A/N: I tell you what, reading such sweet reviews on very boring chapters (in my opinion) gives me faith for all the big chapters. Mainly, I'm just ready to shock your socks off. I really don't have too much to say about this chapter, only that the title has more than just one meaning and is therefore a very very powerful title. If you think you know its multiple meanings, feel free to shoot it in your review at the end. Also, if you don't listen to Hurricane by 30 Seconds to Mars whilst you read, I will know, because you won't be hit with the overwhelming emotions that associate themselves with that song and this story. I'll wait for you to turn it on. You good? Swear you're not lying to me about listening to the song? Alright then, read on.

Chapter Twelve: Blood

The time lapse from when she'd been thrown against the wall like a rag doll to when she'd finally come down from her panic attack could have been thirty seconds or thirty minutes, Katniss wasn't aware of which it was. Her head was still reeling as she let out a low groan from the aching pain in her back. She was hoping for the best, namely that something wasn't broken or that she had any kind of injury other than a bruise. Those, she knew she had.

There was no telling what was going on above the surface; her comm was still off, her legs still felt like they were made of gelatin and while the ringing in her ears had stopped, her head was spinning. If anything was for certain in her shaky, fragile state of mind, she knew that finding out what was going on was crucial. Why Gale was on the ship, what was going on elsewhere through the Helicarrier, if they were all about to die, everything.

Instinctually curling up into a ball, arms locked around her knees, Katniss buried her face into the space between either of her kneecaps to keep from passing out. She could still hear the Hulk's roar echoing out in her ears, and the ringing had subsided slightly, which she figured a good thing. Taking a shaky breath, a whimper tumbled out after as the floor seemed to tilt underneath her. She was still clenching her teeth, trying to calm herself down and get rid of the nausea that hadn't gone away with the panic attack. Count your breaths, count your breaths, just count, dammit. The floor continued to move, the whole ship appearing to tip to the side. Katniss arched her back against the wall—maybe it was a wall, maybe it was a trunk, who knew—trembling, doing her best to anchor her feet onto the ground and keep from sliding downwards.

Things had officially been shot to hell. The Helicarrier was now flying sideways, if it was even flying at all, she'd just escaped the Hulk and her possessed best friend within a literal inch of her life, and her panic attack had left her more drained than ever. She was dripping sweat, still gasping for breath and with the nausea flipping her stomach over and over again; she contemplated death to be a better option than sitting here any longer.

Okay, so maybe now was a good time to reconsider turning the comm back on, since she was at a loss for ideas on where to pick back up.

Shakily reaching up to her ear, her fingers fumbled before turning the comm unit back on, and it was like a rush of noise in her ear. Pandemonium was probably a better word to describe it, but she considered it a relief she could still hear.

"Engine one is on shut down!"

"Wishbone, do you copy?"

"That's two engines down, is Stark out there repairing that engine?"

"He is, but Loki's guys are doing their hardest to keep this ship from staying in the air."

"Where's Everdeen, why is she not responding?"

"Everdeen?! Forget the girl; where's Loki?"

"What happened?"

"It's Barton," Fury's calm and steady voice came over the comm, and while Katniss' stomach should have turned over in rage, she was grateful to hear his voice in her ears. It gave her a slight reassurance that this whole thing wasn't going straight to the ground, and quite literally at that. "He took out our systems; he's headed for the detention lab. Does anyone copy?"

Katniss looked to her side, trying to think of how far she was from the detention lab. She figured it wouldn't be too far of a walk from where she was currently—she hadn't exactly had too much time to memorize the map of the Helicarrier, and plus, she was dying to find out what the spiel on him was all about. And if Barton was the threat, he needed to be eliminated. Flight mode was over for her; she'd entered fight mode, and if taking him out meant she survived this, then that was what she was going to do.

Pressing the comm in her ear, she took one final deep breath, finding her sea legs somewhere and pulling herself up off the trunk she'd been leaning against. "Everdeen," she said, her voice low. "I copy." With that, she took her hand off of the trunk for support and set off to find Barton on the detention level.

She figured the easiest way down to the detention lab, or anywhere near it was through the rafters. That way, she'd have all of the pipes and beams and the added bonus of darkness to conceal her, giving her the advantage. Katniss resumed breathing deeply and counting in her head, her seemingly foolproof mechanism so far of getting through this shit show. Barton was a master archer, as in not the kind of archer she was. He'd been trained by the best; he was a professional sniper, whereas Katniss used her bow and arrow to kill a few turkeys, and maybe a deer if she got a good shot. The situation didn't get much better once she took into account that she didn't have anything on her—she was wishing she'd picked up her gun when she'd had the chance—to defend herself with, and Barton had his weapon of choice. The odds couldn't seemingly stack any higher against her, but they kept climbing on.

Fighting Gale was one thing. Fighting Gale was something that she knew she at least had a chance with, since she knew the places where he'd tick and that she could gain the upper hand in. She wasn't a combat, hand-to-hand kind of person. She wrestled, with Gale, for leisure alone. At least her fight back with him earlier was something she'd been somewhat accustomed to, something she could escape her life with if not win, even without her bow and arrow. Hell, this wasn't even like sparring with Steve, who was a super soldier and was able to defeat solely by the element of surprise. Fighting Barton; disarming him, taking him down, especially under Loki's possession, there was virtually no way of her coming out on top. She was fucked.

Sliding between a set of pipes, her feet landed quietly on the metal plating that lined a walkway, most likely on the way to the detention lab. Peering down the walkway, all she saw was an arrow quiver and a set of extremely cut arms. Got you.

Katniss began tiptoeing behind him, watching as he ducked underneath a large steel beam that was hanging low. She assumed this was her best bet at trying to find an upper hand to take him out, or at least, somewhere to start. Her boots made just as much noise as his did on the metal, so she aligned her footsteps with his, sounding like one. This is almost like hunting, she thought to herself, her mindset becoming a lot clearer. Treat it like he's your prey. This is your chance at dinner tonight, and you're starving. Her pep talk didn't last too much longer, as Barton reached into his quiver for an arrow, her heart hammering in her throat at the adrenaline rush.

Here we go.

Barton swiveled around, preparing to shoot, but Katniss pushed the bow away from her face and held it out as he let the arrow fly. If he's as good a shot as Fury says, then maybe my best bet is to make sure he runs out of arrows. Then he can't fire, and it gives me time to get a read on him. Katniss kept an iron grip on the bow as he jutted it backwards, meeting her face with a loud crack. She stumbled backwards, doing her best to keep from falling but instead, jumping away slightly from his next hit. He took the bow, swinging it down in order to split her skull, she assumed, which she ducked from. Barton completely off guard, Katniss briefly remembered how delayed Steve had been whenever she kicked him, using one of her now only barely wobbling legs to deliver a hard kick right to his abdomen. He was the one who staggered back now, trying to regain his balance before she threw her next blow.

Katniss took complete advantage of the fact he had put quite a distance between them and jumped down between the gap in the walkway and a large cooling gas pipe. Her hands met the railing, pushing her body down the slanted surface her back met. There was a small walkway next to it, so she grabbed onto a pole and swung around right as Barton jumped underneath to join her. He was playing to kill, and sure enough, he was proving that the whole run out of arrows idea she'd had was formulated in vain. Raising her leg, she kicked him in the gut yet again, doing what she knew worked well for her the first time she tried it. He reached for his arrow once again, and her head darting over her shoulder, she realized there was nowhere to run. "Fuck," she muttered inaudibly through her clenched teeth as she took the only chance she had to dodge his arrow, going airborne. He fired right as she jumped through the gap between the corridor she was on and another on the opposite side, hands clenching onto another steel pole and using the force of her jump to swing around to ensure she landed flat footed.

Barton made the jump in one clean step, now right in front of her. It didn't give her too much time to think of a next move, his face was inches away from her own. God, his eyes were just like Gale's; an eerie blue, slightly bloodshot around the edges and looked like he hadn't slept in months as opposed to a few days. He was throwing the bow around, aiming to hit her with it, but she managed to evade each individual blow by the skin of her teeth. Barton managed to nab her in the side, before jabbing the bow in the direction of her neck. Katniss threw her fists up in front of her face to block, meeting him with resistance and sending him stumbling back a few steps. Of course, when he came back, he only came back harder. Readjusting his grip on the bow, Katniss took the little chance she had and did her best to jam it back into his chest. It didn't work.

Instead, Barton was able to hit her back with it, taking her off guard and slamming it into her wrists. She let out a strangled moan of pain, but quickly shut up as he pinned her up against the edge of the railing with the bow. He tried his best to shove it into her trachea, but she was struggling against him, to which he kneed the fleshy area of her thigh with his kneecap. Growling, she took one of her fists and nailed him right underneath his chin, causing him to drop the bow. There were only two options at that point. Grab the bow, or keep fighting. Katniss knew she needed the bow to stand a chance so she picked it up, guarding herself with it right as Barton whipped out a dagger. Right. Master assassin. Probably has more than one weapon on him, and can probably use it just as well. Great, great, great.

The two of them stood in a little one off for a moment, staring each other down. "You gonna kill me?" she panted, trying to catch her breath. Barton didn't respond. Her eyes narrowed into slits. "I said, are you going to kill me?"

Her voice had grown louder and echoed off of the walls surrounding them. Instead, Barton just smirked at her as he twirled the dagger around, not saying a word, his invitation for her to make a move. "Not today," she breathed.

Katniss lunged at him with the bow, swinging it in a downwards slashing movement in hopes to at least knock the dagger out of his hand. One of his fists came up to punch her in the jaw, reminding her vaguely of her sparring session with Steve. Her own curled up fist blocked it, pushing it back down. She threw her knee up, getting him in the side and causing him to stoop down slightly. Katniss backed herself up as he came back up, slashing the air with his knife and poising it to stab her. She threw the bow to the side, obviously seeing no use with it anymore. Delivering another swift punch to his side and grabbing the hand with the dagger in it, trying to push it away, she met some resistance from him. Katniss took both her hands and began to twist his arm backwards while raising it up, getting a gasp of pain out of him. She then pushed it down to her side, reaching to steal the dagger before he threw it up and caught it with the opposite hand. Well shit.

He slashed at the air, Katniss ducking just in time. Barton reached out again to clothesline her against the opposite rail, but she managed to catch his arm and shove it back in the direction of his body. Katniss had gotten a grasp on it as he tried to wiggle free from the grip her elbow and forearm had provided, lifting her slightly off the ground as he realized what she'd done. Her other hand tightening around the one with the dagger bestowed in it, the two were nothing more than a tangle of arms and hands, keeping each other in a death lock. He pinned her up against a pole, her gaining some control of his hand and shoving the dagger in the direction of his own throat. Katniss was standing on her tiptoes now as he backed up, trying to avoid his own weapon.

What she hadn't expected was for him to use his spare arm to reach around and grab the roots of her hair, yanking back as hard as he could to expose her neck. Another cry of pain escaped her as the two did their own little dance across the path, trying to win for dominance. Barton had the dagger hovering right over her neck, the point ready to pierce into her flesh and while she was trying hard to avoid it, she just couldn't. Breathing heavily, she only saw one way out of this, one of the most basic escape moves in the book. She tilted her head as far as she could and sunk her teeth into the flesh of his arm. Through his teeth, he let out a strangled growl, dropping the dagger as he took his free arm and tried to slam her on the ground.

Katniss used the momentum and flipped herself over his arm, still unable to shake him free. He had a tight grip on her waist, and she knew that this was bad. Letting out a grunt, she turned around and took a few steps forward, ramming him back into the side of the safety railing as hard as she could, head first. Barton finally let go of her, his head meeting the rail with a loud and echoing clang. He slumped against the rail, falling down it as he moaned in agony. Katniss watched as he struggled to regain his stature, slouching all the way down to the ground and having to use some of the trip wires to pull himself back up to his knees.

Barton found his balance, slowly lifting himself up as he stared at her. The aching blue that showed sign of possession was still there in his eyes, but it wasn't like it had been. It seemed as though it had diminished, was beginning to fade. "Katniss," he whispered. He didn't have time to say much more even if he had wanted to, because Katniss reared back and sent her fist colliding with his face as hard as she possibly could. Barton toppled over, rendered unconscious.

Katniss took the moment of solitude to catch her breath. She'd been wrong; after her encounter with the Hulk, she'd merely been glistening with sweat, now she was truly dripping in it, what from the fight and the heat of the engines close by. She wiped her forehead, reaching up to press the comm link in her ear. "This is Katniss," she said, her voice huskier than normal and shaking slightly. "I've got Barton here down on the detention level. Does anyone copy?"

"I copy. Is Barton contained?" Fury's voice came back.

"Out like a light." Stepping over him and using the toe of her boot to move his face from side to side, she gave a small shrug. "I hit him pretty hard on the head, you might better call for a med team."

"Everdeen, taking him out was not your-"

"It's done, is it not?" Katniss retorted sharply, reaching over to pull the braid out of her hair. Where Barton had gotten a good grip on it, her head was aching and she needed to let it fall free. "Send for someone to come get him. Maybe a med team; they can determine whether not I just gave him a concussion or knocked Loki clean out of him."

Fury sounded puzzled when he replied. "You think you shook him free from Loki's spell?"

Katniss shrugged again. "He looked up at me and said my name, like it was his first time seeing me despite being present the whole time he nearly killed me. Don't know how he knew my name, either." There was a pause on the opposite end, almost as if Fury was unsure to reply to that or not. "Where's Tony?" Katniss asked him.

"Engine Three," he sighed. "Katniss, stay—"

"Stay here?" she scoffed. "Find him yourself; it's not that big of a ship." Katniss then reached down and pulled the quiver out from underneath Barton, slinging it onto her back. She picked up the bow that had been slung to the side in the midst of their fight and begin stalking off in the same direction she'd come, in pursuit of Engine Three.

It felt good to have a quiver full of arrows strapped to her back and a bow back in her hands. The gun holster had no weight to her anymore, knowing that it didn't matter if it was there or not since she was armed with what she knew best. Given the information she had, her guess was that Loki's men had invaded the Helicarrier, probably to retrieve Loki himself and that sinking the ship was just their little added incentive. There had been no sort of all-clear call in her comm, so that meant there was still a high chance of rogue agents still running amuck through the ship. Katniss felt twenty times more reassured now that she had her comfort weapon in her possession now; threats were no longer threats for her.

She fiddled with the string on the bow slightly; it wasn't her usual bow, after all, it was Barton's. The string was definitely a lot tighter, and the overall make of the bow was sleeker, even more so than the ones she'd trained with at SHIELD. Katniss wasn't even going to start messing with the arrowheads, they all looked intimidating sitting in her quiver and glinting at her in the light.

It took a bit of time to find the way to Engine Three; she'd had to reroute to the remains of Bruce's lab in order to establish a set direction. Shattered glass was scattered all over the floor from where the explosion had blown out the windows and Katniss had to tread carefully to avoid getting any glass in her foot. There were agents scattered all over the floor, agents that she hoped and prayed with everything in her were just Loki's minions. Listen to yourself, Katniss. You can't be thinking like that. These were people with families, lives outside of SHIELD—if it's possible to have a life outside of this circus. They're just people who got a really short end of the stick. She rounded the corner to where a sign of a small arrow that read 'ENGINE ACCESS' was hinged onto the wall. The open doorway was in her sight, and Katniss ran a hand through her loose hair before pulling one of Barton's arrows from her quiver and stringing it. There was no such thing as being too careful anymore, her entire self still on the defense. Katniss was ready to call out for Tony, but she never did get to as her comm crackled in again with Fury's somber voice on the opposite end.

"Agent Coulson is down."

No. That was impossible, Agent Coulson? Coulson, who knew where all the big guns and the literal big guns were at, who was Fury's right hand man—even more so than Hill—who couldn't possibly die, down? No. This wasn't about death. He was just…down. On his way to the medical wing of the Helicarrier. Knocked unconscious. Maybe a few scrapes. He'd be fine. He would be fine. This whole thing was never about death, they hadn't gotten to that point yet; they weren't there. They couldn't be there. Her hand twitching as she held onto the arrow, Katniss waited with bated breath for Fury to elaborate.

"There's a med team on its way—"

"They're already here," Fury interrupted whoever had responded to the call. "They called it."

Katniss hadn't been this angry since finding out who her mom was, if that. Coulson was not dead. He couldn't be dead. There was no way in hell he was dead, this was a joke, this was just agent lingo that she didn't understand, he was fine, he had to be fine—

But people kept talking in her ear, confirming the opposite. Katniss' blind rage took her over as she let out a choked sob, her hands shaking as she did her best to keep the bow and arrow in place. She stepped forward, her feet made of lead as she thought back to her conversation with Coulson, how he'd been one of the first people to actually address her as her and reassure her that her identity crisis was nothing major, that she was still the same person she was when she'd boarded the ship. How he'd told her she'd figure things out if she didn't think she already had. He had been so understanding, so…so fatherly towards her, like he had been looking out for her the entire time. He was the one who had sent Tony to watch out for her, he had been looking out for her ever since she'd walked on board and long before that.

Tony's name, the only name aside from Coulson's that she could process, the only person she needed at the moment no matter how pissed she was with him, was threatening to spill over her lips when her foot accidentally collided with something still. Looking down through her blurred eyesight from the tears welling, she could see that it was one of Loki's guys, dressed in the same attire that Barton had if not with a little more padding. Her lips turned downwards into a scowl as she drew the arrow back further, resting a foot on his shoulder. He was one of Loki's.

Loki killed Coulson.

She didn't think in that moment, she just fired.

Letting her bow fall to her side in horror, she ran away from the body and around the corner so she was out of sight. Her own back slammed against the wall as she tried to process all of her thoughts, but none of them seemed to sink in quite right. Nothing was fathomable.

She heard Steve and Tony rush in from outside. "Who was that?" Steve called out, but Katniss didn't dare answer; she was having enough trouble finding her own inner voice, much less her actual one. "Who d'you reckon was here? Loki's guys?"

"I doubt it," Tony mumbled.

"Whoa," Steve breathed. "Who do you think did that?"

Katniss assumed that they were standing over the body at that point, not daring to peek around the corner. Instead, she peeled herself off the wall and slowly started to stagger off in the opposite direction as she held on to the last little bits of Steve and Tony's conversation.

"Who's the best shot on this ship with a bow and arrow?"

"You don't think—"

"Baby bird."

A/N: I don't know about you, but I have a small headache coming on after everything that just happened. Let's review, shall we? So Katniss and Barton fought—he said her name, wonder what that's all about?—Coulson's down, Katniss killed a guy. Such fun things going on, and to think, they only get better. I gotta say, this chapter was too fun to write; especially the bit where she calls in that she's gotten Barton taken down. She really has no idea. And uh, why was Katniss asking for Tony after she got Barton taken out? Why was she running to him once Fury called Coulson's death? Questions, questions; questions I'd love to hear your thoughts on. I literally have all of next chapter written because I couldn't wait, it's the chapter, you guys. Well, at least, for you all it is. There are more on their way. Tell me, how do you think Katniss is going to hold up when she goes and talks to Barton? More importantly, WHAT DO YOU THINK CLINT IS GONNA DO!? (Wow Em, chill with the caps.) But seriously, it's good. I promise. The only way you'd get to see the gem that is next chapter is a pretty little review, so you know what to do. ;)