- Flashback or Present?: The Day After The Call At Sam's BBQ -
"James E. Woo, FBI." As you step out the car you're greeted with an FBI agent who's card trick seems vaguely familiar to you.
"Y/N... Avenger" You wait for Bucky to introduce himself but he just stares intimidatingly you laugh "This bundle of joy is.."
"Sargent Barnes, it's a privilege!" Jimmy hands Bucky his card who takes it with a nod.
"What's the story here, Agent Woo?"
"I've got a witness set up down the road in Westview, and this morning, it looked like he flew the coop."
"Your missing person is in the Witness Protection Program?" You eye him, you're confused as to what this has to do with Wanda.
"I have contacted known associates, relatives..."
"And let me guess, none of them have seen him either?" Bucky retorts having the same confusions as you.
"No. None of them have ever heard of him. Something seemed hanky to me, so I took the first flight out of Oakland to interface with local law enforcement, which is when I encountered a new wrinkle." Intrigued you and Bucky give each other a look and then follow Woo as you walk and talk. You head towards the two offices by the Westview signage. "Pardon me, Sheriff. Would you mind repeating your claim about Westview to my colleagues here?"
"No such place." You blink baffled.
"You're saying the town of Westview, New Jersey, doesn't exist?" Bucky retorts pointing to the sign.
"It's what I keep telling your G-Man here, but he won't listen." Bucky scoffs finding the cop infuriating.
"I see. And, um, I'm sorry, what town are you from?" You ask amused.
"Eastview." You nod thoughtfully, trying to hide a smirk.
"Thank you, Sheriff. I'll reach out if we need any further assistance." Woo nods and the two cops get in the car as you walk away back up the road.
"I, uh, pulled phone numbers for all the residents. I'm only through the Ds, but so far I got Diddly Squat." Jimmy fills you in as you get out of earshot.
"So you can't reach anyone inside and everyone on the outside has some sort of selective amnesia?"
"This isn't a missing person's case, it's a missing town. Population 3,892."
"Why haven't you gone inside to investigate?" Bucky motions to the town.
"'Cause it doesn't want me to. You can feel it too, can't you? Nobody's supposed to go in." He says spookily as you look towards the towns border. You walk up to it, touching it, your hand nearly disappearing.
"What the hell is that?"
"Some kind of energy field." you say amazed.
"So what she's got an entire town inside an energy field?" Bucky looks at you.
"The team is here, we have something..." Jimmy calls over to you both.
. . .
"Darcy, it's a pleasure, Thor spoke highly of you."
"Right back at you" Darcy smiled after the initially shock had warn off that both you and the ex winter solider had just walked though the tents, causing the team Director Hayward to send to falter about a bit.
"What you got?" You lean over her shoulder as she briefly explains to you, taking in yours and Bucky's matching dark leather combat ready uniform. Shit you two were the real deal.
"Oi... pain in my ass..." you say out loud as you and Darcy watch the screen of the monitor, images of what looks like a show tries to come though. "get this woman a TV, and an old one." You say trying to see. The S.W.O.R.D agent looked around to see who you were talking to.
"You heart the woman...old TV.." Bucky repeated amused as the agent scarpered off. Despite saving the world a few times, you still had a formidable reputation.
"What are you two doing here..." A loud booming voice comes in, followed by Jimmy with soaking wet.
"You must be Director Hayward, its a pleasure..." You try to sound professional almost impersonating Steve but Hayward dismisses you.
"I have an unknown threat, the last thing I need is too unstable ex-hydra agents meddling." He looked round and the screens as you ball your fists up, Bucky motioning for you to calm down.
"Director dickface..." you smile sweetly as he turns around at the nickname, Darcy and Jimmy holding back laughter. "While I understand you're a powerful man, she's one of ours, I intend to keep her safe and everyone else in your little club for that matter so I suggest you stop acting like a..."
"I'm going to stop you right there, yes we know who she is but not what she's doing and I don't really care for the softy approach when it comes to terrorists Miss.... oh no you don't have a full name do you." He gets in a snide remark as he edges closer.
"Back down Hayward..." Bucky voice comes up behind you making Hayward instantly separate.
"Theres an agent going in though the underground pipes as we speak, should give us the low down on whats inside."
"Thats stupid" you scoff.
"Sorry?"
"There's no reason to suspect the perimeter doesn't extend subterraneously." You look at him questioningly.
"There's no reason to suspect it does." He shrugs.
"We don't know about the nature of the threat to... send an agent when we haven't figured that out...." Jimmy backs you up.
"Someone must miss you back in Quantico."
"No, sir. Softball season's over, sir." You smile at Jimmy... finally twigging who taught him the card trick. Scott.
"Right so what do we have up?" Bucky asks, this whole thing was becoming very intense very quickly.
"Radar, lidar, sodar, infrared." Jimmy starts.
"Cycle through. Will someone get me a useful visual, damn it?!" You smile pointing at Darcy as she watches the screen, the sound of an audience laughing comes though.
"What is that?" He walks over as he hears and then sees Wanda and Vision newly wed moving into their new home.
"Is that..."
"Wanda" You smile as you watch her, but the smile suddenly fades, whatever she was doing was creating something massive and the radiation wasn't going to last out much longer.
"He's dead right tho?" Darcy asks, you nod slowly "like not blipped, dead."
"Yeah.." you sigh as you all watch the tv.
"What am I looking at? You? What is this? Where's this coming from?"
"Out there" Darcy motions to her equipment and then outside.
"Is it authentic?" Bucky asks leaning over.
"I'm not sure how to answer that." Darcy replies, gaining a nod of semi understanding from Bucky.
"Is it happening in real time? Is it recorded, fabricated?" Hayward muscles in.
"I don't know. I don't know. And I don't know." Darcy already as fed up as you were of him.
"What do you know?" You ask brining back the level of calm.
"My equipment registered an extremely high level of CMBR. That's..."
"Relic radiation dating back to the Big Bang." you finish and she nods.
"Yeah, entwined was a broadcast frequency. So I had Haywards goons pick me up a sweet vintage TV. And when I plug this bad boy in, voilà, sound and picture."
"So you're saying the universe created a sitcom starring two Avengers?"
"Not the universe... Wanda." You sigh heavily.
"Get me a transport back to headquarters now. Are we recording this?" Hayward yells.
"Never stopped."
"I need immediate analysis. Now, people. Let's go!"
"We need to get inside...." You stop Hayward in his tracts.
"I'm sorry" he scoffs, weren't you the one that just said that it was stupid idea?"
"Yes" you wince and tilt your head before you look back up at him..."but now it makes sense and you need to go in there with someone who has a better possibility at defending their mind against the... magic... for want of a better term."
"What like him?" Hayward motions to Bucky who's eyes dart downward. At the sight of it you quickly take Haywards arm and spin it behind his back nearly breaking it.
"Talk about him like that again and you lose the arm..."
"Ok... ok got it..." He says in chucks heavily breathing as you let go.
"We go in and we talk her down."
"What makes you think she'll listen to you two."
"We know her, we know her pains and we are her, team mates." Bucky says standing next to you.
"Oh right yes, ha of course, her pains lets see, is that the pain of her loosing her parents because of one of Starks bombs? Her Brother defeating Ultron or in fact her entire country? Her being experimented on and brainwashed..? Or loosing vision because the avengers lost? Because if I think, you have connections to all the people behind that?"
You stood in silences soaking it all in for a moment, the heartache bubbling inside you, but eventually you look up at Hayward.
"We weren't there for Ultron." You flick your middle finger up at him and walk over to Jimmy and Darcy. Bucky after giving Hayward a death glare followed you.
"He's a charmer." Darcy remarks as you start gearing up, taking equipment you might need. You chuckle fondly.
"I'll try and use the powers I have to shut out whatever hold she might have on the residence... but she's stronger than me." The you turn to Bucky. I won't let her inside your head to long I won't let her hurt you.
"I know doll..." he says giving you a wobbly smile. Fear in his eyes but this was his job and he knew he was in safe hands.
. . .
As you head outside in the rain toward a protected section of the hex wall.
So, you have your mission, find out what the hell is going on and put a stop to it." You both nod, silently agreeing that neither of you would let anything bad happen to Wanda, you didn't trust director Hayward and Bucky could sense it.
"Good luck!" Jimmy and Darcy both put their thumbs up at you before you spin round and look a the parameter where, just slightly you could see the Hex wall.
"You ready?"
"As I'll ever be.." And with that you and Bucky walk though.
. . . WITH JIMMY & Darcy. . .
First and foremost, our main objective is to get any intel on Y/N and Sargent Barnes, but originally for the FBI at least, this case was a missing person case, to them its a Wanda case, so we're going to start there. We've successfully identified two individuals inside the Westview anomaly. Let's keep going."
After the meeting he heads to Darcy as they watch the screen.
"They look happy, unharmed."
|So what, deep cover? Mr and Mrs Barnes are just playing along?" Darcy raises a brow.
"With whom? Or else, what? All right. Brass tacks, Dr. Lewis. What are we lookin' at here? Is it an alternate reality? Time travel? Some cockamamie social experiment?"
"It's a sitcom. A 1950s sitcom."
"But why?"
"Hey, man, we're working with the same scarcity of intel. But, listen, I do have an idea."
"So, you've seen that radio in Wanda's kitchen counter, right? The next time she's washing dishes, which, by my count, happens about once an episode, barf, we'll shoot a signal to that little guy. This transmitter will mimic the frequency of the broadcast, and if my theory is right, allow us to speak directly to her.......This is totally gonna work.......Don't touch that."
"Agent Woo." another FBI agent interrupts passing him a file.
"Is this from the current episode?"
"Aired about two minutes ago." the agent confirmed.
"What is it?"
"What does it look like to you?" Jimmy shows Darcy the picture.
"Like a retro version of a sword S.W.O.R.D. Drone?"
"Bingo."
"But how did it change and why?"
"Uh, to go with the production design?"
"Or render it useless."
"Why'd you colorize it?" Jimmy looks at the Agent.
"I didn't." With determination Darcy and Jimmy look at each other.
"Let's get this show on the road."
As they gear up, Darcy sits in front of the TV to watch.
"Uh, Jimmy, Y/N is talking to Wanda. They're at some sort of swim club. We've never been here before."
"Is it the '60s still?"
"Uh, uh, Wanda's with another character."
"Real person?"
"Ooh, uh, radio on the side table. Start talking! Its just Wanda and Y/N!"
"Wanda. Wanda, can you read me, over?"
RADIO DISTORTION
"Wanda. Who is doing this to you, Wanda? Wanda? Can you hear me? I'm here to help you."
But suddenly the whole thing flicks and the screen skips until its just you and Wanda on Darcy's screen.
"Pop quiz, Wanda. How does a housewife get a bloodstain out of white linen?" Your voice is bright and very 60s acting, nothing like you.
"Wait."
"What?"
"I don't know....that was weird."
"What was?"
"Nothing." Darcy sighs, "it's over. Mission failure."
"It was worth a try. Good effort, Doctor."
"Yeah, come on in." She sighs once inside they continue to watch the show.
. . .
"Did she just make a reference to our reality? Have they done that before..?"
"No. Never...or at least not that it shows.." Darcy sits up right joining Woo as they both stare at the screen.
"Wow, this is different.... wait what was she singing ...did you know they had kids?"
"What happened? Where'd they go?"
"God, not again.....there's nothing here. One second, Y/N and Bucky are standing right there and the next, they aren't. Someone is censoring the broadcast.
"But where are they!?"
ALARM BLARING
. . . END OF DARCY AND JIMMY POV. . .