Fic: Tell Me About Phil, Ch. 3/4
Jun. 15th, 2012 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabinetzinTitle: Tell Me About Phil, Ch. 3/4
Summary: Phil hasn't gone missing. Phil is gone. Clint is going after him.
Fandom: Avengers
Word Count: ~12500 (story)
Rating/Contents: NC-17, fusion, mindfuck, references to mental health issues and drug-induced self harm
Pairing: Clint/Coulson, Tony/Pepper
Policies: Read my archiving, feedback, and warnings policies here.
A/N: I was going to space this out more, but then I got a little tipsy and decided that I loved everyone in this bar.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 4
It's battle mode after that, as much as you can be in battle mode when you don't know where the battle is. Bruce and Tony go into the labs and just don't come out; Natasha goes somewhere and comes back with a really impressive- and this is Clint saying this- amount of guns. Steve is going back through loads and loads of mission reports that Tony stole from the SHIELD databases, coming up empty every time but trudging on regardless.
Clint finds a sharpie and goes Memento on himself, going over the notes with hairspray so they'll stick; there's no telling if the words will be taken away or not, but he does it anyway. His entire left forearm is filled up with PHIL COULSON, just in case, just to have the reminder of what he's fighting for.
The only thing they haven't done is actually called SHIELD; Clint has absolutely no doubt in his mind that Fury knows exactly what they've been up to, and if he hasn't interfered yet, he's not going to. Clint has and will put his life in Nick Fury's hands, but he really doesn't trust him as far as he can throw him. He's not even sure this doesn't have anything to do with some secret SHIELD project, but he does know for certain that SHIELD could only possibly slow them down.
It's a very tense two days before anything really happens, before an extremely harried Tony and Bruce call them together. "We've done everything we can here," Tony says, and he looks a little wild-eyed, like the only thing keeping him awake is chemical. "Into the bus, kids, we're going to Norway."
Natasha frowns. "What the hell's in Norway?"
"Jane Foster," Bruce tells them.
"Thor's girlfriend?" Clint says.
"Yeah, we thought we could do it without her-" Tony says.
"And we were wrong," Bruce finishes. "So, Tromsø it is."
"Does anyone here even speak Norwegian?" Steve asks.
"Yes," Natasha answers.
"Right, stupid question," Steve says.
"If this is The Matrix and we find the Architect, I'm asking that bastard for a teleporter," Tony says. "The price of jet fuel is killing me." He claps his hands, rubbing them together. "Shall we, lady and gentlemen?"
Clint is not really surprised when Tony and Bruce pass out five minutes after the plane lifts off. It takes Clint a second to realize why it's weird to him that Bruce is on a plane; if that's the point they've come to, then this shit has gotten real- appropriate, Clint thinks.
They're maybe an hour from Norway when the machine that's sitting in between Tony and Bruce starts going crazy, buzzing like it wants to jump off the table. Tony starts awake, shaking Bruce's shoulder, and they start pressing buttons wildly, in some pattern that Clint can't possibly hope to understand.
"Little help here?" Clint finally says.
"We have it," Bruce says, not looking up from the machine. "We've got all the earmarks of an Einstein-Rosen bridge about to open."
"Where?" Natasha demands.
Tony looks at him. "Let's say I'm not asking the pilot to turn around."
"That's good, right?" Steve asks.
"Could be good, could be bad," Bruce says. "Might get us answers, might tear the plane apart." He looks around at them. "If it does, it was nice knowing you."
"Can't you make this bucket go any faster?" Clint says.
"It's a plane," Tony says, annoyed, too caught up to even catch the sarcasm. "It doesn't have a turbo boost. We are going as fast as we can, and it is pissing me off."
"Wormhole's open," Bruce says. "How long it stays is anybody's guess."
The machine goes quiet.
Tony groans. "And now it's closed. Well, on to the post-mortem."
They more or less break in when they get to the facility in Tromsø, but nobody seems to notice; everybody is running around shouting at each other. Alarms are going off everywhere, lights flashing in the hallways.
Natasha reaches out, grabbing one of the scientists by the collar and shaking him. "Jane Foster," she says, and the scientist stops being excited and gives her a blank look. Natasha says something to him, but he cuts her off, pointing back to the lab. She shakes him again, raising her hand, and he flinches back. He's obviously scared, insistent on something, and he looks pathetically grateful when Natasha lets him go, running off before she can grab him again.
She shakes her head, and they don't have to ask what it means.
"So," Tony says, sighing. "There's that."
"We're getting closer," Steve says. "If they haven't made us forget her, then that's different."
"If we can get this close, then we can get through," Clint says resolutely. "We're going to get through."
"Can we at least get lunch?" Natasha says. "I know this is me saying this, but we all need to rest for a second."
"It's on me," Tony says wearily. "Granted, you should expect everything to always be on me, because that's what billionaire friends are for."
After lunch, it's back to New York, where Tony and Bruce hole up in the labs again, having 'appropriated' as much of Foster's data as they could get their very capable hands on. Clint is getting very, very sick of hurry-up-and-wait, but that's his life lately, ever since Phil has been gone.
He and Steve and Natasha are sleeping in shifts, just in case, even though Clint knows none of them are actually sleeping. Apparently other people know it too; Clint's supposed to have been asleep for an hour, but there's a soft knock at his door.
Steve's there, and he's smiling, kind of sadly. "We never had that talk," he says.
"Come in," Clint says, and Steve walks in, sitting down in the chair. "What did you want to talk about?" Clint asks him, sitting down at the edge of the bed.
"I'm supposed to be asking you that question, I think," Steve says. "So tell me about Phil."
Clint shuts his eyes. "You would not believe the number of times I've been asked that lately."
Steve gives him a look, the kind that Clint didn't even know Steve could have; it goes right through him, cuts in deep. "Have you given anybody a straight answer?"
Clint laughs, breathlessly. "I'm a SHIELD agent," he says. "Straight answers aren't our strong suit."
"Listen, I," Steve says, "I came because I thought you'd want to talk to somebody who understood. I know for me, one day everything was- well, it wasn't fine, we were in the middle of World War Two for crying out loud, but everything was where it should have been. And then I woke up and-" He opens his hands.
"Brave new world," Clint says.
"Yeah," Steve says. "And I wish I could go back and see everyone, even for a second. I can't. I hope that you can."
"I hope I can too," he says, looking down at his arm, the big letters there to remind him, the ones that haven't gone away. "I've been through a hell of a lot, and Phil's the only person who's ever loved me. I've spent my entire life getting away from one situation or another, and he's the only one who's ever been worth staying for."
"It's not the same thing at all," Steve says gently, "but we love you, too. Tony and Bruce haven't slept in days, Natasha's still running down other leads when she thinks nobody's paying attention, and I-" He falters. "I am terrified of what we're going to find out. I am terrified that all this is actually for real, because I'd much rather know that we've all gone completely crazy and started tilting at windmills." He sighs. "But I'm going to stick with it, because we're in this for each other, and we're in it for Phil."
"Phil would pass out if he heard you talk about him like that," Clint says, swallowing down the lump in his throat. "He's your biggest fan."
Steve takes his wallet out, pulling out his trading card; he's signed it across the bottom, 'Captain America' in big swoopy letters. "I can't wait to hear all about it."
Clint is about to speak, but suddenly there's a loud noise, like a fire alarm, and they're both up in an instant.
"Attention, all Avengers," Tony's voice says over the PA that the tower apparently has, and he sounds like hell. "We have reason to believe an Einstein-Rosen bridge is about to open, so if everyone could please get the fuck up to the lab, that'd be great. Thanks."
Clint and Steve look at each other, and then they're racing up the stairs, not bothering with the elevator.
Tony and Bruce are flying around the lab when they get there, and Natasha is leaning back against a table, in her best 'I don't want you to know that I am ready to take you out within forty-five seconds' stance.
"Where is it?" Clint asks.
"Working on it," Tony says, and the machine from the plane has grown, weird things coming off of it from all angles, most of it duct taped on. "I have something, but it doesn't seem right. Banner, are you looking at this?"
"Yeah, I see what you're talking about, but I don't get it either, it shouldn't be-" and then he goes off into something that Clint doesn't follow at all, Tony popping in at intervals to object.
"But that doesn't make any sense unless-" Bruce suddenly drops his tablet. "Oh shit," he says, his eyes wide and scared. "The call is coming from inside the house."
Tony puts his hand over his face. "Why does that always happen?"
"Well, if we are in a story, then it's not all that surprising," Bruce says nervously. "It's very common in these kinds of narratives."
"Do we know where in the house, or should we start searching the building?" Natasha asks, taking her gun from her holster.
"We don't know who or what in the house, or whether something's been taken or added," Clint points out, "unless you could rig up some kind of detector," he adds, looking at Tony hopefully.
"I'm good, but I'm not that good," Tony says begrudgingly. "If I had Thor here, maybe, someone who's traveled in it, but no."
"Well, has anybody been gone?" Steve asks. "Has anybody left and come back?"
Clint looks down at his arms; he holds one up, showing them his right palm. PEPPER, it says, in messy, slightly smeared capitals.
"Good enough," Tony says.
"Off to see the wizard," Steve says.
Tony shakes his head. "We've gotta get you some new pop culture references."
"Um, we've got to see how far the rabbit hole goes?" Steve tries.
"We'll take it," Bruce says.
Pepper's office is only two down; Steve insists on going in first, carefully making sure there isn't anything lurking, but there's nothing. There's nothing at all but Pepper's office, big wooden door, frosted glass separating it from the rest of the floor.
They stand in front of it for a while, looking at each other, until Natasha rolls her eyes, sighing, and knocks. "Come in," Pepper calls, and Natasha opens the door.
Clint's never been to Pepper's office before; it looks like it belongs to her, very clean, white and grey and light wood, clearly expensive art on the walls, her own elevator. Pepper is leaning back against the edge of her desk, her ankles crossed, holding a black leather folder over her lap. "I was wondering when you'd come."
"We're not sure why we have," Steve says. "Right? Because I'm not a hundred percent sure."
"I thought you'd worked it out by now," Pepper says.
"Why did you leave?" Clint asks. "Why did you come back?"
The elevator opens of its own accord. "Would you like to come upstairs and discuss it?" she says.
Clint looks at the rest of them, and they're all waiting; this is all him now. "Are you going to push me off the roof?" he says.
"Would it matter if I did?" Pepper asks.
He steps forward, indicating the elevator. "Ladies first," he says, and he follows Pepper in.
The door shuts.
--
Clint doesn't ever actually step off the elevator. He just blinks his eyes open, and he's in a windowless room. It's not precisely what he expected from the real world, looking like a fancy waiting room, the kind you'd find in a lawyer's office or something.
Pepper is standing in front of him; she's wearing a different suit, and he could swear she's shorter. "Welcome to the top level," she says.
He feels very strange, like his body isn't on right. He looks down at himself- he looks down at someone, because last time he checked he didn't have breasts. "Okay, who the hell am I?"
"Sorry," she says. "Our Barton has been dead for quite some time. You're Maria right at the moment."
"Well, that's fun," Clint says, because it is the only response he can think of to information like that. "So, you're up here using us like batteries? That's great. Way to go."
She sighs. "We don't censor media that's made in the System," Pepper says, "not unless we absolutely have to, but that movie had to be banned. Enough people already think the System is unethical, and if they thought that's what we were doing-"
"Okay, so this isn't The Matrix?" he says, cutting her off. "I just want a confirmation on that one."
"No, this is not The Matrix," she says patiently.
"What about Wade Wilson?" he asks. "That's what he said."
She frowns. "We're not sure what the Deadpool unit is, and we can't catch it. I suppose he was just having fun."
"He was sure having a hell of a good time," Clint says, crossing his arms. "If you'd stopped him, I wouldn't be up here."
"I'm not entirely sure of that," she says. "I think it just would have taken you longer to figure it out." Pepper shrugs. "Then again, a lot of people tried to make sure you didn't."
"Where is Phil?" he demands.
Her smile is sad. "There is no Phil."
"Don't you fucking give me that," he snaps, pointing a finger at her. He's long past the point of being afraid that he's crazy; now he's just pissed off at being contradicted. "Don't you fucking tell me there was never a Phil. I did not come all this fucking way chasing someone who didn't exist."
"Let me explain a few things, and then we can talk about what you're looking for," she says, which is good, because he kind of forgot that he has no idea what's going on, because it's not as important as where Phil is. "Your reality is called the System. Users pay a small fee to upload copies of themselves to the system, for various reasons. Barton, for example-"
"I don't want to hear anything else about dead me, okay, that's just too weird," Clint says, waving her off.
"Fair enough," she says. "Then take someone like Bruce Banner. The original Banner was quickly uploaded after having a lab accident involving gamma radiation, just before it killed him. His progress can be viewed through certain- well, they're almost like cameras. His family finds it comforting, knowing he's alive in the System, despite what has happened to him."
"This is some fucked up shit you're telling me," Clint says; he tries to cross his arms over his chest, but Maria's breasts get in the way, and he quickly puts them down.
"There was resistance to the System at first," she says, "but it's commonplace now to become a user. It's not all that different from a video game, except that one's avatar has a life of its own."
"Yeah, you're goddamn right it has a life of its own," Clint says.
Pepper studies him. "I'm sorry, it's just that no one's ever come up here before. You seem to be taking this oddly well."
"Lady, you have seen the kind of week I've had," Clint says. "All you're doing is mopping up. Now that we're all on the same page, let's do this again: Where. Is. Phil?"
"I'm afraid the answer's not any different this time, Clint," she says. "There was an entity in the System you interacted with who you called Phil," she tells him. "But it wasn't a copy of a person."
Clint stares at her, unable to speak.
"Agent was an experiment," she says. "We've fabricated non-copy units before, but they were for the other servers, units that didn't have to pass for users." She smiles fondly at the memory. "Agent was a labor of love, a unit who was close enough that he was practically a copy."
Clint is still trying to put into words the number of things that he wants to say.
"We all liked Agent," she continues. "When Loki killed him-" Clint's stomach drops- "it was heartbreaking for all of us. But Agent was already learning how to play the system- we think he even flew once, but we're still debating that. He was getting very close to consciousness of the System. No copy has ever been able to do that."
Clint has given up on words.
"No one witnessed the actual crime except the Loki and Thor units, and they're back on the Asgard server," Pepper tells him. "They may not return to Earth. If they do, Agent will be wiped from their memories. We did let the simulation run on long enough for Agent's death to be felt by the other copies, but then we pulled him."
"The cards?" Clint asks.
Pepper looks sad. "I don't think you want to know. The Fury copy thought-"
Clint holds up his hand. "Yeah, I don't wanna know. But what happened to you then? To, to Xerox Pepper. She was back and forth, or so I've been told."
"I had to pull her out momentarily so that I could replace her," she says. "You missed all of it, which is good, because it was a ten-minute hack job. I'm kind of embarrassed of it."
"You should be embarrassed of all of it," Clint says. "I mean, forget shame for a second, you people are doing a pretty shitty job if you wiped this guy and left so much of him around."
"Pulling units and copies silently is in beta, as are quick pulls with bridges," she says apologetically. "I'm afraid we implemented them far too soon. We weren't expecting some copies to cling so tightly."
"I've been known to be a stubborn bastard," Clint says. "And I want him back."
She purses her lips, looking frustrated with him. "The Agent unit-"
"His fucking name was Phil," Clint snaps.
She sighs. "Phil is considered unstable by the programmers. He's set to undergo testing that might take months, years-"
"I don't care how you have to do it," he insists. "Make it work. Say he's a clone or an LMD or whatever the hell, whatever he needs to be to make sense. Just give him back."
Pepper stares at him for a moment. "You're asking me to send you back with a fake version of a fake person. That would be enough for you?"
"If it was the only way I could get Phil back, then yes," Clint says. "Besides, I'm dead, right? We'd be a matched set."
She sighs. "I really do miss Barton."
Clint lifts an eyebrow. "Standing right here, Potts."
"I can't make you any promises, because the final decision isn't up to me," she says. "All I can do is put in a good word. I can't even promise there won't be a rollback after this event. After that, you might not remember Phil at all." She smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "But now, I'm afraid I have to send you back down."
"Can I ask you one question before I go?" he asks.
Pepper looks bemused. "You've already asked me a lot of questions."
"Then here's one more," he says. "How do you know this world is real?"
She opens her arms. "How could we?" she says. "Now, if you'll just shut your eyes, I'll put you back. I really do wish you the best of luck."
He snorts. "That's up to you, now isn't it?"
"Not exactly," she says. "We didn't program in all that free will for nothing."
He shuts his eyes. "Now there's a contradiction if I ever heard one."
"Goodbye, Clint."
Clint smiles. "Oh, Tony says to tell you he wants a-"
On to Chapter 4
Summary: Phil hasn't gone missing. Phil is gone. Clint is going after him.
Fandom: Avengers
Word Count: ~12500 (story)
Rating/Contents: NC-17, fusion, mindfuck, references to mental health issues and drug-induced self harm
Pairing: Clint/Coulson, Tony/Pepper
Policies: Read my archiving, feedback, and warnings policies here.
A/N: I was going to space this out more, but then I got a little tipsy and decided that I loved everyone in this bar.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 4
It's battle mode after that, as much as you can be in battle mode when you don't know where the battle is. Bruce and Tony go into the labs and just don't come out; Natasha goes somewhere and comes back with a really impressive- and this is Clint saying this- amount of guns. Steve is going back through loads and loads of mission reports that Tony stole from the SHIELD databases, coming up empty every time but trudging on regardless.
Clint finds a sharpie and goes Memento on himself, going over the notes with hairspray so they'll stick; there's no telling if the words will be taken away or not, but he does it anyway. His entire left forearm is filled up with PHIL COULSON, just in case, just to have the reminder of what he's fighting for.
The only thing they haven't done is actually called SHIELD; Clint has absolutely no doubt in his mind that Fury knows exactly what they've been up to, and if he hasn't interfered yet, he's not going to. Clint has and will put his life in Nick Fury's hands, but he really doesn't trust him as far as he can throw him. He's not even sure this doesn't have anything to do with some secret SHIELD project, but he does know for certain that SHIELD could only possibly slow them down.
It's a very tense two days before anything really happens, before an extremely harried Tony and Bruce call them together. "We've done everything we can here," Tony says, and he looks a little wild-eyed, like the only thing keeping him awake is chemical. "Into the bus, kids, we're going to Norway."
Natasha frowns. "What the hell's in Norway?"
"Jane Foster," Bruce tells them.
"Thor's girlfriend?" Clint says.
"Yeah, we thought we could do it without her-" Tony says.
"And we were wrong," Bruce finishes. "So, Tromsø it is."
"Does anyone here even speak Norwegian?" Steve asks.
"Yes," Natasha answers.
"Right, stupid question," Steve says.
"If this is The Matrix and we find the Architect, I'm asking that bastard for a teleporter," Tony says. "The price of jet fuel is killing me." He claps his hands, rubbing them together. "Shall we, lady and gentlemen?"
Clint is not really surprised when Tony and Bruce pass out five minutes after the plane lifts off. It takes Clint a second to realize why it's weird to him that Bruce is on a plane; if that's the point they've come to, then this shit has gotten real- appropriate, Clint thinks.
They're maybe an hour from Norway when the machine that's sitting in between Tony and Bruce starts going crazy, buzzing like it wants to jump off the table. Tony starts awake, shaking Bruce's shoulder, and they start pressing buttons wildly, in some pattern that Clint can't possibly hope to understand.
"Little help here?" Clint finally says.
"We have it," Bruce says, not looking up from the machine. "We've got all the earmarks of an Einstein-Rosen bridge about to open."
"Where?" Natasha demands.
Tony looks at him. "Let's say I'm not asking the pilot to turn around."
"That's good, right?" Steve asks.
"Could be good, could be bad," Bruce says. "Might get us answers, might tear the plane apart." He looks around at them. "If it does, it was nice knowing you."
"Can't you make this bucket go any faster?" Clint says.
"It's a plane," Tony says, annoyed, too caught up to even catch the sarcasm. "It doesn't have a turbo boost. We are going as fast as we can, and it is pissing me off."
"Wormhole's open," Bruce says. "How long it stays is anybody's guess."
The machine goes quiet.
Tony groans. "And now it's closed. Well, on to the post-mortem."
They more or less break in when they get to the facility in Tromsø, but nobody seems to notice; everybody is running around shouting at each other. Alarms are going off everywhere, lights flashing in the hallways.
Natasha reaches out, grabbing one of the scientists by the collar and shaking him. "Jane Foster," she says, and the scientist stops being excited and gives her a blank look. Natasha says something to him, but he cuts her off, pointing back to the lab. She shakes him again, raising her hand, and he flinches back. He's obviously scared, insistent on something, and he looks pathetically grateful when Natasha lets him go, running off before she can grab him again.
She shakes her head, and they don't have to ask what it means.
"So," Tony says, sighing. "There's that."
"We're getting closer," Steve says. "If they haven't made us forget her, then that's different."
"If we can get this close, then we can get through," Clint says resolutely. "We're going to get through."
"Can we at least get lunch?" Natasha says. "I know this is me saying this, but we all need to rest for a second."
"It's on me," Tony says wearily. "Granted, you should expect everything to always be on me, because that's what billionaire friends are for."
After lunch, it's back to New York, where Tony and Bruce hole up in the labs again, having 'appropriated' as much of Foster's data as they could get their very capable hands on. Clint is getting very, very sick of hurry-up-and-wait, but that's his life lately, ever since Phil has been gone.
He and Steve and Natasha are sleeping in shifts, just in case, even though Clint knows none of them are actually sleeping. Apparently other people know it too; Clint's supposed to have been asleep for an hour, but there's a soft knock at his door.
Steve's there, and he's smiling, kind of sadly. "We never had that talk," he says.
"Come in," Clint says, and Steve walks in, sitting down in the chair. "What did you want to talk about?" Clint asks him, sitting down at the edge of the bed.
"I'm supposed to be asking you that question, I think," Steve says. "So tell me about Phil."
Clint shuts his eyes. "You would not believe the number of times I've been asked that lately."
Steve gives him a look, the kind that Clint didn't even know Steve could have; it goes right through him, cuts in deep. "Have you given anybody a straight answer?"
Clint laughs, breathlessly. "I'm a SHIELD agent," he says. "Straight answers aren't our strong suit."
"Listen, I," Steve says, "I came because I thought you'd want to talk to somebody who understood. I know for me, one day everything was- well, it wasn't fine, we were in the middle of World War Two for crying out loud, but everything was where it should have been. And then I woke up and-" He opens his hands.
"Brave new world," Clint says.
"Yeah," Steve says. "And I wish I could go back and see everyone, even for a second. I can't. I hope that you can."
"I hope I can too," he says, looking down at his arm, the big letters there to remind him, the ones that haven't gone away. "I've been through a hell of a lot, and Phil's the only person who's ever loved me. I've spent my entire life getting away from one situation or another, and he's the only one who's ever been worth staying for."
"It's not the same thing at all," Steve says gently, "but we love you, too. Tony and Bruce haven't slept in days, Natasha's still running down other leads when she thinks nobody's paying attention, and I-" He falters. "I am terrified of what we're going to find out. I am terrified that all this is actually for real, because I'd much rather know that we've all gone completely crazy and started tilting at windmills." He sighs. "But I'm going to stick with it, because we're in this for each other, and we're in it for Phil."
"Phil would pass out if he heard you talk about him like that," Clint says, swallowing down the lump in his throat. "He's your biggest fan."
Steve takes his wallet out, pulling out his trading card; he's signed it across the bottom, 'Captain America' in big swoopy letters. "I can't wait to hear all about it."
Clint is about to speak, but suddenly there's a loud noise, like a fire alarm, and they're both up in an instant.
"Attention, all Avengers," Tony's voice says over the PA that the tower apparently has, and he sounds like hell. "We have reason to believe an Einstein-Rosen bridge is about to open, so if everyone could please get the fuck up to the lab, that'd be great. Thanks."
Clint and Steve look at each other, and then they're racing up the stairs, not bothering with the elevator.
Tony and Bruce are flying around the lab when they get there, and Natasha is leaning back against a table, in her best 'I don't want you to know that I am ready to take you out within forty-five seconds' stance.
"Where is it?" Clint asks.
"Working on it," Tony says, and the machine from the plane has grown, weird things coming off of it from all angles, most of it duct taped on. "I have something, but it doesn't seem right. Banner, are you looking at this?"
"Yeah, I see what you're talking about, but I don't get it either, it shouldn't be-" and then he goes off into something that Clint doesn't follow at all, Tony popping in at intervals to object.
"But that doesn't make any sense unless-" Bruce suddenly drops his tablet. "Oh shit," he says, his eyes wide and scared. "The call is coming from inside the house."
Tony puts his hand over his face. "Why does that always happen?"
"Well, if we are in a story, then it's not all that surprising," Bruce says nervously. "It's very common in these kinds of narratives."
"Do we know where in the house, or should we start searching the building?" Natasha asks, taking her gun from her holster.
"We don't know who or what in the house, or whether something's been taken or added," Clint points out, "unless you could rig up some kind of detector," he adds, looking at Tony hopefully.
"I'm good, but I'm not that good," Tony says begrudgingly. "If I had Thor here, maybe, someone who's traveled in it, but no."
"Well, has anybody been gone?" Steve asks. "Has anybody left and come back?"
Clint looks down at his arms; he holds one up, showing them his right palm. PEPPER, it says, in messy, slightly smeared capitals.
"Good enough," Tony says.
"Off to see the wizard," Steve says.
Tony shakes his head. "We've gotta get you some new pop culture references."
"Um, we've got to see how far the rabbit hole goes?" Steve tries.
"We'll take it," Bruce says.
Pepper's office is only two down; Steve insists on going in first, carefully making sure there isn't anything lurking, but there's nothing. There's nothing at all but Pepper's office, big wooden door, frosted glass separating it from the rest of the floor.
They stand in front of it for a while, looking at each other, until Natasha rolls her eyes, sighing, and knocks. "Come in," Pepper calls, and Natasha opens the door.
Clint's never been to Pepper's office before; it looks like it belongs to her, very clean, white and grey and light wood, clearly expensive art on the walls, her own elevator. Pepper is leaning back against the edge of her desk, her ankles crossed, holding a black leather folder over her lap. "I was wondering when you'd come."
"We're not sure why we have," Steve says. "Right? Because I'm not a hundred percent sure."
"I thought you'd worked it out by now," Pepper says.
"Why did you leave?" Clint asks. "Why did you come back?"
The elevator opens of its own accord. "Would you like to come upstairs and discuss it?" she says.
Clint looks at the rest of them, and they're all waiting; this is all him now. "Are you going to push me off the roof?" he says.
"Would it matter if I did?" Pepper asks.
He steps forward, indicating the elevator. "Ladies first," he says, and he follows Pepper in.
The door shuts.
--
Clint doesn't ever actually step off the elevator. He just blinks his eyes open, and he's in a windowless room. It's not precisely what he expected from the real world, looking like a fancy waiting room, the kind you'd find in a lawyer's office or something.
Pepper is standing in front of him; she's wearing a different suit, and he could swear she's shorter. "Welcome to the top level," she says.
He feels very strange, like his body isn't on right. He looks down at himself- he looks down at someone, because last time he checked he didn't have breasts. "Okay, who the hell am I?"
"Sorry," she says. "Our Barton has been dead for quite some time. You're Maria right at the moment."
"Well, that's fun," Clint says, because it is the only response he can think of to information like that. "So, you're up here using us like batteries? That's great. Way to go."
She sighs. "We don't censor media that's made in the System," Pepper says, "not unless we absolutely have to, but that movie had to be banned. Enough people already think the System is unethical, and if they thought that's what we were doing-"
"Okay, so this isn't The Matrix?" he says, cutting her off. "I just want a confirmation on that one."
"No, this is not The Matrix," she says patiently.
"What about Wade Wilson?" he asks. "That's what he said."
She frowns. "We're not sure what the Deadpool unit is, and we can't catch it. I suppose he was just having fun."
"He was sure having a hell of a good time," Clint says, crossing his arms. "If you'd stopped him, I wouldn't be up here."
"I'm not entirely sure of that," she says. "I think it just would have taken you longer to figure it out." Pepper shrugs. "Then again, a lot of people tried to make sure you didn't."
"Where is Phil?" he demands.
Her smile is sad. "There is no Phil."
"Don't you fucking give me that," he snaps, pointing a finger at her. He's long past the point of being afraid that he's crazy; now he's just pissed off at being contradicted. "Don't you fucking tell me there was never a Phil. I did not come all this fucking way chasing someone who didn't exist."
"Let me explain a few things, and then we can talk about what you're looking for," she says, which is good, because he kind of forgot that he has no idea what's going on, because it's not as important as where Phil is. "Your reality is called the System. Users pay a small fee to upload copies of themselves to the system, for various reasons. Barton, for example-"
"I don't want to hear anything else about dead me, okay, that's just too weird," Clint says, waving her off.
"Fair enough," she says. "Then take someone like Bruce Banner. The original Banner was quickly uploaded after having a lab accident involving gamma radiation, just before it killed him. His progress can be viewed through certain- well, they're almost like cameras. His family finds it comforting, knowing he's alive in the System, despite what has happened to him."
"This is some fucked up shit you're telling me," Clint says; he tries to cross his arms over his chest, but Maria's breasts get in the way, and he quickly puts them down.
"There was resistance to the System at first," she says, "but it's commonplace now to become a user. It's not all that different from a video game, except that one's avatar has a life of its own."
"Yeah, you're goddamn right it has a life of its own," Clint says.
Pepper studies him. "I'm sorry, it's just that no one's ever come up here before. You seem to be taking this oddly well."
"Lady, you have seen the kind of week I've had," Clint says. "All you're doing is mopping up. Now that we're all on the same page, let's do this again: Where. Is. Phil?"
"I'm afraid the answer's not any different this time, Clint," she says. "There was an entity in the System you interacted with who you called Phil," she tells him. "But it wasn't a copy of a person."
Clint stares at her, unable to speak.
"Agent was an experiment," she says. "We've fabricated non-copy units before, but they were for the other servers, units that didn't have to pass for users." She smiles fondly at the memory. "Agent was a labor of love, a unit who was close enough that he was practically a copy."
Clint is still trying to put into words the number of things that he wants to say.
"We all liked Agent," she continues. "When Loki killed him-" Clint's stomach drops- "it was heartbreaking for all of us. But Agent was already learning how to play the system- we think he even flew once, but we're still debating that. He was getting very close to consciousness of the System. No copy has ever been able to do that."
Clint has given up on words.
"No one witnessed the actual crime except the Loki and Thor units, and they're back on the Asgard server," Pepper tells him. "They may not return to Earth. If they do, Agent will be wiped from their memories. We did let the simulation run on long enough for Agent's death to be felt by the other copies, but then we pulled him."
"The cards?" Clint asks.
Pepper looks sad. "I don't think you want to know. The Fury copy thought-"
Clint holds up his hand. "Yeah, I don't wanna know. But what happened to you then? To, to Xerox Pepper. She was back and forth, or so I've been told."
"I had to pull her out momentarily so that I could replace her," she says. "You missed all of it, which is good, because it was a ten-minute hack job. I'm kind of embarrassed of it."
"You should be embarrassed of all of it," Clint says. "I mean, forget shame for a second, you people are doing a pretty shitty job if you wiped this guy and left so much of him around."
"Pulling units and copies silently is in beta, as are quick pulls with bridges," she says apologetically. "I'm afraid we implemented them far too soon. We weren't expecting some copies to cling so tightly."
"I've been known to be a stubborn bastard," Clint says. "And I want him back."
She purses her lips, looking frustrated with him. "The Agent unit-"
"His fucking name was Phil," Clint snaps.
She sighs. "Phil is considered unstable by the programmers. He's set to undergo testing that might take months, years-"
"I don't care how you have to do it," he insists. "Make it work. Say he's a clone or an LMD or whatever the hell, whatever he needs to be to make sense. Just give him back."
Pepper stares at him for a moment. "You're asking me to send you back with a fake version of a fake person. That would be enough for you?"
"If it was the only way I could get Phil back, then yes," Clint says. "Besides, I'm dead, right? We'd be a matched set."
She sighs. "I really do miss Barton."
Clint lifts an eyebrow. "Standing right here, Potts."
"I can't make you any promises, because the final decision isn't up to me," she says. "All I can do is put in a good word. I can't even promise there won't be a rollback after this event. After that, you might not remember Phil at all." She smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "But now, I'm afraid I have to send you back down."
"Can I ask you one question before I go?" he asks.
Pepper looks bemused. "You've already asked me a lot of questions."
"Then here's one more," he says. "How do you know this world is real?"
She opens her arms. "How could we?" she says. "Now, if you'll just shut your eyes, I'll put you back. I really do wish you the best of luck."
He snorts. "That's up to you, now isn't it?"
"Not exactly," she says. "We didn't program in all that free will for nothing."
He shuts his eyes. "Now there's a contradiction if I ever heard one."
"Goodbye, Clint."
Clint smiles. "Oh, Tony says to tell you he wants a-"
On to Chapter 4
