A Gift From: sorcer3sssupreme
Title: Taking the long way home
A Gift For: inkvoices
Rating: T
Warnings/Choose Not To Warn: No warnings
Summary/Prompt Used:Inspired by Doctor Strange - there is a network of guardians at key points around the world protecting people, and this reality, from... magic/other worlds/insert idea here.
Natasha and Clint have very different ways of going about it. Both work.
Author's Note: Okay so I got a little carried away with the first part of the prompt so I didn't fit in as much of the second part as I wanted 😅 I hope I still did the prompt justice! And happy holidays!! 🎉⛄


Taking the long way home

Clint is woken up by his sheets dumping him out of his bed. When he wrenches the door open, America is standing outside, tapping one foot impatiently.

She gestures to her own ear: 'Aid?'

Clint holds out a hand. A small flash drops his purple hearing aids into his palm. As he starts fitting them into his ears, America is already walking off to another part of their Sanctum.

"What could possibly require hearing aids before coffee?" he grouses.

"Oh, right, sorry."

America holds out a hand. A small, star-shaped cut out in reality appears above her hand and deposits a piping hot mug of coffee into it.

Clint takes the chipped and stained New York souvenir mug from the younger sorcerer like it's the most precious baby chick, cradling it to his chest. Even cooing slightly.

"We've got a problem with the dimensional wards. They're going wild." America explains once Clint has had a few sips of coffee.

"The whats?"

America sighs. "I'm going to pretend you just forgot due to your lack of caffeine."

"Nope."

"Oh my god." America pinches the bridge of her nose, briefly scrunching her eyes closed despite the chaos they're walking through.

With a bit more coffee, Clint is noticing that more acolytes than he's ever seen at once are pouring through the hallways all around them.

"They're designed to alert the nearest Sanctum when some part of another universe crosses over into ours," she explains. "It's like, basically the whole reason we're here?"

"Sure, sure. You're a very good apprentice, you know that?"

America scoffs.

They walk into the warding room. It's usually one of his favorite places to go when his thoughts are a bit too chaotic. The latent magic thrumming through the one green space in the Sanctum never fails to center him.

But now, everything is haywire. It sets his teeth on edge so much, he almost turns around and leaves.

"Pretty much." America says when she looks over at him.

Now that he's in here, he feels something tapping at his magic. He raises a hand, energy springing to life around it. The energy begins to focus, slowly coalescing. He feels America's magic next to his own and with a slight shift, they begin channeling together.

Space bubbles and snaps and when the magical smoke clears, there's a figure wearing a ninja mask standing in front of them.

The wards holding the otherwise fabled warrior in place, Clint reaches forward to pull off their mask.

"Oh shit."

🔮✨🔮

"Alright. Looks like we're all here." Strange says.

His voice is slightly echo-y, as if the projection-call wants them to know it's not the real Stephen Strange in front of her.

Or the real Loki, the real Barton or the real T'Challa.

The small group of five have arranged themselves in a circle, some sitting on invisible furniture— well, invisible to Natasha, since the projection only captures living, moving things— and others standing as they conduct their meeting.

"You have to call it, Mr. Sorcerer Supreme," Natasha comments dryly.

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Loki smirk.

"That's Dr. Sorcerer Supreme, thank you." Strange replies. "Alright, how does it go? 'I, the Sorcerer Supreme and guardian of the New York Sanctum call together the five corners of our realm to defend it.' Right?"

Loki scoffs. Natasha rolls her eyes. But the words are close enough.

"Birnin Zana Sanctum answers." T'Challa answers, his gaze sliding towards Natasha, a silent reproach in his gaze.

T'Challa was always more connected to the tradition than the rest of them. Besides Loki, perhaps.

"Moscow Sanctum answers." Natasha can feel the ancient name of her Sanctum layered under her modern English pronunciation.

"New Asgard Sanctum answers." Loki intones.

"Tokyo Sanctum answers." Clint finishes.

"Excellent. Now, I'm sure we've all seen the breaches. I hope you all have been making sure no extra-dimensional entities make it through to our realm. They have a high probability of being extremely dangerous to the fabri—"

"Mr.- I mean, Dr. Strange, sir?"

The voice of a teen boy suddenly on the "call" piques all of their attention.

Their Sorcerer Supreme suddenly looks supremely like someone who'd just unwillingly had a very embarrassing secret revealed very much against their will.

"Peter! I told you not to interrupt me—"

"I know but—" the teen outside of the projection replies.

Suddenly the projection is flooded by a pile of spandex-clad teens (and one adult) and a cacophony of demanding voices.

Clint cringes and subtly reaches up to turn down his hearing aids.

"Is there such a thing as a vote of no confidence for a Sorcerer Supreme?" Natasha asks blandly.

"Traditionally no, but maybe if they fail to keep the realm safe from, say, extra-dimensional threats." Loki drones. "Especially if they failed where the other Sanctums haven't."

Natasha and Loki look expectantly around the rest of the Sanctum guardians.

"Weeeelll," Clint reaches behind his neck sheepishly. "About that..."

"Clint is a weeb!" America shouts, suddenly appearing in the projection.

America disappears and reappears with a magically bound carbon copy of Clint presented in front of her.

Loki leans closer to the image. "Is that..."

"A katana!" T'Challa supplies excitedly.

It's not often his martial training is useful in their line of work.

"We think he's a ninja. But he hasn't exactly been enthusiastic to talk to us, either."

Natasha feels a prickling of extra-sensory awareness that leads her to the doppelganger of Clint who's currently staring a hole through her skull. She'd normally be hesitant to say he looks like he's seen a ghost. But lately she's very familiar with such an expression, and that's definitely what the hollow, haunted look in his eye is.

Loki grins, steepling their fingers together. "I suppose that leaves three of us as prime candidates for the new—"

"Did someone say candidate?"

A new Loki in a sharp suit and much smaller version of their Loki’s ceremonial horns appears, flanked by several other Lokis. Well, presumably all Lokis. One is quite old and a bit hard to compare to the younger versions. One is blonde- extremely unusual for a Loki (and also a woman, which is much less unusual for a Loki)... And one is an alligator. Still wearing the golden horns, of course.

Their version of Loki sighs heavily into their hands, utterly defeated by their own- in a manner of speaking- ambitions.

"Anyone else have something- or more likely someone to reveal now?" Strange seems to have regained control over the many teens in the background enough to rejoin the conversation.

"Nope." Natasha replies entirely too quickly.

Something in the background crashes loudly. But when no figure reveals themselves, the attention of the group turns to T'Challa.

"Unfortunately my guests are currently preoccupied comparing notes on their Black Panther suits. Interestingly, only one of them is an alternate me." T'Challa informs them. “Shuri is having an excellent time interrogating all of them.”

Natasha snickers to herself, easily imagining T'Challa's sister and also apprentice- a real rarity in their order- having a field day getting to examine Black Panther magic or technology from other realities.

Then she hears an even louder crash- this time from her potions storeroom. She grimaces.

"I think Liho is protesting. I'd better go. Let me know if the situation with the breaches changes!"

She hurriedly ends the spell, just catching Clint's curious eyebrow raise as all of their ghostly projections flicker out of existence.

Natasha follows the sound of the crash and finds that, thankfully, only a few jars of the dry ingredients had been knocked over, not any of the highly volatile mixtures that earned her the Black Widow moniker. She fixes the jars with a quick spell and re-jars all the herbs. When she turns around to leave, she catches a glimpse of the spirit currently haunting her Sanctum fleeing into another room.

Liho might have been a convenient excuse, but the spirit really is a lot like a cat. She often sees him out of the corner of her eye, watching her from a doorway, then fleeing when she tries to approach. Once, she caught him just wailing- an oddly lonely sound- but he promptly stopped when he turned and saw her. That was the first time she saw the long, dark hair framing his pale visage, complete with haunting (pun unintentional) blue eyes. After that, Natasha stops trying to exorcize him. None of the spells she’d tried seemed to work on him, anyway. Which is probably because he showed up at the same time as the rest of their extra-dimensional travelers. Though she can't figure out why everyone else's visitors have been decidedly more corporeal.

Natasha jumps when a loud thud sounds out from the next room. When she opens the door, she finds books knocked off their shelves and tchotchkes strewn around. No, not strewn. Laid out. In a trail.

The trail leads her back into the Sanctum’s wards room. Most of them have stopped being at any sort of concerning level. Except for the one the ghost is currently staring at. It takes her a moment to decipher the rapidly vacillating runes in the read-out, but when she does, her jaw falls open.

"Well, shit."

🔮✨🔮

"You didn't all need to come here." Natasha says as she pours tea for her very recently arrived guests.

After Natasha reported the readings from her wards to the rest of the Sanctum guardians, they quickly appeared on her doorstep. Including apprentices and all of their extra-dimensional visitors. Natasha has never been so surrounded by be-spandexed teens and it's making her vaguely itchy. She’ll take her comfortable- if heavy- robes over that torture any day.

"Your readings seem to be the most dire," Strange says.

"You also have the most room." T'Challa adds, "Especially with Yelena doing her rounds."

"Ooh, going apprentice-less for a while? Bold." America comments.

"Just because Clint would drown in a coffee mug if you weren't around doesn't mean all of us are so helpless." Natasha replies, looking out of the corner of her eye at Clint.

Clint chokes on his tea at her accusation.

Natasha raises her eyebrows at America. America grins conspiratorially back at her.

"Th-" Clint wipes at his mouth to clear away any expelled tea. "That was a coincidence!"

"But were the readings really concerning enough for everyone to be here? In person?" Natasha asks once everyone has been served with the tea of their preference.

"Unfortunately." Loki says, "Now, there's no precedent for this, but it seems that the event we experienced was large enough and widespread enough to not only destabilize our own reality, but several nearby ones, as well."

"Wait... that sounds like..." the youngest spandexed teen starts, looking up at the other teens.

"Yes, Peter. Our universes." the white-and-teal spandexed teen responds.

"I thought it was a little odd you brought the whole gang along," Natasha sighs, "but if their dimensions are also in danger... we'll need all the help we can get."

🔮✨🔮

They stay up for days.

The Lokis work together monitoring the degradation while Loki's apprentice, Nico, works with America and Strange to find solutions to stabilize anything they can.

With all the chaos of guests and the mountain of research Natasha finds herself buried under, she almost forgets about the ghost. Until he re-emerges late one night— or... morning?— as Natasha is boiling some water to give her magic an outlet and to not have to use her brain for a few minutes. But she was so not using her brain that she shrieks when she sees him standing off to the side.

The ninja version of Clint runs in, a knife at the ready, followed quickly by their Clint, who skids his way into his counterpart. As they straighten themselves out, Natasha notices the knife is suspiciously missing, even though the ninja appears to think he's still holding one.

"Well someone does have their own visitor." Clint sing-songs when he sees the ghost.

Natasha scowls at him.

"I was wondering how your area seems to have the most volatile fluctuations and yet no actual breach." Clint continues.

The ninja is uncharacteristically not paying attention to Natasha and is staring at the apparition instead. Natasha figures not many ninjas have seen ghosts.

Clint sends off a spell, and a moment later Nico appears. She takes one look at the ghost, then levels an unimpressed look at Clint.

"What, you need a goth to deal with a ghost?" she says.

"I'm not sure he's a ghost." Clint says, looking at Natasha.

She sighs. "None of the usual banishing or exorcizing spells had any effect, but I haven't really had time to think about it with," she gestures at the air around them.

In a flash of blood-tinged magic, Nico's staff is in her hands. She mumbles something to it and after a moment, it vibrates, perhaps in agreement. A spell wraps around Natasha's ghost and for a moment, he wails the same lonely wail. But after nothing bad happens, he stops.

"Interesting." Nico says, almost to herself.

The ghost wails again, as if protesting this description of him.

"Iiiinteresting," Clint adds.

"You can't both say that and not explain anything!" Natasha protests, feeling suddenly protective.

"It seems like he's not a ghost." Nico explains first, "Well. Not conventionally speaking, anyway. He's certainly incorporeal, and a bit noisy-"

The ghost wails again here. Strangely, Clint nods as if agreeing with the noise.

"-but he's not dead at all," Nico continues, "It's almost like he's trapped between his dimension and ours…"

She trails off, tapping her staff against her chin absent-mindedly before wandering off without further explanation.

"Well, I suppose we'll hear more about that later. Care to share whatever epiphany you had?" Natasha raises her eyebrow at Clint, crossing her arms.

"Well, it was mostly a theory about ghosts but it might still work." Clint gestures towards the... transparent gentleman. "He's clearly trying to communicate, and ghosts typically have a hard time affecting the space precisely enough to speak. But his form seems very consistent so I figure… maybe he'll be able to sign."

"That's... actually not a bad idea from you." Natasha says grudgingly.

Clint grins like that’s the best thing she’s ever said to him. She can’t help but grin back.

🔮✨🔮

"'Again'? Okay. Here's 'A'... 'B'..."

Clint repeats the 'again' sign back to their ghost visitor, correcting his form subtly, then goes back to the signed alphabet.

Natasha tries to focus her attention back on her notes, but somehow someone repeating the alphabet over and over again is not exactly conducive to concentrating on fiddly spell calculations. When she glances over, she sees her ghost laser-focused on Clint's hand. It's clear he's taking the whole thing very seriously, his eyes narrowed and brow furrowed. Like if he can glare at the signs hard enough, he'll be able to memorize them faster.

She quickly turns back to her notes before she can think that look is undeniably cute.

"Alright, think you want to try again?" Clint asks once he's through the alphabet.

The ghost nods once, seriously. His mouth is set in a line of grim determination. Clint decided to teach some finger-spelling today since predicting the vocabulary a ghost might need turned out to be very hard. Impossible, really. But as a bonus, they'll be able to learn their ghost's name and can stop referring to him as 'the ghost'.

Now Clint has his own look of concentration on, the tip of his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth as he watches the ghost stumble through the unfamiliar hand shapes.

"Bucky?" Clint says once the ghost lets his hand drop.

The ghost lets out a loud wail, although Natasha interprets this one as a wail of triumph.

"Bucky!" Clint jumps up, grinning. "Excellent. Very good. Nice to meet you, Bucky. I'm Clint and that cranky hermit over there is Natasha."

Natasha flips Clint off without looking up from her notes, "He already knows our names. He's been stuck with us for a week listening to us talk around him while he can't talk back."

"Oh, right. Well. It seemed polite."

'Thank you' Bucky signs, smirking a bit to indicate a less-than-sincere tone.

Natasha snickers. Then quickly looks back down at her notes.

"Ah, see, she isn't as mean as she makes herself out to be, huh," Clint stage-whispers to Bucky.

🔮✨🔮

Natasha returns to her study with tea and cookies in hand. When she opens the door, though, she finds Clint and Bucky heads bent together over some of Clint's books. It's a rare occurrence for Bucky to get close to anyone so the scene seems especially intimate. Then Bucky laughs at something Clint is whispering to him and it's a bit too much for Natasha. Her breath in her lungs feels all wrong, her stomach doing some sort of gymnastic maneuver.

She leaves before she can intrude on their moment any more. She'll get more work done without them to distract her, she tells herself.

She finds herself in the observatory. The small, dark room was her favorite spot as an apprentice. It was much too cold for most of the other students and one of the only places in the Sanctum you could get a full view of the sky. She's pleasantly surprised to find her old heating spells are still intact, and before long she's fully immersed in her research once again.

So immersed that she nearly jumps out of her skin when she reaches for a book she'd set aside earlier and her hand instead grabs onto a solid warm... thing that is definitely not a book.

"Oh, sorry." Clint shifts slightly and produces the book she'd placed down earlier.

Natasha takes it numbly, still staring.

Just behind Clint is a dozing Bucky.

"He didn't want to disturb you while you were concentrating," Clint explains.

"Oh," Natasha breathes. She doesn't know why she suddenly can't breathe, can't think.

She doesn't know why these two seeking her out is making her heart try to jump out of her chest.

"You didn't need to..." she gestures vaguely, not entirely sure what to say.

Clint shrugs, suddenly taking great interest in his spell diagrams.

"It just felt..." he also struggles finding the next words, "It feels better when you're there. When we all are."

Natasha blinks. Clint fidgets with one of the corners of his parchment.

They both jump when Bucky makes a sound that's something between a snore and a loud 'pop'. Clint and Natasha look over, expecting to find Bucky suddenly awake or maybe dreaming. They certainly don’t expect to see Bucky stretched across the whole room, features pulling to the point of breaking. But before either of them can even stand, he's back to normal. Though if his wide eyes are any indication, none of them had imagined what just happened.

"What was that?!" Clint cries at the same time Natasha rushes forward to check on Bucky, "Are you okay?"

'HURTS' he fingerspells haltingly, then 'pull hard'

His eyes slide closed, brow furrowed in discomfort. Natasha grips the edges of her robes tightly. She wants to soothe Bucky's pain but there's nothing either of them can do for him physically. Clint's hand grips her shoulder. When she looks up, she can see the same conflicted helplessness she feels reflected there.

"The dimensional shift must be getting worse," Natasha says quietly, "If the separation keeps getting worse..."

Clint takes a deep breath, steeling himself. "It might be time to call in some backup."

🔮✨🔮

They're all crowded into Natasha's small study, a grim reflection of when they first arrived. When they compare notes, it seems like Bucky’s glitching is a symptom of the more and more rapidly deteriorating stability of their universes.

"Whatever we've done so far has failed to make an impact, so we've got to find a way to think outside the box here." Natasha summarizes.

"Ah!" one Loki exclaims.

"Aha!" says another.

Alligator Loki growls excitedly.

"You better not just be saying that to claim credit for an idea." Natasha says.

"There's no way they just skipped the whole brainstorm session to jump right to the anwer." America frowns, looking put out.

"It was simply an excellent way to frame the problem we're facing," their Loki says confidently, puffing out their chest to begin explaining their idea.

"You're going to Yggdrasil it." Nico cuts off what was sure to be an epic Loki monolog.

"Yes, of course." Loki replies automatically. "Wait, how did you know that? Have you been paying attention to our lessons?!"

Loki's face absolutely lights up with a childish glee as they move forward as if to embrace Nico.

Nico scoffs, blocking Loki's attempt at physical affection by keeping her staff between her and her mentor. "Absolutely not. But if we're both thinking Bucky's condition has proven itself to be tied-"

"Or tangled-" Loki interjects,

"- to the deterioration we're seeing, removing him from the offending dimension should at least slow the damage. To both of them." Nico finishes.

"Okay, let's pretend for a minute some of us don't understand what 'Yggdrasil-ing it' means," Clint says.

"Yggdrasil is the Norse legend of the world tree that holds their nine realms together," T'Challa explains.

"Quite right," Loki nods. "The Asgardian transport magic is based on the theory that one can use the 'branches' of the world tree to more easily traverse through space rather than flinging oneself through the void like some sort of barbarian."

"Though, in this case, we'd be aiming for the void between the branches, between realities," Nico says.

"But does that actually exist between realities?" Natasha asks.

Clint shoots her a grateful look. Usually he's left to be the one asking all the questions about the group's plans.

"It seems discovering that is our first task," Strange states.

The rest of the guardians roll their eyes at the 'haughtier-than-thou' wizard voice he's putting on. But it inspires the rest of the room as they nod enthusiastically and run off to start work on finding the void between realities.

Soon enough the room is empty besides Clint, Natasha and Bucky.

"So. Who are you betting on finding this void first? Strange or Loki?" Clint asks, looking over his coffee at both of them.

"Normally I'd say it was an even split. But Loki has a gang of similarly trained sorcerers. And Strange has a sitcom's worth of babysitting to do, so: Loki." Natasha replies.

'Loki,' Bucky agrees.

"Cheers to a very unexciting betting pool, then!" Clint grins, toasting them both with his mug.

🔮✨🔮

The blonde Loki skids past their room before backpedaling into the doorway.

"Oh! there you are!" she exclaims, eyes wide and grinning feverishly, "We found it!"

Natasha springs up, sparing a moment to glance at Bucky. He nods before disappearing. Natasha follows a very excited Sylvie to the coldest wing of her Sanctum where the Lokis have set up. When Sylvie finally turns into one of the rooms, Bucky and Clint are already there. Two of the Lokis are holding open a portal.

"Huh," Natasha says.

"Expected the void between realities to be black?" America asks, smirking.

The portal reveals on the other side of it, something so white that it appears to emanate light.

"Wow. So do we need special equipment? Spells?" Natasha asks, peering at the portal.

"We sent alligator Loki in a while ago. He seems fine enough," the oldest Loki gestures to the alligator, asleep in some sort of alligator bed set up in the corner.

Natasha frowns. She's about to criticize their cavalier attitude when Clint interrupts her.

"Awesome! Let's go!" he cheers before jumping straight through the portal.

Natasha sighs, shaking her head before following Clint through.

---

The amount of white, the amount of nothing is dizzying. Natasha reaches out blindly for something- anything to hold on to. Her hand is instantly met by a large, calloused hand gripping onto her just as tightly.

For a moment, she finds herself wondering what Bucky's hands would feel like. But when she looks over, it's blonde hair and a crooked grin that she sees.

Although that doesn't do anything to quell the warmth suddenly flooding her stomach.

America pops through, takes a brief look around and summons some star-shaped sunglasses. Quickly after, she conjures a familiar runed ring that hovers under their feet where a floor would otherwise be. It helps. Natasha feels much less like her head’s been separated from her body.

"Alright, should we see if bringing Bucky here will help?" America nods at them.

Belatedly, Natasha realizes she's still holding onto Clint's hand. Clint stiffens when he follows her gaze down to their hands and steps away quickly, one hand coming up to rub the back of his neck sheepishly. America smirks, looking between them.

They take up the points of a basic spellcasting triangle. America raises her hands first, laying the groundwork of the spell. Natasha starts her spellcasting next, having the strongest connection to Bucky. Finally Clint joins in, acting as a bridge between the two women. Their threefold magic surges through Natasha. It floods through her until she loses track of her body, she becomes a being- maybe three- of pure magic.

Then her next breath comes, grounding her. The three of them push their magic out like the tide. And like the tide, it comes back to them.

The spell dissipates, leaving Bucky- no longer spectral- standing in front of them.

After a moment, he takes a deep stuttering breath. Like he'd forgotten how to do it during his time as a ghost.

"Hey." he says, voice hoarse and smile shaky.

🔮✨🔮

Strange comes through as their medical expert.

"Well, it doesn't seem like any long-term damage has been done with you being without your body for so long," Strange says, having exhausted his battery of spells.

"Was that a concern?" Bucky asks, laughing nervously.

Strange pauses.

"Let's just say any long term magic has its risks," he says at length.

"Oh. Well. I guess I'll avoid getting my body and soul trapped in separate realities from now on."

A startled laugh escapes Strange. He quickly retreats before anyone can comment on it.

"Sooo... where do we go from here?" Bucky's gaze flickers between Clint and Natasha.

"Well..." Natasha says.

"I could probably think of a few ways to use that corporeal form," Clint leers.

"Clint!" Natasha's eyes nearly bug out of her head.

"Well... if we're all amenable..." Bucky looks up at Natasha from underneath his eyelashes.

And that is decidedly not fair. Her panicked glance at Clint is only met with another darkened gaze.

Natasha is in so much trouble.

Face flaming, she reaches her hand out to each of them. Bucky’s hands are cooler than she expected, but solid and sure. Clint’s grip feels familiar already, like she’d spent much longer than she could know holding onto him. Clint waggles his eyebrows at Bucky, making the other man laugh as they lace their fingers together. Natasha’s eyes slide closed, a feeling of calm, of right filling her whole being.

All points of the triangle; joined at last.