part time soulmates, full time problem

A Clue

You couldn't stop yourself from manually checking each cell, confirming to yourself that they were in fact empty. The team was gone. So were the bad guys, the guards, everyone.

"THIS IS NOT HAPPENING!" You yelled angrily, punching the last cell door and making it bend in on itself. Then you spotted Thor and Bruce watching you from the stairs.

"Look, we knew there was a chance of this." Bruce said softly. "Our last intel is two hours old and -"

"We need to find them." You said, stomping towards them. "We need a computer, and we need to go back to the security feed and see where they went."

"That's gonna take time." Bruce replied.

"Is there somewhere to stay in the area?" Thor asked, making you frown at him. "They may not have gone far. Then we would be close by."

"Don't be stupid!" You scoffed. "You think the Avengers have houses everywhere like hotels we can just pop -"

"I think there's actually a safehouse near here." Bruce interrupted. You smiled at Thor.

"What a great idea Thor! Let's go!" You said to him, grabbing his hand and dragging him back up the stairs.

Bruce explained that the Quinjet could take us, as all the safehouse coordinates are already programmed into its flight details, so the walk back to the jet consisted of what the next steps in the plan were. It was keeping your mind off the fact that you had failed so spectacularly tonight, and keeping your mind off the fact that you were no closer to getting Bucky back.

An hour and a half later, after Thor had shown and told you every possible detail about Mjölnir, the Quinjet was setting down in front of a wooden cottage looking place, making you question Bruce's idea entirely. That was, until you went inside. From the outside, it looked rundown, almost abandoned, but inside it was clean, modern, and technologically kitted out. It was like Tony had copied the lab in the compound, pasted it into a cottage, and added a couple bedrooms.

It made you wonder what the other safehouses looked like, and whether Tony would let you take any of them after he kicked you off the team for failing to rescue them. Living in the middle of nowhere was sounding more and more appealing to you.

Bruce set about accessing the computer for what you needed, and you were thankful that there was someone there who actually knew what they were doing. You brushed over having to explain to him how you needed to use YouTube to figure out how to get into the manor's security feed. It wasn't important for him to know that. He'd set up one monitor for you to go over the security feed, while he was tapping away doing....something or other on a different screen. Something about the phones and reverse triangulating...something. You lost interest once the security feed was loaded and you started looking back through it. You saw the team getting their heads covered with bags, chained together and led out of the cells. You saw them being bundled into separate black trucks which headed down the driveway. That was all the information you had, so you decided to watch it again. And again.

On the fourth replay, you noticed that five minutes before they were led outside, the camera cycled to Clint in his cell, standing up against the wall and reaching up for something.

On the sixth replay, you noticed his hand was tucking something in a vent.

"A CLUE!" You yelled suddenly, garnering the confused attention of Bruce and Thor. "Sorry, look!" You gestured for them to come over and replayed the video of Clint. "He put something in the vent. It could be a note or something!"

"I'll retrieve it." Thor said loudly, and before you could even open your mouth, he had run outside, and then there was a loud BOOM that shook the cabin.