Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warnings:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Captain America (Chris Evans Movies), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Kip Grady/Scott Hunter, Shane Hollander & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Clint Barton, Kip Grady, Wyatt Hayes, Rose Landry, Tony Stark

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, SHIELD agent Shane Hollander, Hydra Ilya Rozanov, Mystery, Attempt at Humor, Brainwashing

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-05-09 Words: 6,015 Chapters: 1/?

Marvel-lous Rivalry

Summary

When Agent Ilya Rozanov warns Agent Shane Hollander that SHIELD is secretly a front for a Nazi death cult, Shane dismisses it as a tasteless joke.

But when the Helicarriers crash and a century's worth of secrets are exposed, Shane realizes too late that he should have listened. By then, Rozanov is already long gone, taking with him all the answers and leaving Shane wondering if he ever really knew the man he fell in love with.

Notes

Chapter 1: Prologue: Welcome to SHIELD

Chapter Summary

In which agent Shane Hollander gets a job offer he can't refuse.

Chapter Notes

Shane would be the first to admit it. Working with S.H.I.E.L.D. on the 364 days of the year they spent being a thorn in the side of every alphabet agency was agonizing. But fuck if they weren't good to have around on the one day the forces that be decided to wipe your city off the map.

Any interaction between America’s shady “Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division” and another government organization typically meant a week's worth of overtime sifting through the bureaucratic red tape of jurisdiction and international law. In Shane’s experiance with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, this usually culminated in S.H.I.E.L.D more or less doing what the fuck they wanted anyway, jurisdiction be damned and bulldozing through all his painstakingly compiled case work.

Shane’s department of domestic security at the C.S.I.S. would start off, very reasonably, with, "We get that smuggling vibranium up through the Bering Strait is objectively a bad thing, and we appreciate that you caught the guys. But you can't just imprison them in your underwater supermax prison indefinitely and without trial."

S.H.I.E.L.D would respond with, "These are domestic terrorists threatening democracy; we will exercise the full force of the law to prosecute them."

The C.S.I.S would say, "Yeah, we get that, but they're also Canadian citizens who you caught in the Yukon on Canadian soil. If you could please return them so that we can exercise the full force of our Canadian legal system, which we do, in fact, have, that'd be great, thanks. Please also send over any admissible evidence which may be relevant."

To which S.H.I.E.L.D would respond two months later with a Sent from iOS email stating "Sry for late response, prison swallowed by Kaiju last week, all rel. files lost in shuffle after NYC alien invasion."

Shane doesn't care if they had the Avengers on their payroll; it was getting ridiculous. Not to mention, fishy. Granted, upper S.H.I.E.L.D. management was the type of balls-to-the-wall crazy that thought firing a nuclear warhead into New York was a good method of dealing with aliens, but still! It was the principle of it all.

If Shane didn’t know better, he’d suspect Shield of covering up information to execute their own influence across the globe for nefarious purposes. Shane does know better and realized early on that voicing those concerns was the type of stupid that got promising young intelligence agents relocated to bumfuck nowhere Saskatchewan in a department dedicated to counting deer, so he keeps his mouth shut.

Besides, S.H.I.E.L.D. had Captain America on their side! And Captain Scott Hunter, apparently, had a moral code so strong it could bend rebar, so maybe S.H.I.E.L.D.’s poor grasp of international justice was just classic American incompetence. Shane hadn’t had firsthand experience with the man’s morals, but the way he’s currently tearing through the AIMbots invading Shane’s office certainly proves he’s a physical force to be reckoned with.

The vibranium shield goes flying into an AIMbot, turning it into a shower of metal. Shane ducks further under his desk to avoid getting cut open by the debris. What’s left of the robot’s metal frame goes down hard, taking out three cubicle walls with it.

This was going to be the last time Shane stayed to pull an all-nighter at the office. All he’d wanted was to be a good agent and dig into his casework on some reports of what might have been a human trafficking ring. He was doing the right thing, he thought. He was making a difference in the world! And if things shook out well, his boss might actually let him do some, gasp, fieldwork(!) instead of sending him after another wild S.H.I.E.L.D. goose chase.

But no! Instead, the world had decided to punish him by siccing an army of AIMbots on Montreal, and now he was stuck with no weapon and no protection, cowering under a desk where he was probably going to die.

If Shane had really wanted to do the ‘right thing,’ he should have listened to someone who was always right. His mom. Who complained incessantly that he worked too hard.

Shane’s inner temper tantrum is cut short when he notices something sitting on one of the many three-foot-tall paper stacks crammed behind Shane’s desk. It was the ray gun that the AIMbot had been holding before it’d been blasted to pieces. The robot must have dropped it as it went down.

Shane breathes a sigh of relief. Finally! A weapon! Not that Shane had ever actually used an AIMbot ray gun, but he was a crack shot with any firearm he’d ever handled, and the principle of safety off, point and trigger was pretty universal.

Shane drops the stapler he'd been clutching with a death grip and picks the ray gun up. He decides to test his aim by pointing it at the far wall and firing a shot at the first box in the calendar hanging there. The shot rips through the calendar and the wall behind it, tearing a hole in the side of the building, revealing the glimmering stars above Montreal's skyline.

He gapes at the crater, and the files now blowing in the frigid winter wind. Well, at least he’d been on target, judging from where the center of the crater used to be.

A metal figure appears in the crater, and Shane flinches before recognizing the distinct gold and red of the Iron Man suit.

“What the fuck-“ he hears Stark’s voice, modulated through the metal face plate. “Who gave the five-year-old a gun? Kid put that down before you take someone’s head off.”

But Shane’s too busy waving at him to get down because two metal specs have appeared in the sky behind Stark's shoulder. Shane can see the telltale light blue glow of their rifles powering up, aimed square at Stark's back.

“Kid, I get that you’re start-struck. We’ll have time for autographs later, you need to put that gun down n-“

He doesn’t finish the sentence because Shane stalks towards the crater, rifle in hand.

“Woah-woah, hey,” Stark says, repulsors up as he thankfully backs away, giving Shane a clear shot at the sky. “I know you’re, like, a squishy civilian, but if you aim that at me I won’t hesitate to-“

The loud whirr of the ray gun firing cuts him off, and one of the dark figures goes down. Shane pivots to aim for the other one, but it’s already gone, plummeting to the ground below. He scans the skyline, then spots a figure, waving over from the roof of a building a block or so over.

“Is that Hawkeye?” Shane asks, squinting. It was hard to see in the dark.

“Did you just hit an AIMbot from—JARVIS? How far was that shot?” He whistles, “400 yards?”

Shane continues scanning the skyline. No, yep, that was definitely Hawkeye down there. The archer was lobbing arrow after arrow at some weird monkey-looking variants that were scaling the walls of the building he was on.

Huh, those were new. Shane hadn’t seen that variant yet, but that’s not saying a lot given that he’d spent most of the invasion cowering under his desk. On cue, he hears a faint hissing sound from up above. Ah, for Christ's sake.

“Get outta the- “ Shane hooks an arm around the Iron Man suit and drags him bodily into the building. The monkey goes flying past the open chasm, plummeting to the ground. Shane points the gun downward to shoot it for good measure.

“Whoa,” Stark says, “Cap, are you seeing this? Is anyone seeing this?”

“Stark!” Hunter snarls from where he’s smashing an AIMbot with what appears to be the beheaded skull of another robot. He cocks his head to indicate the three or so other bots who had started piling into the wrecked office, “You mind lending a hand?”

“Oh, right! Yep, I can do that.” Stark says, there’s a faint buzz as the arc reactor powers up and shoots them down.

Hunter throws what’s left of the metal skull away after it caves in and rips the central core out of the robot on the ground with his bare hands. Shane tries not to be jealous and fails miserably. When the room is clear, the Captain jogs over to them.

He gives Shane a cautious once-over. “That was some good shooting you did there, kid.”

“Thanks…I’ve got a bit of combat experience,” Shane says, nervously eyeing the swarm of robots descending on the city, “I could help? If you want? With the bots?”

He waves the ray gun a bit. This is, in Shane's mind, an excellent way of illustrating exactly how he could help. He immediately stops when Hunter and Stark shoot each other uneasy looks. Huh. On second thought, maybe the image of someone waving a gun back and forth wasn't really the kind of thing that instilled confidence in people.

“You’re kidding me,” Stark scoffs, “Aren’t you supposed to be Canadian? Aren’t guns, like, outlawed here or something? Where’d you even learn to shoot? Middle-school paintball?”

Shane grits his teeth. “Special forces training.”

Stark’s faceplate swings up with a gentle hiss, so Shane gets a front row view of his reaction as he looks Shane up and down. Stark’s eyebrows furrow as they take in the pressed slacks, the sensible collared shirt, and linger on the glasses in his breast pocket.

“Really? Special forces? Is that why you’re currently working as an accountant?”

“No,” Shane says, “because I’m currently working as an intelligence officer with the C.S.I.S.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“The Canadian Special Intelligence Service?” Shane asks. He throws his arm out, gesturing to the wrecked floor plan, “Whose office you’ve just fucking destroyed?”

Stark looks over at Hunter for confirmation. “Have you heard of this thing? Is this real? Since when does Canada need a foreign intelligence officer? Or special forces?”

Shane glares at him. Hating him for his tone and hating him even more because he was right. If Canada had ever needed a foreign intelligence agency and staffed special force corps on deck, it certainly wasn’t now.

That was how Shane, who’d been top of his year in training and left behind a trail of broken records, had ended up chasing emails about extradition agreements with S.H.I.E.L.D. Sure, he could’ve joined up in the military, but what would’ve been the point? He didn't particularly enjoy the idea of sitting in the desert, acting as backup muscle for the Americans when they wanted to terrorize locals, and it would've been that or an equally mind-numbing pencil-pushing job.

"Since Canada became a nation in the modern world, I imagine," Hunter says wryly, before looking to Shane, "I guess having special forces experience doesn't really make you a civilian, does it, Mr…?"

"Hollander," Shane supplies, "And no, I wouldn't really classify myself as a civilian."

"Very well, Mr. Hollander," Hunter says, flashing his 240 MW smile. Shane swallows. The man certainly didn't look 100 years old. "If you think you're up to the task, I'm certain Hawkeye will appreciate having some backup."

Stark scoffs, "Appreciate he says, like Clint hasn't been blowing up the comms asking us to poach the kid for-"

"And Stark," Hunter adds, clasping a hand around the metal epaulet of the Iron Man suit, "would be more than happy to escort you down!"

Starks blows out an annoyed breath, "I would, I guess. Yep, that's me. I absolutely love acting as a personal chauffeur."

"Glad to hear it, I've got an actual job as a superhero that I need to get back to," Hunter chirps at Stark, already heading towards the stairwell. He points at Shane before he disappears. "Good luck, kid, don't get eaten by a bot!"

It's an awkward trip to the rooftop that Hawkeye's perched on, but Stark thankfully leaves soon after.

Hawkeye takes no time before starting up a conversation.

“Sooo, Scott and Tony both say you work for the C.S.I.S.”

Shane hums in agreement as he lines his sights up.

“Cool, cool, cool,” Hawkeye nods, “What’s it like?”

Shane thinks for a moment, “Pretty boring, honestly.”

The huge gust of wind blows past, blowing the snow on the roof up sideways at them.

Hawkeye wipes his face, “God, what I wouldn’t give to describe work at S.H.I.E.L.D. as boring.”

Shane finds the knob for the sights on the rifle and gives it an extra two clicks to the left to account for the change in wind speed. “You shouldn’t, it’s not worth it.”

Hawkeye sends him a sidelong look, “Feeling like you’re about to start climbing the walls?”

Shane remembers the time he’d accidentally locked himself in the C.S.I.S. hallway at 4am when he went to the kitchen to make a seventh cup of coffee and forgot his key fob. It was an educational night. He’d acquired a wonderful list of skills that included: how to experience every stage of grief simultaneously, how to scale a wall in frictionless office shoes, how to shimmy in an air vent without creasing your slacks, and how to bypass C.S.I.S security to erase footage of you having a breakdown in the hallway (it’s easier than you’d think!)

Shane pulls a face, “Something like that.”

As time goes on, it becomes apparent that Shane’s own skills were still a far cry from Barton’s, but in his defence, he was about half the archer's age, with, even by the most generous estimates, a single percent of the combat experience.

Even so, Shane slowly but surely holds his own. And if the way Barton’s breathing slowly began to ease up was an indication, any additional sniper cover against a sea of mechanized monsters was welcome.

“You know,” Hawkeyes asks, as they fall into a comfortable rhythm, “I didn’t realize that a position as an intelligence officer in the C.S.I.S. came with sniper training.”

“It doesn’t,” Shane says, “I started during my time at the Royal Military College, got proper training during my stint in special ops.”

Barton huffs a surprised laugh, looking Shane up and down, “Uh uh, no fucking way. No way you’ve done all that shit. You barely look old enough to buy alcohol!”

“Eh,” Shane says absent-mindedly, lining up what promises to be a particularly satisfying shot. “You’d be close, I’ve only been legal in the states for a few months.”

If he could just predict exactly where the flying bot would cross over...Shane goes with his gut and hovers his hand over the trigger.

“Damn kid, you must’ve been something special then.”

Shane takes the shot. The beam of light flashes, skewering both a winged-bot mid-flight and the monkey-bot scaling the wall immediately behind it. The crawler goes down hard, hits one of the bots below it, the impact sending it hurtling the other way. It bounces between bots, like a ball in a Plinko machine, taking all of its compatriots with it.

“Yes!” Shane says, pumping his fist in the air.

Barton lets out a low whistle, “Point taken.”

But Shane doesn’t get to celebrate for long. A cry pierces through the air. Shane looks over the lip of the building. A woman is hanging out of the second-story window of a brick apartment complex a few blocks away. She’s desperately clutching at the leg of one of the monkeys.

Why on earth would she try grabbing it? Were the four-inch-long teeth and sharpened nails not enough to signal that they were dangerous? As if to punctuate the point, the robot kicks her in the side of the head, sending her flying backwards out of sight from the window.

It spins and scampers further up the apartment complex. Huh. It was moving a bit funny, almost like it was carrying something heavy, but Shane couldn’t quite make it out. Was it stealing something? The police light of a helicopter catches it, and-

“Shit!” Both Barton and Shane exclaim in unison.

Because there, in its metal claws, was a fucking kid.

“Cap! Ironman!” Barton shouts into his comms, “Anyone still near our side of town?”

Shane can’t hear the answer, but it must not be good because Barton curses and slings his bow across his back.

“Alright, kid, I gotta run, you stay here and make sure-” Before he can finish, the rooftop next to them explodes.

Shane flinches and looks over to see that some type of capsule had crashed into the rooftop, and dozens of the flying beasts were now spilling out. They take to the skies, all going off in different directions. A few train their beady, LED eyes on them.

There were too many. Shane wouldn’t be fast enough to get them all on his own. Both he and Barton knew it. Barton could, but he couldn’t be in two places at once.

“Oh, for the love of...” Barton mutters, looking back and forth between the swarm and the child, hand hovering over the bow like he wasn’t sure what to do.

Shane makes a split-second decision. He sprints to the fire escape ladder and throws himself onto it.

“Stay!” he cries frantically, “You can stay, I’ll go help the civilians.”

“Are you sure?” Barton says, already drawing an arrow out, “You think you can manage it?”

“I can definitely handle one better than I can handle a whole swarm.”

Barton looks him over and nods. “Right, good luck.” He rips his vest and one of his two comms off between firing arrows and tosses them to Shane.

“Don’t die!” he calls before turning back to the swarm, “I’ll cover you!”

Shane pulls on the body armour, thankful to have something between him and the world that isn’t his once-crisp button-up, now soaked in sweat. He slides down the fire escape until he’s level with the building beside and jumps, rolling onto the roof.

“Avengers, this is Hollander. How do you read? Over,” he says, shoving the earpiece in, before jumping to the next building.

Stark's voice comes crackling over the line, “Barton, am I hearing this right? Did you get one of your comms stolen by a kid who can’t read?”

Hunter's voice comes right after, “Hollander, this is Cap. Reading you loud and clear. I appreciate that at least someone on the line knows comms etiquette. That being said, don’t feel obligated to maintain standard procedure with this bunch. Over.”

Barton says,“I didn’t have much of a choice, Tony. Hollander and I are kind of dealing with a situation over here. Can any of you spare a second?” before hastily adding “uh, over.”

“No can do, Clint.” Stark replies, “I need to finish uploading this shutdown program into their database.”

A deep grunt and a muffled crash, then Captain Hunter asks, “How bad?”

“Roughly between 40-50 hostiles,” Barton says.

A heavy sigh, “En route, ETA 10 minutes.”

“Perfect,” Barton gasps. “Hollander’s gone to retrieve a civilian - Hey, Hollander, how’s that going by the way?”

Shane taps the communicator, “I’ve reached the building where the child was last seen.”

He looks up at the side of the brick apartment complex from the roof of the neighboring building. The fire escape is mangled beyond recognition. A glance down shows that the building exits had been barricaded.

“They took a child?” Hunter’s voice crackles over the line.

The top of the apartment complex was another four stories up, higher than any other tower in the vicinity. Shane sighs. There’s no helping it; only one way up to the roof, and he’d need both his hands free. He takes his belt off and loops it around the body of the rifle, attaching it tightly to the back of Barton’s vest in a makeshift harness.

“And you sent the kid to get him back?” Comes Stark’s voice over the line.”

“Trust me,” Barton says, “Kid knows what he’s doing, you’ll see. He’s a professional at this!”

Shane takes a running jump off the building.

His hands manage to catch on the lip of the window, but the skin of his knuckles and palms bursts open. He bites back a cry of pain. Then, ever so slowly, he digs his fingers into the grooves of the brick walls and makes his way up inch by agonizing inch.

It’s slow going. Shane wasn’t a small man, and the weight of the rifle wasn’t helping. God, what he wouldn’t give for a flying suit or superstrength. Even a pair of gloves, he thinks desperately, as the blood, now freely flowing, starts to run down his arms, blossoming on the few white spots on his shirt, not yet covered in grime. His pants slide down several inches, riding around his hips now that his belt is gone. Something sharp in the vest digs into his sternum, and he wheezes.

Shane certainly doesn’t feel like a professional. He feels like an idiot hanging off a building, way in over his head. But somewhere in this building, there’s a mother and child who are depending on him, ego be damned, so he powers on.

Just when Shane feels his arms start to give out, his hands scrabble around the lip of the roof. He takes a second to brace his feet against the top of the windowsill beneath him before heaving up and over.

The monkey-bot and child are nowhere to be seen when Shane rights himself. His heart drops. Fuck, had he been too late?

But no, he spots a shed, on the far side of the roof, its door slightly ajar, and a broken lock on the ground. Shane creeps over and peers in. Both the monkey-bot and the child were inside.

The monkey-bot was hunched over the unconscious small child. Shane squints, brows furrowing. What was it doing? He watches as it uses one of its claws to prod methodically along the child’s wrist. Suddenly, the metal plates retract, revealing a long, thin needle that it sticks in the boy’s arm.

Was it...drawing blood? Why? Shane can’t think of a single reason. Whatever the case, he had to get creative. There was no way he could use the ray gun, not with an injured civilian so close. And even if he did have a hand-to-hand weapon, which he didn’t, he didn’t like the odds of the robot accidentally ripping through an artery in the kid’s arm if Shane startled it by barging in.

Shane peers around. The storage shed was packed to bursting; a motley assortment of mostly sports equipment was scattered around. It’d be too risky to pry the shed door open in case it altered the bot, but there was a good deal of stuff spilling out onto the roof as well. He needed something long-distance he could use without startling the robot, but still did damage...

Shane spots a hockey stick, propped up against the outside wall of the shed. Now that was a weapon he was familiar with. No puck, unfortunately, but that was okay; something small and sharp would do instead. He doesn’t find anything that fits that description, but he does find a roll of electrical tape.

Sending a quiet apology to his mother for wrecking yet another pair of glasses, Shane reaches into his pocket. He grips the lenses in his hands and bears down. The glass cracks and pops free. Taking the largest shard, he uses the electrical tape to fix it against the bent frame, forming a makeshift dagger.

Shane sets it down, winds up with the hockey stick, and prays that a childhood's worth of ingrained muscle memory doesn’t fail him now.

The dagger sails cleanly through the air and sinks into the chink in armour between the arm and breast plate. The monkey-bot suddenly seizes, trembling, before the LEDs blink out, and it falls, limply to the floor.

Shane throws open the door. His hands are gentle as he gives the boy a quick once-over. The kid seemed okay aside from the cut on his wrist and a small tranq dart sticking out of his lower back. No bumps along his head, no bleeding from his ears or nose or any other signs pointing to a concussion, so he was probably okay to move. He did have a what looked like a tattooed #2 behind an ear, but this wasn't really odd. Shane's friend Hayden had twins with similar marks.

Gingerly lifting the kid in his arms, Shane opens the comms. “Child is stable but unconscious, threat has been neutralized.”

Barton lets out a whoop of laughter, “What’d I fucking say? Knew you could do it, man!”

Shane looks down at the boy in his arms, then the exposed rooftop, “How are you handling things on your end? Should I come back?”

Hunter seems to read his mind. “We’re okay for now,” he says in a steady voice, “Get the civilian to safety first.”

It’s twice as rough scaling down the brick building as it was going up, with the added weight of the boy hanging around his neck. But Shane thankfully managed to find a box of bandages and a pair of goalie mitts, so at least his hands aren’t getting ripped to shreds.

Shane gets a flower vase thrown at his head, along with some choice Quebecois swear words for his troubles, when he finally swings back into the apartment. And, in retrospect, he understands why dragging a kid, unconscious and smeared with blood from when Shane had picked him up with his flayed open hands, might distress a grieving mother.

It becomes clear, however, that he’s here to help when he gently sets the boy down safely and backs away with his hands up.

“Mikhail, oh mon Dieu, Mikhail! Mon petit cœur! Je croyais t'avoir perdu, je te-te-”

(Mikhail, on my god, Mikhail! My heart! I thought I’d lost you! I thought you-you-)

She collapses, sobbing over the boy’s prone form, which, hey, Shane can understand; it’s what he’d do if it were his kid. But they really need to get away from the broken window if they don’t want a repeat of the entire fiasco with a different monkey-bot.

Shane eventually corrals the two into the bathroom.

“Où sont les autres?” Shane asks, scanning his eyes around the rest of the apartment.

(Where are the others?)

“Les autres?” The mother, who’d introduced herself as Marie, asks. “Il n’y en a pas d’autres. C’est juste Mikhail et moi.”

(Others? There aren’t any others. It’s just Mikhail and me.)

“Mais, ou es le jumeau de Mikhail?” Shane asks frantically.

(But where’s Mikhail’s twin?)

If there was another kid running around, they needed to take cover as well. Most of the toys in the apartment that Shane could see were pink. Maybe a twin sister? But Marie was looking at Shane with big, uncomprehending eyes. Maybe that hit to the head from the monkey-bot had been worse than Shane’d thought.

He tries to jog her memory. “Mikhail a un tatouage,” he gestures behind his ear, “ici. C’est le numéro deux. Il y a un jumeau avec le numéro un, n’est-ce pas?”

(Mikhail has a tattoo here. It’s the number two. There’s a twin with the number one, isn’t there?)

Shane had seen it, clear as day, when he was checking the boy’s head for signs of concussion.

Marie shakes her head. “Je ne sais pas. Mikhail a été adopté. Le tatouage a toujours été sur son cou. S’il a un jumeau, je ne le saurais pas.”

(I don’t know. Mikhail’s adopted. The tattoo’s always been on his neck. If he has a twin, I wouldn’t know about it.)

Well, that explains it. Shane supposes Marie and Mikhail really didn’t look all that similar, either. Marie had blue-black hair, round brown doe eyes, and skin that was tanned even in the middle of Montreal winter. Mikhail had a head of blonde curls, skin so fair it was almost translucent, and a pair of hazel eyes that were just starting to sleepily blink open. And hey, who said boys couldn't like pink?

Shane checks that the bathroom door is secure before making his way back along the rooftops to where Hawkeye and the Captain were still battling it out.

“Glad to see you made it back in one piece,” Captain Hunter says, “Good job out there.”

“What’d I say?” Barton crows, “Kid’s a professional!”

“Thanks!” Shane says, blushing a bit at the praise.

He takes the vest off and hands it back to Barton. Who takes it and frowns.

“You didn’t need to use anything in it?” Barton asks.

“In it?” Shane echoes.

Barton gives him the stink eye as he goes through the pockets and fishes out no less than three knives, a lockpick and a small grappling gun.

Shane puts his head in his hands and groans, “I was wondering why stuff kept digging into my chest when I was climbing.”

“You scaled the building with your bare hands?” Clint asks.

“I didn’t realize you had a grappling gun in there!” He cries, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you check?” Clint says, hysterically.

“I’m not going through someone else's pockets? That’s so invasive!”

Shane wasn’t a creep or anything. He’d been raised better than that.

“Oh my god,” Clint groans, “You’re just as bad as Cap.”

It isn’t long after that Stark’s program does its magic. Almost in unison, the lights of the robots dim, and the entire swarm drops to the ground.

The adrenaline ebbs from Shane’s blood, leaving nothing but bone-deep exhaustion. He’d already been on a week-long overtime streak before the all-nighter that ended in waging robotic warfare. Every hour of sleep deprivation hits Shane all at once, bringing him to his knees. Barton’s right there beside him, taking deep, gasping breaths.

Hunter, pinnacle of human engineering that he is, looks fresh as a daisy in comparison.

“Really great job out there, guys!”

Barton raises a shaky thumbs up. Shane groans.

“That was a good call you made, Hollander. Offering to help the civilian.”

“’S nothin’,” he slurs, before clearing his throat. “Someone needed to help; Hawkeye couldn’t leave. That left me.”

Hunter nods, giving Shane an assessing once-over. “The C.S.I.S. is lucky to have you. I’m sure an agent like you must get plenty of experiance in the field.”

Shane laughs, “C.S.I.S. doesn’t really do field missions. I’m lucky if I get time to leave the office for lunch.”

Barton perks up behind him, “Shane hates it at the C.S.I.S. He’s bored out of his mind.”

Shane splutters indignantly, “I don’t hate it here. I just...wish I got the chance to get out more, really do something for a change, you know?” Shane gestures at the destruction around them, “There aren’t many of these freak attacks happening in Canada. It’s just a lot of smuggling and election security, which is important, I know. But still, it’s not the same.”

Barton claps Shane on the back, “I hear you, man. But hey, speaking of freak attacks in Canada,” he presses his comms, “Stark, did you ever figure out why they hit Montreal?”

Stark's voice crackles over the comms, “Dunno. Jarvis is running through some of their code to see if any of it was programmed funny. So far, A.I.M. is claiming that it was all some freak accident, but we’ll see about that. Based on some surveillance footage, it looks like a bunch of them were congregating in that ‘sissy’, or however you pronounce the Canadian F.B.I., office building.”

Shane sits up straight, “Did they take anything?” If they got into any of the foreign intelligence data they were getting from their allies, it’d be a geopolitical nightmare.

“Doesn’t seem like it,” Stark says, “they were spending quite a bit of time on the 7th floor though. Anything there we should be worried about?”

“Oh,” Shane says, “not really”. Shane sat on the 7th floor, domestic defence. Most of the cases were about threats to Canadians from Canadians. The 7th floor was more of an overglorified RCMP investigative office than anything else; the most exciting data there was census records, and that was saying something.

“Could just be a terror attack,” Hunter says, “They’ve been increasing lately, even in historically safe areas.”

“I shudder to think of what Capsicle considers historical,” Stark says, “Hey, Hunter, did you hear? They sacked Troy while you were in the ice!”

Hunter shakes his head, then turns back to Shane. “Kid - Hollander - I’m going to be blunt with you. If you want to do more of this type of work,” he gestures around to the dead robot husks, “I’m sure S.H.I.E.L.D. would love to have you.”

“Are you serious?” Shane asks. He’s pretty sure he’d heard correctly, but wants to double-check just in case. Auditory hallucinations were common at the level of sleep deprivation he was at.

“Like a heart attack.” Hunter says, “training and department selection for the next batch of agents starts in a couple of weeks, actually, so the timing’s perfect. And according to Fury, he’s the director,” as if any intel agent worth their salt didn’t know who Nick Fury was, “Avengers can nominate anyone we find promising.”

“Hey, I wanted to nominate him!” Clint whines, “That’s not fair, I’m the one who’s been freezing his ass off on this rooftop with him all night.”

“We both can,” Hunter says diplomatically, before opening his comms, “Stark? You in? Word from Natasha is that you haven’t used your nomination yet.”

“Nah, I’ve already got someone.”

Hunter offers a hand to Shane, “Very well, two nominations it is. What’d you say, Hollander? Would you like to join SHIELD?”

And for all Shane's harsh opinions of S.H.I.E.L.D. as an organization, he finds himself taking Captain Hunter's outstretched hand, only half aware he's doing it.

Because here? Standing atop the skyline of Montreal as the sun crests the sky with an army of AIMbots at his feet? Shane might as well have been standing on top of the whole world. A snowplow had been through the streets earlier to clear the metal scrap from the roads, so the faint buzz of early commuters fills the streets.

Shane couldn't help but think that he was part of the reason they were all still safe, able to continue with their regular lives. He had stood here all night, in the dead of winter and made sure not a single bot made it past the perimeter. He had fought shoulder to shoulder with the Avengers. And somewhere out there, there was a mother and child safe and sound because of him.

And wasn't that its own sort of trip? Shane remembers being a fresh-faced teenager watching news coverage of Ironman when he’d burst onto the international scene. He remembers staring up slack-jawed and open-mouthed at the red and gold suit as it caught their bus from flying off the bridge on their way back from a hockey tournament.

Shane had decided then and there that he wanted to do something that helped people. And once Shane had a goal in mind, he’d work tirelessly to get it.

Taking the offer to SHIELD also ends up being the best decision he could have made in retrospect. When Shane wanders back into what’s left of the CSIS offices, his head of department takes one look at the missing belt, dirt and blood-soaked shirt, and bandaged hands, takes a second look at the security footage of Shane blowing a hole through the side of the building, and fires him on the spot.

Chapter End Notes

Apologies for the poor French. The Canadian education system only goes so far 😔. Please let me know if I fucked up anywhere.

Also, please don't take this as shade against the C.S.I.S. I'm sure that what they do (whatever that is) is important.