A/N: I'd already started writing this when I finally got to see the extended scene on the DVD with Loki and Hawkeye making plans. I thought about it and decided to keep my version, but just mix elements from that scene (which is now, I assume, proper canon) into my story at various points. If you haven't seen the extended scene, make sure to look it up 'cause it's awesome.

Thank you very much to the chapter 3 reviewers: TheNaggingCube, Aminara, and Alpha Flyer.

As usual, everything you recognize (I should say, everything Marvel's lawyers recognize) belongs to Marvel. T rating is for violence and language.

Beta-reader and teacher extraordinaire Aminara continues to be pretty awesome.


The headlights illuminated a tiny, starkly contrasted patch of ground as the jeep flew and jostled along the dirt road through the desert; beyond the dim secondary glow that outlined a few scrubby bushes, they were adrift in a sea of darkness, with no barrier between earth and night sky. They had been driving for an hour in silence when Hawkeye stopped the jeep and got out.

Loki dismounted gracefully from the back, the scepter in his hand casting an eerie blue glow on his face. The same blue fire flickered around Hawkeye's vision, tracing the boxy outline of the jeep, the contours of Selvig's face, the curve of Loki's grin. He had to avoid looking directly at the pulsing blue gem lest he be momentarily blinded. Instead, Hawkeye dropped onto his back and pulled himself underneath the jeep. Flicking open a knife from his belt, he uncovered a small, utterly unremarkable black box welded to the chassis. His attempts to dislodge and damage it only chipped the blade.

"May I ask what you're doing?" Loki inquired in his purring tones. Hawkeye emerged from under the jeep and brushed himself off.

"There's a GPS tracker on all SHIELD vehicles," he explained. "It's welded on and can't be easily removed."

"I can work on that," Selvig chipped in, disembarking as well. "I can use the battery to overload it."

"How long?" Loki asked.

"Ten minutes."

"Let's be on our way in five, shall we?"

Selvig lifted the hood and began his work, retrieving extra cables from the jeep's emergency pack. Hawkeye strode away back the way they came until the sounds and lights of the jeep no longer affected his senses. He breathed in the desert air, listening, watching, combing the sky for any sign of pursuit. Gradually his night vision returned, but all the points of light scattered across the heavens were lightyears distant and unmoving.

"What do you think, my friend?"

Hawkeye glanced at Loki, now at his side. Even listening closely, he'd not heard his approach. "The implosion will have killed or wounded many agents, so resources in this area will be focused on rescue. It will take them some time to regroup and pursue. Still, we should change course and switch vehicles as soon as possible."

"Good news," Loki agreed, his cold smile dimly lit by the glow of the headlights. "What is your name?"

"Clint Barton. Alias Hawkeye."

"I see. I did admire your swift actions against the man with the eyepatch. A bit overdramatic, that, don't you think?"

"Director Fury finds it helpful for his appearance to match his reputation."

"Fury! What a delightfully apt name." Loki laughed softly, his eyes never moving from Hawkeye's face. "You admire him, do you not?"

Hawkeye lifted one shoulder in a noncommittal shrug. "He has a clear line of sight." It had often impressed Hawkeye how Fury saw more with one good eye than most people ever saw with two.

"And is that why you failed to kill him?"

Hawkeye stiffened at the sudden steel in Loki's previously soothing voice. He was on dangerous ground here. He remembered clearly drawing his gun, knowing that Fury would have no time to retaliate, pulling the trigger—but he had struck the heart and not, as he should have, the head. Had he, Hawkeye, missed? Impossible.

"I was disoriented," Hawkeye blurted. It wasn't untrue, but it wasn't quite the full truth either. Loki's bladed gaze told him that he knew as much, but Hawkeye himself wasn't sure what small measure of his previous insanity had kept him from eliminating such a threat. "It won't happen again, sir."

"See that it doesn't," Loki hissed. "You are not indispensable, Agent Barton."

Hawkeye nodded curtly. From behind them came a flash of light and an electronic sizzle, and Selvig tottered uncertainly out from under the jeep as Hawkeye and Loki returned.

"I can't be certain, but that should've incapacitated it," Selvig announced, removing the extra wiring and slamming down the hood.

"We should still find a new car as soon as possible," Hawkeye reiterated as the three resumed their positions and he started the engine.

Loki settled himself in the back again and turned his face up to the starry heavens. "That, my dear Agent Barton, I shall leave up to you."

Half an hour later, as the sky began to lighten, an opportunity presented itself. Hawkeye pulled up at a small campsite with a truck; the previous night's campfire was dead and cold, and a muted snoring came from one of the two tents. Ignoring the sleepers, Hawkeye unloaded the gear from their jeep and carried it to the campers' truck. Loki sauntered into the camp, taking in the brightly colored tents and remains of a simple dinner with the fascinated air of a scientist observing the movements of insects. As Hawkeye and Selvig finished the transfer of gear, there was a rustling in one of the tents and a sleepy, tousle-haired face blinked drowsily in the unexpected light.

"Hey, guys, what's up?" the camper inquired sleepily. "Whatcha doing out here? Hey, Mike, wake up, we got company." A flannel-clad arm reached from the tent, scooped up a rock, and lobbed it into the wall of the snorer's tent.

"Where are the keys for your car?" Hawkeye demanded of the first camper, and got a bleary look of incomprehension in return. The other tent unzipped and Mike stumbled out in his boxer shorts, looking just as nonplussed.

"That is an awesome getup, man," he said, staggering over to where Loki watched with a vicious grin. "What are you supposed to be, like, a cowboy or something?"

"Where are the keys?" Hawkeye repeated, more insistently, and dragged the camper out of his tent by his flannel shirt.

"Hey, dude, leave Ryan alone!" Mike protested. "What do you want the keys for, anyway?"

"We're commandeering your vehicle," Hawkeye explained curtly.

"Like hell!" Ryan retorted angrily, shoving Hawkeye's hands away. "Who are you guys? Why are you dressed like that?"

"Yeah, you should leave," Mike chimed in, frowning. "You look like freaks."

"Is that what you think?" Loki inquired softly, and extended the scepter. There was a barely audible whine, then the discharge of the bolt of blue fire sent him staggering backwards. Mike tumbled back into his tent, already aflame.

"Shit!" Ryan scrambled away and bolted through the scrub, but before he'd taken five steps, Hawkeye drew his gun and sent a bullet through the base of his skull. The camper dropped in a heap of dust. Hawkeye searched him and found the keys without rolling him over; the rapidly spreading puddle of black beneath his throat was decisive. He dragged the body back to the campsite and piled the corpse and his tent atop his burning friend, then drove the jeep over them and cut the gas line. He climbed into the truck with Selvig as Loki took aim at the jeep and obliterated bodies, tents and vehicle in a balloon of blue and orange fire.

"Excellent work," Loki commented gleefully as he climbed in the back seat. "Agent Barton, our next move?"

"We need to set up a base of operations," Hawkeye replied promptly, putting the truck in gear. "I know just the place."

The truck rolled out from the burning campsite and Hawkeye dismissed the charred bodies of the unfortunate campers from his mind. In the back, Loki engaged Selvig in an enthusiastic discussion about the potential and powers of the Tesseract; despite his medieval appearance, Loki conversed fluently and intelligently with the scientist about the workings of the cube, once the two discovered that the contrasting sets of vocabulary they used—one of magic, the other of physics—were simply synonyms for the same phenomena. Once the conversation turned to interdimensional resonances and bridges across space-time, Hawkeye no longer found it worth the energy to pay attention and focused on the road. Content not to speak, he instead planned their next move.

Dawn found them far above the desert, watching the terrain slowly change beneath them. The truck's GPS had brought them to a small airfield where an old man was doing preflight checks for a morning flight in his Cessna. Hawkeye had disposed of him, finished the checks, and transferred their gear, and in short order they were in the air. The bone-deep drone of the Cessna's engines made talking uncomfortable, so instead Hawkeye guided the little airplane to an airport just outside the city limits. Luckily there was both a car rental service nearby and many enthusiastic amateur pilots not keeping a close eye on their wallets.

Hawkeye had found it useful over the years to set up safehouses in various cities, should disaster strike, as it inevitably did. With specialized skills, not just any kit would do, so over the years he worked out a network of small caches of armor, ammunition, weapons, and of course, extra bows, quivers, and arrows, along with clothing, rations, money, passports, and whatever else he would need to survive on short notice. Now again his forethought was rewarded when they arrived an hour later at an unremarkable, mostly run-down apartment building on the far edge of the city. Hawkeye led them to fourth floor and let them into a dusty little apartment, empty but for a small table and a couple of chairs under the window in the kitchen. Loki sank into one of the chairs and gazed out the window, apparently unimpressed; Selvig trundled off to use the bathroom. Hawkeye pulled up the floorboards to expose the compartment where he'd stored his gear months ago and, before anything else, reclaimed his bow.

The code-locked case was unmarked, and inside the slender black weapon lay nestled in a cocoon of soft grey foam, coiled and ready to be used. Hawkeye brushed his fingers over the graceful curves and pulled the bow from its place. With a practiced snap of his arm, the bow sprang open, the long limbs locking into place and drawing the bowstring taut. Hawkeye shrugged into one of his quivers, feeling like a missing limb had been replaced. Loki watched him with curiosity as he pulled and nocked an arrow from the quiver, drew back to his jaw, and aimed through the doorway at the far wall. His eyes found a crack in the plaster, drawn fire-bright for him in his newly sharpened vision, and he loosed the arrow, which thudded into the crack and stuck quivering.

"Fascinating," Loki murmured. "Tell me, Agent Barton—I've seen that you are quite proficient with your firearm. Why do you choose this rather…antiquated form of combat?"

"Any idiot can fire a gun. It takes skill and patience to use a bow. The bow's honest." Hawkeye paused, taking the time to examine the bowstring, looking for wear. "It's also versatile and silent. What it lacks in stopping power, it makes up for with, well…finesse."

"Excellent." Loki stood and brushed dust off his green and gold finery. "You and that remarkable weapon are going to win me the first fruits of my kingdom. You and the good doctor—"

"Selvig," the doctor supplied, returning to the kitchen with only a passing glance at the arrow in the wall. "I can't wait to get started working on the cube."

"Indeed," Loki muttered thoughtfully, stroking the curved blade of the scepter with long fingers. "We need supplies, and manpower, to begin our glorious work. Doctor Selvig, provide Agent Barton with a list of critical items for you to begin building the portal, which our resourceful Hawkeye will procure."

Half an hour later, Hawkeye was beginning to wonder if his resourcefulness would suffice. Besides Selvig's scientific genius, Loki's scepter, and his own skills and contacts, they had nothing with which to begin realizing Loki's ambitious plans except for the gear from the SHIELD jeep. Hawkeye listened carefully and with growing consternation as Selvig elaborated on the resources he would need to build Loki's hyperdimensional bridge. Even with Loki's assurance that they need only unleash, not control, the Tesseract's power, and his allies will do the rest, they would need highly specialized and delicate equipment and the manpower to move, assemble, and operate it, all with little money to fund it.

"Of course we'll also need protective gear, plastic sheeting, at least three laptops with high processing capacity, and food to keep us going for…" Selvig trailed off, blinking, as if he had forgotten what he was saying. Hawkeye looked up to see Loki approaching; as the god drew near, Selvig stood and walked away, clearly dismissed, and the Asgardian took his place at the kitchen table with an expectant smile.

"So, my dear Agent Barton," Loki prompted, "what do you suggest?"

Hawkeye paused for a moment, his eyes focused on the arrow in the wall across the room as he sorted his thoughts carefully. "None of us can show our faces in public," he began slowly, "since Fury will have facial recognition running on all the cameras he can get his hands on. Both of our passports will be marked and watched, even if we could risk going to another airport. All our SHIELD accounts will be shut down and monitored for attempted access, all safehouses and assets will be on high alert, and we're still within a day's travel of the base we brought down. We're safe here at the moment, but as soon as we make a move, SHIELD will strike." Hawkeye frowned into the distance. "What we need are allies. If we can make common cause with an influential organization, we can get the resources we need. But it has to be fast. Every minute that goes by increases the chance of SHIELD tracking us down."

Loki was silent for a moment, deep in thought as well. "Then we should make a plan. Tell me what you know about SHIELD." The god fixed him with a piercing green stare. "I want to know my enemy."

Hawkeye opened his mouth to comply, but paused, frowning in thought. "Enemies…"

Loki raised his eyebrows expectantly. "Yes?"

"I know where we can get everything we need, but we'll have to go now."

Loki stood, and Hawkeye followed suit. The god was smiling in satisfaction. "Let us be on our way, then."

Clint stood gratefully, feeling the pull in his muscles, and took a sip of the coffee that had been left on the table for him. It tasted like metal and scorched dirt, with nowhere near enough sugar, and was lukewarm at best; he'd left it untouched for too long, caught up in his narrative. He'd been sitting in the metal chair for hours—there was no way, in the windowless room, to keep track of the passage of time, but he had some practice at that kind of thing—talking his throat dry, to the point where he was pretty sure his ass had flattened to the shape of the chair. A shame, that, he mused; he had worked hard to keep it in better form. Still, he was well-accustomed to holding the same posture for endless hours, waiting for the perfect shot, although usually not when he was quite so battered and exhausted. His initial diagnosis of his injuries was shifting as time and immobility brought out the deep ache of strains and bruises.

And usually, he wasn't describing in detail how he'd betrayed everything he cared about and fought for.

Before the briefing started, Clint had thought hard about how to present this tragic drama to his interviewers. Should he be contrite, apologetic, apathetic? He'd been trained to never begin an interrogation on either side of the table without a strategy, but he'd never reached a decision on this one; he just let the words spill out of him, trying to remove any emotion. That was easier than he thought, since the memories he was immersed in were mostly devoid of any particular emotion to begin with. Even so, the memories were too clear for his taste, too sharp and immediate; every detail stood out in his mind, as if carved into his consciousness, accompanied by a sense of absolute, unshakable clarity and focus. Nothing had mattered to him but accomplishing Loki's goals, and even recalling those alien thoughts, he could feel his pulse quicken with determination.

Still, it was strange to report, with a detached and steady voice, how he had given everything to the enemy, even secrets that he had fought and bled and killed for, with no coercion whatsoever—to look Fury in the eye and describe how he had, on an enemy's orders, shot the Director in the heart. The very ease of it bothered him—it had seemed at the time perfectly natural and right. Much in the same way, he thought with sudden discomfort, as his current debriefing did. He rolled his neck to ease the ache radiating up into his skull.

Across the table from him, Meyer and Arai conferred in undertones, occasionally glancing his way with hard eyes. Clint ignored them, pacing the length of the room, taking his time over his terrible coffee, collecting his thoughts again for the next round. The two agents had followed his words closely, checking his account against video printouts and reports, clarifying and confirming with occasionally very pointed questions. Meyer was fighting control the accusation in his voice while Arai was careful to keep his features neutral, but Clint could read the indignation and anger in both of them with ease. He wondered if they had had friends that had died on at the compound or on the helicarrier, perhaps even by a well-placed arrow. He felt the defensiveness rising in him to counter their high-handed contempt: he wanted to shout and gesticulate and rage, Do you think this is what I wanted? Do you think you would have done any better?

But more than that, more insidiously, he felt resentment sink into a tight knot in his chest. How many times had he sat in a room like this, in a fucking uncomfortable chair, bandaged and patched up and medicated and sucking down caffeine-infused sludge to stay intelligible, describing with detached precision the details of deception and death while across the table the agents in charge of the case listened and nodded in complacent satisfaction? How many times had he told those stories, the same story as this one but with different names, and they said things like "operational efficiency" and "acceptable loss" and "collateral damage" and waved the ugliness casually away? Clint would be the last to dispute that Loki was evil, but he wasn't a fucking idiot—he knew better than to assume that meant SHIELD was good.

The door of the interrogation room opened and Fury swept back in. Clint caught a glimpse of Agent Hill outside the door, and surprised himself by giving her a vicious grin and a wink before the heavy door swung shut. He crushed the empty coffee cup in his hand and tossed in a corner. Arai and Meyer had fallen silent on Fury's return, and they returned to their places at the table. Fury turned to face Clint, leaning against the back of his own chair, and gestured to Clint's seat.

"Shall we continue, Agent Barton?"

Clint resumed his place in silence as Fury sat down across from him. The unfairness of Meyer and Arai's condemnation burned in him. He knew he would regret it, that he would hate himself for it later, that it would probably come back to bite him in the very near future, but he was sick of bending over backwards to spare other people's feelings and the temptation was too strong. They wanted to know how he had invaded the helicarrier, how he had turned Loki from an outcast into an imminent threat, how he had survived and flourished with all the might of SHIELD hunting him down?

He'd tell them. And he'd enjoy it.