sixthiterationlogs | And Way Down We Go

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And Way Down We Go

WHO: Clint Barton, whoever
WHERE: Around town, the fountain...
WHEN: Throughout January 19th
OPEN TO: Anyone who wants to encounter him
WARNINGS: Standard mentions of drowning, otherwise TBD, but there'll probably be talk of fighting at the very least. Violent babies.
STATUS: Yes (if this changes, I'll edit)

1) Arrival (Early Morning)

Waking up underwater was pretty much the last thing Clint expected after managing to fall asleep after their rescue – and it was pretty much the worst. Whatever phobias he'd had as a kid had been trained out of him over the course of his life, but there was still a lingering thread of unease about really deep water, since even with as good as swimmer as he was he probably wouldn't be able to escape it fast enough to find breathable air. It didn't ever lock him down or stop him from going on any sort of underwater transport, but he was always just a hair more primed to act when on a sub or a submerged helicarrier. Birds just did better in the air.

So when he woke up not only not where he expected, but underwater, Clint's first reaction was one brief moment of panic before clamping it down, because panic would definitely get him killed and he had a lot to live for to die so stupidly. There was a soft light filtering down from what was probably above him if the pull of gravity was any indication, something looped around his shoulders that felt familiar and so was discarded as not a threat for the moment, and a sense of being pushed up. Whatever was going on here, getting air was the most important thing, and only about a second of orienting himself and taking all of that information in passed before he was following that push and kicking to the surface. Fortunately it wasn't as deep as it looked and he broke the surface only a few moments later, gasping for a clean breath and sculling to the edge of the... fountain? What in the hell...? And why was a fountain so deep...?

Grabbing the rim, Clint hauled himself bodily up and over the side to sprawl on the ground, breathing heavily and waiting for the pressure in his head to even out. Once it did, he was smacked clean in the face with how cold it was, especially for someone who'd gone to sleep in early summer in Africa. It wasn't made better by the fact that he'd managed to fall in a pile of old snow, or that he was only wearing what looked like white scrubs and some decent boots – neither of which he'd ever seen before. (At least the scrubs weren't blue.) Sitting around wasn't going to help anything, and he needed to dry off and warm up before his muscles seized and he got hypothermia. Waiting would do him and anyone else stuck in this situation no good. Pushing himself to his feet, Clint started stumbling to the nearest building that looked like it was inhabited, determined to find some answers.

2) Acclimatization (Early Afternoon)

Absolutely nothing about this place made sense. That was the only conclusion he could come to – it had to be magic, or alien science, or something. How else could a person (group of people, probably) kidnap so many different people from so many different times and worlds and with so many different skillsets? And not have any of them remember how they got here or be able to find a way out? They had to be dealing with something beyond any of their experiences and that, more than anything, was a frightening thought.

But he didn't let it show, because it would do no good. Panicking would just leave them stuck at square one, and so the first step was to canvas the area. It would take him a few days to map the entire place (as much as he could), but for now Clint – now warm, dry, and wearing every speck of clothing that had been in that pack since it was a shock to go from summer to winter – was taking his first walk around the village, ducking into every major building just to see what's going where and start making his mental map. Know where all the hiding places and all the exits are. Don't get stuck in a corner if you can at all help it. Maybe they were trapped in this place, but they didn't need to make it easy for whoever put them there.

3) Analysis (Late Afternoon/Evening)

Maybe it was a dumb idea for his first day, but Clint didn't even try to stop himself from taking a short walk into the woods. He wouldn't go far – monsters or animals or whatever weren't something he wanted to take on without at least a knife he could throw – but it was another resource, another set of potential hiding places, and it sounded like their best chance for food. He hadn't grown up with nothing in the backwoods of the mountains, but he knew how to survive out there and how to best live off the land if he had to. He was good at hunting and he was not good at sitting around and doing nothing (much to the annoyance of the doctors at S.H.I.E.L.D.). Day One was probably too early to jump in like that, especially since he had nothing to hunt with, but he wanted a first look so he could start making some plans.

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It reminds her of what she'd told Daniel, once, when Thompson had taken credit for all her work. She doesn't need the glory when she knows her own value and she can't help the surge of pride that rises within her to hear someone that works on her future team saying something so similar.

"That's quite handy and very expensive sounding," she notes, wondering where on earth such a budget must come from. "In my day, we were lucky to have those things and typically had to raid Stark's spare room. How on earth can you afford them so readily?" she wonders.

He'd gotten it from Fury, though even before he'd been recruited Clint already had a lot of the same mindset. It was what lead him to settle on a career in the armed forces to begin with in a lot of ways. And for as ruthless and willing to bend (or break) the laws as he could be, no one who knew the man could deny Nick Fury didn't genuinely have the best interests of the world and its inhabitants at heart.

It was a trait he shared with his top agents.

"Stark," Clint replies, and he manages to bite back a growl at the name. It's only been a few days for him since that unthinking betrayal of his secret, and he's not in the mood to think about Tony in a positive light yet, no matter their history. But that one he does keep throttled down, since it's tied so closely with the secret he guards so heavily. "They signed him on as a consultant a few years back and then of course he couldn't stop fiddling with everything, but even before that we were really well funded. Agents everywhere, buildings in most major cities, helicarriers - you directors basically turned us into the FBI of the world, and that meant getting government funding from a lot of governments. Enough to have S.H.I.E.L.D.-only advanced schools of scientific study that you had to already have at least one PhD to even apply to get in."

"I assume you mean Tony, seeing as no one has mentioned Howard, of the people from the future," she says, trying not to let her personal feelings get in the way because she knows what that means. It means that Howard didn't manage to get that far, which means that even if she had managed to get to the future, she would have been rather alone. "Strange," is all she says. "We went from the SSR pursuing a Stark for treason to one supplying its replacement with new, shiny toys," she deadpans, not entirely sure what it says about progress, but at least it means they're well stocked.

"It all seems so far-fetched and distant," she admits. "I can picture what you're saying, but I keep thinking back to where I was and connecting those dots is like a dizzying dream to even consider."

"Tony, yeah, but Howard first," he answers, because it's true. He has no complaints with Howard Stark - or, well, none that are relevant now. He trusted Tony when he said he'd been a shitty father, but that's nothing new to Clint. "It was you, him, and- god, that one guy, what was- Phillips, that's it, General Phillips. You lead, Howard bankrolled and did tech work, Phillips kept you hooked into the armed forces and the government. He stuck around for a really long time, too, over forty years." He won't be all that cautious mentioning deaths that aren't Peggy's, because it's just a fact of life that it ends. Howard Stark had died before his time, but he'd still lasted into his seventies, which Clint would consider himself lucky to see. Phillips, of course, had passed much earlier than that, but it was only to be expected, considering how old he'd been in the war. "Tony didn't take up his dad's seat, though. Or maybe they didn't need him to at that point, I dunno, I wasn't there. But they brought him in after his mess in the Middle East and he kind of got his head out of his ass."

Clint's steps slow a bit at her words of disbelief, the snow crunch under his feet fading as he considers for a couple of moments. Finally, he looks at her, more serious than he normally is. "You know, if you don't wanna know something, all you've gotta do is tell me. I'll stop talking."

"No, this is fine," Peggy assures him, because the truth is that he's already mentioning some things that other people have already told her. Some of this is hardly a surprise to her. "Some of it, I've heard. Others are easy to infer," she says, given that between herself, Howard, and Phillips, she can see how they would have a hold on the intelligence community and the army. She can't help but wonder what becomes of Daniel, though, and whether she's able to bring him with her.

That, though, is a topic she's leery of drifting too far towards, because that's something she hasn't probed at for fear of a future she doesn't get to live. "What happened in the Middle East?" she asks, gesturing to her door only a half kilometre away.

Okay, well, if he can make things make sense for Director Carter - no, wait, it'd still be Agent Carter at this point, since she doesn't seem to know S.H.I.E.L.D. - then he'll do what he can. Long as she says she's fine with it.

Clint takes a moment to sort out what's relevant and what's not in answer to her question, because the geopolitical situation had changed dramatically since the 1980s and he's not sure she knows that. A quick summary is probably in order. "About thirty years ago - from my time - a lot of countries in the Middle East started moving back towards being run - ruled - by stricter, more radical forms of Islam. Terrorism jumped up, suicide bombers, airplane hijackings. But a lot of the people who ran, run, those countries and the extremist religious leaders see the western world and especially America as evil and an enemy to be brought down and you've heard all the rhetoric. Tony was mostly designing and selling weapons to the armed forces about six years ago, he went over there for a live demonstration of a new missile, the convoy he was riding with got attacked by a terrorist cell and he was taken hostage to make them a missile of their own. Got hit with shrapnel, he almost died. He was a hostage for about three months and he managed to fool them into thinking he was making their missile when he was making himself a weaponized metal suit to break out with, which he did, and then the Air Force picked him up in the middle of the desert. Everything that happened to him showed him he was way down the path of being a dick, so when he got back, he shut down the weapons division of Stark Industries, went into things like clean and renewable energy and construction and bankrolling other scientific projects, but he also built a much better weaponized suit and became Iron Man so he could fight against the people that stole his weapons to use in aggressive attacks. That's how he ended up on the team."

It bears a distinctly striking resemblance to a story she might have told herself, because she'd nearly watched Howard fly the Blitzkrieg Button into New York City, a device of his own making and design that could be used to awful, terrible things. She has to wonder if Howard ever learned, ever stopped secreting Steve's blood away in an attempt to recreate his experiments. "He seems to be quite full of himself, but harmless," had been Peggy's evaluation of the man, grimacing at the recollection of how he'd been so intent on continuously using such strange words in her presence that she hadn't the first clue what they meant.

"He seemed a great deal like his father," she says, which isn't something she thinks Tony wants to hear, but Peggy has stopped counting the number of times she had nearly mistakenly called him 'Howard'.

Clint shrugs once more, unsure of whether she'd spent a lot of time with Tony or not - certainly not many people could spend a lot of time with Tony; even in his best moods, he was almost always on Full Speed and had a tendency to run off on tangents or projects at the drop of a hat. "I wouldn't know, but I know he wouldn't want to hear that. They didn't exactly get along." Understatement there. But anything else really isn't his business, much as he kind of really goddamn hates Tony right now. Harmless he isn't - and he's pretty sure Tony would agree with that.

The house is close, and Clint's not sure of her living situation, so he's not sure if it's time to cut the conversation short for privacy reasons or not. Better to leave that to her. "Anything else you wanna know?"

"Yes, I'd gathered that, as well," Peggy concedes, given that while Tony had never come straight out and said it, there was a certain implication that had been hard to avoid, seeing as there were always signs in body language that couldn't be ignored, things that Peggy had noticed when the topic of Howard had come up. She opens her mouth to ask another question, but finds herself stalling.

After all, there are things she wants to know, but finds that if she figures them out without living them, there is a possibility she'll spend her whole time obsessing. "Tell me about your life," she says, instead. "Here," she says, opening the door. "I don't think my roommate is home, but I don't think she'll mind my bringing company, even if she is."

He should've expected that, he really, really should have. Of course she'd want to know about the people spending time with Cap, and even Tony, the people involved with S.H.I.E.L.D. in her future. She'd want to know that the organization she built was staffed by good people who would continue her work (oh, the irony). And now she has one in her sights, one who's willing to answer all the questions she wants, so of course it would get specific.

Clint huffs a bit in a sigh, raising an arm to scratch the back of his head - and using the motion to hide and make sure he has control of his expression and voice before answering. The long-term separation from his family began too recently for it to be as second nature to conceal his reactions to any reminder of them, since at home he'd just been busted out of superjail and has no idea when he'll be able to see them again. And as much as he looks up to and respects Peggy, even more than Fury in some ways, hiding them is still second nature. "There's not a lot to tell," he answers as he walks through the door at her invitation. "Fury picked me up after I got blown up in Africa, I've been working for him ever since. Brought back Nat, convinced her it'd be better to work with us instead of against us, and it stuck. Went wherever Fury told me to go, nearly shot Thor at one point when he broke into our satellite station and started beating up all our guys, got involved with the Avengers after Loki-" He abruptly shuts his mouth, and there's a determined grimace he can't hide on his face for a moment before he pushes on. "Still pretty much doing the same stuff before I got here."

"Yes, she told me about her past," Peggy says, which had been something of a strange thing for Peggy, who had spent time in Russia seeing the infancy of the very program that Natasha would one day come out of. She's not sure how to feel, but guilt had been high on that list, not exactly knowing how to cope with seeing and hearing about things that you might change. Zola is another of those things and if Peggy ever gets back, she knows what she'll be doing first thing. Get Bucky, rescue Steve, dismantle the Red Room.

"Thor is here," she provides, "I don't know if you've seen him yet. Unless you're trying to avoid him after the shooting incident?"

"Yeah, I saw him - and the New Mexico incident was years ago, we don't care now. I was only doing my job and he knows it, and I was never told to take the shot anyway." Clint can be kind of a maverick agent sometimes - it's part of why Fury recruited him, actually - but for the most part he follows orders. He also just knows that sometimes he needs to make the right choice instead of the prescribed choice. It got him a best friend and his kids their godmother, after all.

He starts flexing his fingers as they get inside, trying to circulate his blood better to warm them as he looks at Peggy in curiosity. "What all'd she tell you?"

"She told me about the Red Room," Peggy says, "I came across it with some of the Howling Commandos and some of the SSR when we were in Russia on a mission. I saw what they did to the girls, one of them was after me in New York City. Dottie Underwood, though Natasha had another name for her." One that Peggy can't quite remember, off the top of her head, if she's honest. "I saw what happens to girls in that place," she says calmly.

"It was abhorrent," she says, her judgment sharp and clear. Peggy searches around for something to drink, finding the small bit of alcohol left in a bottle. "Do you drink?" she calls over her shoulder

"I saw that file," he says, giving no other reaction to it. When he'd been sent out after Nat, when she was still the Black Widow and not Nat, Fury had given him every document they had about career female spies from Russia. That one, though, hadn't been very helpful overall. "It was redacted pretty bad, though. Looked like someone went after it with a sharpie factory and a mechanical shredder." There'd been a few clues in there about fighting styles, what the school - or whatever it was - had entailed, the handcuffs, but most of it was just plain missing. He still couldn't decide if that'd been because the file was from before S.H.I.E.L.D.'s time and they'd just inherited something already in pieces or if one of the assholes who'd restarted HYDRA within S.H.I.E.L.D. had decided to cut it up for their own purposes. At this point it doesn't really matter.

"Not all that much, but if you're offering..." He doesn't shun alcohol, but one of the things Clint's wary about on a personal level is overindulging after watching what happened to his father at least two times a week for the first eight years of his life. Still, showing up somewhere like this, meeting someone he knows just died - in his time - kind of makes him want that drink more than normal.

"It was a dismal place," Peggy says seriously, settling a few glasses of strong drink together (though her portions are far from generous given the lack of much in this place) so that she can hold it out to Clint before settling in a chair opposite him. "They locked the girls down to their beds, forced them to watch American movies to develop skills with the language and from personal experience, that hand to hand fighting style is one I always feel off kilter with."

Peggy has none of that finesse that she'd come up against, but lucky for her, Dottie didn't have Peggy's brute strength. "I pity anyone who went through that system. I'll still stop them," she makes a point of saying, "but I do pity them."

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And Way Down We Go

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