran right back to whatever shadow he had emerged from. Clint slipped the tech into his ear and was instantly rewarded with the sounds of Cap shouting orders and Stark shouting snark in return.
"He said we'd go where we were needed," Natasha shrugged. She checked her weapons and he checked his and hoped he had enough in his quiver as he didn't remember restocking it since their last battle what with being abducted by aliens and all.
There were arrows, and some looked new and shiny and inscribed with little lines he'd have to have one of the anthropologists decipher for him, or maybe Thor should he choose to make a return visit. Satisfied, if intrigued, he keyed his comm and asked, "Where do you want us?"
He was met with a slew of profanity from Stark, a surprised greeting from Cap, and a roar from the Hulk from his place behind and to the left of the monster. Unfortunately, there was another monster behind and to the left of him as well, but Clint didn't get much chance to think about that as the pretty little knotwork circle he was standing at the edge of began to light up.
He had a feeling that he knew what that meant, so he quickly jumped out of its now fully glowing range, yanking Natasha with him. She glared at him but managed to announce what he hadn't and reported, "Incoming!"
The ground shook and crumbled beneath their feet and the stream of light coalesced into not one Asgardian warrior as he had suspected, but five. Pretty Boy did the nod thing to him in greeting as though they had not just parted moments ago, and then turned to face the so much more than simply two monsters that were now flooding the playing field.
"What sport!" Ponytail enthused, and he had no idea if she had taken the time to change or her clothing did the same thing Thor's seemed to do and adapted itself to the situation as she was now clad in full armor and holding a gigantic spear in one hand while the other rested atop a sword slung at her waist.
She and the others ran right towards the monsters and Clint most definitely was not going to be the one to try to stop them. Tony landed beside him and flipped up his face mask, undoubtedly giving him the once over to verify any potential claimed status for himself even after his sensors had already done the same. He eyed Clint's current getup with a raised eyebrow, and then glanced back over to where the Asgardians were having a go whatever the hell they were fighting this time. "So I take it you brought back more than just questionable fashion choices from your little sojourn to another planet?" he guessed.
"I was kidnapped by extraterrestrials, interrogated, healed by some mystical/magical means, and had a drunken shoot out with someone who may or may not be a mythical figure. What the hell did you do for the past however many hours?" he challenged. He drew an arrow from his quiver and saw Tony's eyes light up at the shiny possibility of new tech.
Instead of instantly bugging him to let him have a go at it though, Stark flipped his mask down, shrugged, and said, "Searched for your sorry ass."
That was fair enough and so, when Tony took off, various weaponry at the ready, he provided cover fire and grinned, "Aw, you missed me!"
There was no verbal response, but when a certain shield sailed over his head just as repulsor blast hit a Vespa hurdling his way and a certain large green friend took out the beast that had dared to have a go at him, he figured there was no need.
Instead, he took a shot at the next one and kept an eye on the way the Asgardians were truly having a ball with their current opponents. He hit a paw-like hand right before it swept towards Pretty Boy, who rewarded him with a gleaming smile and by decimating the creature entirely. He readied another volley and grinned, "Hey guys? I was abducted by aliens and all I got were some kickass allies and a nifty t-shirt."
Natasha groaned, Steve chuckled, and Tony made several highly inappropriate comments while Hulk just continued to smash. As far as Clint was concerned, all was right in the world.
End.
Feedback is always welcomed.
Title: Kansas by Way of Alderaan
Genre: Gen, Friendship
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~10,000 words
Warnings: Language, Interrogation
Synopsis: They wanted information. Too bad he didn't have any to share.
Author's Notes: For the "alien abduction" square at
hc_bingo.Disclaimer: I do not own theses characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available on AO3.
Clint was battered and bruised but, more importantly, had survived yet another battle. He hopped down from a less than stable perch atop a less than stable building, thoughts of a hot shower and a night of bad television occupying his brain. He heard the chatter of the others, most voicing similar requests, and then he heard something that just did not sound right at all.
There was a rush of noise and a blinding light and the edge of whatever it was nicked the already crumbling building and caused a crap ton of bricks to cascade towards his immediate vicinity. That was all well and good and he might have even gotten out of there relatively unscathed, but one of the bricks managed to clip the side of his head and send him down into an inelegant sprawl. That was less than good, but still better than the hands, unknown and far stronger than they had any right to be, that grabbed on to him, tugged him somewhat upright, and then dragged him towards something large and shadowy and yeah, he probably had a concussion from the knock on the head because nothing made sense, the least of which being the blinding light returning and the feeling of being ripped apart for half a second, only to be shoved back together again in the other half and then for the whole process to repeat with dizzying cyclicality.
The hands still held him, unyielding despite his truly pathetic attempts to break free. His head pounded and his vision swam and the only thing he could make out were walls shiny and shining and the lumbering figures beside him. One of those figures tugged on him again and he tried to follow, tried to stay on his feet and at least pretend he had some dignity, but there were steps, steep and slick, and he tumbled downward, head smacking into something decidedly not soft. There was noise and the hands shifted and he knew he was about to be relocated and he should probably pay attention to where on the off chance he figured a way out of wherever the hell he was, but consciousness was a fleeting thing and the darkness was oh so very welcoming and he collapsed into it more than a little willingly.
He next awoke in a place decidedly not shiny or shining. It was dark enough that he worried he had either gone blind or been blindfolded, but there was no pressure of cloth, no tightness aside from the ache in his head. He caught the slightest glint of light off of a cuff around his wrist and followed that to a tiny crack that seemed to delineate a doorway of some sort. He tried to push himself up to go to it and found that he was really and truly unable to do so. For the first part, he was chained in place, the links loose and light and incredibly sound, granting him enough range of movement to raise his arms slightly and shift his legs, but not much else. For the second part, even trying to sit upright made his head throb and stomach churn and reignited the memory of falling masonry connecting with his skull.
“He wakes,” a voice declared. He could not tell where it came from, only that it was loud and bold and echoed off whatever walls that surrounded him.
A light shone down from seemingly nowhere, bright and blinding and blocking out everything save for the circle it cast around him. It was enough to see the pallet-like thing he was bound to, but cast the rest of the room in shadows. He felt as much as heard the footfalls of one of his captors approach, the floor reverberating with each step, the thin pallet bouncing in time with the action. It was definitely sound that he heard though, a voice clear and deep and oddly ominous as it declared, “Let us begin.”
He had absolutely no idea how much time passed from that point forward. There was simply questions, endless questions, with stomping feet and enraged voices when he didn’t have the information they required. There was no torture, aside from one of the looming figures tripping on a chain while he paced and inadvertently tugging Clint’s aching shoulders taut and jarring, but there was also no food, no water, no relief to the questions being asked again and again and again.
They started simply, as though verifying who they held. They wanted to know where he was raised, who his parents were, who his family was, and where he had trained. He couldn’t tell if they liked those answers as he received exactly no feedback from any of that. Then again, his usually flippant mouth was at work, so his answers were less than proper and perhaps they were reining in their rage until he crossed some line known only to them.
When they asked about the tesseract, he knew they had gotten down to business. They called it by a myriad of names, some of which he had heard before and some that made him simply guess they were still on about the glowy box of doom. He was tired by then, so desperately tired, and his head pounded with their footsteps and his throat croaked out its smartass replies.
“He’s lying,” one of them accused.
“He worked with the Liesmith, of course he has learned the trade,” another responded.
It took him far too long to sort that out and, when he did, he wanted to bang his head all over again. Loki. It all came down to Loki. The guy fucked with his mind and fucked with his life and he thought everything was done and gone and of course it wasn’t, it never would be, things like this didn’t just fade away or die, they lingered, tendrils wrapped around everything and anything, suffocating the life, the light, out of anything that remained.
“Less worked with and more was his puppet,” he admitted bitterly, providing a truth he didn’t even like to admit to himself. He remembered those days, the bone weary exhaustion, the being shoved to the back of his own mind and forced to bend to another’s will. He had fought then, and found it just about as effective as his current battle. He’d push, he’d pull, he’d thrash about, and it made abso-fucking-lutely no difference to anyone on the outside. Then again, he had managed to take the body shot versus the head shot with Fury, aim at systems versus people on the hellicarrier, make the guy pulling the strings think the puppet was faulty instead of becoming sentient instead.
There was a difference in the air around him now, he could feel it as a tangible thing. He swore he heard the smile in his captor’s voice when he said, “His lies lessen; progress is made.”
The questions changed then, focused more on what he knew of Loki, what he knew of his plans, what he knew of not just what happened, but what the long game was in the grand scheme of things. The problem was, he simply didn’t know. Loki wasn’t exactly big on sharing with his minions, providing things more on a need-to-know basis and, frankly, he hadn’t needed to know, so he didn’t. He had his suspicions, the logical outcomes of what he was provided mixed with what he knew of what everyone else was doing - he spent the time in his mind watching and and waiting and reasoning - but there was nothing for certain and most definitely nothing he was going to share with the assholes holding him now.
His head had gone from throbbing to a constant pain, teetering between a heavy weight too great for his neck to hold and lightheaded from the lack of food and steady bloodloss from the wound that still oozed into his eyes. His captors were on about verse thirty of why Loki was a bad man and why Clint should just give him and all of his secrets up when the words stopped making sense. And by words, he meant both what was said to him and what he slurred back. He was too tired, too weak to keep this up without a break and still have a chance of making it out in one piece, and so he stopped. He closed his eyes and risked another accidental near dislocation and just sank into the hardness of the thin pallet to let the hell of the world he currently was in drift away.
There was shouting, there was yelling, there was a slap to the face that hurt like fuck but still did nothing to keep his eyes from fluttering shut. He caught a glimpse though, the barest hint of the shape of the hand that struck him before it darted back into the shadows. It was then he suspected he wasn’t just not in Kansas anymore, he was in Alderaan levels of trouble. He giggled at his own joke, which just confused them more, but confusion meant pausing, meant talking amongst themselves instead of at him, and he took advantage of that to try to drift off again.
He honestly wasn’t sure if he succeeded or not because the next thing he knew, there was a noise even louder than their bickering, and the thin line of the door exploded inward, crashing against the far wall after slamming against the edge of his pallet. His chains rattled and he tried to push himself up to see the new arrival, managing to at least turn his head slightly instead, and found an all too familiar outline backlit from the golden glow of the passageway beyond. Even without the hammer currently in hand, he would have recognized the massive form of his teammate and friend and he managed a garbled, “Hey, big guy, how’s it going?” before he flopped back to contemplate the light above him and hoped Thor kicked some major ass.
The shadowed figures weren’t so shadowed anymore, but he didn’t pay them that much mind, nor did he pay mind to the hammer sailing back above his head, knowing that if Thor was there, all hell was about to break loose and he kind of wanted to enjoy the show, but he also kind of wanted to pass out, so he settled for staying where he was and listening to the entertainment instead, head tilted to the side to catch what he could when he could manage to force his eyes to stay open for more than a second or two.
What he heard was impressive.
Thor laid into them verbally, casting absolutely no doubt on his status as warrior and prince of an entire fucking planet. He used words like "abuse of station" and "brother in arms" and "under sovereign protection" and something that sounded suspiciously like an accusation that taking Clint was an act of war, not just against Midgard, but against Asgard itself as they had forged an alliance and Clint wondered if SHIELD actually had something formal with the planet, or if Thor simply meant the times they had sided against the others on Game Night. It was that of all things that seemed to make an impact though. Well, an impact beyond that Mjolnir made as it was thrust against a wall during a particularly dramatic gesture.
The people who took him, his captors, trembled, as in visibly shook. They were nearly equals in size to Thor, yet not a one would challenge him or raise a hand to him. Two cowered back, another stood his ground, and yet another was dumb enough to speak. "We have the right to answers," that one said. "We have a right to know what fate may await us should we not act now to stop it."
Clint felt the need to speak up at that. It may have been a stupid need, but it was a need nonetheless. "Dude, I told you I don't know what Loki had planned," he slurred. "He never told us and I'm honestly not sure if he knew the endgame himself, or just hoped for the best."
Thor's head snapped to him then, and if he thought the guy was enraged before, it was nothing compared to now. "Fandral, see to his care," he ordered tersely, and a man that had been standing in the doorway stepped forward, another smaller figure at his side. More shadows came forward, blocking the exit, and he thought he made out the shapes of the guy even bigger than Thor and the girl with the long ponytail who had visited during the New Mexico incident, but he could have just been seeing things at that point.
It was definitely the Pretty Boy from New Mexico that knelt at his side now, massive hand cradling his face while he spoke over Thor's bellows to ask, "What injuries do you bear?"
Clint was rather enjoying listening to Thor rip the others a new one, something about violating a direct edict from some sort of court that was possibly royal in nature, and so he found it hard to pay attention to Pretty Boy, even when he repeated the question. It was, however, impossible to ignore the voice of the smaller form beside him, and his head cranked to attention when Natasha demanded, "Barton, focus! You obviously have a head wound, but did they do anything else to you?"
He tried to shake that head, but found that movement truly sucked so he stopped the effort pretty damn quickly. "Head's from the building falling on me. They haven't touched me 'cept to drag me around and to try to wake me," he reported hoarsely.
Natasha grabbed his chin and tilted it towards the light, exposing what he was fairly certain was a decent sized bruise left over from his attempt to doze. "I doubt buildings collapse in the shape of handprints," she commented with barely controlled rage. "What else did they do?"
"Nothing!" he insisted, his own voice doing nothing to help the ache in his head. "Seriously, Tasha, they grabbed me, locked me down, and started asking questions - nothing more. Well, nothing more than a single slap which, let's be fair, you know me, I probably deserved at that point." He tried to grin to lessen the seriousness of the situation, or at least make her quiet down enough to let him enjoy Thor's continuing diatribe, but that seemed to be a failure on all points.
The Pretty Boy looked even more pissed than Tasha, as in edging towards Thor levels. "They did not treat your wounds?" he growled. "They did not offer you aid or nourishment?"
This seemed to be a big thing to him, and Clint tried to think back to the cultural sensitivities seminar he had been forced to take, but could only remember the exact number of tiles on the ceiling, and the trajectory needed to get a pamphlet page folded into a dove to lodge itself in the rafters. Even Thor had quieted though, waiting for his answer, so he offered a semi-meek, "Um, no?"
The huge guy from the doorway stormed in at that point, and it looked like they were in for diatribe 3.0, which normally he'd enjoy or maybe ask for popcorn but now was almost too much noise and he really wasn't used to laughing, lovable Thor being quite so serious for so long, and so he cleared his throat and tried to ignore the way Nat's weapons were already clearly armed, and asked, "So, what's the chance of unlocking these things and getting a glass of water?"
There was a cracking noise that sounded suspiciously like a bone breaking, unless maybe the discharge of static from Thor getting all worked up sounded different in this world because he was fairly certain Earth was a place far, far away at this point, and then something vaguely key-like was dropped into Pretty Boy's waiting hand. The chains were off soon enough, and he tried to push himself fully upright for the first time since everything had started far too long ago. The room spun around him in a truly dizzying way though and he felt himself lurch to the side, only to be stopped by Natasha's quick reflexes.
He let his head drop to her welcoming shoulder, wincing at the impact, and muttered, "What the hell? I can usually take much more than this."
She shifted slightly to twist and meet his gaze as she explained, "Nearly fourteen hours without food or water, plus a head injury, plus a trip on the Bifrost, and that was after a full battle - it's a wonder your still conscious, Barton."
That seemed reasonable, or at least her expression said she thought so and he was willing to go with that for now. "Give me a minute or two and I can disprove that wonder," he offered.
She shook her head and her soft curls tickled his nose and he really hoped he wasn't getting blood on her because they had been on enough missions together for him to know how much a pain in the ass washing that out of her hair was. "Let's get you out of here so Thor and his buddies can have some fun," she said instead, hands sliding into a more supportive position.
Those hands were gently but insistently pushed away though, replaced by a set much larger and impressively stronger. Pretty Boy lifted him to his feet, and then took one side while Ponytail took the other. "Let us make amends for his treatment," Ponytail said, supporting him easily enough that he suspected she could have carried him bridal style all on her own. He was kind of glad she refrained.
"You are his Shield Sister, and have full rights, but we ask that you grant us this penance," Pretty Boy requested from Clint's other side. He couldn't tell if it was diplomacy or smarm he was spewing, but had to give the guy credit for trying.
Natasha stood with her usual controlled grace, hands up but gauntlets still armed. "I hauled him all over Marrakech the last time he had a head wound like this - you two enjoy," she told them both. Her tone was glib, but even Clint caught the way she hovered, the way her hands twitched as though ready to either catch him or start shooting at a moment's notice.
"Take him to the Healing Chambers," Thor ordered. "I will meet you there once this matter has been settled." Clint had the feeling that the "settling" would not take long, and had a brief regret of missing the good part, before he decided concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other was more important. Each step awakened more aches and pains - some from the battle, some from the building, and some from laying relatively still for so long - and he really hoped these Healing Chambers held something of the analgesic or eighty-proof nature or that he could be brought back to SHIELD Medical instead where he could get one and sneak out for the other.
They got him out to a hallway seemingly made of solid gold with touches of marble and fires burning in burnished holders along the walls, flickering and gleaming and setting his headache up another notch. The last of Thor's buddies from New Mexico were there and one immediately headed for the room they had just left, while the other handed Natasha something with an almost ceremonial bow before leaving to join in the head bashing fun. Clint craned his neck to the side, which made his unsteady steps falter even more but his personal crutches easily compensated for it. When he saw what she now held, he sighed, "Oh, thank fuck."
Natasha, for her part, rolled her eyes and explained to their new friends, "He's a little attached to his toys." She shouldered the quiver though, and held the bow in a relaxed and ready grip, and it was enough to put Clint's mind at ease, or at least a great deal of it if nothing else.
"The bond between a warrior and his weapon is legendary," Pretty Boy defended him, already worming his way into more of Clint's good graces. "Would you not feel incomplete without the gauntlets you wear, or the blades you keep at your sides?"
Natasha looked at him consideringly before she archly told him, "I have far more than that at my disposal."
Her tone was less than impressed, but it also held a hint of humor. It was this humor that Ponytail picked up on and she grinned, "Well said, Sister."
Pretty Boy spent the next few minutes playing the mock victim, lamenting the women teaming up against him and slipping in more than a single entendre that was doubled. It all seemed in good fun though, and it took Clint's mind off of his aches and pains for a bit as his attention was split between following their conversation and continuing to stay relatively on his own feet.
The conversation stopped and so did they and Clint looked up and expected to find transport of some kind but instead found himself standing in front of a set of huge and ornate doors. There were guards on either side and they looked less than impressed at their offering, right up until Ponytail said in a truly admirable and commanding voice, "We bear the Archer from Midgard, Ally to Thor, Son of the AllFather. Grant us entrance to treat the wounds grievously gifted to him by our own kind."
The guards nodded and the doors swung open with barely a touch to reveal a room deceptively simplistic despite the continuation of the shiny. He looked around, unsure of himself for a moment until his eyes caught the row after row of runes carved into every pillar and slab. He thought back to the trip and realized the hallway had also been carved in a similar manner, as had pretty much everything else he had seen so far. "Oh, hey, we're on Asgard," he muttered more to himself than to anyone around him.
Natasha, of course, heard him, and congratulated him with, "Good job on those keen senses there, Barton. So glad to know you're the one that watches my back." To Pretty Boy and Ponytail, she offered a far more serious, "His concussion must be worse than I thought. If your doctors aren't accustomed to our physiology, I'll need to take him home to ours, regardless of the effects of the Bifrost."
"Out technology can be adapted for your kind," Pretty Boy assured her. He guided Clint towards some sort of slightly raised dais and, when Clint stumbled on the stairs, bodily lifted him with embarrassing ease and set him atop a bed-like thing that seemed to wrap around him as soon as he was settled.
He was going to ask where the doctors where, or what the thing he laid on did, or even where the rest of the team was, but the moment he lay back against a really comfortable pillow, the bed lit with a soft glow and made an equally soft hum and he really and truly could not find it in him to keep his eyes open. He was just going to blink, or maybe do that thing where he closed one eye and then the other, taking turns so half of him got to sleep while the other half was totally awake for real, but instead found it incredibly difficult to pry himself conscious enough to do so. Natasha leaned down over him, ruffled his hair in a way both comforting and slightly pulling on his head wound, and promised, "I have watch." That was enough for him, and he let himself drift off, dreams of battle and beer dancing about his damaged skull.
He eventually woke reluctantly, far too comfortable to move yet with an overwhelming feeling that there was something else he was supposed to be doing. There were voices nearby, not quite hushed, though quiet enough that he probably could have drifted off again if he tried. He would have tried too, except that feeling was just too damned strong - the bed he lay upon was cushy in just the right places, the room the near perfect temp, but the light that pressed against his eyelids was odd, and the voices only slightly familiar, the feel of the fabric that his arms rested on far too smooth to be even the fancy sheets Stark insisted they all needed let alone those of Medical.
It was probably that which woke him fully. He questioned why he would even think he needed to be in Medical given that absolutely nothing hurt, and then the memories of the battle, the interrogation, and everything else came rushing back. He shifted, remembering the way the bed had closed around him and expecting to be held in place, but the sides fell away neatly and he found absolutely no resistance to be had.
"He wakes," a voice said, unfortunately one only recently familiar.
He pushed himself up to a sitting position and quickly found Pretty Boy sitting on a ledge nearby. "Is that a thing with you guys? Like the Asgardian version of 'Good Morning, Sunshine,' or something? 'Cause your friends said the exact same thing." He looked around, trying to get the lay of the land, and found he was in exactly the same room as before. There was no natural light, no hint of sky, and the torches burned merrily on at precisely the same levels, giving him absolutely no clue as to how much time had passed.
"They are not our 'friends,'" Ponytail insisted from his side. She looked truly disgusted by the prospect, which he supposed was fair considering their behavior. Not all humans were sunshine and puppies, so it was only fair that the same we true of Asgardians.
He was going to ask what happened to them, suspecting a great and artful tale if Thor's past sagas were anything to go by, but found it was entirely unnecessary when the god-like prince in question told him, "Your captors have been dealt with within the fullest extents of our laws."
He gave the big guy a little wave in form of hello, and found it enthusiastically returned. It made him feel a little bit better about the serious tone his friend used, but also made him wonder if anyone was going to elaborate on that or if he was going to be left in the proverbial dark.
Natasha got up from where she was seated, leaning up against the side of his bed, and turned to face him. Despite the fact that Asgardian senses were about a thousand times better than theirs, she whispered, "Sore subject. The men broke several dozen cultural taboos and personally offended Thor by taking you." That at least explained the lack of storytelling, though hinted that she herself knew enough of the tale for him to get it out of her later, when there was less chance of offending their hosts. Louder, she asked, "How are you feeling?"
She reached forward and gently touched where he knew he should have a giant lump on his head, but he found his anticipatory flinch was for nothing. He took a moment to take stock of himself, doing an internal inventory of injuries as well as visually looking to where he knew he should have marks. He found absolutely nothing. Well, that wasn't true. He found the dirt and grime still remained, the flecks of dried blood that clung to his skin and hopefully would wash out of the fancy fabric he was surrounded by, but there was no pain, no discomfort, and no actual physical wounds. "I'm... fine?" he asked, more surprised than articulate. While he understood technology was a wondrous thing, this surpassed anything he had seen in the past, including things SHIELD had stolen from dubious sources.
She eyed him doubtingly and he submitted to her scrutiny while she tried to disprove him, even going so far as to hold out his arms to show her that the slight bruising from the cuffs and chains had faded to nothing. The ache in his head was gone, as was the accompanying dizziness, even the hip that had been winged by debris during the fight felt fine. His vision was sharp, his muscles tensed and relaxed on command which boded well for his reflexes and, honestly, all in all, he felt like he had just woken up from a decent night's sleep after a week of doing nothing more strenuous than challenge Stark to create a machine that would heat his Toaster Strudels without making them all burnt and crunchy on one side. His stomach chose that moment to rumble though, possibly at the passing reference to food, so he amended his assessment to, "Er, maybe a bit starving though?"
Thor laughed at that, deep and booming and rather proving that even he had been toning down the volume while Clint slept. "Many are famished after a Healing; it is a sign of success!" he advised, earning nods of agreement from the others gathered. Clint tried not to think of the audience he had while he slept, especially one involving not just his teammates but people he had either never spoke to before or barely shared a sentence with, and was thankfully distracted when Thor promised, "A feast awaits as soon as you say the word."
As good as food sounded, a feast sounded even better. He had been willing to settle for a Power Bar from the emergency pack Nat usually carried if she was going anywhere with a potential timeline of over an hour, but the prospect real and actual food and maybe even something more than bottled water was more than he could have hoped for.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and said, "The word?" which earned him a chuckle from Thor and his buddies and an eye roll from Natasha. "On the condition someone tells me just what the hell happened to bring me from Jersey to another planet and how you all figured out where I was because, really, I've got nothing."
Ponytail tilted her head at that and he really should probably find out her name at some point, if for no other reason than he'd probably slip and call her by the moniker sooner rather than later. "You do not remember your transport?" she questioned.
He shook his head and pointed to where his wound should have been, feeling the trail of dried blood beneath his finger. "Beaned by a brick," he explained. "I didn't even really see the guys who took me until they started asking questions."
There was a collective round of frowns by the Asgardians, though Natasha looked thoughtful, as though some missing piece of the puzzle had slid into place. He briefly wondered if he had crossed that invisible cultural line she had warned him about by even mentioning the guys who took him, but was disproven in at least that when the guy that made Thor look tiny smirked and commented, "Perhaps that is why he was captured so readily - they took advantage of his existing injuries."
Clint thought he was being given far too much credit at that as there was no way, no how, that he could have stood up to a handful of Asgardians on his own, but the others were nodding as though this was a thing, an actual possible thing, and Natasha was severely hinting he should go with it, so he did. At the very least, he stayed quiet and let them draw their own conclusions. For all he knew, denying it would make it seem like Thor had weak allies or had chosen poorly or was a lying liar who lies about the strength of humans, and there was no way he was going to not have the back of the guy who just totally had his.
There was a procedure and decorum to be had in all of this though, so he was promised that much of the tale would be told at the feast where others could hear the saga, and was directed to wash first because it was rude to show up covered in blood when there was a water source readily available. His audience didn't leave, which was odd, but he had changed in worse situations in the past so he tried to give it no mind. He rinsed his arms, neck, and face and was going to call it good to go, but Natasha unbuckled his vest and pried off his undershirt and made him swipe his torso down too, and then damn near dunked his head as a whole under the running water to get the dust and debris from there as well.
He toweled himself dry with a sinfully soft cloth, and made a few ineffectual sweeps across the legs of his uniform pants, refusing to strip down completely despite intimate knowledge that Asgardians, or at least Thor, had absolutely no qualms about wandering around public areas less than fully dressed. His watchers seemed satisfied with that though, and he really tried to ignore whatever Ponytail and Nat were whispering about while gesturing in his half naked direction when he walked back over to eye his dirt encrusted armor warily. He might be clean, but his gear most certainly was not, and he wasn't sure how that was going to fly, gathering-wise.
Thor solved that by presenting him with a tunic in hues of purple, black, and gold. He took it because even he knew you didn't turn down such things when offered by a prince-god of millions of people, and found it to be of course of the highest quality. It was sleeveless like his usual vest, and wrapped snugly around him, securing at the side with a catch that looked more like his bow than a standard buckle. The fabric itself was like the stuff the sheets had been made out of but somehow stronger, and he had the overwhelming feeling that it would put Kevlar to shame if given the chance. Natasha handed him his quiver and bow and they slid into place like the missing limbs they were, and he finally felt more like himself than he had since this whole thing had begun. He would have questioned the armament for feasting, but the others still had their swords, spears, and iconic hammers, so he figured this at least was deemed acceptable, and went with it.
He did question why Natasha was not gifted with anything and still wore her usual jumpsuit, even though she seemed perfectly fine with the situation. It was Nat herself who explained to him, possibly because he was smart enough not to actually say anything to the others and risk offending them, that her suit and gauntlets were seen as her personal armor and weaponry and, as they were undamaged in the current debacle, there was no need to replace them. He did notice that her hair was pinned back from her face with something far fancier and shinier than anything he had ever seen her use on her own, so perhaps she was not ignored after all.
Suitably dressed, they left the Healing Chambers to head towards wherever the feast was to be held. The pathway was partially inside, covered by artistic arches and surrounded by inlaid columns, and partially outside, where it seemed as though space itself bore down around them wherever his vision was not filled with looming buildings and waterfalls the size of small countries. They passed the guards along the way that might have been the same as before, or might have been their identical twins or some sort of equivalent of clones for all he knew. There were similar figures stationed in various areas along the way, armor pretty much identical and faces mostly concealed, the barest hint of individuality or perhaps job-specific markings along the trim.
The fifteenth set of columns that they happened across supported a doorway to a truly impressive chamber. Gold and gleaming like everywhere else, this one was filled with tables overladen with food and drink of all sorts, some of which he even recognized. There were people milling about, some carrying platefuls of food or a tankard of something he could not quite discern and some seated with the same, already digging into the feast. And feast it was - he seriously doubted he had ever seen so much food in one place before, and that included the multitude of shindigs Stark had hosted since Clint had moved in at the Tower. There were meats and fruits and things that looked candied and sweet and breads and rolls and a thousand and one bowls and platters to serve it all.
"Wow," he said, truly under-expressing himself. "This... this is... wow."
"We apologize that we have not had time to ready a true event in your honor," Ponytail told him. "Thor has spoken of your likes and dislikes and, hopefully, we have provided more of the former than the latter in our short notice."
Clint turned to Thor questioningly and asked, "Am I missing something here?"
Thor lowered his head slightly, and his voice with it, and replied, "This is an apology, or at the very least, the beginnings of one. We hope that you accept it in the good grace it is given."
Clint was going to protest that, really, a few hours of being questioned wasn't that bad, and then it hit him. This was not just for the transgressions of a few misguided Asgardians; this was for the transgressions of one that was once considered a prince and the prime example of his people. This was those people's attempt at making amends for what Loki had done, even though they had absolutely nothing to do with the wrong that was committed against him in the first place.
He tried to remember his diplomatic training, or least something beyond the "don't shoot your hosts unless you really need to" that Coulson had always drilled into him. He also tried to ignore Nat at his side, who was undoubtedly waiting for him to turn to her for prompting. He decided he could manage this one his own, or at least should be able to, and replied, "Your gift is most welcomed, even if it is unwarranted."
That seemed to do the trick as Thor smiled widely and clapped him on the shoulder in a way that damn near shoved him right into the room. Several people stopped what they were doing and offered a bow in their sovereign's direction, and others did that respectful nod thing that Clint was starting to get used to. As they walked deeper into the chamber, he had a brief second of wondering if at least the one guy on the left had actually bowed at him instead before deciding that there was no-way no-how that would happen and that they were simply giving Thor his props or the Asgardian equivalent thereof, and he focused on looking ahead and not tripping and making a fool of himself and his teammates by default.
Thor led them all the way to the head table which, yeah, should have been expected. There was a man there with a white beard and hair to match and an eye patch that looked like it was riveted directly to his skull. Beside him stood a woman draped in fabrics that made the nicest thing he had ever seen on Earth look like rags in comparison. And he did mean stand as both rose at their arrival and he had a sneaking suspicion that these were Odin and Frigga and, wow, okay, there's one for the journal he never got around to keeping.
Thor and his father had some sort of unspoken conversation that ended with Thor calling the room's attention which meant all noise and action ground to an utter and complete halt pretty much the moment he opened his mouth. "My friends," he boomed, even louder than he usually did at the Tower. "I give you two of the Midgardians Avengers, the Archer known as Hawkeye and the Warrioress known as the Black Widow. I know them as comrades and as Brother and Sister in Arms; I ask that you grant them the respect they have so earned."
Clint was mortified having so much attention on him, and took comfort in the fact that Natasha was frozen in place beside him. They were used to skulking in the shadows, hidden from view for a reason, not set on display for all to be seen. This was new. This was different. This was making him question breaking his training and make a run for it even though he was fairly certain Tasha would take him down if he tried. If she didn't join him, that was.
The room seemed to bow as one, save for Thor's parents, whose tilted heads served as an end to it a moment or an eternity later. Thankfully, that was it. No further grand speeches given or expected, only food and drink to be had. The masses began to mill about again, the god-king and god-queen sat back down and began to converse amongst themselves, and Clint let out a relieved breath, only to have a secondary one knocked out of him when Ponytail patted him on the back and urged, "Now we feast!"
The food was good and plentiful and the drink strong enough that he knew he should limit himself if he was to make it through to morning. Any time he paused, it seemed more was heaped upon his plate, until finally he waved his hands and insisted he simply did not have room for more. He knew he had a decent appetite, just as he knew Thor put him to shame on a near daily basis. This though, was impressive. Apparently Thor had a usual eating mode, and a feasting mode, and he was clearly in the land of the latter for the time being.
Between Thor and Natasha, he finally heard just how the hell he was brought to the other side of the known universe. The bright light that he vaguely remembered had been the Bifrost, his captors miscalculating by roughly a foot without the usual operator's guidance and assistance and damaging the already ravaged building upon their arrival. They grabbed him and took off again, apparently having only distracted some guy named Heimdal who apparently was a gatekeeper or ticket-taker or whatever for a few minutes so time was of the essence.
The team had thought Clint had been crushed by the falling building. Hours were wasted as they dug and searched and Tony upped his sensors to new and frightening levels and yet still only found a handful of rats and a cat they decided to name Trouble. It wasn't until they reached what would have been ground level that they found the telltale imprint of knotwork left behind by the Asgardian system. Thor tossed out some feelers homeward while the others still searched and the Heimdal guy confirmed there had been an activation without his approval. Natasha was chosen to travel with Thor as Clint's Shield Sister, though it was possible the Asgardians had confused the meaning of SHIELD at that point, and it took mere hours to find him after that.
Clint knew the story from that point forward, or at least as much as was going to be shared in front of inquisitive ears, so instead the conversation switched to talk of the battle itself and how it compared to those Thor and his friends had fought in the past and what they thought each other should have done versus what they actually had done and achieved.
He picked at the remains of his plate, torn between making himself sick and being rude by not finishing it all, and listened to the tales being told around and about him. He blamed the near food coma for why it took him so long to realize a lot of the conversations were petering off, and the ones that remained seemed to feature his own name more often than not. It shouldn't have been a surprise, and yet it still was, when a huge brute with a brownish beard gestured in his direction, and even stared directly at him while he muttered something he couldn't quite make out from his position.
Natasha was to his right, and so he leaned over and asked, "What is that all about?"
She shrugged, just as much in the dark as he was, so he turned to his left and asked Ponytail instead. "He wishes to see a demonstration of your expertise with your weapon," she explained readily enough.
Clint made a face, certain he had misheard. "Here? Now?" he verified, pretty sure she meant later with far fewer people, a far lower alcohol content, and a hell of a lot more open room. "Besides, aren't-" he started to ask, but stopped himself when he realized Odin and Frigga were long gone.
"If you wish," she said, perhaps a tiny bit too eagerly. She gestured to where several people were arm wrestling, and several more were tossing knives at a target at the far end of the room. "Others are already showing their prowess in feats of mastery in hopes of gaining either glory or a bedmate on this night."
Clint didn't want a bedmate, not right now and not with Natasha narrowing her eyes at him knowingly, but he also didn't want to let Thor down. He looked over to his friend, who smiled and shrugged without a care in the world. "I already know your worth. I believe they question my version of the tales as much as they question your ability."
That may, possibly, have been worse. Clint knew how good he was and no longer constantly felt the need to prove it to himself. Technically it was his "worth" that was being questioned but, really, from the way Thor phrased it, it was also the validity of Thor's own word. He had worked with the guy, read his file, done an entire report and more on him. Honor was beyond important. His word was his life. His word was what at stake. He sighed, and resigned himself to a show even as a not so small part of him wondered what it would be like to have the chance to challenge a warrior of legend, drunk as he may be, and smack him down.
"There are targets already here," Ponytail baited. "We can move to the training grounds or clear an area suitably back should you prefer."
"I should be able to make it from here," he offered, giving them an out to give him one of his own.
Ponytail smirked as if that was what she had been going for all along. Nat rolled her eyes and sniffed his cup, but notably didn't try to stop him.
A surprisingly little amount of finagling latter, and a path was clear from where he sat to the target. He debated going around to the other side of the table and pacing it out, but heard one loudmouth audibly scoff that clearly one of so small of stature would fail this task at such a distance. So he stood and pulled an arrow from the quiver at his feet, and readied his bow.
"Three shots?" Pretty Boy suggested.
Clint didn't even look his way when he replied, "I only need one." One shot, one show, one victory, or something like that.
He took his shot and hit his target and knew before the resounding thud and answering applause that he had hit his mark. He moved to sit down again, but the loudmouth was still at it and strongly implying it was luck, pure and simple. The loudmouth took a shot of his own, from nearly seven paces closer than Clint had done, and the bolt landed close enough to his original arrow and with enough force to make it wobble.
"Barton..." Natasha warned.
Big Guy held out his quiver for him and Ponytail and Pretty Boy smiled eagerly while Thor simply sat back and guffawed. The final guy was quiet as ever but looked contemplative, though that may have been a default state for him. "Three shots?" Clint verified.
The loudmouth had changed to outright mocking now, including commentary on how he would be able to please "The Archer's woman" if given the chance. Natasha snorted and shook her head and dryly suggested, "Think Dubai."
He let off two more shots in quick succession, forming a perfect triangle around the man's own bolt and maybe, possibly, winging the guy's mustache along the way. "That good enough?" he asked with forced boredom, a hint of adrenaline in his veins along with the pride of accomplishment.
"That should do nicely," Ponytail confirmed.
Clint expected the man to be enraged but, after firing two more arrows that barely got near the center of the target, the loudmouth simply laughed and conceded it was a good show. He set another tankard of mead in front of Clint, bowed dramatically to Natasha with a parting lament of never being able to show an entirely different prowess with her, and was on his way.
"Are there going to be any more challenges like that?" Clint asked, lifting the mug to cover his lips from any wayward watchers. It was apparently the right thing to do, as if accepting the offering was accepting an apology or proper recognition for winning or some such thing. Multiple people nodded and smiled and went on with whatever else they had been doing before the impromptu show.
Thor shook his head. "Few question my tales and fewer still now that you defeated Balyard." He raised his own mug and glanced it off Clint's, the liquid sloshing slightly with the action. "The night is yours to enjoy!" he promised.
He would have preferred it to be his to enjoy at home in his own bed, but it was not to be. Apparently Asgardian feasts were not short affairs and even he knew it would be rude to walk out before Thor as his host was satisfied. So he drank his mead and ate the food Natasha put in front of him to counteract said mead and still questioned if he would need that miracle healing chamber to take care of the hangover he would undoubtedly have come morning.
That too was not to be, however. After Thor and his buddies had drank a sizable amount more than he would ever dare and were no worse for wear for it, he was led not back to the Healing Chambers or even a place with a normal, non-magical, bed. Instead, he was brought to a precipice of seemingly space itself. Across it stretched a bridge of crystalline glass that either reflected or was made up of every color of the rainbow and, on the other side, stood a building considered small by Asgardian standards, but still with an ornate and domed roof.
Thor strode across as if it were nothing, and Clint attempted to do the same even though it was incredibly unnerving to see only the darkness of the universe itself closing in around him. The bridge was sturdy though, and he assumed it had to be if made for non-human standards, and he found it lit from within as much as it reflected the light when he was able to focus on it and not the vastness of space.
There was a large, unmoving object of a man with a truly impressive sword standing guard to the little building. Thor greeted him jovially yet he remained stoic save for the slightest of nods. They were allowed to enter though, and inside he found a relatively simple dais, a mild light show of random energy bursts, and not a whole lot else.
"The Bifrost will return you to Midgard," Ponytail explained before he could even voice the question.
"Any place in particular? Midgard is kinda big," he quipped, earning a smile from her and an eye roll from Natasha.
"Heimdal will always ensure your safety and that you shall arrive where you need to be," Thor assured him. He clapped him on the shoulder and he was once again proud that he didn't topple over from the force of it. Those things were going to be bruised soon and waste the effect of all that healing if Thor kept it up.
Ponytail gestured to the dais and Natasha readily stood atop it. "You sure about this?" he whispered as he stepped up beside her.
She nodded and replied, "How do you think I got here, Barton? How do you think you did?" Then, with a grin, she added, "Try not to lose that fancy meal you just ate."
Considering he was known for jumping off of both great heights and various moving objects that were usually traveling at great speeds with little to no effect as to the contents of his stomach, he figured she had to be joking. At least he hoped so. He also hoped his weird memory from earlier was either a hallucination or the effects of the thing had been amplified by his concussion. He didn't have much time to think about it either way though as, soon enough, he was encased in light itself, anything and everything streaming past him at speeds too great for even him to make out the specifics, his body pushed and pulled and torn apart and rebuilt all at once. He didn't know if he should hold his breath but that was okay because it was too late to draw one anyway and he had the feeling the bending of time and space was probably not an oxygen-rich environment.
A jolt that rattled his very bones and nearly made him faceplant on whatever surface Heimdal had decided upon signaled their arrival. He blinked to clear his vision and shook his head a few times to right his equilibrium and decided there was a damned good chance Nat hadn't been joking even as he decided he was now completely and totally sober.
The sobriety turned out to be a good thing as the touched down not outside of the Tower or one of SHIELD's various bases or even some random park somewhere. They landed in the middle of what should have been a busy city street, save for how anyone and everyone seemed to have fled to anything and everything that might possibly provide shelter. He was about to question why until a Mazda flew by his head and his attention was drawn to a very large, very angry, somewhat furry monster of indeterminate origin.
A man in a black suit ran towards them and he stepped forward out of instinct, vaguely recognizing Agent Lowell in the process. He handed them each a comm and ran right back to whatever shadow he had emerged from. Clint slipped the tech into his ear and was instantly rewarded with the sounds of Cap shouting orders and Stark shouting snark in return.
"He said we'd go where we were needed," Natasha shrugged. She checked her weapons and he checked his and hoped he had enough in his quiver as he didn't remember restocking it since their last battle what with being abducted by aliens and all.
There were arrows, and some looked new and shiny and inscribed with little lines he'd have to have one of the anthropologists decipher for him, or maybe Thor should he choose to make a return visit. Satisfied, if intrigued, he keyed his comm and asked, "Where do you want us?"
He was met with a slew of profanity from Stark, a surprised greeting from Cap, and a roar from the Hulk from his place behind and to the left of the monster. Unfortunately, there was another monster behind and to the left of him as well, but Clint didn't get much chance to think about that as the pretty little knotwork circle he was standing at the edge of began to light up.
He had a feeling that he knew what that meant, so he quickly jumped out of its now fully glowing range, yanking Natasha with him. She glared at him but managed to announce what he hadn't and reported, "Incoming!"
The ground shook and crumbled beneath their feet and the stream of light coalesced into not one Asgardian warrior as he had suspected, but five. Pretty Boy did the nod thing to him in greeting as though they had not just parted moments ago, and then turned to face the so much more than simply two monsters that were now flooding the playing field.
"What sport!" Ponytail enthused, and he had no idea if she had taken the time to change or her clothing did the same thing Thor's seemed to do and adapted itself to the situation as she was now clad in full armor and holding a gigantic spear in one hand while the other rested atop a sword slung at her waist.
She and the others ran right towards the monsters and Clint most definitely was not going to be the one to try to stop them. Tony landed beside him and flipped up his face mask, undoubtedly giving him the once over to verify any potential claimed status for himself even after his sensors had already done the same. He eyed Clint's current getup with a raised eyebrow, and then glanced back over to where the Asgardians were having a go whatever the hell they were fighting this time. "So I take it you brought back more than just questionable fashion choices from your little sojourn to another planet?" he guessed.
"I was kidnapped by extraterrestrials, interrogated, healed by some mystical/magical means, and had a drunken shoot out with someone who may or may not be a mythical figure. What the hell did you do for the past however many hours?" he challenged. He drew an arrow from his quiver and saw Tony's eyes light up at the shiny possibility of new tech.
Instead of instantly bugging him to let him have a go at it though, Stark flipped his mask down, shrugged, and said, "Searched for your sorry ass."
That was fair enough and so, when Tony took off, various weaponry at the ready, he provided cover fire and grinned, "Aw, you missed me!"
There was no verbal response, but when a certain shield sailed over his head just as repulsor blast hit a Vespa hurdling his way and a certain large green friend took out the beast that had dared to have a go at him, he figured there was no need.
Instead, he took a shot at the next one and kept an eye on the way the Asgardians were truly having a ball with their current opponents. He hit a paw-like hand right before it swept towards Pretty Boy, who rewarded him with a gleaming smile and by decimating the creature entirely. He readied another volley and grinned, "Hey guys? I was abducted by aliens and all I got were some kickass allies and a nifty t-shirt."
Natasha groaned, Steve chuckled, and Tony made several highly inappropriate comments while Hulk just continued to smash. As far as Clint was concerned, all was right in the world.
End.
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