My beta, irite, is the best beta eva.
Warnings: mild religious irreverence, mild angst, cats, mice, acrobatics.
"I swear to god," Clint mumbled into his pillow, face pressed deep into its fluffy surface, "If you don't stop making that noise, I'm going to bring you and your little friend down to R&D so Stark and Banner can experiment on you."
There were two beats of absolute perfect, unbroken silence.
And then, a loud, high-pitched meow.
Abruptly, Clint flung himself up and out of his bed in one fluid movement, using his momentum to somersault across his bed and land gracefully in front of his loud-mouthed cat.
The cat yawned pointedly, unimpressed with Clint's acrobatics, and, after a moment, Clint slumped. "Let me guess. Out of food? Or do you want to play with the mouse?" Without waiting for a reply (and yes, he did sometimes wait for a reply when talking to his cat), Clint wandered out of his room and towards the kitchen.
The cat's damn food dish was, predictably, empty. However, Cat just marched by his empty dish and jumped up next to the small rodent habitat that sat on a nearby table and pawed at the glass. Inside, a white mouse reached his paw up and placed it on the glass, too.
"Ah," Clint mused, voice dry. "Play time, then." He glanced at the clock on the coffee pot, which showed him that it was just after 6:00 AM, and then walked over to the mouse's cage and flicked the latch open.
With no sign of fear at all, the mouse nosed his way out of the cage and nuzzled up against Cat's cheek. Then, he bolted, the cat hot on his heels.
This was something that they did every day. Sometimes for hours. Once or twice, they'd even snuck out of his apartment using Cat's special high-tech cat door, but they always made it back in together. And Clint didn't worry that Cat was going to eat the mouse, as it had been Cat's great idea to adopt the rodent (well, Natasha's, too—they'd ganged up on him). Cat and the mouse had become friends after the mouse had escaped from R&D and invaded Clint's apartment rather rudely.
Which was how Clint found himself with not ONE, but TWO pets, a situation that was completely unprecedented in his life.
Cat, well, Cat had been kind of a special thing. Post-Manhattan, Clint had been doing his best impression of a self-destructive alcoholic, and he'd found Cat behind a bar after he'd gotten his ass kicked in a bar fight. The animal had promptly manipulated Clint into adopting him, which had worked out for the best—Clint had needed something to get his head out of his ass, and adopting a cat seemed to have done the trick. And then the stupid animal had proved to be a decent companion while Clint had been laid up after he'd been hurt on a mission. So he supposed Cat had earned his keep.
But the mouse? Clint wasn't so sure about that. And yet...he had a mouse habitat on his kitchen table, complete with wheel and other accessories that he just couldn't help picking up when he went to the pet store.
Huh.
Cat and Mouse were deeply entertained by their game of Cat and Mouse, so Clint decided to make himself some coffee and turn on the news. It was early, yeah, but not ungodly early. Earlier than he wanted to be up on a non-mission Saturday, though. Sure, he'd only been back at work for six months, but hey, he wanted a vacation. He frowned into his coffee cup, adding far more sugar than was strictly necessary, and then made his way to the couch and turned on the TV.
He was on TV.
Clint blinked once, twice, then took a deep drink of coffee. Then he looked back at the TV.
Yup, that was him all right.
He was tuned into the news, and there was an angry, exclamatory 'Breaking News!' banner across the bottom of the screen, and there was a helicopter filming 'him' as 'he' was perched on top of a building, firing flame arrows at...what?
The camera in the helicopter panned away from 'him' to 'his' target, and Clint scowled. 'He' was firing arrows at a billboard. The billboard wasn't important, but the 'message' his arrows spelled out was. It read, simply, 'Kneel.'
God fucking damn it.
Looked like he had to talk to Thor, and fast.
Seriously.
Clint stopped in his bedroom to grab his cell phone, and he saw that he had six new voicemails. This was not surprising at all, nor was the fact that they were all from Fury.
Did that man ever sleep?
Holding the phone to his ear, Clint managed to listen to the messages while herding his mouse back into his little habitat—he was a conscientious pet owner, god damn it...and he wasn't about to go running off and leave the damn mouse to get into his Froot Loops again. The gist of Fury's messages, as far as Clint could tell, was, 'So help me, Barton, if you're compromised again I'm going to kill you myself' and so Clint took a moment to send his boss what he hoped was a reassuring text message. It read, 'I have no fucking idea what's going on.'
The almost instant reply was, 'Report when you do.'
That settled, Clint headed out into the hall and, after a moment of deliberation, headed towards Natasha's apartment.
He knocked on her door, and she answered it quickly. She was, predictably, awake, although it looked like she'd just finished working out because she was wearing gym clothes and had her iPod clutched in one hand.
"What?" She asked, eyebrow raised. "You're up early. The world ending?"
"Might be," Clint answered, jaw tense. He pushed past her into her apartment and turned on her TV. The news was running replays of what had happened—apparently, 'he' had vanished shortly after he'd stopped watching.
Natasha watched the footage with a cool look on her face. When she saw the message, she frowned. "You're sure it's not you?"
Clint rolled his eyes. "I was sleeping,Nat." He paused, then added, "And my elbow doesn't stick out like that when I shoot."
She shrugged. "Thought I'd check." Then, "Probably Loki, then, right? Guess we'd better talk to Thor." Natasha looked longingly towards her bathroom. "Can I at least shower first?"
"Fury's been calling," Clint said by way of answer. He glanced pointedly down at his own pajamas, and Natasha tossed her iPod onto the couch next to her and stood.
"Fine, let's go."
Together, they went to the elevator. En route, Clint asked the empty space around him, "Hey, JARVIS, where's Thor this morning?" He'd been heading towards the communal floor, but it occurred to him now that it was, in fact, ass o'clock in the morning.
"Master Thor is in the communal living area, sir, as are the others. Director Fury has alerted everyone to the situation."
Well, that was good. Saved him the trouble. And it saved him from being on the receiving end of Tony's 'I got woken up before 10:00 AM' wrath. Clint could sympathize, but it wasn't Tony being impersonated on national television, now was it?
When Clint and Natasha made it to the common room, everyone was watching the news, coffee cups in hand. Their expressions more or less matched what Clint had been feeling when he'd seen the news himself.
As usual, it was Tony who broke the silence. "Busy morning, hey, Legolas?"
Clint scowled and threw himself onto an empty chair. "Yeah, I thought I'd get up early, make some vague, threatening statement insinuating that I was Loki or something. Thought it seemed like a great idea." He glared at Thor. "What the hell, man? I thought your people had a handle on your brother." Clint stood and began to pace. "You said, and I quote, 'He will not be released for millennia, if he is at all.' Well, sorry to tell you this, buddy, but it hasn't been millenia. It's been like, two weeks."
Okay, that wasn't fair. It had been well over a year since then, but the point stood. It had been much less than 'millennia.'
Thor looked annoyed when he replied, "There is no proof that your doppelganger was my brother. If Loki has escaped his prison, my father would have told me."
Clint wasn't really in the mood for his 'you don't have proof' thing. He sympathized, he really did. It had to be hard having Loki as a brother. But at the moment, Clint wasn't feeling especially sympathetic. "Yeah, right, because there're so many other people who'd put on my face just to...to..."
God damn it. It had been over a year. Well over a year. He'd been to the shrinks, had suffered through the hours of therapy. He was supposed to be over this.
But then, so much of that had hinged on the idea that he was never gonna see Loki again.
Steve stepped in then, saving Clint from trying to finish his sentence. "Guys, until we know for sure it's not Loki, let's work on the assumption that it is." He turned to Thor. "I need you to get in touch with your people, see if they know anything."
"I will see what I can do," Thor replied tersely. He stood and left the room, striding purposefully off to do...who knew what.
To the rest of them, Steve said, "It seems like he's trying to send a message to us specifically."
"Really?" Tony interrupted sarcastically. "And here I thought—"
"Why would he want to get our attention, though?" Bruce interrupted before Tony could finish whatever snarky thing he was trying to say. "Last time he had our attention...it went badly for him."
"Maybe he needs something," Natasha suggested. "Something he knows we have."
"Or maybe," Clint threw out, flopping back into his chair with a huff, "He's just an asshole and wants to gloat about how he got free."
That seemed the most likely explanation to him, honestly. And that asshole was wearing his face to do it. As if he hadn't done enough already, as if he hadn't taken enough...
Something landed awkwardly in his lap, and Clint reached his hand down to pet the cat that was clawing him in the crotch trying to get comfortable. Immediately, the cat began to purr.
Steve said, "That's a possibility, true. We need more information. Does Fury have anything?"
Clint shrugged, but it was Natasha who answered. "He'll let us know when he does. No point in checking in before then."
"Then we're just waiting on Thor," Steve said.
"Fantastic," Tony muttered. "Perfect. Nothing like waiting on a god to get something done. I mean, the Christians have been waiting two thousand years—"
Natasha glared at him, and he was smart enough to take that as his cue to stop talking. Clint was thankful, because it was too early for this, not that there was ever a good time to deal with Loki, and Tony's inappropriate commentary wasn't helping anything. After all, Loki, had chosen to take his face, was fucking taunting him. Kneel. Right. Like that was ever going to happen again. No, if he ran into Loki, he wasn't going to kneel. He was going to put his boot right up Loki's ass.
...If he ran into Loki.
He could find Loki. Fuck it, Loki was probably looking for him. Why else would he do something so pointed?
Clint stood abruptly, dumping Cat unceremoniously onto the floor. The animal gave a disgruntled hiss before stalking over to Bruce, who scratched his ears absently.
To the room at large, Clint said, "I'm going to—"
"Absolutely not," Natasha interrupted calmly.
Clint whipped his head around to glare at her. "Nat, he's obviously—"
"Yeah, it's obvious, and since when do you do—"
"When it might save an innocent life—"
"Loki's not hurting anyone. He's committing vandalism—"
"That could change in a heartbeat, Nat, that guy's nuts—"
"Do you two have any plans of filling the rest of us in on what's going on here?" Steve interrupted, exasperated. Tony and Bruce both nodded in agreement, looking equally annoyed.
Natasha rolled her eyes. "Clint here thinks he should go find Loki, since Loki's looking for him. He figures Loki wants something from him, so obviously he should figure out what that is and give it to him. Which is impressively stupid."
"If he's looking for me," Clint pointed out, "I could act as bait. We could bring him in. I'm not just gift-wrapping whatever the hell he wants and handing it over, Nat."
Steve considered this. He frowned. "I don't think this is a good idea. Loki's—"
He was interrupted by Thor re-entering the room.
Tony raised an eyebrow. "Huh. That was a little faster than two thousand years. What's up, Rapunzel?"
Thor stated decisively, "My brother has not left his prison. He remains on Asgard. My father checked the cell himself."
Everyone let that sink in for a moment.
Cat, who had settled onto Bruce's lap, stood up suddenly, arching his back. He snarled, seemingly at nothing, and then bolted from the room without even a glance behind him.
After a beat, Bruce said mildly, "Well...that's...unexpected."
No one was sure if he meant Thor's news or the cat.
Thanks for reading!
This is going to be three fairly-short chapters long. I've mostly lost the ability to write long chapters, and I'm experimenting with shorter fic, so.
As always, reviews are appreciated.