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Word Count: 3912
Category: F/M
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Choose Not to Warn
Fandom: Avengers (2012), Norse Mythology
AU: Archer, Battle-Mage, Trickster, and Warrior
Series: Clint and Angrboða
Characters: Angrboða, Bruce Banner | Hulk, Clint Barton | Hawkeye, Natasha Romanov | Black Widow, Phil Coulson
Relationships: Angrboða/Clint Barton | Hawkeye, Clint Barton | Hawkeye & Phil Coulson
The return eye-roll is familiar, as is the accompanying indulgent smile, though there's something that doesn't seem quite right. Phil's alive and there, but there's something more or something less as well, and Clint isn't quite sure what.
The melody of a ringtone wakes Anna up at what a glance at the clock proves to be an entirely too early hour for when they'd gone to bed, and she pokes at Clint once she determines it isn't her phone that's going off. He sighs, before reaching for the phone, his voice still sleep muddled as he answers. Whatever is said makes him sit up, reaching for the switch for the bedside lamp.
"I don't know how soon I can get a flight, Nat, unless SHIELD..." he pauses, mid-sentence, as if interrupted. "Huh. Get Stark to send a damned jet, and I'll meet the plane at the airport, or I'll catch the next commercial flight out from Missoula."
Anna gives up on the idea of more sleep, and reaches out to press her hand between Clint's shoulders a moment before she gets out of bed. There's packing and some clean-up to do before the flight, and she isn't going to let Clint leave without her - not with the way the conversation she's half-listening to is going. There's something that makes her worry in Clint's voice, and in the urgency of the conversation.
"Can you tell me what's happening?" she asks once he ends the call, watching him as she packs clothes back into duffels.
Clint's quiet a long moment, running a hand through his hair. "Someone who was killed isn't as dead as he was supposed to be." He pauses, turning a bit so he can look at her, and reaching for a pair of jeans she'd left out for him. He looks at what she's packing before smiling a moment. "I was going to ask if you wanted to fly back with me, or catch a later flight."
A soft smile crosses Anna's face a moment. "Of course I'm going with you, love. As far as you want me to, or I'm allowed." She puts the last pair of jeans into the duffel before going to pull the shirts out of the drawer they're in. "I assume I'm going to be dealing with no few non-disclosure forms and such."
"Maybe." Clint shrugs, grabbing a shirt off the stack she's bringing. He's quiet as he pulls it on, clearly thinking about something. "I think with what's going on, maybe I should have told you more about it sooner."
"Your job is dangerous, I know that." Anna reaches out to touch his shoulder, holding his gaze. "I can't miss that. Dangerous jobs sometimes follow a person home, I know that too. I'm not helpless, love."
"I know." Clint picks up her hand, holding it tightly in his a long moment before he lets go. "It's just that it's more dangerous than it used to be." He pauses, looking away a moment before he takes a deep breath, his voice quieter than she expects as he says, "I'm not just going up against foreign governments and rogue agents any more, or wierd baby-sitting jobs in the middle of nowhere. Loki..."
"Is just one of the first dangers you faced?" Anna finishes the sentence for him when he's quiet for several minutes. "And there are others that are going to be like him?"
"And for all I know, they'll decide to come after the people I love - the people any of us love." He looks up to meet her gaze again, a frown of worry on his face. And something else, as well. "That story you told me, about Angrboða. How much of it is true?"
Anna stills, studying his face. She hadn't expected he would ask such a question - though she thinks she should have expected he would understand there is truth behind the myth she told him. "As I recall it, all of it."
It makes Clint relax a little, as if she's told him she can hold her own against someone like Loki - which, perhaps, she has. She isn't as certain she could fight Loki, but that is more that she still, for all her anger at him, and her bitterness, she still finds him physically pleasing. It annoys her, often times, that she still cannot often push him away, though he seemed far better able to do the same to her.
The rest of the time until they leave passes swiftly, packing and cleaning and leaving the ranch house as it was when they arrived, and returning the key to the box in the barn. A plane waited for them at the airport, sleek and small, another of the same sort that brought them out in the first place. Anna is only glad that it means they're not waiting in a line at either end, so Clint is less wound up.
Even with one of Stark's jets, Clint is antsy, though he tries to keep it under control. Anna - Angrboða, though he can't really think of her as anyone but Anna - rolls her eyes, and tells him to pace if it helps any. It doesn't help the worry about Natasha's message, but it at least helps to burn off some of the excess energy.
"Coulson's alive."
Those words had dragged him from sleep into wakefulness faster than he'd done in the last couple of weeks. He hadn't even thought about if it was a trick of some sort, just started planning to get back to New York.
"SHIELD isn't part of this. This was an Avengers mission, and Coulson is one of ours."
That had been something they all agreed on without any of them saying a word. It had been the Avengers who gathered for Phil's funeral, Stark who'd paid for it and the headstone, Natasha and Clint who'd dictated the contents of the stone, all of them who'd borne the casket from herse to plot. No matter what SHIELD said, no matter what Phil had been before, he was one of the Avengers, and they would take care of their own, now that they were a team.
"He was still in the suit we buried him in, and he was unconscious before Banner got the IV in. He hasn't woken up yet. Banner's running tests to make sure he's who he looks like."
Clint isn't certain if he should be worried about that or not. He had no frame of reference for someone being resurrected, none of them did. A small frown crosses his face, and he returns to where Anna's sitting beside a window, and settles into the seat next to her.
"Have you ever had anyone come back to life after being dead?" He doesn't know if she has, but if she is as old as he thinks she might be, she's the only person who might have a chance at seeing that sort of thing.
Anna frowns slightly, watching him a moment. "No, though sometimes I've wished it could happen. I've not even heard of anyone who came back from the dead - at least, not outside of legends that I could never find anything to support."
Vampires, zombies. Things that are just the stuff of legends and horror movies, even when other myths are real. At least he can be sure of that much, although the idea of a zombie-Phil is both amusing and sickening at the same time. Perhaps more amusing than sickening once he has a chance to see Phil really is alive with his own eyes.
A hand on his arm, and Anna resting her head on his shoulder draw him out of his thoughts, and Clint shifts to wrap his arm around her shoulders. It helps, to hold onto her, and keeps him from counting the minutes - no matter how patient he can be on a job, this is a different sort of wait - until the flight touches down on the runway at LaGuardia. When they stop, Natasha is waiting for them at the terminal, glancing briefly at Anna before she raises an eyebrow at Clint.
"Anna's coming to the Tower with me." Clint shrugs, meeting Natasha's gaze easily. He's not going to send Anna off home until they have an idea what's going on, and there isn't a risk to anyone else. Never mind that she's lived with knowing the dangers of his job for years, and he's pretty certain she can take care of herself at least long enough for back-up to arrive.
"Ok." Natasha shrugs, leaving any problems on his shoulders. Both of them know SHIELD and Fury probably aren't going to be happy about it, but right now, this isn't a SHIELD matter. It's an Avengers matter, and they haven't worked out protocols for this sort of thing yet.
A car is waiting for them outside, complete with driver courtesy of Stark, and the ride to the Tower is quiet, with Natasha sitting opposite them, watching Anna. That Anna is watching her in return with curiosity in her expression makes Clint hope they're not going to go off and compare notes or something. He might live through it, but he doesn't fool himself into thinking the two couldn't make him uncomfortable in the process.
They stop at the room that Natasha says Stark had put in for Clint, leaving the luggage there before making their way to the medical floor, and the room where Phil is asleep in a bed that doesn't look like a hospital bed to Clint. Banner is sitting in the chair next to the bed, and looks up when they enter, smiling briefly to Natasha, and giving Anna a curious look.
"Anna Boyd." She doesn't wait for Clint to introduce her, stepping forward with her hand out. "I'm with Clint." She's never used the term girlfriend, though others have applied it to her - never Natasha, though part of that is because she'd asked Clint what Anna was to him.
"Bruce Banner." Bruce took the offered hand, smiling briefly at her before he looks over at Natasha. "Phil hasn't woken up while you've been gone, but he probably will wake up again soon. Do you want me to stay, or go?"
"We'll be fine." Natasha gives him a brief smile, before stepping out of the way to let Banner leave. After, she sits on the end of Phil's bed, leaving the chair open for Clint. Watching Anna with a bland, blank expression that reads to Clint as wary curiosity and a need to know that she doesn't want seen.
Anna returns the regard with open curiosity, and it's a more true expression than Natasha's, for all that Clint doesn't think the curiosity is all that Anna's feeling right now. There's some wariness underneath that he can see in her eyes, and he suspects Natasha can see too.
"Is there proper tea here?" Anna breaks the silence first, a smile crossing her face that Natasha responds to with a small smile of her own.
"I can make some." Natasha slides off the bed, tilting her head toward the door. "I can show you around some of the Tower as well, if you'd like."
"I doubt you'd show me much, but where to find tea and food would be appreciated." Anna leans over to press a light kiss to Clint's temple. "I'll be back in a little while, love."
He watches them go with a faint sense of foreboding that he shakes off after a moment. Chosing instead to focus his attention on Phil, studying him as he sleeps. His eyes are moving under his lids, as if he's dreaming, and Clint's tempted to reach out to wake him, but refrains. Banner had said Phil should wake up again soon. On his own.
It's most of half an hour before Phil opens his eyes, and Clint can't stop the words that slip from his lips, relief and worry and all the muddled, mixed emotions making him sound more plaintive than he intends. "I hear you're supposed to be back from the dead, and you're not even awake when I get here."
It takes Phil a moment to look over at Clint, and there's a worrying blankness to his gaze for a moment before a faint, familiar smile crosses his face. "How short did you cut your mandatory down-time?"
Phil's voice is quieter, and somehow thinner, than Clint is used to, and he tries to shrug it off, letting the easy smile cross his face, though it fades quickly. "Three weeks." He doesn't think he would have cut it so short if it had been anyone else in the hospital bed, save if Natasha were. He'd have come back inside of a week of being away if she'd been injured.
The return eye-roll is familiar, as is the accompanying indulgent smile, though there's something that doesn't seem quite right. Phil's alive and there, but there's something more or something less as well, and Clint isn't quite sure what.
"I brought Anna in with me." It's not exactly something he should let slip, but Phil's known about Anna almost since Clint asked her out for a drink the first time. He doesn't think Phil's met her, but he feels the need to let Phil know anyway. "Nat's taken her to get coffee or tea." Tea, more likely, and questions that Natasha won't ask in front of Clint. Though Clint knows Anna will drink coffee on occasion, and it's easier to find coffee here.
A frown crosses Phil's face, disapproval and confusion mixed in his expression. Clint runs a hand through his hair, as close to a wince as he'll come, even around those he trusts as much as he trusts Phil or Natasha or Anna.
"She had an interesting story." The justification sounds weak to him, and he watches Phil for any sign that he thinks it as weak as Clint does. There's quiet a moment before he adds, "Nat said you'd have an interesting story, too."
Phil looks away, turning his gaze toward the ceiling, and struggling to sit up. Clint reaches out, finding the controls to raise the bed, and helping Phil get to a sitting position. He doesn't like that Phil is weak, but he wonders if this is all part of him coming back from the dead. Convelesing, and having to regain strength and muscle tone, like he would after a long illness or severe injury. It would make whoever brought him back either capricous or not strong enough to do more than heal the wound that killed him just enough to let him live.
Natasha watches Anna as she cradles a cup of hot tea, cataloguing gestures and facial expressions. Little things as the silence stretches out - not uncomfortable for Natasha, though usually so for others. Anna doesn't seem to notice, her expression more remote than Natasha expects. Staring into the distance, in at least the general direction of Medical. Natasha thinks she might even be staring straight at Clint, though she can't be sure unless she asks JARVIS. Or perhaps Tony, though that's not a conversation Natasha wants to have.
"There is something off in there." Anna's whisper is barely audible, but it catches Natasha's attention. She tilts her head, turning over the words in her head.
"Just being back from the dead is weird enough." Natasha shrugs, taking a sip of her tea, watching Anna's reactions. The flinch, the momentary frown that fades into a more neutral expression quickly.
"I was not speaking of Agent Coulson." Anna frowns again, her brow furrowing, glancing over at Natasha a moment before returning her gaze to the point on the wall she'd been watching. "Or not of his being alive when once he was dead."
That Anna is speaking more like Thor is as odd as what she's saying, but Natasha doesn't comment on it, merely catalogues it. She'll talk to Clint later about what he knows about Anna, because right now, Natasha doesn't have a good feeling about this.
"There's something weirder than that?" Natasha almost winces at her own words, but shoves it aside as necessary to get information on a potential security risk - or worse.
Anna gives her a sideways look, a strange expression on her face. "There is a lot in the world that's weird, Natasha. It's just a matter of perspective." She shrugs, smiling and hiding whatever it is that she hides behind a mask of polite professionalism. "But that's neither here nor there. Do you think Clint has had enough time to talk to Agent Coulson about whatever it is he cares to talk about?"
"Maybe, if Phil woke up pretty quickly after we left." Natasha takes another sip of her tea, wondering at the abrupt change. Like she had a glimpse of something else, something other, and it had vanished behind a wall before she could truly look at it.
"Then shall we return? There's no point in making Clint think we're talking about him behind his back." Anna's smile is mischeivous and brief, before she sets her mug down and heads for the door.
It forces Natasha to take long strides to keep up, but not before she sets her mug beside Anna's, glancing down to see that the other mug is untouched. The tea nothing but a diversion, but for what? To give Clint some privacy to talk to Phil, or to give Anna a chance to study Natasha as much as Natasha was trying to study her?
She had begun to bleed across the walls that she builds in her mind to deal with a lifetime when she first heard Clint speak a name she's avoided for centuries. It's getting worse here, with the strange feeling of being constantly watched, and the beacon of seidr that is Agent Phil Coulson, sleeping in the hospital bed in Medical. She can all but see him, even through the concrete and steel that seperates the lounge Natasha had shown her to and the room.
It doesn't make her less Anna, but it does make her more than just Anna, and she's not had to cope with a life still not over when she's done this before. Let herself become the full sum of her lifetimes while still living as a mortal, without cutting her ties and fleeing to the taiga and tundra of the far north, where she could lose herself for years while reordering her mind.
Angrboða followed the glow of seidr to the room; Anna followed a mental map to Medical and tried to hold onto herself as the walls crumbled a bit more under the weight of an outside pressure.
"Anna?" Clint had been across the room a moment ago, a blink of an eye ago that had been longer - now he's holding onto her arm, watching her with a frown, and anchoring her against the pressure. "Are you all right?"
Drawing in a breath, she opens her mouth a moment, staring past him at the man now sitting up in the bed. Agent Coulson, who is watching her with a small, puzzled frown. All but glowing with seidr in a pattern she has never seen before, and does not understand.
"No. I'm not." She wrenches her gaze away, burying her face in Clint's shoulder, and focusing on shoring up the barriers between herself and her lifetime. Anna barely registers Clint guiding her from the room, and through halls to the room Natasha had shown them before bringing them to Medical. Is only dimly aware of him sitting her down on the couch there, of him settling beside her, and pulling her close so he can hold onto her.
She's not sure how much time passes before she's truly aware of the outside world again, only that she's stiff and chilled to the bone, and wrapped in blankets that radiate a furnace heat. The barriers not rebuild so much as reset, more of Angrboða bleeding through into Anna, but not yet letting herself slot the lifetime into the memories of centuries.
"Miss Boyd?" The voice isn't familiar at first, and Anna blinks, turning her head to look over at whoever's spoken. It takes her a moment to place him, and she smiles at Banner, though it feels strange.
"I'm... better." She draws the blankets closer, a small frown on her face as she looks around the room. The windows are dark, and the light comes only from a small lamp that's close to Banner. "Where's Clint?"
Banner grimaces a little, ducking his head. "Ah. He was sent to get some rest. You've been catatonic for almost a week." He closes the book he has in hand after marking his place. "Natasha's watching him, as is JARVIS. Do you want to talk about what happened?"
"Not yet." Anna shakes her head slightly, closing her eyes. They feel gritty, as if she hasn't blinked in a while. "I need to talk to Clint first." She needs to tell him something more of the story she started, and she needs to tell him what she'd seen around Agent Coulson. Then she'll decide what to tell his friends - the ones, she thinks, who are his team, though no one has introduced them as such.
"He probably won't wake up until morning." Banner shrugs apologetically. "You can go in there, though." He nods toward a door that has to be the bedroom of the apartment.
"I know." Anna shivers as the heat from the blankets starts to seep in, and warm her. She can, but she won't until she's warmed up. Tracking where the cord for the blanket radiating heat is keeps her busy for a moment, and she smiles a moment at how it had been layered. "Even this couldn't keep me warm, could it?"
Banner frowns, and then shrugs. "No. It worried us, but all your other vital signs were steady, and Clint wouldn't let us take you to medical, so we just did what we could here."
Anna nods, glad Clint had done that; she doesn't want to think about what might have happened if she'd gotten too close to whatever is wrapped around Agent Coulson while trying to rebuild the walls in her mind. If she even would have been capable of doing that while so close.
The rest of the night passes with Banner reading his book and watching her from time to time, though whether trying to figure out what had happened, or making sure she doesn't lapse back into such a state, she's uncertain.
The sky outside is beginning to lighten when the door to the bedroom opens, and Clint comes out, running a hand through his hair as he looks over toward the couch. "Anna?"
"I'm here, love." Anna reached for the switch for the electric blanket, turning it off before she stands, though she keeps the one blanket wrapped around her. There's still some of the chill of earlier, and she would rather insulate herself as Clint comes to wrap his arms around her. She rests her head on his shoulder, leaning into him in reassurance that she is still here, still alive, still Anna, even if she is a bit more than that.
"What was that?" His voice is rough, and there's a wealth of emotions threading through the question, chief among them, she thinks, being anger and fear for her. "What happened?"
"Someone used your friend to tear down what was not meant to be torn down in that manner." Anna keeps her voice low, as not to carry beyond the two of them. "I will tell you more later, love, but not among your friends, not yet."
Word Count: 3912
Category: F/M
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Choose Not to Warn
Fandom: Avengers (2012), Norse Mythology
AU: Archer, Battle-Mage, Trickster, and Warrior
Series: Clint and Angrboða
Characters: Angrboða, Bruce Banner | Hulk, Clint Barton | Hawkeye, Natasha Romanov | Black Widow, Phil Coulson
Relationships: Angrboða/Clint Barton | Hawkeye, Clint Barton | Hawkeye & Phil Coulson
The return eye-roll is familiar, as is the accompanying indulgent smile, though there's something that doesn't seem quite right. Phil's alive and there, but there's something more or something less as well, and Clint isn't quite sure what.
The melody of a ringtone wakes Anna up at what a glance at the clock proves to be an entirely too early hour for when they'd gone to bed, and she pokes at Clint once she determines it isn't her phone that's going off. He sighs, before reaching for the phone, his voice still sleep muddled as he answers. Whatever is said makes him sit up, reaching for the switch for the bedside lamp.
"I don't know how soon I can get a flight, Nat, unless SHIELD..." he pauses, mid-sentence, as if interrupted. "Huh. Get Stark to send a damned jet, and I'll meet the plane at the airport, or I'll catch the next commercial flight out from Missoula."
Anna gives up on the idea of more sleep, and reaches out to press her hand between Clint's shoulders a moment before she gets out of bed. There's packing and some clean-up to do before the flight, and she isn't going to let Clint leave without her - not with the way the conversation she's half-listening to is going. There's something that makes her worry in Clint's voice, and in the urgency of the conversation.
"Can you tell me what's happening?" she asks once he ends the call, watching him as she packs clothes back into duffels.
Clint's quiet a long moment, running a hand through his hair. "Someone who was killed isn't as dead as he was supposed to be." He pauses, turning a bit so he can look at her, and reaching for a pair of jeans she'd left out for him. He looks at what she's packing before smiling a moment. "I was going to ask if you wanted to fly back with me, or catch a later flight."
A soft smile crosses Anna's face a moment. "Of course I'm going with you, love. As far as you want me to, or I'm allowed." She puts the last pair of jeans into the duffel before going to pull the shirts out of the drawer they're in. "I assume I'm going to be dealing with no few non-disclosure forms and such."
"Maybe." Clint shrugs, grabbing a shirt off the stack she's bringing. He's quiet as he pulls it on, clearly thinking about something. "I think with what's going on, maybe I should have told you more about it sooner."
"Your job is dangerous, I know that." Anna reaches out to touch his shoulder, holding his gaze. "I can't miss that. Dangerous jobs sometimes follow a person home, I know that too. I'm not helpless, love."
"I know." Clint picks up her hand, holding it tightly in his a long moment before he lets go. "It's just that it's more dangerous than it used to be." He pauses, looking away a moment before he takes a deep breath, his voice quieter than she expects as he says, "I'm not just going up against foreign governments and rogue agents any more, or wierd baby-sitting jobs in the middle of nowhere. Loki..."
"Is just one of the first dangers you faced?" Anna finishes the sentence for him when he's quiet for several minutes. "And there are others that are going to be like him?"
"And for all I know, they'll decide to come after the people I love - the people any of us love." He looks up to meet her gaze again, a frown of worry on his face. And something else, as well. "That story you told me, about Angrboða. How much of it is true?"
Anna stills, studying his face. She hadn't expected he would ask such a question - though she thinks she should have expected he would understand there is truth behind the myth she told him. "As I recall it, all of it."
It makes Clint relax a little, as if she's told him she can hold her own against someone like Loki - which, perhaps, she has. She isn't as certain she could fight Loki, but that is more that she still, for all her anger at him, and her bitterness, she still finds him physically pleasing. It annoys her, often times, that she still cannot often push him away, though he seemed far better able to do the same to her.
The rest of the time until they leave passes swiftly, packing and cleaning and leaving the ranch house as it was when they arrived, and returning the key to the box in the barn. A plane waited for them at the airport, sleek and small, another of the same sort that brought them out in the first place. Anna is only glad that it means they're not waiting in a line at either end, so Clint is less wound up.
Even with one of Stark's jets, Clint is antsy, though he tries to keep it under control. Anna - Angrboða, though he can't really think of her as anyone but Anna - rolls her eyes, and tells him to pace if it helps any. It doesn't help the worry about Natasha's message, but it at least helps to burn off some of the excess energy.
"Coulson's alive."
Those words had dragged him from sleep into wakefulness faster than he'd done in the last couple of weeks. He hadn't even thought about if it was a trick of some sort, just started planning to get back to New York.
"SHIELD isn't part of this. This was an Avengers mission, and Coulson is one of ours."
That had been something they all agreed on without any of them saying a word. It had been the Avengers who gathered for Phil's funeral, Stark who'd paid for it and the headstone, Natasha and Clint who'd dictated the contents of the stone, all of them who'd borne the casket from herse to plot. No matter what SHIELD said, no matter what Phil had been before, he was one of the Avengers, and they would take care of their own, now that they were a team.
"He was still in the suit we buried him in, and he was unconscious before Banner got the IV in. He hasn't woken up yet. Banner's running tests to make sure he's who he looks like."
Clint isn't certain if he should be worried about that or not. He had no frame of reference for someone being resurrected, none of them did. A small frown crosses his face, and he returns to where Anna's sitting beside a window, and settles into the seat next to her.
"Have you ever had anyone come back to life after being dead?" He doesn't know if she has, but if she is as old as he thinks she might be, she's the only person who might have a chance at seeing that sort of thing.
Anna frowns slightly, watching him a moment. "No, though sometimes I've wished it could happen. I've not even heard of anyone who came back from the dead - at least, not outside of legends that I could never find anything to support."
Vampires, zombies. Things that are just the stuff of legends and horror movies, even when other myths are real. At least he can be sure of that much, although the idea of a zombie-Phil is both amusing and sickening at the same time. Perhaps more amusing than sickening once he has a chance to see Phil really is alive with his own eyes.
A hand on his arm, and Anna resting her head on his shoulder draw him out of his thoughts, and Clint shifts to wrap his arm around her shoulders. It helps, to hold onto her, and keeps him from counting the minutes - no matter how patient he can be on a job, this is a different sort of wait - until the flight touches down on the runway at LaGuardia. When they stop, Natasha is waiting for them at the terminal, glancing briefly at Anna before she raises an eyebrow at Clint.
"Anna's coming to the Tower with me." Clint shrugs, meeting Natasha's gaze easily. He's not going to send Anna off home until they have an idea what's going on, and there isn't a risk to anyone else. Never mind that she's lived with knowing the dangers of his job for years, and he's pretty certain she can take care of herself at least long enough for back-up to arrive.
"Ok." Natasha shrugs, leaving any problems on his shoulders. Both of them know SHIELD and Fury probably aren't going to be happy about it, but right now, this isn't a SHIELD matter. It's an Avengers matter, and they haven't worked out protocols for this sort of thing yet.
A car is waiting for them outside, complete with driver courtesy of Stark, and the ride to the Tower is quiet, with Natasha sitting opposite them, watching Anna. That Anna is watching her in return with curiosity in her expression makes Clint hope they're not going to go off and compare notes or something. He might live through it, but he doesn't fool himself into thinking the two couldn't make him uncomfortable in the process.
They stop at the room that Natasha says Stark had put in for Clint, leaving the luggage there before making their way to the medical floor, and the room where Phil is asleep in a bed that doesn't look like a hospital bed to Clint. Banner is sitting in the chair next to the bed, and looks up when they enter, smiling briefly to Natasha, and giving Anna a curious look.
"Anna Boyd." She doesn't wait for Clint to introduce her, stepping forward with her hand out. "I'm with Clint." She's never used the term girlfriend, though others have applied it to her - never Natasha, though part of that is because she'd asked Clint what Anna was to him.
"Bruce Banner." Bruce took the offered hand, smiling briefly at her before he looks over at Natasha. "Phil hasn't woken up while you've been gone, but he probably will wake up again soon. Do you want me to stay, or go?"
"We'll be fine." Natasha gives him a brief smile, before stepping out of the way to let Banner leave. After, she sits on the end of Phil's bed, leaving the chair open for Clint. Watching Anna with a bland, blank expression that reads to Clint as wary curiosity and a need to know that she doesn't want seen.
Anna returns the regard with open curiosity, and it's a more true expression than Natasha's, for all that Clint doesn't think the curiosity is all that Anna's feeling right now. There's some wariness underneath that he can see in her eyes, and he suspects Natasha can see too.
"Is there proper tea here?" Anna breaks the silence first, a smile crossing her face that Natasha responds to with a small smile of her own.
"I can make some." Natasha slides off the bed, tilting her head toward the door. "I can show you around some of the Tower as well, if you'd like."
"I doubt you'd show me much, but where to find tea and food would be appreciated." Anna leans over to press a light kiss to Clint's temple. "I'll be back in a little while, love."
He watches them go with a faint sense of foreboding that he shakes off after a moment. Chosing instead to focus his attention on Phil, studying him as he sleeps. His eyes are moving under his lids, as if he's dreaming, and Clint's tempted to reach out to wake him, but refrains. Banner had said Phil should wake up again soon. On his own.
It's most of half an hour before Phil opens his eyes, and Clint can't stop the words that slip from his lips, relief and worry and all the muddled, mixed emotions making him sound more plaintive than he intends. "I hear you're supposed to be back from the dead, and you're not even awake when I get here."
It takes Phil a moment to look over at Clint, and there's a worrying blankness to his gaze for a moment before a faint, familiar smile crosses his face. "How short did you cut your mandatory down-time?"
Phil's voice is quieter, and somehow thinner, than Clint is used to, and he tries to shrug it off, letting the easy smile cross his face, though it fades quickly. "Three weeks." He doesn't think he would have cut it so short if it had been anyone else in the hospital bed, save if Natasha were. He'd have come back inside of a week of being away if she'd been injured.
The return eye-roll is familiar, as is the accompanying indulgent smile, though there's something that doesn't seem quite right. Phil's alive and there, but there's something more or something less as well, and Clint isn't quite sure what.
"I brought Anna in with me." It's not exactly something he should let slip, but Phil's known about Anna almost since Clint asked her out for a drink the first time. He doesn't think Phil's met her, but he feels the need to let Phil know anyway. "Nat's taken her to get coffee or tea." Tea, more likely, and questions that Natasha won't ask in front of Clint. Though Clint knows Anna will drink coffee on occasion, and it's easier to find coffee here.
A frown crosses Phil's face, disapproval and confusion mixed in his expression. Clint runs a hand through his hair, as close to a wince as he'll come, even around those he trusts as much as he trusts Phil or Natasha or Anna.
"She had an interesting story." The justification sounds weak to him, and he watches Phil for any sign that he thinks it as weak as Clint does. There's quiet a moment before he adds, "Nat said you'd have an interesting story, too."
Phil looks away, turning his gaze toward the ceiling, and struggling to sit up. Clint reaches out, finding the controls to raise the bed, and helping Phil get to a sitting position. He doesn't like that Phil is weak, but he wonders if this is all part of him coming back from the dead. Convelesing, and having to regain strength and muscle tone, like he would after a long illness or severe injury. It would make whoever brought him back either capricous or not strong enough to do more than heal the wound that killed him just enough to let him live.
Natasha watches Anna as she cradles a cup of hot tea, cataloguing gestures and facial expressions. Little things as the silence stretches out - not uncomfortable for Natasha, though usually so for others. Anna doesn't seem to notice, her expression more remote than Natasha expects. Staring into the distance, in at least the general direction of Medical. Natasha thinks she might even be staring straight at Clint, though she can't be sure unless she asks JARVIS. Or perhaps Tony, though that's not a conversation Natasha wants to have.
"There is something off in there." Anna's whisper is barely audible, but it catches Natasha's attention. She tilts her head, turning over the words in her head.
"Just being back from the dead is weird enough." Natasha shrugs, taking a sip of her tea, watching Anna's reactions. The flinch, the momentary frown that fades into a more neutral expression quickly.
"I was not speaking of Agent Coulson." Anna frowns again, her brow furrowing, glancing over at Natasha a moment before returning her gaze to the point on the wall she'd been watching. "Or not of his being alive when once he was dead."
That Anna is speaking more like Thor is as odd as what she's saying, but Natasha doesn't comment on it, merely catalogues it. She'll talk to Clint later about what he knows about Anna, because right now, Natasha doesn't have a good feeling about this.
"There's something weirder than that?" Natasha almost winces at her own words, but shoves it aside as necessary to get information on a potential security risk - or worse.
Anna gives her a sideways look, a strange expression on her face. "There is a lot in the world that's weird, Natasha. It's just a matter of perspective." She shrugs, smiling and hiding whatever it is that she hides behind a mask of polite professionalism. "But that's neither here nor there. Do you think Clint has had enough time to talk to Agent Coulson about whatever it is he cares to talk about?"
"Maybe, if Phil woke up pretty quickly after we left." Natasha takes another sip of her tea, wondering at the abrupt change. Like she had a glimpse of something else, something other, and it had vanished behind a wall before she could truly look at it.
"Then shall we return? There's no point in making Clint think we're talking about him behind his back." Anna's smile is mischeivous and brief, before she sets her mug down and heads for the door.
It forces Natasha to take long strides to keep up, but not before she sets her mug beside Anna's, glancing down to see that the other mug is untouched. The tea nothing but a diversion, but for what? To give Clint some privacy to talk to Phil, or to give Anna a chance to study Natasha as much as Natasha was trying to study her?
She had begun to bleed across the walls that she builds in her mind to deal with a lifetime when she first heard Clint speak a name she's avoided for centuries. It's getting worse here, with the strange feeling of being constantly watched, and the beacon of seidr that is Agent Phil Coulson, sleeping in the hospital bed in Medical. She can all but see him, even through the concrete and steel that seperates the lounge Natasha had shown her to and the room.
It doesn't make her less Anna, but it does make her more than just Anna, and she's not had to cope with a life still not over when she's done this before. Let herself become the full sum of her lifetimes while still living as a mortal, without cutting her ties and fleeing to the taiga and tundra of the far north, where she could lose herself for years while reordering her mind.
Angrboða followed the glow of seidr to the room; Anna followed a mental map to Medical and tried to hold onto herself as the walls crumbled a bit more under the weight of an outside pressure.
"Anna?" Clint had been across the room a moment ago, a blink of an eye ago that had been longer - now he's holding onto her arm, watching her with a frown, and anchoring her against the pressure. "Are you all right?"
Drawing in a breath, she opens her mouth a moment, staring past him at the man now sitting up in the bed. Agent Coulson, who is watching her with a small, puzzled frown. All but glowing with seidr in a pattern she has never seen before, and does not understand.
"No. I'm not." She wrenches her gaze away, burying her face in Clint's shoulder, and focusing on shoring up the barriers between herself and her lifetime. Anna barely registers Clint guiding her from the room, and through halls to the room Natasha had shown them before bringing them to Medical. Is only dimly aware of him sitting her down on the couch there, of him settling beside her, and pulling her close so he can hold onto her.
She's not sure how much time passes before she's truly aware of the outside world again, only that she's stiff and chilled to the bone, and wrapped in blankets that radiate a furnace heat. The barriers not rebuild so much as reset, more of Angrboða bleeding through into Anna, but not yet letting herself slot the lifetime into the memories of centuries.
"Miss Boyd?" The voice isn't familiar at first, and Anna blinks, turning her head to look over at whoever's spoken. It takes her a moment to place him, and she smiles at Banner, though it feels strange.
"I'm... better." She draws the blankets closer, a small frown on her face as she looks around the room. The windows are dark, and the light comes only from a small lamp that's close to Banner. "Where's Clint?"
Banner grimaces a little, ducking his head. "Ah. He was sent to get some rest. You've been catatonic for almost a week." He closes the book he has in hand after marking his place. "Natasha's watching him, as is JARVIS. Do you want to talk about what happened?"
"Not yet." Anna shakes her head slightly, closing her eyes. They feel gritty, as if she hasn't blinked in a while. "I need to talk to Clint first." She needs to tell him something more of the story she started, and she needs to tell him what she'd seen around Agent Coulson. Then she'll decide what to tell his friends - the ones, she thinks, who are his team, though no one has introduced them as such.
"He probably won't wake up until morning." Banner shrugs apologetically. "You can go in there, though." He nods toward a door that has to be the bedroom of the apartment.
"I know." Anna shivers as the heat from the blankets starts to seep in, and warm her. She can, but she won't until she's warmed up. Tracking where the cord for the blanket radiating heat is keeps her busy for a moment, and she smiles a moment at how it had been layered. "Even this couldn't keep me warm, could it?"
Banner frowns, and then shrugs. "No. It worried us, but all your other vital signs were steady, and Clint wouldn't let us take you to medical, so we just did what we could here."
Anna nods, glad Clint had done that; she doesn't want to think about what might have happened if she'd gotten too close to whatever is wrapped around Agent Coulson while trying to rebuild the walls in her mind. If she even would have been capable of doing that while so close.
The rest of the night passes with Banner reading his book and watching her from time to time, though whether trying to figure out what had happened, or making sure she doesn't lapse back into such a state, she's uncertain.
The sky outside is beginning to lighten when the door to the bedroom opens, and Clint comes out, running a hand through his hair as he looks over toward the couch. "Anna?"
"I'm here, love." Anna reached for the switch for the electric blanket, turning it off before she stands, though she keeps the one blanket wrapped around her. There's still some of the chill of earlier, and she would rather insulate herself as Clint comes to wrap his arms around her. She rests her head on his shoulder, leaning into him in reassurance that she is still here, still alive, still Anna, even if she is a bit more than that.
"What was that?" His voice is rough, and there's a wealth of emotions threading through the question, chief among them, she thinks, being anger and fear for her. "What happened?"
"Someone used your friend to tear down what was not meant to be torn down in that manner." Anna keeps her voice low, as not to carry beyond the two of them. "I will tell you more later, love, but not among your friends, not yet."