It was not everyday that another, distant mutant mind touched upon that of Charles Xavier's.

It was not completely unheard of, of course not, but it was surprising enough in its rarity that he paused mid-sentence and closed his eyes and tried to listen.

The mutant's presence is brief; merely brushing across his own psyche before disappearing behind what Charles suspects is either a relatively strong mental shield or unconsciousness.

It was brief, yes, but it was by no means weak. It left a long, aching tear in its wake and the older mutant could feel one hundred emotions at once, held at bay only by his formidable psychic shields.

There was so much fear and oh, how tired he was of fear. Every mutant he encountered was ripe with it, was built from it's foundations, their terror burying beautiful gifts and the seeds of strength.

He reached out for the mutant – a tendril of calm stretching out like a light – but found nothing. Unconscious then. His lips turned down in a frown.

"Charles? Did I lose you?" The voice broke through his gentle search for the mutant.

"No, no, excuse me Moira." He said, looking up at the woman on the view screen as he steepled his fingers in thought. "It would seem there is a mutant in need of our assistance."

Charles could see her interest spike, her brows hitching upwards as a million questions form effortlessly from her brilliance.

"A manifestation?" She asked, hopeful. A large part of what she did was cataloguing manifestations, applying it to current algorithms and case studies in order to build models of prevalence and predictability.

"Possibly." Charles stated with no particular certainty. It was likely, given the strength of the mutant's psychic outpouring, that the mutant was young, perhaps experiencing his or her powers for the first time.

However, Charles has had plenty of experience with mutants in their adulthood who's powers have evolved a secondary ability or, in the worst case scenario, have exhibited a sudden traumatic loss of control.

Until he was able to make a connection with the mutant, he couldn't truly know. Their contact had been far too brief to ascertain anything outside of the primary mutation – empathy, Charles was more than certain – and the mental state at the time of the incident. He couldn't even tell whether the mutant was female or male, not that it mattered.

"Well, rain check, then?" She smiled, her eyes softening and Charles offered the same, thankful for Moira's effortless understanding.

"Yes. I will contact you soon, Moira. Wish us luck." She did and they bid each other farewell as the screen went blank.

He reached out once more and, finding nothing, pushed his wheelchair back away from his desk, optimistic that with the aid of Cerebro he would have the mutant under his protective custody – given he or she needed and wanted it – by nightfall.

One More Time (With Feeling)

By Cider Sky

When he woke, it was to an incredible, all consuming emptiness.

It left him feeling numb, his brain so fuzzy he couldn't be sure if the pain in his head was actually pain in his head or the idea of pain in general. He was coming to awareness too slowly – his fingertips tingling with their inability to respond to his commands and his limbs felt so filled with lead they might as well not even be there.

As an additional bonus he could taste blood in the back of his throat, but when he tried to drag his tongue across his teeth, checking for holes in his bite, he couldn't even muster the strength to do that.

Something was very wrong.

His sluggish, strangely numb mind tried to run through all the possibilities, as he was trained to do, but he might as well have been trying to work it out in Sumerian. He felt dumb and slow, unable to get his mind through grounding procedure.

SH – SHIELD Agent Clint Barton. Designation …

His head ached as he tried to pull forth the words he knew were supposed to help him.

SHIELD Agent Clint Barton. Designation … Hawkeye. The words felt empty and meaningless and only made his body ache. It was as if something was working against him, trying to keep him from the plane of conscious thought.

He tried to take a deep breath but his lungs wouldn't fall out of their sleep-like rhythm. Something threatened to drag him back under into unconsciousness. He was so damn tired. Clint lay there, unable to even twitch as he came to the slow realization that he had been drugged.

This realization was sufficient enough to send his body into small override, his senses awakening.

SHIELD Agent. Clint Barton. Designation Hawkeye. Victor-Seven-

Victor-Seven-

He pushed with everything he had, all but ordering his body to work in order to escape this sedated confusion.

Finally something bent and broke.

Suddenly, the words, different words came easy.

"SHIELD Agent Clint Barton. Designation Hawkeye. Irr- Irreplaceable. Phil, I can't. This is ridiculous."

"Are you doubting my methods, Agent?" Phil said, his tone semi-serious as he looked up from one of the many works of Hank McCoy.

"I just don't see what's wrong with my current RGS." Recall Grounding Sequence, unique to each Agent and known only to them, their handler and the Director.

"It's best to keep these things separate. What works for one situation may not for another. Two different beasts." Phil explained for the hundredth time.

"Yes, sir."

Clint huffed, moving his neck side to side as he worked over the walls of his psychic shields. He didn't know where Phil came up with these exercises, practiced in the privacy of his office, but he couldn't argue with their current success rate.

"SHIELD Agent Clint Barton. Designation Hawkeye. Irreplaceable. Master Marksmen. . Skilled tactician. Partner of Natasha Romanov. –"

Clint hadn't chosen all of those designations. Some were Phil's, most notably the ones he would never say of himself.

"Native Iowan." That one he had chosen. It had been a comfortable truth and had made Phil roll his eyes.

The next bit was all Phil.

Clint glanced at his handler, his eyes pleading, but Phil waved him on. For the fifth time he sighed like an exasperated teenager.

" - Mutant. - " He paused. When he looked up Phil was there, smiling up at him and Clint could feel a light brush of pride weed it's way through his psyche.

" – Hero." He finished.

He had wanted to say Assassin. Phil hadn't approved it.

He had to admit, it sounded a lot nicer than his ten sentence SHIELD RGS; it was, after all, meant to serve as a grounding method during interrogation and to bring an Agent to attention during moments of traumatic compromise. It wasn't supposed to be 'nice'.

"Good. Now if you're done acting like we're pulling teeth –" Phil grinned and Clint fought the urge to stick out his tongue.

Phil gestured to the empty chair across from him and handed him the material he had been reading, launching into a lecture concerning the importance of familiarity and consistency in regards to the maintenance of formidable psychic shields, how SHIELD had the whole RGS brain hack thing figured out and yadda yadda –

At some point Clint stopped listening and began to turn over the words Phil had helped chose for him in his head.

"SHIELD Agent Clint Barton. Designation Hawkeye. Irreplaceable. Master Marksmen. . Skilled tactician. Partner of Natasha Romanov. Native Iowan. Mutant. Hero."

The fog lifted from his mind and he remembered everything.

It had happened again. The thing he had sworn to himself would never happen again did and Tony and Bruce had been right there. He could have killed them – hell maybe he had.

No. No that was unacceptable. It was merely speculation until proven. He had not killed anyone. It wasn't like last time. It wasn't.

His body, though still slow to respond, jerked as a thrill of panic and fear coursed through him. Finally, his eyelids cooperated and shot open, his lungs following suit and allowing him a deep dragging breath that turned into a cough, the taste of intravenous sedative on the back of his throat.

He looked from side to side as he urged his limbs into action, his right foot twitching in response.

His stomach dropped. He had no idea where he was.

It wasn't a SHIELD facility, that much was clear; it lacked the charming, slate grey walls and was far too well stocked. SHIELD didn't have cabinets in their holding rooms – medical or not – as it was a liability, what with highly trained assassins coming and going.

He also hadn't failed to notice the lack of the mandatory guard detail in the corner of the room.

It was also blatantly obvious that it wasn't a public facility. No windows. No medical equipment. No scrubs. No sound.

His limbs were coming back and he managed to move both his legs, clench his hands into fists.

It wasn't Stark's neither, not as far as he could tell. He'd been in Stark's facilities and as modern as Tony was he wasn't that into white – white walls, white floors, white cabinet, white fucking everything. The only thing that stuck out was a hardly visible line down the wall to his right. A door, more than likely, one that was meant to keep him inside.

And fuck. If he was being held like this, what had he done? He refused to think about Bruce or Tony. If he had … hurt them, he would never forgive himself and he would go ahead and turn himself over to science or SHIELD or whoever and just give the fuck up. It couldn't happen again.

He tempered his breathing.

Assess the situation first. Analyze. React.

It wouldn't help to lose his shit – he could do that later, when he wasn't being held by an unknown party and when he wasn't near anyone he could hurt.

Not that he was sure there was anyone around at all.

It hadn't escaped his attention that his headspace, while aching like a son of a bitch, was remarkably empty – remarkably his own. If his mind wasn't working so hard to keep him calm and to help him work a way out of this, he might've stopped to enjoy it.

Though, this wasn't like how it had been with Phil; this emptiness was something else. It had taken a piece of him with it and he began to feel sick as his mind stretched trying to grasp for something that was no longer there.

Clint groaned as his stiff legs and arms began to obey his commands with more fluidity and as soon as he was able to get his left arm up he reached over and ripped out the IV in the nook of his right arm.

A bright splash of red followed the violent movement but Clint paid it no mind as he forced his sluggish body into a sitting position, his head swimming at the movement.

His muscles tensed and bunched as he forced them to act far earlier than they wanted to and soon his legs were over the side of the cot. Any second someone could be coming to check on him, though he had a sneaking suspicion that whoever had drugged him had underestimated his metabolism.

It had something to do with his mutant physiology, something in the way he stored and utilized energy in order to power the part of his brain that controlled his 'gift.' Phil had known more about it. Of course he had.

He could thing about this fucking later, he berated himself, pulling himself to his feet.

His knees buckled, unsurprisingly, but he managed to hold firm, his knuckles white as he gripped the side of the bed.

He lurched across the room, taking in every detail he could. There wasn't much – the room was extremely lacking and terribly sterile. It reminded him of an operating room, only a lot less quaint and that was enough to scare the fuck out of him.

He went through the cabinets, his uncoordinated movements making far more noise than he needed, and stood dumbfounded for a moment.

Everything inside was at least thirty years old – hefty encyclopedias dated back to the nineties, gauze cartons from 1978, medical plungers he was certain were no longer in production.

It sent a chill up his spine and left him with all the motivation he needed to get. the. fuck. out.

"C'mon, c'mon –" He muttered as he searched the rest for something, anything that could act as a weapon.

Clint managed a plunger with a thick needle and decided it would do; he had done substantial damage with a lot less.

From there he moved as quickly as his body would allow.

He checked the crack in the wall, running the needle through the crack, checking for a deadbolt but it seemed that if anything was modern it was the door. The needle ran down without catching, confirming his suspicion that it was electronic and sealed by a full-length slide bolt.

He wasn't getting out of that door. Moving on.

He looked up at the ceiling, a good ten feet above him, and towards the 2x2 foot vent cover with a frown. Contrary to popular belief he didn't enjoy climbing around in vents. They were noisy and weak and hot as fuck.

It would be tough to get up there and even tougher to get his shoulders through the space but he couldn't see anyway out that didn't involve him punching and needle-stabbing his way threw unknown territory.

With a grounding breath he gripped the cot and flipped it, leaning it against the wall. Within a minute the vent was open, the razor blade fan torn out and no more than five seconds after the panel hit the ground, he was up and out.

Steve and Bruce sat in stunned silence as they waited for Tony to return.

Steve opened his mouth and promptly shut it, still unsure of just what to ask. He hadn't been there when whatever it was had happened so he was feeling more than a little lost.

He had been three floors down, working his way through his usual exercise routine when it had hit him, the overwhelming stab of fear and panic, dredging up from within him like a poison.

It made him near sick to his stomach, something that was nigh impossible with the super-soldier serum bonded to every cell in his body. All in one swift moment he felt everything; a faceless terror sewn to an inexorable exhaustion built from guilt and hopelessness bonded to anger and loneliness.

He could hardly process it and ghost images from the past had raced painfully through his mind; a film that played only the worst scenes.

It was like nothing he'd ever felt, before or after, and it had been gone just as swiftly as it had come, leaving him with symptoms akin to a hangover. He never thought he'd feel that again.

Steve hadn't known what to do, certain he had just experienced some sort of shocking meltdown or some terrible fault in the serum, delayed but unavoidable.

It wasn't until an alarm started going off that he even considered it might be external to himself, let alone an attack.

Things had become truly frightening when he had learned that one of his team had been the probable cause. He hadn't known what to think when he had finally found the rest of his team in Stark's lab, Tony and Clint unconscious and Bruce distanced from the others, fighting back the Other Guy.

When Tony had come to it was with a loud groan and the very serious exclamation, "I think something's wrong with Barton."

From there it was madness, the entire tower in chaos; apparently, whatever had happened, it had been very widespread and terrifying.

Steve didn't often feel anxious but he urged Tony to hurry – whatever this was, it couldn't wait.

Finally, the door swung open to reveal a rather bedraggled Tony, a wad of toilet paper stuffed up one nose, a red-eyed Pepper, and a very un-happy looking Happy.

"You can sell that story to your underlings and suits and whoever else, okay, but as Head of Security, I think I should know what the hell is going on!"

The whole room cringed. The alarms had only just been deactivated and the man's voice sounded far too loud in the silence that had followed.

"Happy, this is not the time to play Head of Security. Daddy's got a headache." Tony's snark was still there but there was nothing behind it; he sounded drained and nothing in his tone suggested he was finding anything funny about their current situation.

"Play? This isn't – play … And you hired me to do just that! As your Head of Security I'm telling you this is the perfect time for me to be doing my job!"

"Happy, please –" Pepper started as she moved to the conference table, slumping into one of its chairs.

"One minute I'm scoping out that new batch of hires and the next everyone's on the floor in pain. Myself included!" Happy's face was red as he became more agitated and Steve imagined that happened a lot working for Tony, though in this particular circumstance the eccentric billionaire was free of blame.

"One girl quit, by the way. And some guy had a complete breakdown, was crying and everything - "

"Not to mention the whole thing with the 55th –" he gave Tony a hard look. Tony didn't look up and was instead doing his best to rub the migraine from his head, " – that floors been no-touchsies for what, thirty years and suddenly Flash Gordon's watch-dogging the place?"

"That … okay I was hoping you wouldn't notice that." Tony groaned.

"Oh, I notice things. A lot of things –"

"Happy!" Tony interrupted, following Pepper's lead and collapsing into the nearest available chair. "Listen. Something happened, okay, and you will be part of the super secret club that gets to know about it, but for now I need you to put your scary-cooperate-head-of-security-game-face on and go run some interference."

"We need to keep this as internal as we can. We have 1600 people in this building, 85% of which are Stark employees. The other 15% are contractors who are not bound by the same contractual terms of confidentiality."

Steve sat back, listening intently as Pepper spoke. He had wondered just what they had been doing in the past half hour; he'd felt particularly useless, sequestered to the boardroom while Tony and Pepper did all the work.

"And we don't know how far this … reached. We need someone out there talking people down. You have the statement I drafted –"

Happy lifted up a set of papers.

"Yeah, about that –"

"Happy, please."

Pepper sighed, her voice pleading, all but begging the justifiably freaked-out HOS to keep calm and help them bury this.

Steve was about to jump in and tell the man to do his job but it proved unnecessary. Pepper was a brilliant well respected woman; he exuded confidence and was overall remarkable.

It was hard to say no to her.

Happy seemed to deflate.

"Fine. Okay. But later you better tell me what's going on." Happy said, pointing at Tony before exiting the room with purpose.

Steve was trying to be patient but he was tired of feeling very much so in the dark

"Jarvis, scrub all visual and audio recordings throughout the building starting one-minute before the event."

"Right away, sir."

The event. Steve supposed it was better than 'that thing Clint did or maybe didn't do, but it seems like he was involved'.

"And get me information on wherever the Widow is. We need to talk to her, only her, so run as much interference as we can with our esteemed Director." It sounded like an afterthought but Steve had no doubt that it wasn't.

"I've checked out SHIELDs regulation and I can't say I'm a huge fan of their mutant 'handling' procedure …" Tony added darkly and there it was – that thing everyone was talking about.

Steve knew about mutants – sure – but he'd yet to encounter one, had yet to hear anything outside of the errant news report and most of what he knew was from a large packet handed to him by Fury; even then mutants had been a small part of his re-orientation material.

Back in his days mutants had been something he'd only heard about once he had joined the Super Soldier Initiative and even then it was spoken as if it were only hearsay.

"So," He started, not sure where to start; they had only been able to guess in the beginning, but hearing confirmation was a little startling, "it's true then. Clint is a … mutant?" It seemed like a strange thing to say about someone, seemed unkind, somehow.

It was Bruce who answered – the man had been eerily quiet when Tony had all but pushed him inside and told him to stay put. Steve had been a little more than concerned when the man hadn't even answered him when asked about his wellbeing.

"We ran the blood work. He runs a positive for the X-Gene." Steve could only assume that was a solid 'yes'.

"But when we cross-referenced it with his SHIELD medical file, he tested negative."

"SHIELD tests for that?" Steve asked, one brow arching upwards.

"Of course they do." Tony answered with snort, as though the reasons were obvious. "And the fact that Clint was hiding it isn't giving me the impression SHIELD has the warm-fuzzies for mutants, or at least his mutation. Whatever the hell it is."

Steve nodded – he sure as heck couldn't put a name to whatever that had been. But then he remembered something.

"But I thought most mutations were superficial, harmless …" That's what his briefing packet had said, though the news often said differently.

"80% of the time they're about as remarkable as heterochromia," Bruce started, giving everyone in the room a short glance before looking back down at the table.

"Which is to say, not very remarkable." Tony added for what was probably the sake of himself and Pepper, though he had the idea that Pepper knew more than the average person.

"Ability to change hair color on the fly, or, I don't know ... can grow their fingernails like cat ladies." Tony elaborated and Pepper huffed, rolling her eyes – she winced immediately after the action, no doubt still nursing a pounding headache.

"10% are purely physical, stuff you're not really benefited by – "

Steve didn't even need to ask before Tony elaborated.

" - guys with horns or a third eye, or something." Steve tried to imagine it – anyone he had ever encountered who had looked like that had been on the 'bad' side of things. It was hard to imagine every day citizens living their day-to-day with horns.

"Then there's the 8%, the unlucky ones, Epsilon Mutations. They usually have debilitating mutations. Think immunodeficiencies, Ectrodactyly –"

"- people born with gills and no lungs." The idea made Steve's stomach churn but he was beginning to get the picture.

"And the last 2%, they're the ones with … powers, right?"

"Exactly, Cap'. A+."

"But it gets even more complicated with that group. You have alphas, deltas … omegas. People like Magneto –"

"The X-Men." Steve had done some research on the matter; besides, it was hard to not know who they were. They were on the news nearly as often as the Avengers.

"Clint, we think, is one of those 2%. Alpha class, most likely."

The room went silent as the news settled. Steve was rather certain they were all wondering the same thing: why hadn't Clint told them?

The answer most certainly had to do with trust and that left them all with the realization that Clint, their teammate, hadn't trusted them enough.

It felt like an incredible failure.

"So, what do we do?"

"We wait for Barton to level out, wait for him to wake up –"

"Wake up?" Pepper spoke up, one elegant brow arching upwards and Tony flinched.

"We had to sedate him." There was no denying the guilt in Bruce's voice, but Steve couldn't help but show his surprise.

"What? Why?"

"We couldn't risk Clint hurting himself, or … others. We don't know what we're dealing with, yet." Bruce didn't sound very proud of what they'd been required to do but Steve understood it, to a point, and hoped Clint would two.

"That and whatever happened with Clint … well, the Other Guy didn't like it so much."

"I got it under control, Tony." Bruce shot back, his voice filled with uncharacteristic defensiveness.

"Well, Bruce, we couldn't risk it. Barton could've woken up all exorcist on us and I don't know about you, but I've hit my personal daily limit of nose bleeds and Vulcan-mind-melds."

"Okay. Boys. Enough." Pepper interrupted. It was clear that tensions were getting a bit too high.

"He started it."

"Tony –"

"Well, where is he now?" Steve interrupted, his voice rising over their exhausted squabbling.

"About that –"

That was all Tony had been able to manage before the door, despite being locked, swung open again to reveal a regretful looking Thor.

"Shield Brothers, Lady Pepper –" He said as though he hadn't just knocked down a door in some great urgency.

"You're supposed to be not here." Tony ground out; if he was trying to be secretive by being vague, he was doing a terrible job.

"Yes, that is true, but I have grave news. Our Clint Barton is missing."

Silence.

"I believe he has taken to the ceiling paths."

It took Steve a moment to register what the Asgardian had meant and when he finally processed it he could have sworn.

Tony beat him to it.

"Shit."

Clint fumbled through the airshaft that was far too small for him, and fought the blind panic that was threatening to overtake him.

Whatever had been holding his abilities at bay before was now gone and though the world wasn't nearly as loud as it had been before, it was filled with enough alarm and panic to have him scrambling for calm.

He was army crawling through an unknown maze, hitting weak points - making the whole thing sway – and hot spots that were enough to make him lightheaded. He went up and down, left and right, but there was still no sign of an opening. No offices or hallways or freaking janitor's closets.

There was no fucking exit here.

He had just about decided to destroy a portion of the venting system – and it would have been easy, as fragile as they were – and take to the walls, when, finally, he could feel a draft.

He followed it, not caring so much that he was making enough noise to awake Thor or that his hands were bleeding from when he'd caught them on sharp corners, and upon reaching the large fan, started to kick.

It was moving and was made of stronger stuff than the vents themselves; he kicked and kicked and kicked until finally, it groaned and bent.

A moment later it was bent outwards, creating a space just big enough to fit through.

He wasted no time and dropped down.

And into a room of nothing.

Odd, sure, but he couldn't give a single fuck as the headache from before made a glorious return and began to pull at his concentration, hundreds of stranger's emotions trying to rip him down.

Something strange and familiar brushed across his still torn to shit shields but he pushed it deep; he had to move. His adrenaline would only last him so long.

The room was dark but he stepped forward, not caring if he ran into a wall, and reached out, hands landing on cold concrete. He felt around and, within minutes, landed on what felt like a door knob.

It turned easily and he leaped out, not caring, for the moment, what was on the other side.

He came out into an blessedly vacant hallway but, after a moment of regaining his bearings, any relief he had felt vanished.

In front of him was a rather spectacular view of Manhattan. It was a view he knew extremely well and had seen many times before.

No. This couldn't be right. He'd been drugged for fucks sake.

But the view didn't lie.

Stark Tower. He was in Stark Tower.

As if Clint's trust issues weren't bad enough. Next up: Natasha shows up. So does Xavier. Pepper is a badass. Things get hairy.

So, I apologize for the incredibly long, ridiculous wait for this chapter. I know it wasn't as action packed (at all) as it should've been but I've decided to go with shorter chapters and higher update frequency, over long chapters and who knows when updating.

Shiny?

Anyway. Thank you to every single one of you who took the time to review, favorite, and just read. I appreciate your readership and your reviews – you are all amazing.