So i realized that I've written up to chapter 25 (out of who knows how many) and I've only posted up to 16. so here's another fast update!

Thank you too!::

amy. .9 SO. Many. Possibilities.

Fury-Natalia Update: commence!

Ms. Hawkeye ohhhhhhh sweet historical society don't fail me now:)

I Can Hear the Drums

Chapter 17

Since the days Thanos first attempted to quash the Nine Realms, his reclusive home of Thran had been invaded by Asgard's armies, and veritably destroyed. With the Infinity Gauntlet lost, his Chitauri army dispersed. Left weak and exposed from the battle, he was forced to retreat from his stronghold to the edge of the universe itself, in a place that became known as Wrath Slum.

Wrath Slum was an asteroid belt swirling in steady rhythm around a mega-planet, just the place that might appeal to the dictator's aesthetics. So long as he remained passive to his neighbor Kree and distant Shi'ar, he was allowed to build a steady territory, and form once more the powers which once made him the single most influential creature the universe had seen in a millennium. His Chitauri grew prodigiously. His loyalists likewise expounded. Those who might have once considered him the greatest of evil, now turned to him in their trembling for assistance. Fear abounded. He'd learned many lessons from his first attempt at conquering the Nine Realms. He required more loyalties, an unending affiliation of spies to work as his eyes and ears in the worlds. From his little orbiting belt, he controlled so much more than anyone knew. He understood more of those human corruptions that a superior species might discount.

Leverage; he became a ruler with a lot of leverage.

In the privacy of his thoughts, he might laugh at the Kree's hearty appeal to his help when Midgard began their arms race. Openly, he merely pulled the strings of their own future demise. He had his own interests in this death that came sailing toward them, should it ever come. Thanos did not put his faith in the frightened words of mere mortals. He saw the practicality of what his army faced, and he knew only one thing for certain: Midgard could never be allowed to develop as a universal power. His pull within the Kree Empire made sure that his neighbor race agreed. He'd let them fight those little battles, serve as a distraction, and fracture Midgard's armada. There were more important things for his attention to turn toward.

Alfheimr's involvement had been a shock. Thanos didn't like surprises, especially when so much went into getting him where he was today. He'd spent considerable time and resources extracting Amora, the Enchantress, from her prison in Hel to be his eyes and ears in the Nine Realms. For her to miss this pivotal turning point in Alfheimr's once peaceful history, was enough to warrant her death sentence. He didn't mourn the loss, he mourned the missed opportunity. Had he any notion of what the deceased King Haladarrel had planned, he might have changed his mind as to what side Alfheimr was on. It wouldn't have been easy, but he was a young king, and they tended to be impressionable. Now with Rinon sitting as the Le'lareme, the admiral of the elven armadas, a greater wealth of issues occurred. Rinon would have to be converted, or killed. Those were the only options.

"I see little has changed, not that I am surprised. You always did prefer more color in your attendants than your surroundings."

Thanos' marred chin rose in a tight smile. He turned away from the distant undulating waves of his armored serpents to address his visitor. "You're late."

"I got hung up." The tall, slim Frost Giant crossed the space between them, and glanced down into the cosmic abyss where Thanos' attention once rested. There were millions of those horrid creatures down there, cruising through the light reflected from the mega-planet's surface. They swam forward like a school of fish, following the asteroids.

"We had an agreement about your requirements in my service," Thanos reminded him.

Loki's eyes flicked over. He thought better of his proximity to the edge, and retreated. "I had not anticipated the close quarters of my previous ship. A mere oversight." Loki felt the rush of air as Thanos reached for him. He meant to step away, but the massive hand clamped down on his throat. He tried to phase away, attempted to escape back into the fissures of his mind and appear in the little shared room he had on the Milano, but somehow he couldn't. He was trapped in Thanos' hand.

The ruler clamped down, tightening until Loki could feel his fingerprints bruising into his spine. Any tighter, and the Frost Giant feared he may completely lose his head from his body. His skin flashed blue, he gasped, tried to pry free, but Thanos held him still.

"I warned you what would come if you crossed me," Thanos growled. He retracted his arm, pulling Loki in close enough to feel the heat of his breath. "I will not kill you. I wouldn't give you the pleasure of that." His arm extended, swiftly, whipping the Frost Giant backward against an outcrop of rock. Loki might have shouted if he could find the air for it.

"Your old friend, the Asgardian's Enchantress, has been in my employ for long enough to make you understand the depths of my sincerity, putrid flesh. You will find me that power I seek, or you will suffer every atrocity I can attribute to you. I have all the time and patience to enact everything I can that will make your every dream a tangible nightmare." Thanos released at last, and Loki collapsed in a heap.

He struggled to fill his lungs as quickly as possible. "Wai – " he coughed, wheezed, sucked in a breath and tried again with his hand on his collar to pull his shirt from his neck. "Wait! A st—stone. He has a stone! Barton, Quill, they've discovered one."

"A single stone?" Thanos asked, skeptically.

"I do not know how he has come across it, but I have seen evidence of it, yes. I can bring it to you. Dispel this debt. Call it a gesture of good faith to allow me to leave and retrieve it." Loki was desperate, grasping at straws.

Thanos took his time considering it. "What has the man planned to do with it?"

"Barton does not trust me. He will not say," Loki lied.

"Do they mean to use it to find the rest of the stones? What of the Gauntlet? Is that not yet found?"

Loki stayed on his knees and held up his hands. "I know nothing more. That Guardian had it on his ship. We happened across it by chance alone. That is all I know."

Thanos came for him again. Prepared for this second attack, Loki withdrew a shadow dagger and meant to strike out with it. But Thanos vanished before his very eyes. Loki looked around, expecting a scuff of a foot along the floor, the evidence of a portal, something that might shed light as to where Thanos had gone. There was nothing. It was as if he had simply disappeared into thin air.

From behind, Loki felt arms cross his chest, pinning his hands down. Thanos reappeared like a mirage findings its form. Suddenly, it all came together in the blink of an eye. Elven technology. The dark elves' cloaking device, adapted to a living being. He'd somehow achieved it!

Thanos squeezed with his inhuman strength, tighter and tighter. The sharp tips of his metal gloves dug into Loki's chest and began to dissect their way outward. Loki screamed as he felt his chest being mercilessly ripped apart.

"You are mine, Frost Giant. Find me a way to destroy these Midgardians, and I might let your suffering end."

:(:):(:):

Clint groaned against his arm. He shifted slightly in his cot while, beneath him, Loki rolled around on his own clump of bedding. He told himself he should force Rocket to fashion him a set of ear muffs. Dwelling for the past near three months as Loki's companion, almost did him in. His newfound ability to hear, brought with it a near hypersensitivity to the world at large, was more of a burden than it was fortuitous. Natasha liked to say he could hear a fly buzz three rooms away. It may be helpful on a mission. Attempting to sleep just above someone who spent his night tossing and turning, was not what he needed.

"Loki, shut up!" Clint growled, dropping his hand down to grope for the Frost Giant's face. They both opted to not share a room with the peculiar Drax. Peter's filthy room was also off limits. Gamora, and the Rocket/Groot option, was all that remained. And, valuing their lives, they declined both.

A fifth stateroom existed on the top deck, though it was overrun with a thousand of Rocket's miniature explosives, Quill's useless hoarding, and fifteen pounds of leaves. It took a full day to clear the junk into the vacuum of space for the thrusters to burn. At least they had a room to sleep in afterward. Or they might have, if Clint could get any sleep.

"Loki! Wake up!" Barton continued to grumble. He found the edge of Loki's blanket and stole it off him. When that created no reaction, Clint forced himself up, and half-crawled off of his own bed. He found a baseball on the shelf beside him, and decided to drop it on the side of Loki's face. He had one rule: Barton gets to sleep, or no one does.

Loki shook awake. He threw himself up from the cluster of blankets, and held his heart in one hand should it decide to fall from his chest. He inspected everything like terrified prey searching for the eyes of a lion, but finding none.

"If you can't shut up, you can't sleep in here." Clint grumbled, retracting back onto his mattress. One eye remained open, watching the peculiarity of Loki's reaction. Something didn't feel right. He had a sense for things like that.

Loki climbed off of his cot, and stood shaking in the room's center. He felt along his chest, counting the ribs as if he might find one out of place. The wide-eyed look never left him.

"What?" Clint asked.

Loki didn't answer. When he phased into another location, especially one at such a great distance and under Thanos' charge, he was never physically affected. Now that the Enchantress was dead, and Thanos himself inherited her abilities to steal into a creature's nightmares, Loki was the subject of his control. Deftly, he rubbed the purple brand hiding in the palm of his hand. He wore a leather strap there to hide it. Barton was curious about it, but said nothing. The archer had been marked once by the devil woman himself. He'd gone so far as to murder Thor and Odin (or the beings who served as look-alikes) in service of her control. It brought chills to Loki when he considered what he must do in order to dispel his debt with Thanos.

Clint was up, whether he wanted to be or not. "Loki, what is it?"

Convinced at last that he had not been fileted in half, Loki shook his head. "Nothing of consequence," he said, seeping his voice in honey-laden assurance.

"Bull!" Clint replied. "You're keeping something from me. I knew it before we got on that ship, and it makes me even more concerned after we ran into that Southling who wanted to tear your eyes out."

Sleep sailed away on a long distance horizon as Barton dragged himself upright. He scrubbed his fists over his eyes, while attempting to bring the world into some kind of general focus. "I might trust you more than Thor does, and God knows why I trust you at all, given our history, but if you don't tell me something, then I'm turning this ship around and leaving you on Cross Lake for Hank to pick up."

The last thing on Loki's mind was dealing with Clint's distrust. He had a considerable lot of other horrors to consider. Thanos salivated for a chance to retrieve the Infinity Gauntlet again topped that list. Agents of that dictator had seen the heralds of Galactus, as few others had. Typically, those in servitude to the World Eater would prepare the way for his arrival. This time, they had a decidedly different calling. They wanted the Gauntlet. Loki had to steal it for Thanos before the heralds, Barton, Quill, or anyone else found it or face his own suffering for as long as Thanos lived. How could he possibly warn Clint of this without revealing the true blight of his predicament?

Clint groaned. "You better start talking, or else I'm going to make something up, and it is going to be worse than anything you actually did. And I'm serious about that. In three seconds, I'm going to say that you spend your nights dreaming about mermaids and fish filets."

In order to protect himself from giving away any potential secrets, Loki decided his best option was to completely avoid the situation. He attempted to flee from the room for the waiting conference area beyond them. Clint removed one of the collapsing arrows he always kept close, extended it, and threw the object in his path. Loki glared at the taunt.

"This is a useless waste of our energy. If you believe that I may decide to spend our time here expressing my feelings to the likes of you, then prepare yourself for a disappointment."

"I don't care about your feelings," Clint told him, standing. Loki was a head taller than him at the least. "I care about trust. Why did that Southling know you?"

"A spiritless child from a land she'd been banished from. How should I know the intimacies of her heart?"

"Not good enough. She knew you. She'd seen you before. She trusted you too, once. Just say it. You were the one that ordered me there."

Loki propelled backward. He occasionally failed to consider the sins of his past, when the overbearing weight of his future hung on him like a hangman's noose. He was making mistakes that might have never entered him in the past. The long stretches of sleepless weeks were taking their toll on him. When sleep at last did come, it was filled with Thanos' unending torture and humiliation.

No genius needed to deduce what Clint knew to be true in his heart. Loki had control of Asgard's throne before the archer was sent to his death those years before in Alfheimr. Loki hadn't ordered it. He executed it himself. One key to the fluidity of his deception was to intersperse lies with shadows of authenticity. That occasion had come again.

"I admit it," Loki said, appearing confused, embarrassed. He needed to sell this. "I feared Alfheimr, and for good reason, it seems. Had Asgard not taken control as the defending force of the Nine Realms, Alfheimr was prepared to do so instead. If they knew of my control of Odin's throne, Rinon and his men would have destroyed me with a mercy not shown by Odin." A darkness crept into Loki's face as he said it. "You have not seen the side of that elven king that I surely have."

Not willing to pass judgement at only Loki's assurance, Clint remained skeptical. He knew Rinon. Maybe not as much as others, but after their conversation, he thought he had some reference frame for the elf. He might not suspect a dark history, but the potential was there. He'd gone to war at Odin's side, and secluded himself to the mountains in fear and loathing. Could there have been another reason?

"I feared him as many realms now rightly do. I could harbor no evidence against his trust, yet I required a reason to overthrow him. So, yes, I may have taken you from Midgard to accomplish that feat."

Clint grabbed the Frost Giant by the cloth of his shirt, and threw him back against a shelf. He'd known it in his heart. It wasn't a surprise. But the reality slammed into him like a dagger blade.

"Do you have any idea what I went through?!" Barton screamed. "Elaren venom! Do you know what that does to a man?! It set my every cell on fire, as if I'd been cursed to burn alive! I couldn't use my bow for twelve years! They think it even caused my stomach cancer!"

Loki held his hands up as if to stop him. His fingers pulled at the shoulder of his shirt, displaying the thin white line in his own flesh. "You gave me the same shot once. Thrust an arrow through my shoulder. I may be a Frost Giant, but it doesn't mean I feel no pain. Had I had any inclination that the Southling's leader, Ge'elaphi, held the same venomous heart as Rinon himself, I might have prevented it. Until it occurred, I had no notion. But you have survived it."

Clint shrugged him off, and took a few cautionary steps away before he decided to mar Loki's face with a right hook. "No thanks to you."

"I might have prevented Thor from riding to your rescue with those dubious friends he considers warriors, but I did not. Do you think Thor was able to withdraw from my sight long enough to activate the Bifrost? Do you think it was by chance they broke Heimdall from his prison? Do you think I had no hand in that? I saw the reality of what they had plotted, and my heart changed. I opened the Bifrost for Thor to come to Asgard in the first place, where he was able to collect the others. I allowed him to go to Alfheimr, so he might recover you before the worst happened. I never considered he may make a poisonous allegiance whilst being there. Rinon forced his hand in that."

"Get back to sleep." Clint said. He was too angry to argue. If there was one person in this galaxy who had the ability to completely twist reality into a dark, ugly thing, it was Loki. Clint wasn't sure why he continued to listen, other than for the opportunity to find the grains of truth in him. They were always there, sprinkled like land mines in a war torn field. Did Loki really fear Rinon? Or was he simply deflecting a worse sort of defiance?

He headed into the adjoining room, and slammed the door shut behind himself. He had a thousand things on his mind, the least of which was Loki's attempt to murder him years ago. The revelation, though, threw that old pain back to the forefront of his mind.

When the Sarhorn healed him, he'd taken away that pain which kept Clint from wielding his Odin-given bow. For the first time in more than a decade, he had the ability to use that tool without feeling like his entire arm would be pulled from its socket. He may have suspected the Frost Giant, but that establishment never came for certain. He wasn't surprised, Clint continued to tell himself. This was what Loki did. This was his nature. It was the reason Thor ended that glimmer of hope he once had that Loki could be saved.

The fact that Loki might toss the blame onto Rinon, shook him. Barton trusted the Elf almost entirely. Only the faintest glimmer of doubt entered his mind when Haladarrel spoke to him of Rinon's self-imposed distance to the rest of the world. Speaking with the former king himself dispelled such doubts instantaneously. He could understand Rinon, where others may not. He knew Tony felt the same, and between the two of them, Clint thought that was enough of a character witness. Loki had gotten under his skin. He'd warned himself against this exact circumstance.

He'd sent their specifications for the Time Stone to Tony already, hoping he might devise a new way to track the Gauntlet from it. For now, they worked with the poor man's method. All Infinity Stones had an innate desire to find one another. Using the Stone as a beacon, Clint could occasionally open its protective seal, and decide whether they were getting closer or farther from the source. In a quest to overcome his earlier trip to the dog house, Peter decided to take on babysitting the Infinity Stone himself. For as long as he'd had it, letting it go would only come with a fight. For now, Clint let the man have it. In a space-sized game of hotter/colder, they combed the Oore galaxy to find any indication that the Gauntlet was nearby.

The green hued particles of the passing Oore system danced across the window panes on his right, while the deep purple hues of the Dark encompassed his left. They were cruising along the galactic line, on their way to Bruce's far southern end of the map. What they hoped to find, was yet unknown. It was easy to feel lost out there, surrounded by friends and worse, by secrets. He hated when things were kept from him, though he was often guilty of doing it himself. Maybe a call to Stark was in order. At least nothing big existed between them that the other wasn't aware of.

While wondering over the motivations of those around him served as one sort of distraction, there was an even bigger one yet on the horizon. A fourteen foot tall man, dressed in a cape with silver armor and a massive spear, suddenly appeared in the empty airspace directly in front of the nose of his ship.

Shocked, Barton threw himself over the controls, and yanked the thrusters back into an all stop. His body flew forward toward the front view screen as the stranger lifted his weapon, and prepared to send it flying through the length of the Milano.

CLIFFHANGER!

ok, now that a lot of prep work is done, we are now launching into "action central". (you know, as if blowing up the armada, losing banner, Tony having cancer, throwing Pete out a window, and the death of Haladarrel wasn't actual action)

Next time: Jurassic Park, war hounds, and Rinon's allegiance.

Please review! come one, guys, I want them. please give me to me:)