a/n: this is a sequel to Loki. you should go read it.

hi guys! i'm so sorry this took so long. i had finals. blah. also this chapter was a pain to write. but! thank you for all the alerts and favorites and reviews! i love every one, and i'm sorry i can't respond to each personally. please keep reviewing because i love them. yes. also, major divergence from movie up ahead in the next few chapters. so...yay?

please read and review :)


"Do you hear that?"

Jane sucks in a breath through her teeth, trying to ignore the way her abdomen is aching from being fireman carried for who-knows-how long. They've stopped in a dimly lit corridor, but she's too busy staring at Clint's ass (he has a nice ass, but she's not Darcy, so she keeps her mouth shut) and trying not to pass out from all the blood rushing to her head to notice where. The concrete beneath them is worn to a light gray. The metal pipes, mounted on the walls and ceiling, making the hall small, claustrophobic, are chipped and peeling.

(She only notices these things to keep her mind off of—)

"Hear what? And damn it, Clint, put me down."

"Last time I put you down, you bolted for the lab."

Yes, the lab, to maybe talk some sense into a certain asshole, but then he had thrown two strong arms around her waist and tossed her like a sack of potatoes over one shoulder, running so that her fists on his back missed the mark as she bobbed (up-down-up-down).

"Yeah, well, I'm thoroughly lost now, so I don't think that's an option." Part of her thinks this all happening too fast and what the actual hell.

Part of her thought he'd been dead.

(But he was too clever for that, wasn't he?)

Clint puts her down much more gently than he picked her up. For a moment her world spins. She pushes her hair back from her face and tries not to vomit as the pounding beat in her head ebbs and she looks around the corridor. Blank. Empty. She spies a door at the far end. The lights are flickering. She bites her lip absentmindedly as his serious eyes find hers; he looks like he's about to ask an unthinkable, unspeakable question (what happened who was he etc., etc.), so she heads him off, readjusting her coat. "Do you sweep every girl you meet off her feet?" Her laugh is tried and sad.

"I never said chivalry was dead." He cocks a small, half-grin, fiddling with the pistol strapped to his thigh. Jane watches as his fingers dance around the safety. He opens his mouth, again, slowly meeting her eyes, and she steels herself, but instead—"So, do you hear it?"

She exhales, loudly. "No." Something in Clint's eyes says that her interrogation will come later, when they are out of this mess, but right now he only has his head canted thoughtfully to one side. "No. I don't hear anything."

"Exactly."

She frowns. Silence. Only her breathing, echoing in the dim light of the hall. Barton is, for lack of a better cliché, silent as the grave; no shouts, yells, cries; no running footsteps. Just a deep, dark silence. Except—

Except—

"The calm before the storm." Clint looks back the way they came. She focuses on a point somewhere over his shoulder, staring at the dirt wall, focusing on the ground. Except—

Except a deep-set sort of rumbling, one that starts at the balls of her feet and vibrates through her throat and rattles all her teeth, slowly, one that shakes the casings of the pipes around her and sets the underground complex creaking. In the silence the noise sets her on edge. She looks wide-eyed at Clint, who is watching some loose concrete bounce around by his foot. She says, very quietly, "Residual energy. Sling-back from the Cube. I didn't get any definite readings but that has to be it—"

Clint's walkie-talkie chooses this moment to crackle to life, but the noise seems dull and muted over the low rumble that is beginning to come from the bowels of the complex. "Anyone still in the building better get the hell out." Jane recognizes Nick Fury's voice and her frown deepens. "This is Priority Alpha. Get on a transport and get gone."

"Sir?" She's starting to get antsy, because she doesn't have any sort of wish to be buried alive under a million pounds of rubble, but Barton's as steady as ever, talking quietly into the black, rather antiquated device (she expected them to have holographic imaging by now, being a secret government organization and all). "Any word on Hill?"

"I'm here. Loading the last of the tech now." New voice. Crackled and crumpled over the line. She vaguely remembers hearing it once before, but now the ground is really starting to shake, rattle, roll—

"I suggest you take Jane and hitch a ride with Hill, Agent Barton—now move!"

Clint deftly clips the walkie-talkie back on his belt. "So, run, yeah?" He jerks his head towards the far end of the hallway, the small, unassuming metal door.

"He called me Jane." Is all she can think to say, and she didn't think she could frown any more but she is, fiddling with her bottom lip, because there was something just so—so—

Ew.

"Yeah, run." Clint nods, and she feels his hands, steady on the lower part of her back, as he turns her towards the door and pushes her forward. The rumbling grows to a dull roar. She starts to think about being buried alive—

(One second of crushing blackness, but how much pain would she actually feel?)

—and tries to go faster, almost tripping up in her haste, legs smashing up-down-up-down. She can't stop in time, skids into the door, and has to duck back as Clint reaches around her to punch in the key code. It opens with a heavy hiss, revealing—

"Where the hell are we?" She had expected a quinjet or something. Not a row of pick-ups and jeeps. The low-ceilinged room is as bad as the corridor, lights flickering on exposed wires, piles of wooden and metal crates, stamped with the S.H.I.E.L.D logo, creating a miniature maze, vehicles parked in nice, neat rows. Beyond them, a tunnel.

"Supply corridor." Clint jerks his chin towards the nearest car, a cargo-green jeep. "We need a ride."

"You couldn't have called something a little faster?" The whole foundation is beginning to tremble, sending the piles of crates crashing to the floor.

"Beggars can't be choosers." He shoves her out of the way as a couple of boxes tumble towards her. "You want to drive?"

"You're really calm about this whole situation, you know." She fights the rising hysteria. Her voice speeds up. "Considering we're going to get buried alive—"

"I'll drive." He takes her arm and pulls her towards the car. They're about half-way when a door at the far end of the room, obscured by more cargo, slams open. For a split second, in the bad lighting, she thinks she spies green, green, green, but, instead, Maria Hill extricates herself from the gloom. She clears a path through the growing rubble, her voice loud and firm over the noise.

"Get those loaded up, and by now I mean yesterday. Rendezvous point 761—"

Men, weighted down by heavy metal boxes, immediately begin to load the trucks. Clint stops, doubling-back—

"Barton." Hill nods, once, and all Jane wants to know is why the hell no one is freaking out— "Any other word from the Director?"

"Only what you just heard. We need to get out of here."

"We'll be trapped in the blast radius." Jane feels the need to add, unnecessarily. Hill looks at her, and she thinks she registers shock—however slight—on the other woman's face, as if she'd forgotten about her until just now. Jane continues: "The Cube's been activated. The residual energy can't be contained—it's enough to blow this place sky high. Or swallow it whole. Actually, I'm not quite sure about how the explosion is going to take shape, considering the readings—"

"So we need to move, that's what your saying." Hill turns towards the men. "Hurry up!"

"What's that?" Clint's gone back to playing with the edges of his gun holster. Jane's gone back to worrying at her lip, which is starting to smart. Any second, now, any second and bam, rocks and crushing and death

Hill sends her a single, short glance. Then, very quietly: "All the Phase 2 tech. This is the last of it."

Jane opens her mouth to ask what's Phase 2 and then—

Crack!

The gun shot is sharp, even amid the indistinct roar of the growing energy, and immediately Hill is on the floor, rolling behind the nearest stack of crates, her own firearm ready. Jane's pushed down by Clint, hard, so that she sprawls in an ungraceful heap, smashed up next to Hill, with Barton playing who-wants-to-be-the-human-shield. She hears the sounds of a scuffle as Clint sends a blind shot around the corner of their barricade. More gunfire. Yells.

"Who's that?" Hill mutters under her breath, peering around the other edge. "I've never seen him before."

"He's got the Cube." Jane says, glancing over the crate, mostly because yes, among the several black-dressed S.H.I.E.L.D agents there is one holding onto a silver briefcase. In the center—

Clint shoves her back down.

"Sir, I've got an armed hostile heading out the West Supply Corridor, requesting back-up—" Hill barks into the walkie-talkie on her hip. Jane shrugs off Clint's hand, pulling herself up quickly again, just for a moment, long enough to see Loki—there she said it, was everybody happy, Loki, Loki, Loki—settling gracefully into the back of the nearest pick-up, silver and gray, followed by—

The stupid son of a bitch.

He kidnapped Erik.

"Negative, Hill." Fury. Dark and oddly subdued.

"Then requesting permission to pursue without back-up—"

"Your orders are to evacuate, not pursue. I presume Jane Foster is with you?"

"Sir, they've got the Tesseract!"

"Foster takes precedence!"

"Sir, with all due respect—" Hill sends her a look that could stop a small army. She tries to convey her disbelief, because never, in the however-many months she had known Fury, had he attempted to accommodate her in any way—

The engine roars to life and his reply is lost; Hill throws the walkie-talkie so hard it shatters, crack-snap-breaking as it hits the concrete floor. She shouts, to the other agents:

"Stop them!"

The gunfire is useless. All of it misses, but somehow Jane thinks that's his doing. His. Loki. Loki's doing. The headlights of the car flicker on, illuminating the dark expanse of the tunnel wall. There are the agents piled into the front cab and then there is Erik, and then him, him—Loki, kneeling in the pick-up, eyes green, green, green, eaten up by the shadows in the dim light.

She stands; he turns, then.

And smirks. At her.

The car is thrown into reverse. He's perched like a bird in the flat bed, scepter just barely raised, hardly moving as the wheels start rolling, and all she can manage is: "Oh no, I don't think so—"

She bolts, ducking her head as she runs. Around her: chaos. Men prone on the floor, bleeding slowly and she couldn't do anything for them, move on, move on, and men still shooting at the retreating form of the car, and Loki, long-haired, dark-eyed, changed—behind her Clint is yelling something, and so is Hill, but she ignores them, scrambling into the driver's side of the nearest jeep as the pick-up containing Loki and Erik peels out into the tunnel, heading up, up, up.

"I thought I was driving." Clint pulls himself into the passenger's seat; she hadn't even heard him move. Hill is different, loud and demanding as she jumps into the back and stands, amid the supports there. The keys are in the ignition.

"I'm going to put it on record that I'm not the one disobeying Fury, here." Hill says, once, then reloads her gun. Jane turns the keys and Clint settles his own gun against the dashboard.

"I hope you can drive stick."

"I hope you can shut up." She backs up so quickly the car smashes against the tunnel wall with a sickening sort of crunch.

"I'm starting to get the feeling that this is very personal." Clint says casually, as she throws the car into drive. It sputters in bursts after the pick-up.

"Oh? What ever gave you that impression?" She bites out, under breath, trying to focus on keeping the car straight, because it handles nothing like her Pinzguaer back home. She hits the edge of the wall, side mirror shearing off in a shower of sparks.

"Who is that guy?" Hill shouts over the wind, leaning against the supports making up the roof, arm outstretched and gun ready. Clint looks at Jane once, so quickly she almost doesn't catch it out of the corner of her eye. Then he yells back, "Don't know. Didn't get a good look at him."

"He's got Selvig!" Hill takes a shot but it misses, ricocheting off the metal lamps above. Jane has her foot pressed to the floor, swerving to avoid a support beam, hands clenched so tightly on the wheel that her knuckles begin to hurt as she pulls up alongside the pick-up and don't look at him, don't look at him—

"Ram them." Clint calmly pulls out another clip and jams it into his gun.

"What?"

Without further preamble he grabs a hold of the wheel and jerks it towards him; the car careens wildly sideways, metal meeting metal with a sound like nails on a chalkboard. He sends several shots towards the tires. She presses further on the gas, jeep inching ahead, until she can slide the car into reverse and swing about face and hello

The jeep is kissing the pick-up and driving very, very backwards.

"Didn't take you for a stunt driver!" The wind is loud, the rumbling louder, and Clint smirks at her from the passenger seat as he leans out, trying to get a shot towards the back of the truck, towards Loki. She fights to keep her grip on the wheel, mirroring the movements of the driver in front of her. Hill's annoyed voice floats over her head, cursing, and then shots: one, two, three, right at the front windshield. The third takes out a passenger, an agent; blood spatters over the window, crimson and harsh and ugly.

"Wrong side."

"I don't need your commentary!" Hill shouts. Clint grins. Jane's hands slide over the wheel and there is too much going on

—the clear path of the tunnel, behind her; Clint, twirling his bullets towards the back of the pick-up; Hill, aiming for the front; foot on gas, hands on wheel, and ignore the tip of the scepter she can barely see, ignore what's attached to it, ignore, ignore, ignore—

"Damn it!" The wheel slips. The jeep slides around, once, barely avoiding another support pole. The pick-up pulls ahead, towards the small circle of bluish light that she hopes (prays) is the end of the transport tunnel. She comes out of the turn, trying not to fight the spinout, like they taught her to do in driver's ed. Her foot eases up; her breath is coming rapidly, and she knows, now, that they've lost them.

"Pull up, I've almost got a clear shot—" Clint jerks his chin.

She doesn't have the heart to tell him that no shot at Loki is a clear shot, is about to, anyway, but then Hill is banging the butt of her gun against the top of the jeep and shouting, "Move, move, move!"

Jane's eyes flit to the rearview mirror, and—

"Oh, my God." She breathes.

The tunnel is collapsing behind them, road caving like brittle, hard mud, cracking and breaking with a loud blast, rocks and debris and lights and sparks flying up in their wake. The pick-up is out of the tunnel, but she couldn't care less, or maybe should could, but all she can think about right now is that there is no way they are out of the blast zone so drive, drive, drive—

She nicks the wall of the tunnel.

The car sputters angrily.

The rocks pour towards them.

(Her life flashes before her eyes, all green and silver and black—)

Then—

The cave-in stops, trapping the back half of the jeep suddenly in a cloud of dust and dirt, so suddenly she slams forward into the wheel, cracking her head and chest. Her foot is still on the pedal, pressed to the floor, but the tires are only trading air, making a sad, empty sound. She coughs hair from her mouth and dust from her lungs and tries to get the ringing in her ears to stop.

"Hill, you ok?" Clint's the first to speak. His voice is cracked, rough. Jane looks over to see a small patch, bright red, blooming over one eye, where he slammed into the dashboard. His gun is lost.

"Fine, no thanks to you." Hill pulls herself up and over the roof, sliding to the ground with remarkable stability, all things considered. Jane's slightly jealous. Her world is still spinning. The walkie-talkie crackles to life and she thinks, rather sluggishly: hey, what do you know, the vintage tech survives all. The other woman holds a hand out for where it rests, unbroken, on Clint's thigh; he tosses it towards her.

"Hill?" Fury's voice is very, very quiet.

"Sir. I'm with Agent Barton and Jane Foster in the West Transport Tunnel. The rest of the place is covered in rubble." Jane notices blood running down her temple as she twists towards the ruined entrance. "Don't know how many survivors."

"Coulson? You copy?" Fury doesn't sound sure and Jane's stomach drops until another voice snaps to life over the static of Clint's walkie-talkie speaker.

"Right here, sir." Pause. "The damage is…extensive."

"We'll need an evac team on the scene immediately." Fury is saying, but his voice is getting fainter as Hill walks slowly towards the tunnel entrance, twenty or so feet away, and Jane's too busy trying to unclench her fists from the wheel to care. Clint looks over at her with his steady, serious eyes and she grabs onto them like an anchor, because the rest of the world was falling to shit.

"I was on the New Mexico Incident." Abrupt. His eyes are trained on Hill, his voice too low for her to hear as she deals with Fury on the radio. Jane looks at the nail marks on her palm. "What happened to him, Jane?" He rubs a hand down his face. "Last I saw him, he didn't seem to be hell-bent on world domination."

"I don't know."

"What does he want?"

"I don't know."

"Jane are—"

"I don't know, ok, Clint?"

"—you ok." He finishes. She blinks, once, twice, thrice. She wonders if everybody made it out of the wreckage behind her. Those men and women down in the lab. The agents loading up the tech. She wonders how far the damage spread. She wonders why she'd even bothered. With anything.

Hill looks frustrated, up ahead. She hears: "…I think at this point we need to try to apprehend the Tesseract…" But then she shuts it out. Next to her Clint lets out a large sigh, shrugging back into his seat. "Loki, huh? Nice name."

"He's a god." She doesn't know why she says it. It's information she shouldn't share. Or she should. (Whose side is she on, anyway?)

"A what?"

"A god."

"You mean—" Clint stops, frowning. "You mean—not the—the Loki. Like—" He doesn't sound convinced. Not at all.

She shrugs. It hurts to move. To breathe. Hill looks like she's about to break her second walkie-talkie of the night. Jane fingers the cuts on her jacket. "Do you think," she starts, heading him off before he can ask her another question, "that you can get me a ride?"

"Anywhere in the continental United States."

God, he was amazing. So reliable. Unlike—"Good."

"Why?"

"I need to talk to someone."

"Now?"

"Now."

"Who?"

She bites out a bitter laugh. "Loki's brother."