Long chapter + no time to write it = long update time. The only math I enjoy -.- anywho...here you guys are quick update hope you like it

Chapter 5- Searching for Answers

"Alright, I want you to come back in two days so I can check your healing progress, but otherwise you're free to go,"Bruce said.

Elaina slid off the white-sheeted bed to the polished floor.

"Thanks, Bruce, you made me like hospitals a little bit more," she said with a short laugh.

"You're welcome. Remember, no falling out of planes and no following Clint up into the rafters."

Elaina smiled, still taking him seriously, as she walked to the door, still slightly limping.

"I won't. Wouldn't want to worry you or anything stressing like that. Good-bye, Bruce."

"Good-bye," he said with a smile, shaking his head in defeat.

She walked down the hallway of the Helicarrier, heading to her room. The last thing she wanted was more sleep, but she did want to take a shower -which she hadn't done in longer than usual- and fix her hair and make-up, even though she hardly wore any of it. Thirty minutes later Elaina was finished with a very careful shower and was in the process of brushing out her wet, dark brown hair. Even though she had recovered too much activity still made her lightheaded forcing her to stop. She knew she wouldn't be needed on the bridge for a while, Bruce would see to that, so she decided to do a little research of her own. Logging on to her personal laptop she pulled up a previously visited website about a political group named "For Their Futures." Then by cross-referencing their name over a trusted search engine she found what she had been looking for. The group had been accused of being involved in an assassination scandal eight years ago. Though it wasn't news to her, the fact that the public thought they could have even remotely been involved threw hope into the matter. Elaina was deep into her findings when the door to her room slid open.

"May I come in?" came the familiar voice.

She turned in her desk chair to face the doorway.

"Captain Rogers, what a surprise, of course come in," she said with a smile.

He smiled back at her, flashing white teeth, "I wanted to see for myself that you were all right."

"Oh, well, I'm fine, thank you," she said the smile sticking to her face.

"I'm not intruding am I?"

"No! No, of course not, you're fine. You can sit if you'd like," she said gesturing to an extra chair.

"Thank you," he said sitting down.

"Is that something for S.H.I.E.L.D? If you don't mind me asking," he added seeing her screen.

"No, it's sort of a personal mission, it's about this group called For Their Futures. I wouldn't expect you -or anyone here for that matter- to know about them, they like to stay out of the spotlight as much as they can."

"So why are you interested in them, then?"

Elaina looked toward him for a second before looking back at her screen.

"They were accused of being involved in the assassination, some way or another, of Maria Atkinson eight years ago. She was about to expose them for some pretty bad things. She was at a press conference about to reveal what she found when she was killed."

"Politics haven't changed," Steve said. "Was she right?"

"She did her research and she never played dirty," Elaina said. "What ever her reasons were she had to have been right. Especially, if they wanted to kill her for it."

"Did you know her personally?"

"No, but I've done my research. She was a lawyer for a year and a half before she moved into politics. No one can really prove FTF had anything to do with it because it was so long ago."

"You don't have technology for that?" Steve asked.

Elaina chuckled, "No, you weren't asleep that long; we haven't figured out time travel just yet."

"I meant videos or recordings. I think I would know about time travel," Steve smiled.

Elaina's eyes widened, her mouth actually falling open and her gaze fixed on the floor.

"Elaina? Elaina, are you alright?" Steve asked, concern rising in his voice.

Elaina suddenly snapped out of her stupor when she realized she was scaring Steve to death.

"Videos! You're a genius!" she exclaimed.

"Stark and Dr. Banner are the geniuses, I think I hardly qualify..."

"Please, Captain, you are very smart-"

"Please call me by my name, I heard that Dr. Banner had to tell you the same," Steve added in.

"Either way, thank you, you might have just changed this case."

"Glad I could help. Listen, I have to go, Fury wanted me for some thing or another. You really do think highly of the six of us, don't you?" Steve said with a smile.

"I guess I do. Why shouldn't I? You saved the world and you're all basically legends."

"The only thing legendary about me is the city I come from," Steve countered being humble as always.

For a second he stared straight at Elaina, neither of them saying anything.

"Weren't you about to-?" she started.

"Yeah," he said quickly, starting to walk out of the room.

Right before he walked out he stopped, seeming to consider what had just been said and then shook his head, leaving. It was as if a conversation similar or exactly like that had come up to him before.

The next afternoon Elaina sat in front of a computer on the bridge of the Helicarrier. When her previous searches turned up negative for any of Dr. Durov's known hideouts she started to use everything she knew about him to run a general search. She used aliases, passports, cameras, credit cards, anything that could be traced or link him to a location somewhere on the planet. Right now he might as well have been on Mars. Eventually, the trained assassin became furious with the lack of information she was getting and threw a harsh, Russian curse word into the air.

"Somehow I think that wasn't a very positive word," the smooth words came beside her.

"A very good guess, Mr. Stark," Elaina replied as if she were teaching him. "You've just passed Russian 101."

"Good. Now I'll be able to understand all this screwed up information Jarvis keeps coming up with," Tony replied sitting in a chair next to her.

Elaina laughed and turned to face him. She figured he would have Jarvis looking for things as well, but didn't think he would find as much as he was letting on.

"What kind of 'stuff'?" she asked, trying not to sound overly desperate.

"Nothing I'm sure you don't already know, definitely not a location," Tony said noticing her hinting.

"I can't believe he can be so, well, basically invisible. He was never that knowledgeable to be this elusive before," Elaina said.

Memories of cold, elaborate social gatherings filled her mind. Road signs finally remembered flashed in front of her eyes, but the words on them still remained blurry. She was close to remembering a specific place, yet she couldn't quite grasp a name. Trying harder to remember only helped the memory slip from her mind. When her eyes refocused on the present she realized she had been string blankly at Tony.

"Alright, space wonder, come back to Earth," he said.

Elaina shook her head as if trying to cast away the thought.

"What?" she asked stupidly.

"You were talking about Dr. Doom, wherever he is, being dim but never elusive," Tony joked with Durov's name. "Then you just started staring off into space."

"Sorry, I was trying to remember if there was anything I missing, but I couldn't think of anything."

Five hours later Elaina still sat in front of the unyielding computer screen. Her eyes were getting heavy, and she could barely keep them open. The moon had just started to rise in the dark sky, casting its ghastly light into the Helicarrier's windows. Slowly, she started to nod off at the desk, she tried to fight it, but to no avail. In minutes she found herself resting her head on her hand with her elbow on the desk. Closing her eyes for just a second she fell into a semi-peaceful rest. It was only a minute or so before she was woken.

"Elaina?" the voice roused her.

Groggily she opened her eyes and lifted her head from her stiff hand.

"Ow," she mumbled rubbing her wrist.

She looked up to see Clint standing behind her.

"Thanks for waking me up," she said with a sheepish smile.

"You should be resting, like Bruce said, but not here," he replied.

Elaina laughed, shifting in the chair.

"I didn't really expect to fall asleep, it just happened. Been watching me have you?" she joked. "Where'd you come from, the rafters?"

He gave her a side smile, "How'd you know?"

"You are you."

Clint smiled, starting to walk away, "Go back to your room, Elaina," he said casually.

She stared after him, every time they met he proceeded to confuse her even more. However, she did not end up going back to her room that night; she stayed on the bridge searching in vain for a man she was convinced she would never find.

The second time she fell asleep on the bridge her head was resting on her arm on the space in front of the computer. The road signs in her head reappeared, finally giving her a name to them. The biggest blue sign read "Now leaving Albuquerque." That one name triggered a whole plethora of other memories that crowded into her head at the same time. A small, seemingly normal, house on the edge of a desert. Near-by was a small cattle farm and withering, brown fields that had no doubt once been prosperous. The curious temperature was crisp and there was no water in sight for miles, the sun glared down between gray clouds reflecting off the dirt road. Elaina's eyes snapped open as she sat up in the chair at the desk. She looked around the bridge, trying to locate Fury quickly. Why hadn't she thought of it before? What had caused her to suddenly remember the name that had eluded her so shortly ago? She saw Fury at the table to the back of the bridge , getting up she started to walk that way.

"New Mexico!" she exclaimed when she had gotten closer to him.

"What?" Fury said caught off-guard.

"New Mexico, that's where he is. I haven't check yet, but I'm ninety-five-percent sure," Elaina replied.

"How'd you find this?"

"I didn't find it, sir, I finally remembered, it should be a small ranch an hour out of Albuquerque it's very secluded and we probably won't be able able to get too close by air."

"Why haven't we gotten wind of this before, if there was a threat?" Fury asked.

Elaina knew what he was implying, but not the answer to his question.

"I don't know, sir."

"Fine, we'll set course for New Mexico the minute you give me some hard evidence he's there."

"Thank you, sir."

Now that she had a possible location, a name, finding hard evidence couldn't have been easier, or so Elaina thought. Satellite turned up clean, so did radar and thermal imaging. She had found the actual ranch by calculating average speed and the time she knew it took to get there. That hadn't been the problem, the problem was that there was no sign the place had been touched in the past ten years. The first lights of dawn were just appearing through the puffy, now-orange clouds around the Helicarrier. This was when Elaina realized, despite her short, information-filled naps, how tired she really was. She started to set the satellite images back, in her jumbled, tired mind she had forgotten to try arrival. If they were there a car had to have dropped them off or was there and hidden. A few days back, there was an image of a black suburban parked in front of the house, the license plate clearly visible. Elaina smirked before proceeding to check the license plate on the SUV. Seconds later, a name popped up on her screen, a name of one of Durov's known associates in the States.

"Not so clever now, are you?" Elaina mumbled in sheer satisfaction.

After showing Fury her "hard evidence" the Helicarrier was on its way to New Mexico in minutes.

"What's the ETA, sir?" she asked.

"Three and a half days, at the least, we're a few miles off the East Coast and hopefully won't run into any trouble. Now get some rest, Agent Barton," he replied.

"Yes, sir," she replied sullenly, walking toward her room.

"You didn't sleep at all last night , did you?" the sudden voice turned on instincts that made Elaina turn in defense. She sighed, dropping her head in defeat when she saw it was only Clint.

"You have to stop doing that," she scolded him.

The produced a laugh from the archer that took her by surprise.

"One of these days, someone's going to turn around and either punch or stab you," Elaina smiled. "I'm not kidding."

"Sorry," he apologized with a smile.

"And, no, I didn't sleep last night- well, I did for a little, but then I remembered where Durov could have gone. He was there," Elaina continued.

"Where?" Clint asked curiously.

"New Mexico."

"New Mexico?" Clint said in shock. "Yeah, I remember New Mexico, I almost shot god. Don't think it would have done much, though."

Elaina smiled at his mention of a formerly-banished Asgardian.

"Another one still needs an arrow through his eye," Clint added.

Elaina could hear the scant harshness behind his words, she couldn't imagine how much he hated Loki for what the trickster had done to him. Not being able to control you actions, doing things against your will, she couldn't know how hard it had to be. She also knew how much Clint liked doing his own thing, so not being able to must have been torture.

"Get some rest, please, you're zoning out," came Clint's voice.

"Oh, sorry, yeah I'm going," Elaina said walking away.

The sun was right above the Helicarrier, casting odd shadows into the corridors. Elaina sat on the edge of her bed looking out of the window and letting her mind float with the passing clouds. She shifted her eyes over a few feet where she had view of the Number Three engine of the massive, flying aircraft carrier. She could remember, in fine detail, that horrible day when all hell had broken loose. The engine had exploded in a huge cloud of fire and smoke and the force of the blast had rocked the whole ship. She had been sitting in her room when it happened, she had seen the unauthorized Quinjet landing on the carrier.

Picking up her sidearm she ran out of her room to find the whole of the crew in a bout of panic. Somehow she made her way to the bridge where the core of the chaos was. A flash of gold and red flew past the window, Tony was going to the engine to try and fix it. She had no doubt he would, but she was worried about the safety of those on board.

"Take us to the water!" Fury called.

"We're flying blind, navigation's recalibrating after the engine failure," one of the S.H.I.E.L.D members piloting the Helicarrier said.

"Is the sun coming up?" Fury asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Then put it on the left!" Fury exclaimed. "Get us over water, one more turbine goes down and we drop!"

Elaina was surprised how much they depended on technology and how lost they were without it.

"Agent Barton!" Fury called.

Elaina looked around first, as she usually did, before realizing her mistake.

"Yes, sir?" she replied loudly over the many panicked voices.

"Go after Barton," he said.

"Clint?" Elaina clarified.

"Yes."

"Are you sure, sir? I mean, do you think I'll be able to-"

"You'll be fine. Right now you're the only one available that can match him, now do so before he causes anymore damage."

"Yes, sir," she replied taking out her sidearm.

She got off the bridge, moving quickly down the corridors looking for any sign of Clint or Loki's lackeys. Then she wondered what the rest of the Avengers -besides Tony- were doing so as they were not "available" to chase down one of their own. That thought struck concern inside her as she swiped her access key to open the first door leading away from the bridge. When the door closed behind her she realized she was staring at a group of the invaders...along with Clint.

Elaina backed against the door, her gun dropping to her side. She looked behind her to make sure the door had locked securely. When she looked back she was staring down the tip of an arrow.

"It will take too long to kill you, move aside," the smooth words came from Clint.

No, not Clint, this isn't Clint, it's Loki, Elaina's conflicted thoughts ran.

Her face wrinkled into a frown to see him like this, doing these horrible things against his will. She shook her head slowly, pressing her back against the door.

"I won't let you," she said.

"Just shoot her!" egged one of the men.

The former-assassins locked eyes, she could see that he hadn't slept, the area around his eyes -still filled with the glittering color of the Tesseract- was red. She calculated that into her short list of advantages. She knew he didn't need a weapon to kill her, the short-sleeved black shirt he wore highlighted the muscles in his arms from years of wielding a bow. Ultimately, he was stronger than her, much stronger. The first blow came faster than she expected, ducking she evaded an arm over her head. She struck back blocking his arms and sending her knee into his stomach. The archer stumbled backwards, drawing his bow loaded with a trick arrow. Elaina threw herself to the side hearing the arrow cut through the air beside her. She got closer to him, knocking the bow from his hand with one well-placed kick. It didn't seem to hinder him, however, and in stead he drew out a short-bladed knife. In another flurry of locking arms and lashing out with legs, Elaina felt a searing line of pain cross her forearm when she got a little too close to Clint. A long, bleeding gash ran down her arm where he had swiped the knife across her arm. She had been wrong, apparently lack of sleep didn't seem to be effecting his ability to fight with his normal speed and agility. She recoiled holding her injured arm out of his reach and before she knew what had happened he had his arm around her neck. She fought against him to no use only to get her neck bruised. He let go of her for a second before bringing his arm against her head, knocking her almost to the point of unconsciousness. She hit the ground in a heap, her body partially supported by the corner of the two walls meeting. She could feel herself being lifted half-way up by one of the lackeys and that something was being pressed against her neck.

"No, I wasn't lying when I said it'd take to long, come on, we got more important people to kill," she vaguely heard Clint's voice.

She was dropped back on the floor where she fell unconscious.

After that Elaina remembered the failure of the Number One engine and the Helicarrier starting to fall from the sky had woken her up. She had made it back to the bridge when Tony had restarted the third engine and the panic had died down. Of course, the aftermath had been horrible, the people they had lost and the Avengers had been scattered. She got off of the bed, remembering what day it was, starting to walk down the hallways to the medical wing. Halfway to the wing she realized what she was doing. Turning around she started to walk toward Bruce's lab in stead, she had no idea why she would think Bruce would stay in the medical wing. Few S.H.I.E.L.D members were roaming the halls which led her to believe most were on the bridge helping their course to New Mexico. She wondered what Durov could possibly want there, that lab was by far the least equipped for his tasks. Of course, she knew he would have gotten as far away from the Russian lab as possible, but to go to the one hideout that couldn't meet his needs gave her the idea that something was wrong. Nothing was wrong with the location she had found, she knew that much, something was wrong with the reasons she thought he had for being there. He wasn't trying to perfect his weapon, that was for sure. It worried her that he might already have the weapon and was planning its first use in the United States. The chilling thought accompanied her all the way to the Research Level.

The door to the lab slid open, she could see Bruce in the far corner looking at one of the suspended screens. He finished whatever it was he was doing before turning to face the door.

"Elaina, come in, I was just getting ready to call for you," Bruce said.

"You thought I wouldn't remember because it's a head injury?" Elaina joked.

Bruce smiled, "I don't think anything could effect your memory."

"Was that a complement or a reference to me being hard-headed?" Elaina smiled.

Bruce gave a short laugh, "I meant it as a complement."

"I know, I was just joking with you," Elaina said.

"How do you feel? You seem fine to me," Bruce asked.

"My head still hurts a little, but not as much as it did before, only more when I put too much pressure on it. Otherwise, I feel fine."

"'Hurts'? How?"

"On a scale of zero to ten it's about a six," Elaina explained.

"That's surprising, here, can you look at me?" he asked.

She looked at Bruce, letting him look her over for a few minutes.
"Wow, you're a fast healer," he said.

"I always have been, I broke my arm once when I was seven and healed in nearly half the time the doctors said I would. Of course, they still made me wear a brace until their assumed time had passed, but it was just a precaution," she said. "They never could explain it, it just was."

"That's interesting and completely believable right now. You're showing signs of a minor concussion which is remarkable considering its only been two days and the severity before was so high."

His statement made Elaina feel better about going to New Mexico.

"Will I be able to go on the New Mexico mission?" she asked curiously.

"How long until we get there?"

"Three days at the least and I promise I'll be extremely careful when we get there," Elaina half-begged.

She knew if Bruce didn't want her to go that she wouldn't go because of how much Fury trusted him.

"I think you'll be fine, and, besides, if Fury wants you on the mission -unless you're lying in a bed half dead- I don't think I could question his orders," Bruce said smiling.

"Of course you could, he trusts your judgment and even more so now," she said.

"Maybe that's true, but they still need you desperately for the mission. Just, please, get some rest every night, okay? No staying up through the night on the bridge in front of a computer," he said.

Elaina sighed, "I'm guessing Tony wasn't the one who told you that."

"You would be correct."

Elaina nodded, "Okay, if that's how he wants to play it...Alright, good-bye, Bruce, and thanks again."

"Bye, Elaina, don't kill Clint you might end up hurting yourself."

She smiled as she walked out the door, waving behind her back at Bruce.

Sorry for any grammar/spelling/misuse of words I had no time to proof read this and just want you guys to stop your waiting :)

And since the DVD came out (its permanent place of residence is in my computer) I wanted to add another scene I enjoy in the movie (yes Fury getting angry at the stupid pilot who has no clue in which direction oceans are even if the sun is rising...) and added some Loki-possessed-Clint in it to make it even better.

Well, you all probably know she's not going to kill clint...uh-oh spoiler...haha not really. So hope you all enjoyed it might be a while before the next update but I promise it will be worth it and youll get some more sight into elaina's past and for all those hawkeye fans, yes, even more hawkeye :) I know how you guys feel. Will work as fast as possible :P ~SHSK