Everything was going perfectly. His plan was good, the execution flawless. S.H.I.E.L.D hadn't known what had hit them when he'd detonated the explosive. He'd watched them scramble around like disorientated termites, struggling to comprehend what was happening – not knowing who was responsible. He had revelled in it. The chaos had thrilled him to the core. He had disabled the computers – there was nothing they could do to stop him now. It was time for the last part of the plan. He backed away from the window overlooking the bridge and turned to head towards the detention block. It wasn't far. Half-way there, he sensed he had a silent shadow. He spun, nocking an arrow and releasing it as his shadow knocked the bow aside. Natasha. He recognised her; he had made a plan for this occurrence. They fought. She was a tough opponent, and one that he had sparred with on many occasions. He knew the way she moved, knew the methods she favoured. But she knew him, too.

His head smashed against the railing, his thoughts turning fuzzy. He groaned, attempting to rise but ultimately failing. He slipped to the ground. He managed to force himself to his knees, to look her in the eyes.

'Tasha..?' He saw the expression on her face, though it was so fleeting it could have been imagined. He could manipulate her, use her feelings…her leg whipped out and her foot connected solidly with his face. Everything went black and then…suddenly he was on his knees again. He was looking at her, she was visibly distressed. That wasn't like her…she was lowering her guard, kneeling down, leaning forward. Her hand stretched towards him.

'Clint?'

The knife he had dropped earlier slid smoothly into his palm. The cold smile of a predator twitched at his lips. He had her.

He woke with that smile dying on his lips. He was sweating, the sheets tangled around his legs. He sat up, running a hand across his forehead, and surveyed his palms. There had been so much blood. It had been everywhere. On his hands, his shirt, pooling on the ground, splashed against the railings…he could still see the flash of the knife, the horror in her eyes. He could still feel the urge, could taste the scent of blood in the air.

It hadn't happened. Natasha had knocked him out. It hadn't happened. He buried his face in his hands. It could have. He could have killed her. He had wanted to. Just like he had planned the deaths of those agents he had planned hers, too. He couldn't take it anymore. Every time he fell asleep he was back there, trapped in his own body. Trapped in his mind, or some strange parody of it. It had still been him. He had still been in control; it wasn't like someone else was commanding his body. He had planned, he had killed. It was all him. He pushed the tangled sheets down and slid off of the bed. A glance at the clock told him it was only 2 A.M. The butter knives were on the bedside table. He'd need a new target, though. He grabbed a sheet of paper from the drawer, and the pencil and set to work. He pinned it in place and grabbed the previous one, crunching it up and tossing it into the bin. He stepped back, as far as he could go and held the knife in his hand. He felt the weight, curled his fingers.

A crude representation of his face stared back at him.

He threw the knife.

…

Tony Stark had had a rough night. Granted, not as rough as the night that had preceded it, but rough enough that he was actively cursing the day he'd agreed to a drinking contest with the Norse God of Thunder. Not his best move, he would admit. Not exactly his worst, either, but it was somewhere around the middle of that particularly lengthy list. He had, potentially, the worst hangover he had ever experienced – and that was saying something. It was so severe his patented 'Tony Stark's hangover cure' had completely failed to even minutely ease the agony. It was as if an entire choir of bongo drums were banging around inside his head at a party hosted by a particularly rowdy horde of symbols. Not a fun place to be. To make things worse; someone was clattering around in the kitchen with absolutely no regard for the fact that there was at least one hung-over superhero in residence. Possibly two, but he wasn't sure. Thor had looked miraculously unaffected after he'd hoisted himself out of the remnants of the dining table. Then again, his eyesight had been a tad fuzzy so…

There was that infernal clattering again. It was ringing in his ears and adding to the internal cacophony that was his current, miserable, existence. He was never drinking with Thor again. He rolled out of bed and landed, with a thud and a groan, heavily on the floor. He briefly contemplated remaining there. Except that…now something was clinking and clattering. He struggled to his feet, ignoring the increased pressure behind his eyes, and staggered to the door. He was going to invent a particularly painful method of punishment for whoever it was that was so cheerfully banging around. It was probably Steve. He had a god-awful habit of getting up in the wee hours of the morning when normal people were sleeping…or had just staggered into bed after a highly satisfying night of fun – a concept he was steadily introducing the other man to. It was proving a challenging exercise, but let it never be said that Tony Stark was not up to a challenge. Oh God, there were stairs. He stared them down, but they didn't so much as tremble under his slightly unfocused gaze. There was nothing else for it; he would have to go down them. They hadn't won, though. He would have them removed when he got the dining table fixed. Or replaced, it was probably beyond saving.

The chinking and the clattering were still echoing down the hallway. His head was throbbing. He was personifying stairs. The clatterer, whoever they were –Steve – was going to get a healthy dose of mechanical cockroaches in their bed. Or maybe real ones, they tended to be a lot creepier. Though he'd have to obtain real cockroaches, and he already had mechanical ones…

He was procrastinating. Slowly, he grabbed the rail and descended the stairs. Every step sent a jolt of pain lancing through his head. He was starting to think that maybe Thor also deserved some mechanical cockroaches in his bed. In his bed in which he slept nude, Tony's brain happily supplied. God, that was not a mental image he wanted anywhere near the forefront of his mind. Or in it at all. He reached the bottom and breathed a sigh of relief. Scccccccccraaaaaaaaape.

Okay, that was it – Steve was getting spiders in his bed. Real, live, spiders and preferably of the biting, and only mildly poisonous, kind. A good six dozen would do it.

'Steve?' He couldn't even yell at him, it hurt too much. The man didn't respond. He shuffled the last few steps towards the kitchen and then stuck his head around the door to try again. 'Stev-' He blinked.

'Not Steve.' Barton looked up from where he was nosily crunching on some cereal, and said the first words Tony had heard him say since he'd arrived at the mansion. He was seated at the dining table, seemingly uncaring that there was a huge dent in the middle. He looked…different. His face was a little gaunt, and definitely paler than Tony remembered, but he looked marginally better than when Tony had snooped around his room. His eyes though, they were still dull. He hadn't even really made eye contact, his gaze had just skittered from Tony's face to settle somewhere above his left shoulder.

'Um, no you are not.' Tony said slowly. His usually scathing wit was a little hung-over so it was the best he could come up with on short notice. 'Why are you…since when do you…and in the kitchen?'

For all that the sentence was hopelessly fragmented, Barton seemed to understand it.

'Am I not supposed to eat in the kitchen?' He drawled, scraping his spoon along the bottom of the bowl.

'You don't get to do that,' Tony, suddenly angry, forced the words between gritted teeth. 'You don't get to pretend like you haven't just locked us all out for the past week.'

'I know.' Barton met his gaze briefly but Tony could read nothing in his expression.

'Good.' Tony sighed and rubbed his temples, 'because I am far too hung-over for that conversation.'

Barton barked out a laugh, but it sounded wrong. Forced. His spoon clattered into the empty bowl. His chair slid across the wooden floor. Tony couldn't hear him as he walked to the sink, but his eyes followed the movement. He watched the other man's back as he scrubbed the bowl and then set it aside; cataloguing, comparing. He didn't know him well enough to be able to decide if he was acting normally but he seemed more or less fine. Barton finished with his dishes and turned around, raising an eyebrow at the scrutiny, before brushing past Tony on his way out. Tony frowned, and then shrugged it off. He wanted painkillers.

…

Steve had been up at the crack of dawn, as usual. It was a habit so ingrained in him; he doubted he could sleep past 5 A.M if he tried. He didn't mind, though. It was somewhat nice to be up earlier than everyone else, to have the space to himself. He had been lifting weights for about an hour. He wasn't even tired. To be honest, he didn't actually have to lift anything in order to keep his condition but it was relaxing. He'd had a routine going for the past week; get up at 5, lift weights until 6, go for a run until 7, have a shower, have breakfast with whoever was awake (usually Bruce, sometimes Tony) and then engage in whatever ridiculous activity Tony had conducted for the day. It kept him sane, grounded, following a routine. It made him feel as if nothing had changed, even though there was very little that hadn't. It was a pretty impressive gym, despite the fact that, Steve suspected, Tony had never shown any interest in using it. There was a treadmill in one corner, various muscle building apparatus in another (at least that's what he had been told they were for), a boxing ring in the centre, and what looked like a foam mat spread along the entirety of one side. He'd yet to see anyone, other than himself, use the room and he wondered why on earth Tony even had it.

He glanced up as something clinked softly to his right and startled, nearly dropping the weight on his toes. Agent Barton was quietly – very, very, quietly – working on one of the muscle building machines and he hadn't seen or heard him come in. He blinked, but the man was still there when he opened his eyes again. It was downright creepy. He wondered if he should say something. He hadn't really said more than a few sentences to the man since they'd first met and they'd pretty much consisted of 'do you have a uniform. Good, suit up. I want you on this building.' That had been it. He hadn't had one, single, even remotely personal, conversation with him unless you counted the very one-sided chat that had basically sparked the other man's somewhat secretive breakdown. So the situation was a tad awkward, to say the least. He realised he was staring, and quickly turned his gaze away. At least Agent Barton didn't seem inclined to chat. He set the weights down and stood, twisting to release the tension in his back. It was time for his run anyway. He was almost out the door when something, he had no idea what, compelled him to open his mouth and speak though he'd had absolutely no intention to do so.

'Would you like to come for a run?' Curse his big mouth and unconscious desire to include everyone in everything. It was silent for a while and he thought that maybe the agent hadn't heard him, or simply wasn't going to respond. All he could hear was the slight clink of the weights on the machine as they moved up and down. His fingers, curled around the door frame, were starting to tap with nervous anticipation. He was just about to give up and leave when the other man finally spoke.

'…yeah.'

Steve blinked.

'Well…great.' He dithered at the door as the agent lowered the weights and stepped off of the machine. He wiped his hands on his dark pants as he approached. He seemed…smaller than Steve remembered. Almost shorter, as if his presence had diminished. He put the thought aside for further contemplation.

'Let's go.'

…

'It's like watching a zoo animal, isn't it?' Bruce heard Tony remark from beside him.

'What?' He turned his gaze to look incredulously at the other man.

'He's like one of those lions pacing around in a cage, when they should be off running around the plains of, you know, Africa.' He made some grand, elaborate, gesture to illustrate his point. It was somewhat wrecked by the sandwich he was simultaneously stuffing into his mouth.

'You think Barton belongs in the Serengeti?' Bruce couldn't help the smile or the snort.

'Hmm, maybe not the Serengeti, per se.' Tony amended. 'He does seem more the Amazonian Jungle type – plenty of trees for him to play Tarzan.'

Bruce turned back to look out the window thoughtfully, his mind sifting through the conversation he'd had with Natasha the other day. It seemed slightly suspicious that, all of a sudden, Barton had started 'acting normally' again. He suspected the man may have been eavesdropping. He wasn't sure if that was problematic. It meant, on one hand, that he had realised what he was doing affected everyone else. On the other hand, it meant that maybe that was the only reason he'd stopped.

…

He was avoiding her. Most people might have been fooled, but she wasn't. How did she know? Why she was actively seeking him out, had been for the past hour, and had yet to find him. Stark's mansion, while massively excessive, just wasn't big enough that it could take an entire hour to search the place. Therefore, he was avoiding her. It was pissing her off. When she did eventually find him – and she would, he couldn't hide forever – she was going to break one of his fingers. Maybe two. Then, when she was done, she would demand answers.

…

He didn't want to face her. All he could see was the knife, the blood, her broken body…just lying there... lifeless. Every time his mind turned to her he could remember what he'd thought and felt in that moment. He could feel the thirst for blood – her blood – and the twitch of that smile curving his lips. It made him sick. He had never been one for torture, preferring quick, clean, kills. Loki had warped his mind beyond reparation. He would never be able to erase those images. He would never be able to forget that look in her eyes, the fear. That part might have been a dream, something his mind had conjured up to torture him with, but it was as real, as vivid, as a memory.

He knew she was looking for him. So that meant he couldn't be found. He'd almost run into her coming back from jogging with the Captain – thankfully the man hadn't been too eager to chat, having simply made a few short-lived attempts and then focused on running – but had just known right before they'd rounded the corner. He'd fled, with no explanation given to the dumbfounded man he left in his wake, and feeling absolutely repulsed by doing so. He had never run from anything in his life, but this was something he couldn't bring himself to face. Now he was hiding like a frightened child whose mother was stalking around with a wooden spoon. He had fallen so far already, how much further could there possibly be until he hit the bottom? At least she wouldn't find him.

…

A/N: Thanks to StarArrow who pointed out the embarrassing fact that I misspelt the title. Of all the spelling errors to make…

I know this is short but I'm stumbling around with pretty intense writer's block at the moment so I thought I'd post something now, or you mightn't get anything for ages.

Again, thanks for the reviews! You guys are far too nice to me and the only reason I don't reply is because I honestly don't know what to say.