The alley where Barton's clone lay dead was almost five miles behind me before I stopped running. As I sprinted through the streets, my mind scrambled to come up with a rational way to rescue Loki. No doubt he was being held under top security, with dozens, if not hundreds of trained agents watching his every move. As the saying went: he probably couldn't sneeze without permission. It was not going to be the easiest extraction mission I had ever had.

Extraction mission, not rescue.

Shaking my head, I slowed to a stop at the corner of 115th and Amsterdam in the metaphorical shadow of Columbia Law School. As it was nearly nine by that point, all classes seemed to be finished for the day and the campus was mostly dark.

Recovering my breath, I looked up at the stark, imposing grey walls of the university. I had never gone to college, but I had heard both grand tales and horror stories about the experience. As tempting as it was to stand there and think about what might have been, I shoved thoughts of education aside and marched quickly down the sidewalk, heading toward a group of trees that broke up the harsh concrete everywhere I looked. I only passed a few people, and none gave me a second look, despite my jumpsuit and undoubtedly frayed appearance. It was only a short walk to the park. A large statue rose from the middle of a low wall at the edge of the manicured lawn, depicting a heavily robed, old fashioned man. There was a small plaque, but I didn't bother reading it. Climbing over the wall and into the low bushes behind it, I waited a moment to make sure no joggers would come past.

Luck appeared to be with me for once as not a single person came past. Unable to believe it, I forced myself to remain still for a full three and a half minutes before my self-restraint gave out and a slipped over behind the statue. At the base, there was a small ledge with tiny details chiseled into the dark grey stone. Starting at the right edge, I began to count in, running my finger across the bumpy design.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven," I whispered to myself, stopping on the last number and pressing hard. The ridge slid inward and stopped with a soft click. I stepped back.

There was a pause, and then the back panel of the statue began to slide down. I waited nervously as the grinding noise it made seemed unbearably loud and obvious. But no one came to investigate. And when the panel slipped completely out of sight, I darted inside and down the narrow staircase without hesitation. A few flickering fluorescent lights had been built into the ceiling at spotty intervals along the way, spaced just close enough to alert me to the presence of yet another sharp corner.

This was an old passageway, a little-used access point that only a handful of SHIELD agents were even aware of. I was one of the few. And yet I had no doubt there would be guards once I reached the more widely trafficked tunnels.

I slowed my headlong pace to a gentle jog, and in less than a minute I heard voices. Slinking along the wall, I kept a hand on Nick Fury's pistol, ready to withdraw it from my belt at a moment's notice.

There were two voices, one strong and deep, the other cold and female:

"You think the Council made a good call?"

"I won't play guessing games, Ty. Let well enough alone."

"I don't trust her," Ty asserted quietly.

"Who? Agent Hill?"

"Director Hill." His voice turned mocking. "Fury would have—"

The female interrupted him with a subdued laugh. "Word is, Fury got whupped by a girl. And I think Director Hill is the better choice, anyway."

Now my curiosity was fully aroused. I stopped and listened, still lurking behind the corner.

"That's not true. I heard that he died in a plane wreck."

"He was a wreck by the time she got through with him. And that's not the point. Director Hill isn't—hold on… Agent Lowe. Yessir. No sign of activity. Over."

"Everybody has a different story," Ty protested after a moment. "Nobody really knows what happened."

"It was a girl who killed him," the woman insisted. "Agent Romanoff, I think."

"The Case Red?"

"I'm not even sure what that is."

I slowly drew the pistol, resting my finger on the trigger. When I came around the corner they both had their backs to me. Perfect.

"It's just another term for 'kill on sight.' They probably have people out looking for her right now. She's dangerous. Anybody who can take out Director Fury single handedly oughta be—"

Allowing myself a grim smile, I pulled the trigger. The silencer on the gun made a faint twanging sound, and the man collapsed on the ground. The woman whirled around just in time to receive a bullet to the forehead. She fell on top of him without a sound.

Aware that time was everything, I quickly knelt down and yanked the communicator from her ear. That might be useful later. After a moment of thought, I took her SHIELD jacket too. It was possible that it would help me remain incognito if crossing paths with one of the other agents became unavoidable.

After slipping into the jacket, I began to run down the tunnel again, silent as a shadow. I had not gone more than fifty paces before I noticed the vents in the ceiling. They appeared at regular intervals, every twenty paces or so, but it was not until I heard an echo of footsteps in the hallway that I decided to make use of them.

Swift and silent, I scaled the wall, climbing just high enough to touch the vent. With deft fingers and my superhuman strength, I quickly pried the vent from the ceiling, trying not to mangle it, and reached a hand into the shaft. Empty space. But would there be enough?

The footsteps grew louder.

Indefinitely careful, I eased up into the heating duct, straining my eyes for any tell-tale signs of alarm systems. Nothing. Pulling myself all the way in, I backed over the open vent—there was no room to turn around—and gently replaced the vent cover. It wouldn't stay in place without support, so I held it there with my fingertips, leaning as far away from it as possible.

Whoever it was passed directly underneath me. After several agonizing moments, the familiar, yet terrifying sound of walking faded away. No longer afraid of being overheard, I bent several pieces of metal just far enough to hold the cover in place, and then began to skulk through the shaft, noiseless as ever.

For the first two minutes of crawling, it was pleasantly peaceful. But then I caught sight of a strangely distorted section of metal two inches in front of my nose. A light flicked on in the room below me, and for an instant I saw the crisscrossed lasers blocking my path before my eyes adjusted and the lines vanished.

I swore out loud.

I knew those lasers like I knew my favorite pistol, having helped design both. There was no logical way to get past them without giving myself second degree burns and setting off about a hundred alarms.

After so many years in high pressure situations, I had come to the conclusion that my brain worked faster under stressful circumstances. The theory still held when I came to a conclusion twenty-three seconds later. There was no real purpose to my crawling through the heating system besides convenience. In the halls, there wouldn't be alarms restricting the agents' movements. But up here... well, nobody really came here except with mischief in mind.

Mischief.

Loki.

I clenched my jaw. Loki was the whole reason that I was here in the first place instead of running for my life like a sensible person. Logic dictated that I figure out where he was being held and formulate a plan based on that.

Slowly, I backed away from the laser grid and over a grate, tearing small holes in my jumpsuit on the rough surface. I listened carefully for any sound, then dropped down into the hall using the reverse method I had used to get into the ducts. It took a moment for me to orient myself before I turned to the right and took off.

I knew I was on the bottom floor of the building. And thinking like Director Hill, I assumed that Loki would be as close to the top of the thirty-five story building as possible.

And so began the longest four hours of my life.

My assumption that there would be no alarms proved to be true, but I hadn't counted on the unusually high number of agents that scurried from room to room, from elevator to elevator, from person to person. If I had been completely unknown, moving around would have been a cinch. But after years under SHIELD's tight yoke, there was no way to move twenty feet without seeing someone I knew. Zipping up my jacket and pulling my hair into a tight pony tail with the rubber band I found in one of the pockets wouldn't be enough to disguise me. So I slipped from hiding place to shadowy corner, employing every trick I knew about blending in and vanishing into thin air. It was stressful beyond belief. It was mind numbing. It was physically exhausting, especially after the day had already gone. And after two hours, I had only made it up five levels.

Stepping into a large supply closet to avoid a passing agent who I recognized from a job several years ago, it was all I could do to keep standing. I wound through the tall racks of simple office supply until I reached the corner farthest from the door. There was no way I could continue. Last time I had seen a clock, it had been nearly 2 AM. I had been up since maybe five thirty.

"Loki can wait," I muttered, dropping ungracefully to my knees and shoving several boxes of paper to the side so I could slip under a rack of metal shelves. "No one will find me. It's safe. As long as I'm quiet."

Crawling into my impromptu den, I suddenly realized how dizzy I was. My stomach grumbled loudly as I pulled the boxes back into place and curled up on my side.

"Shut up," I whispered, closing my eyes. "You'll give me away."

When I opened my eyes again, I winced. Not at the light, because there really wasn't any, but at the memory of last night. Or the entire day. Definitely the entire day. I extracted myself from under the shelf and struggled painfully to my feet. My insides felt as twisted and knotted as fishing line, complaining loudly. How long had it been since I had eaten? Not a healthy time, that was for sure. I needed to find Loki and get out as soon as possible, before my reasoning became any more affected by the lack of nutrition... It was extremely lucky that I hadn't been discovered last night.

A plan.

I needed to focus and create a plan.

There was no way I could go through the trouble of sneaking up to the top floor, not in my current state. So logically, the simplest way to get to Loki would be... would be to have SHIELD escort me to him. They had only one holding cell potentially capable of securing a demigod with magical powers, and I knew it well; it was where Nick Fury often placed Case Reds, if they happened to be apprehended alive. I was now a Case Red, and if they had the opportunity to take me in, there was little doubt in my mind I would end up in that very holding cell.

Convinced that my half-baked idea was a fairly good one, as far as half-baked ideas go, I strode out of the supply closet, much to the surprise of a young blonde man. "Hey!" I shouted. "I heard somebody wanted to interrogate Natasha Romanoff!"

The agent jumped and began to jabber into his radio. I stood still, and within a minute, we were both swarmed by heavily armed guards. They roughly forced my hands behind my back, handcuffed me, and pushed me towards an elevator without a word. I was content with the silence. There was nothing to say, anyway. Nothing to do but wait.

The elevator, to my surprise, did not rise, but dropped. And dropped, and dropped. I felt a strange mixture of chagrin and relief. Chagrin because my guess had been completely wrong. Relief because this was probably the easiest way to discover my error.

The doors slid to the side and spit me and my escort of fifteen out into a dimly lit concrete hallway. As we marched down it, a stray thought crossed my mind.

Loki must have had to duck, with this low ceiling.

I nearly giggled in my slightly hysterical state, but it died in my throat when one guard threw open a heavy metal door. Then punched a numerical code into a keypad, spun a large wheel, opened a second door, subjected his eye to one of those annoying retina scans, pressed a button on the wall, watched yet another thick door slide upwards, and shoved me ungraciously into the room beyond.

The look on Loki's face could have instantly frozen the entire Caribbean. In the height of summer.

Someone undid my handcuffs and pushed me down onto a metal bench in the middle of the room. Everything I could see was concrete and three-inch thick metal. There was nothing besides the bench, which was bolted to the floor, and Loki sitting next to me on it.

My escort left without a word, shutting the doors behind them.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

With each successive thud, I felt the hazy fog I had been fighting dissipate. I realized how incredibly stupid I had been. Slowly, I looked over at Loki.

"Genius," he muttered, glaring sideways at me. I realized that he had a black eye and several freshly scabbed-over wounds on his face. One of them cracked slightly, and blood oozed down his neck. Oh yes - Bruce Banner. I had forgotten. "Getting caught down here with me. I applaud your intellect."

"It sounded smarter upstairs, alright?" I hissed. "Just so you know, I've been crawling around looking for you for almost twelve hours!" Not quite the truth, but whatever. It sounded dramatic.

Loki gave me a flat stare. I detected no hint of appreciation in his green eyes. Just annoyance. And perhaps a hint of disappointment, if I probed a little deeper. He didn't say anything else, and I soon retreated within myself, thinking hard. I had taken a gamble, I realized, and my brain was struggling to function without the nutrients it needed. I was so hungry...

I frowned, trying to focus on my previous question: What had I been thinking when I presented myself to that silly agent? The chances of being brought down to Loki had been incredibly minimal, but they had led me straight to him, even though my logic behind the move had been skewed. Why would SHIELD do something so… well… so dumb? Maybe because it was the most secure detention area on the base, as I'd first suspected. Yet they knew I was his ally, his accomplice, his partner in crime. They would therefore know that I had broken into SHIELD HQ with the express purpose of finding and freeing my dangerous 'boyfriend,' as Tony Stark had so candidly put it. They knew. So why—

A sudden thought made my skin crawl. That was how they saw me. Not just as an accomplice… as a weakness. Nausea and dread consumed me.

Loki must still have the Tesseract hidden away in his invisible tote bag. And SHIELD wanted it back. That's why they hadn't killed him. And that was also why I was still alive as well. No manner of torture would make Loki part with his secrets—but it was possible, however slightly, that he could be swayed if I were the one who was suffering.

I gave a slight shudder and buried my face in my hands, trying in vain to block out the mental images. I had witnessed several of SHIELD's interrogations, and though I had seen many horrors in my day, they had given me nightmares for months.

Besides, I had no assurances that Loki would feel so much as a pang of sympathy for me. He himself had never hurt me, but would he object to SHIELD mangling his disobedient servant? Especially after my recent displays of false loyalty? I had no way of knowing, and it nearly killed me just to think of his cold eyes and expressionless face. Perhaps I was merely a convenience, just like Barton and Peter.

I bowed my head and folding my hands in my lap, gripping them so tightly that my knuckles turned white. My eyes watered, smearing my vision. My clenched hands, my soft black boots, and the stiff white floor all turned into one colorless blur. I was aware that there were security cameras in every corner of the cell, and agents watching my every move, but it didn't matter anymore. I didn't care who saw my tears. They fell, slowly and steadily, from my aching eyes. Each one landed on the cold, hard floor with a sickening plop.

For half an hour I cried in silence, feeling my muscles slowly cramping from my hunched-over position on the bench, but I didn't move. I couldn't move. It was all I could do to keep breathing. Slowly. In. And out. In. And out. I counted my breaths, knowing that each one brought me closer to whatever horrors SHIELD was preparing.

And then I felt something new. Something other than pain and frustration, and the wetness of my tears. It was a gentle pressure on my arm. It grew a bit stronger, and then slid along my back to encompass the whole of my shoulders.

I blinked, trying to clear my vision, and slowly glanced at Loki out of the corner of my eye. He was still sitting rigidly on the bench, facing the wall, but his arm was around my shoulders in a gentle, awkward embrace.

This unusual gesture distracted me from my dark premonitions for a moment. It suddenly occurred to me that Loki had no issue with physical contact unless any emotion was involved—in which case he became stiff and uncomfortable. There had been no hesitation when he had held my hand in New York, or kissed my hair on the plane to Tonsberg, or put in my diamond earrings before our infamous trip to London. Those displays of affection and condescension had undoubtedly been meant only to gall me. Or perhaps they had been genuine, and he had hid his compassion under a façade of sarcasm.

But here, there was no mask to hide behind. And it showed in his whole bearing. He seemed… weak. Tired. Disappointed. And angry, too. There was no denying it. I could feel it radiating from his very skin, which had grown suddenly cold against my jacket.

"Loki," I said, letting his name flick off the end of my tongue. It wasn't much more than a hoarse whisper, but I felt him move a little. "Loki, what are… what…"

He took in a shallow breath and pulled me closer, letting me lean against his strong frame. I didn't think. I just let my head rest on his leather-clad shoulder, fighting to keep my fears at bay and simply enjoy the feeling. It reminded me of poetry and soft candlelight. Of home. Was the forest house really my home? I closed my eyes and relaxed, exhausted. Loki's touch somehow calmed my nerves and began to dispel my nausea.

I could have fallen asleep right there on the bench had he not suddenly sat up with a jerk, his soothing embrace becoming crushing in an instant. I gasped for air, struggling to pull away. He let me go, and I retreated to the opposite corner of the room, staring at him in dismay.

He looked hardly less alarmed than I felt. His pupils slowly dilated, and then shrank to menacing slits as he held out both hands as if to grasp something square. The Tesseract slowly materialized, illuminating the cell with a glow far brighter than the artificial lights overhead. It seemed a living, breathing thing, sending its misty bluish rays across the room. They lit up Loki's face in such a grotesque way that he looked more ghoul than god.

A low, ground-shaking hum filled the air, and I watched as the deceptively small power-source began to vibrate in Loki's hands. His large eyes now reflected the eerie glow of the Tesseract. A loud, blaring alarm suddenly went off in the cell, and—I assumed—in the entire SHIELD base. I resisted the impulse to clap my hands over my ears in pain.

I didn't ask Loki what was happening. I doubted I would receive an answer. His skin was white as paint and growing more ashen by the second.

The Tesseract glowed brighter and brighter until I could hardly look at it. A massive beam of pure energy suddenly shot from the top, a loud boom like thunder following a second later. Loki dropped the Tesseract and jumped to his feet, backing away. The light collided with the cement and steel ceiling far above us. The whole room shook violently. Energy blasted away from the impact, only to be pulled back into a slow spin around the circular white faded to black, leaving tiny pinpoints of light behind. Exactly like stars in the night sky.

Loki turned to me, green eyes wide and fearful, as the room quaked again. The vulnerability I saw in their depths frightened me even more than the Tesseract's violent behavior. In the short time I had known Loki, he had never seemed weak. Even after a setback, no matter how major, he had always been in control. I got the feeling that his weakness scared him as much as it scared me.

A second later, the first Chitauri jumped through the portal and landed with a crash, putting a small crater in the floor. It straightened and looked around as it pulled a large gun over his shoulder. Loki pushed me behind him, armor appearing over his leather tunic.

The Chitauri turned to us and aimed the weapon at Loki's head.

At least a dozen more of the creatures fell from the ceiling, all quickly mimicking the first.

Then a large figure floated down and landed several feet away, completely shrouded in black and emanating a coldness even stronger than the icy aura I had come to expect from Loki.

"We meet again, traitor," it breathed. A putrid odor washed through the room, sickly and rotting like a corpse too long exposed from the grave. "How have you enjoyed living?"

Co-written with Alassiel

Lassie: It was definitely a team effort on this chapter. Hope you enjoyed! If you did, review! ;)