CLINT WASN'T TALKING TO TERRAN. They were making their way to S.H.I.E.L.D. to convene with Fury one last time before heading down their wild, elaborate goose chase, and instead of the car being filled with chatter between the two blonds with interjections made by the redhead, it was filled with one blond sighing and trying to talk to the other who had decided to turn off his hearing aids for the time being, focused solely on crossing his arms and looking out the window.

"Clint, I wasn't lying to you, there literally was nothing going on until you walked in on us, I swear," Terran tried, nearly shouting, but if Clint could hear him at all, he made no motion towards it.

He sighed and looked over to Natasha in the back who merely shrugged, not looking too worried about the entire situation, which should have put him at ease, but he wanted Clint to talk to him.

But then again, there were greater worries to be had than that, and it was made more than evident when they met up with Fury in their usual debriefing room, Terran now in a bad mood because not only was Clint ignoring him, but it seemed that the entirety of S.H.I.E.L.D. was ignoring him too.

"You kiss one assassin and suddenly everyone hates you!" he cried, throwing up his arms before crossing them as he fell into his seat dejectedly.

"Fury told everyone to ignore you so you wouldn't be late," Natasha explained, scooting her chair towards him, and he gasped, looking towards the one-eyed man, utterly appalled.

"You're too nice to get anything done," the man said simply, before turning towards Clint, tapping him on the shoulder. When Clint looked up, Fury tapped on his own ears, and the blond nodded, sighing softly, turning them back on.

"Thank you, Barton," he drawled, not wholly unkindly, and Terran refrained from saying anything to Clint for fear of Fury yelling at him; not that it would matter much, Charles Xavier had yelled at him for an hour straight once, he knew fear.

"Is there a mole?" he asked instead, because Milo wasn't in the room and he was starting to miss him.

"As far as we know, no," Fury said, but it was clear he didn't believe himself, instead moving on to the matter at hand, "But what we do know is where Constantin is believed to hit next, and you two are going to follow and investigate and, most importantly, make sure this sad son-of-a-bitch doesn't get killed."

"Great, we're going on a rescue mission," Terran said, taking the papers that were slid across to the both of them, "Clint are you coming on this?"

"Not with you, but I'm working alongside, I gotta still convince Steve that you're working with me and not Nat. Luckily, we have the explanation he wanted when he asked why you're always with her all the time, not that I knew," he said, and he didn't sound hurt, just appalled at the entire situation.

"It happened last night, Clint," Natasha sighed, finally addressing her platonic partner on the issue, "You've known every step of the way and I was going to tell you once you got home."

Clint rounded to look at her, his expression suddenly softening to one of insecurity and fear. "Would you really?"

"Barton, you know you're more important to me than he is, or anyone else," she said, tilting her head as she spoke, and he sighed, nodding as he dropped his head onto the table, his arm coming around to hide most of it, but it was clear he was smiling.

"Touching. Now, can we please focus on work?" Fury demanded, and the trio all turned to look back at him, then to the papers.

Terran picked up his copies and scanned over them, frowning and looking towards Natasha who was already asking for Fury to get them back into contact with Professor Dillon, as he would be helpful in determining exactly what they needed to look for.

"So who is this guy?" Terran asked, trying to discern his name from the ones that were on the hit list that Professor Dillon had given them.

"An easy target," Fury said, because that was the first thing he felt they needed to know, "He's a professor in Jim Thorpe, lives more reclusively, his own home by the woods, all that shit, but he has a schedule that never deviates. Wakes up in the morning, goes to school, then groceries or the library, then a walk, then work partly at the same coffee shop, go back home. It's dull and boring and an easy target."

"But he knows what he's talking about?" Terran asked, crossing on leg over the other.

"Yeah, he's a genius and a novelist, wrote fictional books about the multiverse, but the crackpots on the internet got it in their heads he actually knows what he's talking about, but he's holding some of his knowledge to himself, and he's Constantin's next target, so you need to find him and keep him safe, get him back here and figure out what he knows so we can stop Constantin," Fury explained, and it sounded like a well-ordered list, but Terran has been alive too long to believe that the list was anything like the way it was going to play out in real life.

"Okay," Terran said, sighing as he turned to look over at Natasha, "Road trip!"

º º º

It wasn't much of a road trip.

Sure, it was just him and Natasha on the road heading to someplace else, which was basically the definition of a trip, but they didn't sing along to the music on the radio or play little car games because they were stupid and fun. They just talked about the work and what they needed to do, because they were on the job, after all.

"I want to go on a real road trip with you," he said suddenly, out of the blue and unexpected as the topic was on all the ways Terran needed to use his friendliness to gain access without being overbearing.

"What?" she asked, raising an eyebrow and looking towards him, and he knew fully well that she had heard him, and most likely understood exactly what he meant, but he humored her anyways.

"I want to spend time with you when we're not on missions," he explained, and he didn't know why he was saying it then, but he had been told sometime in his life that confrontations and conversations were best done in cars where attention had to be diverted and no one could get away as easily, "You know, this whole time we've been on a mission, and yeah, you're not always undercover, but I want to be with you on off-time. You know, we're gonna be done with this soon, I feel it, and I just don't want to leave and for that to be it."

"What do you think we are, Terran?" she asked, and he couldn't help but linger on how she addressed him, the way he always did when she called him Terran, not Sweets; he didn't always react to it, but he always remembered.

"We're something," he mumbled, because he didn't really know.

She nodded in agreement, not knowing any more than he did. "We're something."

It was silence the rest of the way, because there wasn't anything left to say, but Natasha did hold his hand for two minutes at one point when he started to cry and he put a hand on her thigh for ten minutes when she let him, because that was all they could do for the time being.

But when they finally arrived in Jim Thorpe, the two found that they hardly had any time to talk, immediately rushing from the car towards where they were sure their target was supposed to be: at his work.

He taught something completely separate to anything having to do with the multiverse which was why he wasn't on the immediate radar of S.H.I.E.L.D., but they reached the university easily, practically sprinting to the room.

"Hey, watch it!" one of the students shouted as Terran pushed towards their crowd, and he was only barely able to call out an apology before he tried, and failed, to push open the door.

"He didn't come in today, so they just locked the door," one of the students explained, looking on him sympathetically as he continued to shake at the door, trying incredibly hard not to break it open.

He turned around to look at Natasha who had gone to the office to ask why he hadn't shown up, and her expression was nothing short of grim. He breathed a thanks towards the student before running to Natasha, scooping her up in his arms and sprinting to the car faster than he had been when he wanted to make sure she could keep up.

"I don't need you to baby me," she spat as he nearly threw her into the car, "I can keep up fine and can take care of myself."

"Yell at me later, okay, I'm panicking," he said, and traffic safety stopped being the top thing on his mind as he raced towards his usual grocery store and coffee shop, "Why wouldn't he show up to work, the file said he had a near perfect attendance record save for a funeral and when he was in the hospital."

"Our main focus now is just to find him," she said, pointing towards parking spot, to which he parked so haphazardly it couldn't even be considered parking.

"I'll take the coffee shop, you take the store," he said, already running, and she could only roll her eyes and sprint towards the store.

It was a strange thing for the people of the small area, finding a tiny redhead bursting into the room dressed in leather, her eyes wide and calculating, walking with a purpose throughout all the aisles at a record pace.

It was even stranger for them to see a giant bursting into a tiny coffee shop, demanding to know if anyone had seen Ron Filton that day and, if so, where was he headed. And, if not, where he could find him. No one said anything until he shouted that his life was in danger, to which everyone started speaking all at once.

"Sweets, he's not there," Natasha said, bursting into the shop, and Terran turned to look at her, brandishing a paper filled with notes.

"He's not here, but they have his usual grounds and his home address, so let's go," he said, reaching down to pick her up again, and she didn't have any time to complain, grabbing the paper and going over it all.

The drive was tense and far too short, Terran tearing up the roads in a desperate attempt to reach the house before it was too late. Whatever too late meant, he didn't know, but he had a sneaking suspicion it already was too late.

When they finally arrived in the secluded, wooded home, it was the picture of serene, at least from the outside. Only from the outside, really, but that didn't mean it didn't look beautiful. Natasha didn't stop to admire it, focused only on the job, but Terran did, looking between the home and her, thinking to himself, despite all that was at stake.

He would like to live in a house like this, he decided as he stared at it. It wasn't the suburban house that he imagined, but it was still nice. He could have a family in this house. But then he remembered how he could never have a normal life, so he imagined Nicky living there, and it didn't quite fit, but he could find another nice place for him.

Another kind of normal for the boy. That's all he wanted for him.

Pushing the thoughts aside for a later date, he rushed up the stairs to the door which, to their dismay, was unlocked. It was nearly falling off its hinges and the two crept slowly inside, Natasha pulling out her gun and Terran simply crouching down, listening.

The first smell that hit them was lavender. A burning candle, coming from inside the study, but it was just there to mask the other smell. Strange, to have had the afterthought to burn a candle. There was the consideration that, perhaps, it was meant to be in mourning or for concentration, but that couldn't be the case, it made no sense, not with the suspicions. Then it clicked.

Blood. The candle was burned to mask the smell of blood, and the thought came just moments before Natasha pushed open the door to pure carnage.

Terran's mind told him he was going to be sick, and his stomach nearly followed, but he covered his nose with his jacket and forced himself to calm, looking towards Natasha who immediately checked the scene, going behind the desk and dropping down, which meant the body was there, which meant that Terran had to go around the house and make sure there wasn't anyone waiting for them.

He heard her calling out to him, but he didn't listen, instead making his way around the nice house. As he searched for someone ready to kill him, he imagined living in the house, imagined having a nice family and settling down, and he didn't know what the family looked like-nothing like the one he had, that was certain-and he found that the image didn't stick that well, despite how nice it seemed from afar.

It was a life for someone other than him, but it was a life that he could envy.

"There's nothing," he called, his voice hoarse, as he completed his daydream and his sweep, making his way back to the study to find Natasha now investigating the room, "What are you doing?"

She handed him a bloody paper, and he took it without much fanfare, reading it over, raising an eyebrow at it. "What's this supposed to be?"

"He wrote it before he was murdered, he didn't finish, and the pen is still open in his severed hand," she explained, motioning towards the hand that had rolled underneath the small case filled with antiquities and pretty things.

"Shit," he breathed, stepping towards the body, but Natasha stopped him, looking up into his eye.

"The spider's on his desk and you don't want to see the body, just help me look," she said, tearing up the already torn up room.

"Constantin probably took it," he reasoned, turning to look at the spider that rested on the desk, looking so peaceful and untouched amidst the scene, and he couldn't help but envy its life.

"He didn't, this was in his pocket, Constantin had ripped up his journal, the same one that Dillon had," she said, motioning towards the journal that had been left on the floor, thrown like trash, and Terran sighed as he picked it up slowly, dusting it off and flipping through it.

"He hid something," he said, devoid of any and all emotion as he flipped through it idly, "Because he knew he was going to die, because he knew how the universe worked, he'd heard the news about his friends, but it was different this time, he could feel it. He knew."

Natasha held up the ripped up pieces of paper that she had been searching for. "Thanks for your help. God, I don't know how Constantin hadn't found these, they were just anywhere, it wouldn't have taken him that long if he wanted to be thorough, and he had found the paper, there was blood over it and everything.

He pointed towards her and shook his head. "If he had had time to light a candle to hide the smell, he planted those because he had taken them."

"So we have nothing?" she demanded, and he shook his head, flipping to the inconspicuous piece of paper that Constantin had failed to see.

"They all match, but there are some missing," he said, showing her the paper in his hand and the page, "He hid what we need to find in there."

"What, you're saying he planned for someone to come in after Constantin?" she demanded, and he nodded.

"He's a man of the universe, remember?" he asked, and it was his tone, or lack thereof, that unsettled her; this wasn't the Terran she was used to, "He could feel it was his time and he planned it all out because he felt he had to. The universe told him and he listened."

"Do you honestly believe this?" she asked, scoffing, "This universe thing?"

"Natasha, I know a woman who has died so many times and yet is still alive and well and can be found in so many decades, I believe in everything," he said, reaching underneath the table until he felt something cave in.

The latch unhinged and he reached in, pulling out all the books. Stacks and stacks of them, all vintage and old and the kinds of things that Rhett would have adored, because he was interested in books of that nature, and that was how he and Terran had become friends in the first place.

He goes to the books and flips open the pages, and it took some time, as the books didn't open directly to the slips of paper, but when they did, they found entries from the journal that had been ripped out, but not by Constantin, and inside were notes about some people on the hit list and notes about blueprints and the feasible transference between multiple realities.

"Okay, we need to regroup," Natasha said, rising to her feet and pulling out her phone, "We're going to get a team to clean up and do a scan, find anything we missed."

Then they heard footsteps, the two immediately on edge, and they pocketed all they could before making their way out towards the main floor, only to find no one there, yet the footsteps were sounding from the kitchen.

Terran held Natasha's arm, stopping her. His first thought was that it was someone with the ability to turn invisible, he had met mutants like that in his day, but then there was the sound of the cabinet opening and closing, as well as the drawers, and while they themselves didn't open, there was the sound of it.

Exactly what Terran had done when he had made his rounds.

"We need to go," he said, a sinking feeling in his stomach, and Natasha didn't argue, the two rushing out of the house and into the car, speeding out without another thought.

Whatever had just happened, the universe had something to do with it, and that made everything all the more severe.

"They're going to need to get energy readings," Natasha said as she began making calls and sending messages, Terran continuing to drive.

He continued to drive and while Natasha worked on actually figuring out what was happening, all he could think about was that house. Strange as it was, he could see himself in that house, just not the himself that was currently thinking.

A different himself. A different himself with different experiences and circumstances could have lived in that house, and whatever had made those sounds had been a himself that had appeared a few minutes after he and Natasha had, he knew it.

Because as strange as it was, he could feel that he had lived in that house in another life in tandem to the one he lived, which was a strange concept, but a real feeling. Something about that house felt off, but it couldn't have just been the house.

"What do you think happened in there?" Natasha asked some time after her final phone call.

Terran sighed, adjusting the grip on the steering wheel. "Whatever it was, I don't want it to happen again."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

( 11.18.18 )

This chapter was strange, right, and it'll be explained what went on with the footsteps and stuff, but Terran acting weird was just Terran acting weird, but the mention of him seeing himself living in that particular house is because of the universe thing, it all makes sense in a very subtle way.