Disclaimer: I own no part of the Marvel movie universe.

Chapter 7

"Clint?" Natasha called out.

"Here."

He was in one of the labs, kneeling on the floor and leaning over a trashcan. The smell in the air made it clear he had just finished clearing his stomach of whatever was left of lunch and whatever acid was ready for dinner.

She sat on the cold tiles next to him.

"I didn't think it would be that bad."

She rubbed his back as he dabbed at his mouth with his sleeve. "It is. They meant to control him for longer. You were just a dupe of convenience, at least in Thor's thinking."

He shook his head. "No. They needed my skills. And Selvig's. That was planned."

She sighed. "A temporary dupe, then. Loki... it's like they stacked methods on him."

"He looks like I felt."

She rubbed harder. "That's over now. We know what to look for now, what the strategy is."

"But we still don't know who they were. I certainly didn't know. Selvig can't remember where the connection was to or never actually knew it. The damned device reset when it was deactivated so we can't use that to trace anything and for all any of us know that was just a staging area..."

"Clint, it will be okay. If they try again, we'll stop them."

"Natasha, they made me kill. They nearly made me kill you."

She didn't bother telling him about Loki's threat. She hadn't before, and she didn't plan on ever letting him know anything beyond that his end was planned, that they weren't just going to keep him.

And if Loki ever got his language skills back and showed signs he remembered, he was going to get a little speech about never letting Clint know what the actual plans for their mutual demise were.

"Then the best we can do is to get him well enough to tell us whatever he knows. For them to have that much control over him, and to be able to gain control over you and Selvig second-hand through his actions means they're had practice at mind control, enough that their first two attempts on humans worked in seconds. He was still under their control when Tony blew their invasion base up. His controller and whatever tech was involved their end survived somewhere else."

Clint looked up at her and his eyes were hard.

Neither of them had to say anything. They'd been on enough missions together that skill means training infrastructure, and in this case that meant...

It meant that somewhere off in the midnight sky, horrors were happening. Now. To someone. Someone from somewhere else, but close enough to human for the lessons learned from controlling one to apply to another.

Someone capable of pain, fear, hopelessness, horror, despair...

No matter where they came from, no matter what they looked like or lived like... they were people.

"We find the bastards and avenge everything they've done," Clint finally growled.

Natasha nodded. She smiled. "We've Avengers, it's what we do. Right?"

"Right."

"C'mon, let's get you cleaned up." She helped him stand.

"What about the trashcan?"

"Tony's problem for not warning you days ago personally instead of relying on someone who hadn't seen Loki to pass the message on. He can deal with it."

He managed a chuckle as they walked out, JARVIS closing the door and turning off the lights behind them.

Pepper carded her hand through Loki's hair as he lay on the bed, still doing a fair job of feigning unconsciousness. "You really have to force-feed him?"

"Even at home, when we let him go a day without simply to see what he would do, he had to be forced afterward." Thor patted his brother's shoulder. "He was never the lover of food some of my friends are, but even so, for him to be reduced to this..."

Pepper nodded. "I hope there's a way for us to help." She smiled wryly. "When SHIELD put me through the clearance checks so I could know what Tony's up to without breaking any regulations, I never imagined this was what I'd be dealing with first."

"I am sorry for that, Virginia."

"Pepper, please. And it's no problem. I'd rather have this to deal with than another invasion. This... this is something I feel less helpless about."

"What do you mean?" Thor asked.

"I'm not a warrior like you. Not even like Tony. All I could have done was get out of the way so he wouldn't be distracted trying to save me. My skills lie elsewhere. This? Even with no clue what's going on inside his head, we can try to make him comfortable, try to let him know he's going to be cared for."

Thor nodded.

"It's almost funny in a way."

Thor looked at her oddly.

"When I was a kid, we didn't even know there were other planets outside our own system. We didn't know if planets were rare or common, if having so many was the way planets were or if that made our system strange... it was just us. Every theory, every wild hypothesis, just us."

"I cannot remember being too young to not know there were other realms."

"I was still in school when they found signs of the first we knew of outside our system. And suddenly big planets were everywhere, nothing like our Jupiter. We had thought Jupiter was big!"

Thor smiled. "Indeed. And the universe is a beautiful place."

"Yes. Yes, it is. And now, we've finally got the technology to find other planets like us, and the sky... the sky is full of eyes looking back at us." She sighed. "And here I am, sitting with two aliens born on worlds we may not even be able to see yet." Wearing jeans and t-shirts, of all things.

"A long way to come in a single lifetime."

"Thor, when Steve was born, we hadn't even put an artificial satellite up yet. We barely had rockets. His parents were born before we had powered flight."

Thor stared at her. "Truth?"

"Truth. The first man to walk on our moon died only a little while ago. If you hadn't needed to go home so soon, and you'd expressed an interest, SHIELD might have been able to arrange a meeting with him for you."

"So fast to come so far."

"We're still adjusting." She shook her head. "People are still in denial about the invasion, simply because accepting it happened means admitting aliens exist. We still have people who won't believe the moon landing happened. Or that evolution is real."

"I was under the impression biology was already a respected science on this world."

"Depends on who you ask." Loki stirred under her hand. "It's okay, Bruce is gone," she told him.

"We're certain he doesn't understand language yet," Thor told her.

"Doesn't matter. It's still worth treating him like he's there."

"Indeed." He smiled broadly at her, and she knew he'd consider her an ally in her own right now, even if only in terms of taking care of his brother.

She thought of the food waiting on them all, the dinner she'd specifically picked so that Loki would be roughly eating the same as everyone else in the room.

"Thor?"

"Yes, Pepper?"

"What is it like when he eats right now? 'Messy' is all anyone's told me beyond what he's been fed."

Thor closed his eyes for a moment.

I thought I was trusted enough for that to be an acceptable question. Was I wrong?

She wasn't wrong. It just took a little while for Thor to respond.

"He tries to keep his head away and his mouth closed. Once something is in his mouth, he will chew and swallow on his own. But it is the same way every bite, no matter how long he was kept hungry."

"And he never tries to harm the person feeding him?"

"Not even once.. No bites, no struggle enough to make bruises. There was one night when Natasha told me not to try because she thought there was genuine terror in his eyes instead of mere protest. I backed off rather than risk harming him. I offered him food again before he went to sleep, but I did not have the heart to push when he turned away."

"Hmm. Oh!"

"What?" Thor's eyes were bright. "Do you think you know what is wrong with him?"

"I... think I may have an idea. And Bruce has a hypothesis he didn't tell us two, because Loki was there. Maybe if we all come up with what we think is going on and compare them, we might be able to figure some things out."

"What do you think?" Thor asked her as he looked down on Loki.

"He's like Tony when he really needs to do something but either doesn't want to or feels like he can't for some reason. Foot-dragging, but eventually willing. I think Loki wants to eat, but he doesn't think he can let himself."

"A mental block against the act of eating, then." There was a stomach-rumbling. "That was not me."

"Or me. I guess that's as good a sign as he can give us that he needs food. I'll be back with the plates for you two in a few minutes."

Thor nodded, and she left.

Once she was in the hall and a good distance away, she said, "JARVIS?"

"Yes, Pepper?"

"Don't let Loki know you're here. I don't know how he'd take a voice from nowhere and it may be a good thing if he doesn't know everything in this building is observed."

"I had calculated the same, and Mr. Stark has already made a similar request."

She smiled. It was always good when they agreed on something. Made life easier.

And at this point, anything being easier than it had to be was a blessing.