"Phil would never carry those cards around. They wouldn't have been in his pocket. They could get scuffed or folded, and they would not be out in a time like this. He was a professional, Fury. You're just a liar."

Fury looked up at the ceiling of his office.

"Nice of you to drop in, Barton. Now get the hell out of my office."

Clint dropped to the floor with an unnatural amount of grace. He had his bow out ready, and made a dramatic play of reaching for an arrow to get Fury to talk.

"Barton! I do not appreciate your threats. Consider this your final warning before I send you off on the most boring and longest mission of your life." Fury appeared unfazed.

Clint was not swayed. He stared unblinking at Fury, before slowly beginning to walk towards him.

"I know Coulson is still alive. You tell me where he is, or I tell everyone exactly how you lost your eye."

"Agent Phil Coulson is dead. If you keep talking this way, you'll be joining him."

"Gladly. I know he's alive. Where have you put him? Where the fuck is he?"

"You really think threatening me will do anything other than get you killed? There is nothing for you to prove."

"There is everything for me to prove! He was, and is, goddammit, the best handler you've got. Without him, I have nothing but this fuckin' bow, and he fuckin' designed it. And you're just here pretending he never even existed, when he still does somewhere. I'd bet my life on it that you're just lying to us."

"Barton, you are hereby on temporary leave. In two weeks, you will head to England. You'll get your mission upon arrival."

Clint walked out angrily. He clenched his fists round his bow, considering snapping it in half as he walked out of the building and all the way back to the Avengers tower.

Fury ran a hand over his face, sighing. An angry marksman with impeccable sight and hearing was not someone Fury wanted to be going rogue.

"Clint Barton ("Hawkeye") has been added into Operation: S Suit to prevent danger to himself and/or others in his grief. The Avengers are not to be informed. Barton will be on location at 1300 hours on the 18th."

He hit 'send' on the email, and ground his teeth together.

In his defence, Coulson had requested to be sent elsewhere, and for the Avengers to be told that he'd died. It was just a coincidence that word from Asgard was that Loki had been made mortal and sent to England. Pure coincidence. Nothing at all to do with the fact that Coulson wanted revenge for being stabbed, and for Barton having his mind played with, and for Natasha being scared out of her mind by The Hulk, who would never have been awoken if not for Loki.

"Hey, Tasha, where's Barton?" Bruce asked, walking in. He'd not seen Hawkeye in a couple of days, and was preparing for him to jump out of a cupboard any moment.

"Fury's sent him on some kind of peaceful retreat, so probably on the front line of a major war by that guy's standards." Bruce visibly relaxed, a small frown then beginning to cross his face.

"Um, okay. You said that quite casually, are you not kinda concerned?" He sat down tentatively next to her on the couch.

"Barton's a big boy. He needs to get out for a bit. He's been going kinda stir-crazy, he blames himself for Coulson's death, y'know."

It was a rhetorical question. Bruce just nodded and let them fall into what he hoped was comfortable silence.

"Luke Johnson, you're not paying any attention, are you? I thought not. Your prize is getting to write me two essays on any of the topics we've covered today. Now wake up."

Loki sighed. This teacher seemed to have a grudge against him, and he could not, for the life of him, figure out why. There's no way he recognised him, this mortal body was far different to his normal frame: he was shorter, his jawline less pronounced, his eyes a duller hue, his hair shorter and lightly curled, and he had freckles.

"Sorry, Mr Hart." He shot him a flirty grin, which was returned with a frown and a narrowing of eyes.

"Four essays, Johnson. Class dismissed."

His pupils swiftly left and he sat on the edge of his desk with a sigh. It was difficult to not shoot Loki in the face, the gun in his pocket getting more and more tempting every time the slimy supposed-kid opened his mouth. But he was there to observe. He would just have to get revenge for whatever happened to Barton (he couldn't ask, he couldn't find out, not if he got the answer he didn't want) and everything that went down on the Helicarrier in the form of a heavier workload for the newly mortal bastard.

I fell and started a new story. Whoops!

I will finish all the others, eventually, but hey, new one, yaaaaay!

It's pretty suckish but I have pheels and free time.

Holla?