Warning: sex and death, the former more explicit than the latter, though some feel that it's debatable. Feel free to skip to the note at the end for a summarized version so you can avoid the explicit and not miss the important bits anyway.
It starts with Bruce asking the God of Mischief where Thanos had sent the cube. "I've no clue," Loki replies, shrugging with the all the elegant air of...well, of a prince. "As we know, it's headed for your City of New York, but as Thanos also told my brother, he knew nothing of the methods Agent Barton would employ in delivering the cube to its final destination."
"Oh," Bruce had said, and then Tony, Natasha and Agent Coulson walks into the lab. There's a joke in there somewhere, Bruce knows, and the punch line is something along the lines of an elephant tripping over its own trunk because that's how graceful the discussion turns out.
"Hey doc," Tony greets him cheerfully, moving right to the black case sitting on one of the tables. "What's going on?"
Bruce shrugs as he ran a scanner over the scepter Loki—or Thanos, rather—had used to mind-jack SHIELD's people. "No go on the tracking part," he tells them. "Apparently, Thanos left the entire delivery operation for Barton to arrange. Loki's given us all he can about the cube."
Loki seems to take offence to that. "I can tell you much about the Cosmic Cube," he says defensively. "But yes," he admits after a moment, "I know not how it will reach Stark Tower."
"So I'm back to this," Bruce raises the scanning wand for clarification, "but even though it matches Selvig's reports on the Tesseract, it's going to take weeks to process."
Tony hums, fiddling with the terminal that he's setting up. "Not if we by pass their mainframe, direct route to the home work-cluster and clock this at around…" he twists his wrist, "600 teraflops."
"Heh," Bruce huffs as the necktie-wearing SHIELD agent start complaining. "All I packed was a toothbrush."
That makes Tony laugh—he's obviously ignoring everything Coulson is saying to him—as he leaves the terminal and approaches Bruce, presumably to check on his work. "You know, you should come by Stark Tower sometime. Top ten floors? All R&D. You'd love it—it's candy-land."
Bruce drops his gaze to the keyboard, focusing on the information he's getting rather than the attractive and kind offer Tony was extending to him. It doesn't help that the man is crazy enough to be sincere about it.
Tony Stark is as unconventional as he'd heard.
"Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I…" he shoots a sheepish glance at the agents, "kind of broke…Harlem."
Tony waves his hands dismissively, as if the prospect of the Other Guy making an appearance didn't bother him in the slightest. "Well, I promise a stress-free environment," he says, walking around to Bruce's side. "No tension, no surprises—"
"Ow!" Bruce exclaims as something sharp cackles through his shirt and against his skin. By the time everyone—including a louder voice Bruce recognizes as Steve's—protests the action, the pain had disappeared, and the flash of annoyance Bruce felt was chased away by the eager look in Tony's eyes as he peers closely at Bruce.
"Nothing?" he asks, managing to look interested and disappointed at the same time. Bruce couldn't hold back an amused grin at Tony's…well, eccentricity.
"Are you nuts?" Steve asks, sounding angry as he stomps in, Thor following closely with a bewildered look.
"Jury's out," Tony says lightly, pulling another reluctant laugh from Bruce.
But the amusement fades because of the tense atmosphere, and another glance at everyone lets Bruce take in the stern glare on the captain's face and the hands-on-gun stance Natasha and Agent Coulson have adopted. Even Loki looks tense—though that was a little pleasing, considering that for someone who's supposed to be a god, he looked pretty anxious at the thought of facing the Other Guy. The only one who hadn't reacted so violently is Thor, but that probably doesn't count because he's supposed to be the god of thunder and strength and whatnot, so there probably isn't much that Thor's afraid of.
Tony turns back to Bruce and, half-expecting the man to realize what he'd done and react similarly to everyone else, Bruce returns to the task at hand. "You really have got a lid on it, haven't you?" he asks rhetorically. "What's your secret—mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?"
"Is everything a joke to you?" Rogers persists unhappily.
"Funny things are," Tony replies.
"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny," Steve snaps, which sort of hurt because…well, Captain America thinks he's a threat. "No offense," he tacks on, glancing at Bruce briefly before turning his glare back on Tony.
The off-hand apology doesn't soothe the hurt, and deep beneath his consciousness, a dim roar rumbles through his head. "Yeah, i-it's all right," Bruce says, more to convince the Other Guy than to assuage Steve's clearly non-existent guilt over the—also clearly—unintended insult. "I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle—" he glances at the object in Tony's hand and doesn't recognize it, "…pointy things."
Tony walks away with a huff, but before Bruce can finish feeling hurt at the presumed rejection, he says, "You're tiptoeing, big man," in a fond tone. "You need to strut."
And despite Steve's snap that Tony needed to focus on the problem now, Bruce is relieved that he somehow has someone vouching for his self-control, even if it's in a rather roundabout way.
"You think I'm not?" Tony asks, a plastic wrapper crinkling in his hand. "Why did Fury call us and why now?" he points out. "Why not before? What isn't he telling us?"
"Mister Stark," Coulson finally speaks up, breaking into the rather impressive show Tony was just starting to put on, "we didn't—"
Tony holds up a hand. "I didn't say you, Agent. I said 'Fury.'" And then he narrows his eyes at Coulson. "Unless you wanna tell us what he's not saying."
"I can't say for sure what he's keeping quiet about," Coulson hedges.
Tony harrumphs. "Then you don't get to sidetrack me," he tells the agent. "I'm getting to the bottom of it." Then Tony grins and strikes a pose. "Call me Holmes. Sherlock Holmes."
"You really think Fury's hiding something," Steve half-asks, bringing them back on-topic.
"He's a spy," Tony says, reaching into the bag for…was that blueberries? "Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets," he exaggerates before stuffing a handful of blueberries into his mouth. "And it's bugging him too," he adds as he chews, and Bruce buckles at being put under the spotlight once more.
Bruce hems and haws, trying to wave the attention away. "I just wanna finish my work here and—"
"Doctor?" Steve presses with a no-nonsense voice that keeps the room quiet.
Well mostly quiet, as Thor leans close to Loki and asks in an ineffective whisper, "What is it they speak of?"
Loki hushes his brother, peering intently at Bruce.
Nervous at the attention, Bruce releases a breath of air and takes his glasses off to fiddle with so that he doesn't have to look at anyone as he began. "'A…warm light for all mankind'—Thanos's jab at Fury about the cube."
"I heard it," Steve confirms. Bruce tries not to squirm at being the sole focus of Captain America's gaze.
"Well, like Loki said, it was Thanos taunting us with the cube's location, but I also think there's more to it. I think it was meant more for you," Bruce says, gesturing to Tony. A small smirk of approval appears on Tony's face and he offers his blueberries up to Bruce—as a ruse to hide his expression or as a reward for Bruce's insight or perhaps both, Bruce isn't sure. In any case, Bruce is a little hungry, so he takes two and sets them down on the table for later consumption, when he really got hungry. "Even if Barton didn't tell Thanos about the tower, it was still all over the news."
"What's so special about that big ugly—" Tony turns sharply to Steve, who politely ceases his condescending tone, "—building in New York anyway?" Behind Steve, Bruce sees Natasha bite back a grin of amusement.
Bruce hides a smile of his own. "It's powered by an arc reactor—a self-sustaining energy source," he states, glancing at Tony questioningly, though by now he's realized that this whole show was to get Steve up to speed on what was happening. At Tony's nod, Bruce continues. "That thing will run itself for what—a year?"
Tony shrugs. "It's just a prototype." And he isn't bragging at all when he says it, because for him, it's just a fact. "I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now," he explains to Steve, who was doing his best not to look confused. "That's what he's getting at." Something clicks for Steve, and his face clears in understanding.
"So why didn't SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project?" Bruce points out. "I mean, w-what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?"
At that, Steve glances at Coulson and Natasha. "Would you care to explain?" he asks them.
Natasha holds her hands up. "Don't look at me," she claims, apparently affected by the captain's stare. "I've been on two consecutive assignments since my appointment with Mister Stark—that's where my focus has been." The last part is said a little bitterly, and Bruce supposes it was because of the missing agent she's been so fixated on.
Even Coulson seems to blanch a little when Steve turns his gaze towards him. "I think you should take the matter to Director Fury," he says in avoidance.
Steve seems to sense that he wouldn't get anything from Coulson and Natasha, so he exhales heavily and agrees, leaving the room abruptly.
"Finally," Tony sighs, looking relieved. "That's the guy my dad never shut up about?" he adds with a whine. "Now I'm wondering if they shouldn't have kept him on ice."
Bruce huffs a laugh even as Coulson turns his indignant eyes on Tony. "Watch it, Mister Stark."
"Watching it," Tony acquiesces, holding his hands up in a move reminiscent of Natasha's reaction to Steve's scrutiny. "And now we move onto topic number two," he says, eyes twinkling as he moves his attention to Loki and Thor. "So," he begins nonchalantly. "About our little time-traveler."
The familiar shriek of a seagull wakes her up and for a moment, Anna wonders what the hell Clint had fed her last night for her to have such a weird dream. Not that she can remember what said dream was, but the feeling of oddness clings to her as she rolls over, slipping an arm and a leg over smooth, hard man-flesh. A deep hum of pleasure rumbles under her cheek and she sighs in satisfaction.
It was a good morning already.
A large hand glides up her hips and over her waist. "Are you up?"
She bites back a giggle when he predictably cups her breast and smoothes a thumb over her nipple. "No." She moves her leg up until her knee is tucked between his cock and balls. "But you are."
He laughs and moves over her, and she keeps her eyes closed as he presses their lips together. His body slides between her legs easily, hips rolling against hers, and she pulls back with a gasp when he sinks into her without warning, her body stretching around him pleasurably.
"Oh, shit," she mutters, clutching at his shoulders and squeezing her eyes further shut as she wonders just how long he was because holy fuck, would henever end?
"Damn, Anna." His breath spreads hotly across the hollow of her throat when her mons can finally grind against his skin. "My god, you feel so good."
He trails kisses down her chest as he leisurely fucks her, and she keens when his teeth tug sharply at her right nipple and his hips roll into her at the same time, because the combined sensations are amazing together and he reaches in so deep and puts delicious pressure on her clit at the same time. She does her best to try and look up at him, but his mouth is busy worshiping at the altar of her breasts and shoulder and throat and who was she to stop him? So she runs her tongue over the shell of his ear and sucks at his lobe whenever she can reach it instead, and when her mouth isn't doing that, she murmurs her thoughts aloud to him, knowing it drives him crazy when she talks borderline-dirty to him.
"These arms make it so hard for me to concentrate on my training," she whispers, brushing the tips of her fingers along his biceps before moving her hands away. Then her fingers dig into his ass and scratch a path up his back, making him jerk sharply into her, a grunt of surprise escaping him. "Fuck," she moans, rolling her hips against him. "Again. Do that again."
"No." He bites down at her shoulder.
"Bastard." She clenches her muscles around him, drawing a strangled gasp from his throat. Losing rhythm, he tries to slow his thrusts but Anna isn't having any of it. "Please," she murmurs, brushing her lips over the shell of his ear as she arches her back and bucks her hips up as wantonly as she could. "I'm so close already. Can you feel me shaking? You do that to me all the time—"
"God-fucking-damn, Anna." Her legs are hiked up into the air, those big hands hooking behind her knees to press her thighs against her breasts as he speeds up his pace, turning their lazy morning sex into a more frantic, sharp coupling. The headboard starts slamming noisily into the wall, and she moans and keens and mewls and intersperses all of that with expressive cusses because she knows that hearing her lose her cool like that get him off just as fast, andgod, but she fucking loves making this previously uptight, highly-disciplined man lose his cool like this.
Her ego swells twice as large every time.
A firm hand slithers around her neck, and Anna looks up into the bright, bright blue of Clint Barton's eyes as he buries his dick deep, stops moving, and begins to strangle her.
"No." She chokes on the word, but it doesn't matter because she needs to get loose. "Clint—" She scratches at his hand, slaps him repeatedly across the face and yanks at his salt-and-peppered hair, to no avail. "—stop it!"
'But you love this.'
She always remembers that fucking bastard too late. "Tha—" her eyes threaten to roll back as he squeezes tighter, "—nos."
"You love this man," he says with Clint's voice, and Clint's lips stretch into the smile that's made her ache between her legs from the time she was seventeen years old and following him as he looked for a casual hook-up with the usual random redhead in Madrid. "From what I've seen, this affection you have is considered disgraceful. Why, then, would a woman of your Earthly ranking possess such a desire? Not to mention," he adds, and the body between hers pulls out and pushes in again, making her gasp at how sensitive, at how real everything felt, "that such notions are unbefitting of a lady of Asgard. We should, perhaps, remove the cause of such symptoms, yes?"
"No," she grits out, her vision beginning to darken even as the pleasure rose through her once more. "Please—"
—stop-pleaseletgo-pleaseletmebreathe-Iwilldoanythin gjust—
"—spare him."
"Spare him!" Thanos laughs. "Your world in the balance and you bargain for one man. You're a conundrum, Thorsdóttir."
A whine escapes her. "Please—"
"Give into me," Thanos suddenly says. "I'll reward you beyond your wildest imaginings. You can have your Clint Barton and anything else you wish." His promise would have meant a lot more if he let her breathe. "I'll show you how it can be," his hand loosens then, and her lungs scramble to suck in a loud breath, coughing as she forces her abused throat to widen and let the air pass, "if you just give into me." He digs Clint's fingers into the flesh of her hips as Clint's body moves faster against her, angling his thrusts—
For a moment, her world whites out entirely as her body shudders with orgasm, and in those precious few seconds, she forgets about Thanos, knowing only that the cock fucking her through climax belongs to Clint—the man she's had fucking complicated feelings for since Day One of their meeting. And it felt so. Fucking. Good.
When her body finishes calming down, she opens her eyes and sees the bright blue that heralds Thanos's control over Clint's body. "No?" he murmurs. "Very well then."
The scene suddenly changes.
They're on a chair now, Anna hovering above Clint with her thighs spread on either side of his body, her hands on his firm biceps for support as she sank over and over into his lap. There's a slight curl on Clint's lip that she'd seen twice before—once when she hit her first bullseye from an impressive hundred-yard distance, and the other when she tripped avoiding one of his silly tripwires, somehow launched herself through the nearby window and earned a total of twenty-one stitches all over her body. When he looks up at her now, the tell-tale blue of mind-control is nowhere to be found, leaving the familiar blue-grey-shaded eyes she'd become so familiar with.
"Damn, you're amazing," Clint pants, moving mindlessly against her. "The hell have we never done this before? But seriously, the handcuffs—get them off."
'No. Move.'
"No," she obeys, her hips still rising and falling as she drags her fingers over the restraints that kept him from touching her. The ones around his ankles rattle noisily.
"Anna," he says in a warning tone that sends a thrill through her, one that had her rubbing her crotch into his and groaning as her arousal spikes higher. "I wanna touch you."
'No.'
"No."
He leans up, teeth nipping at the lobe of her ear. "C'mon," he groans. "I can't get off like this. You're just torturing me."
'He should be patient.'
"Be patient," she tells him, dipping down firmly and clenching her muscles around him, drawing out a long moan from his throat. "I'll get you there." She licks a bead of sweat off his chest and rolls her eyes up to see him looking at her, his eyes blown dark with hot desire. "Promise."
"Jesus Christ," he breathes, jerking up helplessly. "I could come to that look on you."
'Why doesn't he?'
"Why don't you?" she asks, bending back and bracing herself on his knees.
Clint's eyes trails down her body, tongue peeking out to lick at his lips. "Think I will," he answers hoarsely, bucking into her. His eyes dart to her breasts when they bounce, and he starts moving in earnest. "Holy fuck," he rasps, eyes squeezing shut briefly as she tosses her head back and mewls. "C'mere," he beckons in a gruff voice that has her obeying instantly, letting him press his lips to hers roughly as he continues to fuck her. The handcuffs clink and clatter while he tries his best to reach for her, and she laces her fingers through his and keeps his hands still. He tightens his fingers around hers as she leans in to press her chest against him and suck a path up to his ear, making him groan and speed up his pace.
'Do it.'
"So good," she sighs, hearing his breath catch at the words. "Can you come like this, Clint?"
"God yes," he hisses, teeth nipping at her jaw before he kisses her again.
"Then do it," she moans against his lips, "inside me, Clint." She squeezes down on him, and Clint jerks, falling out of his rhythm. "Oh damn," she purrs, "I forgot a condom."
"Shit!" he gasps, moaning brokenly and shuddering as he came inside her. "Anna, holy fucking hell!"
'Kill him.'
Still moving against him, Anna snaps her hand forward quickly, driving it forcefully into his neck. Clint's eyes pop open as he chokes, the handcuffs rattling as he struggles to get free and stop her. Running her fingers up his chest, Anna pants as she cups his cheeks gently, twisting his head sharply until she heard a snap.
She comes then, yelling his name into his broken neck and pumping her hips against his to prolong the sensations running through her.
'Good,' Thanos says from behind her. 'Very good.' And then she comes back to her senses, abruptly feeling the ache between her thighs, the warm foreign liquid still spurting from the cock buried inside her, and the sweat rolling down her back as she stares at Clint's dead body, remembering how she'd—
Anna screams, jerking away, only to fall short as her wrists and ankles caught on the handcuffs.
No. No, she was handcuffed to the chair now, locked into place against the man she'd just killed mid-orgasm.
"Let me go," she sobs, hovering over Clint and doing her best to keep from touching him. Not out of disgust for his dead body, but in shame.
And fear. Because Thanos could do it, couldn't he? He could have Clint sit in a chair and use her own hands to snap his neck just as easily as he'd had her do here. With Clint under mind-control, the handcuffs wouldn't even be needed to hold him steady.
'How many times has that been, Lady Thorsdóttir?' Thanos asks mockingly. 'Have you been keeping count?'
One-hundred and thirty-seven. She's killed her mother, Uncle Rhodey, Uncle Bruce and Uncle Steve ten times each. But Clint…
She's killed Clint forty-seven times now. Thanos had fixated on him the most because he was connected to Clint. He was showing her how Clint liked his food, how he trained, how he fucked, and the bastard wasn't even using any of her memories of him. Everything he's letting her see now is all Clint Barton. He dangled the information in front of her, knowing she could do nothing about it.
'You kill everything you touch.'
She does, doesn't she? She'd even almost killed herself before she was born, her umbilical cord apparently having wrapped around her neck. The doctor should never have seen it. If he hadn't, then only one life would've been taken had she died in utero—hers. Instead, she'd been born prematurely and single-handedly caused the death of three Avengers.
She's the stain on their legacy. She kills everything she touches.
'Give in to me,' Thanos murmurs quietly. 'I reward my faithful.'
…no, he didn't. Anna knows he doesn't know, but every time he tortures her with pure pain, his memories leak forward for her to see. She knows well that he rewards no one—not even the most faithful of his minions.
It's tempting though. To give everything up and just play the submissive puppet. To let the son of a bitch pull all her strings.
"Anna." She yelps and jerks away in surprise, dragging the chair backwards and making Clint's body slump onto her.
"Uncle Thor," she chokes out, the restraints rattling as she sees him over Clint's head. Much like the day he saved her, he doesn't seem to notice the naked state she's in. Thor simply reaches forward to break the handcuffs off her wrists and helps her out of the chair, this time away from Clint's dead likeness.
"You'll be just fine, Anna," Uncle Thor tells her, detaching his red cape from his shoulder-plates and wrapping the coarse fabric around her shoulders, covering her up. "I'm here now."
'What is he?' Thanos demands, his voice coming from all around her. 'How does he exist? How can you do this?'
Anna doesn't know either. Thanos had gone through her memories with a fine-toothed comb, but he never found the answer he was looking for. To be honest, Anna doesn't care how he was there—she's just grateful that even in her own mind, Uncle Thor was always be there for her, saving her when she needed saving.
"Trust me, Anna," Uncle Thor says, placing a kiss on her sweaty forehead. "I'll save you. Always."
'He cannot save you! He is but a construct of your mind! You're only fooling yourself!' Thanos contradicts, but the doubt he'd planted is weeded out as Uncle Thor quietly smiles that 'we-know-something-the-Allfather-doesn't' smile of his.
"Never forget," he bids her, tucking her under his arm and leading her carefully out of the room, "you are a Stark, and your forefathers never knew how to give up."
'Fool!' Thanos hisses as he got rid of her uncle the only way he knew how.
The world fades out as Anna starts screaming again.
Notes:
Sherlock Holmes: Sorry, I couldn't help myself. I just had to put that in there.
Explicit Sex and Death part: Thanos performs psychological torture on Anna by preying on the attraction she has for Clint Barton. He has her have sex with Clint while she's under mind-control, then kills him. Sort of a backwards situation of the scene where Loki taunts Black Widow during their confrontation in the detention level.
Disclaimer: I took the part where Thanos taunts Anna with Clint and his death from the scene between Loki and Black Widow in the detention level, and so therefore do not really own it. Except the sex part of it all—that wasn't in the movie. And also, the part where Tony Stark pokes Bruce Banner and Steve Rogers reacts are taken from the scene when Iron Man, Hulk and Captain America are talking in the lab, and so I therefore don't own it. The words, when arranged in…um, well, mostly in that order, belong to the screen writers of The Avengers 2012 movie.
Why did I use it? To make it clear that in my AU of The Avengers 2012 movie, everyone stays as in character as I can keep them. Here, they are still the same characters we watched in the movie, but they're now reacting to the news that Loki isn't the bad guy and that Thanos is the real bad guy who's already controlling Anna's body, holding her mind captive, and effectively turning her into a hostage that Tony—just him for now—is trying to save because he knows that she's a time-traveler, and that she's their best bet in saving the world and winning the fight against the alien invaders.
Anna and Clint: This is more of a psychological thing too. It's not torture, but her attraction to Clint Barton is weird by normal social standards. Although my muse and I say that it's all because of Anna's daddy issues, I'll get into the why this pairing later. Way later—like, after-the-AU-part-of-the-movie-is-done later.
