Thank you SO much for the few steady reviewers here. It means the world to me! I've put so much into this that it's nice to see people enjoying it:)

Guest: Aw! Thank you so much for reviewing!

discordchick: They are a trip for sure. More on what the Sarhorn meant will come later:)

Ms. Hawkeye: Clint Whump? Me? No, that never happens in ANY of my stories.

Alethea: Steve's going to hate a lot about what's coming soon.

amy. .9: Oh the things to come. I admit that I will not not attempt to murder all of planet earth, and the Sarhorn is definitely not avoiding the opportunity to possibly give advice about what may or many not occur in the possible future that will most likely, but may not be, occuring.

lynneanne: um, i think i cried a little. ok, not a little. I cried a lot. this was incredibly sweet of you to say and as an author I am profoundly blessed to have such a devout reader such as yourself.

Fury-Natalia: Dear Lord Jesus, things are going to get HAIRY!

I Can Hear the Drums

Chapter 19

Less than three miles until the ground ended their fall. Less than two minutes until everything he knew to be his body would hit that ground in an unrecognizable splat. Clint had only a single recourse. He had to trust that something, somewhere, was going to stick out a hand in that emptiness beneath and save him. After all, he couldn't necessarily die, could he? The Sarhorn saw him jump. Rinon saw him jump. Here, there was no impossible shot to make. No saving a billion lives. No choice of Steve over him. There were no Twenty Predictions Of The Sarhorns coming to fruition. So technically, Clint couldn't die just now, even when all hope seemed at its utter bleakest.

That is what he held onto as he tumbled through the open air. It was what forced Loki to dive down after him. The Frost Giant clung to his chest, and they fell together. Next came Rocket. He pulled his arms and legs close to his body, became more aerodynamic and shot himself directly into the dual spinning mass below him. Now, they were a trio of attached beings again, still falling inevitably faster through the free air.

Above their heads, the Milano still dropped, though at a slower rate. The parachute Rocket deployed, had lost a few of its strong lines, but still the ship held together under the heavy damage she sustained. Groot had somehow managed to punch out the safety glass with his mass, but failed to fall through it himself. One hand continued to hold onto the brim of the forward view screen while he watched the others falling between his dangling feet.

"I AM GROOT!" he called to them.

"Is that all that thing can manage!" Loki screamed.

"Stop insulting my stupid friend!" Rocket fired back.

Clint might have replied if the both of them weren't so tightly wrapped around his chest that he couldn't breathe. The three continued to fall. The ground sailing up toward them like a death waiting to come. Clint didn't want to watch it. He had to let himself go. To relax. To trust he couldn't die yet. He had no idea how they were getting out of the situation, but he knew full well Loki and Rocket both were expecting some miracle. Barton's mind went back to something he'd heard once, or maybe read. Most of the people he knew who fell from extreme heights, didn't die from the fall. It was the heart-attack on the way down from the shock of having fallen at all. He could understand that sentiment completely the way his heart currently tried to thud right out of his chest. Or maybe it was just Loki's heart jackhammering against his own.

"Barton!" the Frost Giant said into his ear. The ground was still coming. They were still falling. Nothing was changing. Clint wanted to tell him it would be all right. But how could he?

"I AM GROOT!"

Clint opened his eyes for a split second. Groot seemed so very insistent about things. He finally realized why. Somehow, the tree-man had matched their terminal velocity. Somehow he grew, massively long, in a few short seconds. Only a few inches above their faces, one of his extended legs dangled, waiting for them to just reach out and take it. From hundreds of stories up, Groot's blurry face smiled. He shook his foot once in insistence.

"Grab Groot!" Clint cried. His hands were pinned to his sides from the other two clinging to him for life. Rocket was the first one to let go. He stepped up onto Clint's shoulder, grabbed onto Groot's leg, and frantically started climbing back up toward the Milano. Loki went next, and dragged Clint up with him.

Rocket looked down at the two. "Hold on tight!"

Clint squeezed his hands into the intricate root system, and pressed his body in as tightly as he could. Loki ducked in beside him. He grew out crystals of ice like a layer of cement, and absorbed his way into the roots for an added layer of security. The minute they anchored down, Groot began to retract himself. Like being fired from another slingshot, the trio shot up into the sky on a rollercoaster leading straight up. Clint's body rocketed down against the strain, and nearly forced him to let go all together. He dug into Groot's bark with his fingernails. He'd have a considerable amount of splinters to deal with if they ever survived the landing.

"I aaa-m Gro-oot," Groot replied. His voice sounded much closer than it had before. Clint lifted his head up to see that their hundred-story journey was over in a matter of seconds. They were now back, dangling just beneath the ship, which was still poised for a crash landing.

"Good job, Groot," Clint replied. "Next time, how about just not falling on our heads?"

The wide smile returned, and Groot shook his head up and down like a dog might. Rocket slapped the smile off his face while he crawled by. He dragged himself back up into the safety of the ship, and directed Groot to start the same, even with the two others still dangling from his feet.

"Clint?!"

Barton moved his attention farther up into the ship. Apparently, Peter Quill had survived being tossed around like a rock in a tin can. He leaned over the corridor Groot had, at one time, hovered beside.

"Oh, look who decided to join the party. Get enough beauty sleep?" Clint asked conversationally. "You know, I didn't think you had enough free air. Hope you don't mind that I decided to CRACK A WINDOW!"

"What the Hell, man? Seriously, am I not allowed to sleep on my ship, like, ever?"

"If this happens every time you do, I would say the answer to that question is no," Clint replied.

The air filled with a hum of electric energy. Clint's heart sank to his boots as he twisted around to find the source. Their hammer-wielding foe had returned. He hovered in the air, timing his controlled descent with that of the crashing Milano. A black cape covered most of his face, and whipped around his body like a tornado. The silver armor glinted in the red light of the closest sun. His hammer, on a pole nearly as long as his spear, waited to be of use again.

If he wanted to kill the heroes outright, a single swing was all it might take. He had dead eyes, large black voids filled with small white pupils and little else. His face was tinged in faint, lethargic looking blue. When his attention rested on Barton, the archer felt sucked into that hellish expression.

His mouth never opened, but Clint heard his voice clearly in the recesses of his skull. Images followed. They flooded his mind with war, death, fires, and storms. It was like a horror reel playing in the privacy of his thoughts. He saw a darkness, a swirling, massive pit of black with a center star attempting to shine through the overwhelming form around it. Shapes and shadows highlighted in that dim, flickering light moved through the pitch and rotated around that center hole like water following a drain. He felt that dark reaching out to him. He felt it grab him by the wrists and try to pull him under. His heart rate sped up. He began to pant as he struggled against it.

"Clint of Barton. Archer of Midgard. Elect of Odin. The one who wields Sleiphner's Bow and the Hammer Mjolnir. My master requests your extinction," that haunting voice told him. Clint braced against it, panting into Groot's bark. The voice echoed through every corner of that dark nebulous Clint hovered over. He wanted to fight against its gravity, but it continued to suck him in. A chant began whispering into his ear. Thumping harder and harder.

Galactus is coming

Galactus is coming.

Galactus is coming.

He is coming for you!

"NO!" Clint screamed. He pulled himself free of the blackness. Swept the tendrils from his wrist, and tried to fall backward to get away from it all.

"Barton!" Loki cried. He grabbed Clint's arm as the hero disentangled himself from Groot's safety and launched outward as if to skydive right to his death. Loki held fast to his wrist, shaking it to bring him back to his senses. The Frost Giant glared at the herald. "What have you done to him?!"

The herald's head lifted, bringing the hammer up until its handle was over his head, ready to strike directly down and crush them both. This time, as he spoke, everyone could hear.

"He stands accused."

"Ronin!" Rocket exclaimed. From above them, the pointed ears and sideways tufts of Rocket Raccoon thrust down through the shattered bow window. If he'd been human, he might have looked ghostly from the color draining his face. He stood witness to what he might have never believed to see. Ronin the Accuser, the Kree soldier and cult leader of the uprising that nearly ripped all of Xandar in half twelve years before. He'd been killed by the Guardians. They were sure of it. It happened right in front of them with the aid of the Power Stone. It wasn't possible that he had come back.

With Clint in one hand, Loki wove his feet around Groot's massive leg, and tore his other frozen hand free. He directed the palm in Ronin's direction, and fired whatever power he could muster into the creature. The Kree propelled backward as the ice swamped through him. He lost concentration on his own gravity, and sank suddenly away.

Loki looked up into the ship. "Give me a rifle!"

"They're below deck, we'll never reach them!" Quill said. "Do you ride horses? That's some thigh strength you got for a scrawny guy."

"Cease your blathering, and give me something with which to kill him!"

Quill extended his hand imploringly. "Forget that! Get crawling up here! If you don't get moving, it doesn't matter if you kill him or not. You're going to be trapped between this ship and the dirt!"

Loki swallowed, looked down, and gauged they had less than a minute before that prediction came true. He fed his free hand back into the bark, and lifted Barton up until they were face to face again. "Can I trust you will not kill yourself if I release you?"

Clint pulled away from him, got his own handholds back, and started climbing. "All right. I'm all right. Moving, got it." He indicated Groot. "Get climbing, big guy, we'll follow you up."

The trio moved as one. Groot climbed through the vertical pilot's cabin, following Rocket's direction. Loki and Clint worked their way up his body from legs to chest, and, by the time he reached Quill, they were clinging to his shoulders. Groot extended his right arm, and they used it to bridge the corridor gap before hitting the bulkhead wall on their backs. Groot pulled his feet in, and squeezed past them to hover over the stairwell.

They lined up along the bulkhead. Clint, nearest the open corridor, Loki beside him. Quill came next, and then Rocket and Groot. There were no seat belts, no straps, no way to close the open corridor, and no stopping their descent. Groot reached across the four of them with his left hand, and grabbed the rim of the doorway. His roots began to grow, expand, and pressed each of them against the wall like individual rollercoaster harnesses.

"Is this a bad time to wonder where Gamora may be located?" Loki asked. His eyes were closed as he ticked the final seconds away in his mind.

"Oh – " Quill cursed under his breath. "Her room was locked."

"And you left her in there?"

"I came up here to get tools, and someone just had to move all my stuff."

"If you use the term stuff to really mean junk, then yeah, we did that," Clint replied, trying to focus on anything besides the coming impact.

"What about that surly fellow with the disenchanted humor?" Loki asked.

"He didn't feel like getting up."

Loki meant to give him a wry expression, but could only see Clint. Barton shrugged one shoulder. It was a habit he picked up from having his injured one for so very long. "That actually doesn't surprise me at all."

"This entire team is the worst form of thrown together ingrates I have ever had the displeasure of fixing my eyes – "

The nose of the ship slammed home. Peter tensed up, letting out a howl as the ship flipped first onto its top, and then went into a pinwheel spin. Groot's tree limb arm collided with their chests while they rolled. The downed parachute tied up onto itself, flew over the shattered front view screen, and wrapped the ship up like a tortilla shell might surround inner burrito contents. Sand, rocks, occasional scattering lizards were all kicked up into the dusty dunes while the ship attempted to find a final rest. It seemed like an eternity passed before it finally cruised to a stop. One prong of landing gear attempted to extend through the tangle of parachute cords. The ship listed while it connected with the ground.

Loki's eyes opened gently. A few extra holes in the ship attempted to allow the sunlight in, though it was shaded through the massive canopy of grey and red fabric. He swallowed the faint taste of sweet blood in his mouth. There was a new cut along the side of his tongue where his teeth had connected with it. He blinked the world into focus, and checked on Clint first.

"I'm alive. Everyone can relax," Clint said. He shifted his chest a little to get one of his arms free, and tapped Groot. The long bark retracted back, and the line of four fighters were able to drop free.

"What mighty force has aroused me from my sleep?" A great voice boomed from what remained of the lower cabin. A Snap-On tool chest had rolled over the port hole leading down. Using one fist, Drax elevated the mass, and sent it three feet across the room. His bluish dome appeared in the wake. "I said I required rest."

"Well, sorry Ronin decided to come back from the dead and interrupt your beauty sleep!" Rocket told him.

"Sleep is not beauteous. It is required." Drax replied with severity.

Rocket threw his arms into the air in surrender, and focused his attention on combing around what remained of the cabin for any of his specialty weapons.

"GET OUT OF MY WAY!" Gamora roared from below.

Peter rolled his eyes. "Oh, great."

Clint indicated the room he shared with Loki. "Our weapons. My arrows. I bet that guy's still hovering around."

Loki helped clear a path in that direction. Across from them, Drax pulled himself into the upper deck, and a disheveled Gamora came rocketing right up behind him. Seeing Loki's attempted escape, she grabbed at him first, bypassed her anger over Quill's very existence, and directed all of her disdain to that off guarded Frost Giant.

"What did you do this time?!" She demanded.

"I did nothing!" Loki tried to say.

"Don't give me that. Every time you are on my ship, we end up stranded someplace!"

"I never intended to stay on this ship in the first place!"

"Oh, brother," Clint whispered, continuing on to the stateroom without him.

The cabin was a buzz of activity. Gamora and Loki continued their escalated argument, while Drax detailed the exact reason for his need to sleep a solid four and a half hours in sequence to Groot, who could really care less. Groot picked at a few growing buds he'd formed from the stress of the excitement. Rocket slapped his hands, told him to stop picking, and uncovered a crate of explosives he'd stored a few months back. Peter sidestepped the argument with Gamora, and slid below deck to retrieve the rest of their munitions. The Infinity Stone was already bouncing around in his pocket. When he came back, Groot helped him distribute the weapons, and Gamora managed to continue her argument while arming herself to the teeth simultaneously.

Clint slipped into the sideways stateroom, and looked around the mess to find his quiver. Most of the arrows had scattered. Tony and he had discussed adding a small magnet to the bottom of his quiver to keep them in place should such situations occur, but they hadn't taken the time to do that just yet. He gathered them up in handfuls, and slid them back into place. He picked up his jacket next and swung it on over his sleeveless shirt. The pockets were already lined in expandable arrows as extra munitions. Last, he looked for Loki's dagger.

"The only reason we found ourselves in that utter desolation, was one of us, who should not have had any access to the navigation panel, suddenly took it upon herself to navigate!"

"I wouldn't have even been in the navigation seat if someone didn't decide that direction was an unnecessary folly that needed no heed paid to it!"

"You wanted to take us both to Thanos! Of course I wished to keep you as far from the navigation as possible!"

"I didn't want to take us to Thanos, I wanted to take us to another ship with which to escape, and you wouldn't believe me!"

Just beyond the open door, Loki's voice joined Gamora's buildup, creating such a ruckus that half the galaxy might hear them. There had been twelve such blow-ups since first boarding the Milano, and each one revealed more and more of the dynamic between them. Clint had begun to recall those shadows of memories he'd shared with Loki once. The result was eye opening.

When Loki was first banished from Asgard after his fight with Thor, he fell into the expanse of the Nine Realms. Everyone at first assumed he was dead. Few mourned him.

During that time, Loki's Frost Giant roots expanded, keeping him alive in the vacuum, cold, and desolation of space by surrounding himself in a cocoon of ice, not unlike Steve Roger's miraculous Rip Van Winkle effect. He was picked up by a passing trawler first and, not really understanding what they'd discovered, the men thought to take his frozen form somewhere that might fetch a good price.

Coincidentally, that ended up being the Collector. He was a large scale eccentric. Known throughout the universe for the oddities in his private trove, he only paid premium prices for the rarest of all creations. Loki's frozen body was irresistible to him.

Loki came to his senses again in the heat and throng of Knowhere. It took very little to break free from the Collector's bonds and attempt to escape. It was during that effort, he ran headlong into Gamora herself. She was there on Thanos' work, looking for the staff that eventually granted Loki his powers, among the Collector's things. When he refused to give it up to her, she nearly destroyed him. Loki stole aboard her ship while she was distracted. There, they first met.

Loki wanted the staff. She wouldn't give it up. Hovering over the galaxy on their way to Thanos' lair, they fought for the first time. The last person Loki wanted to be trapped serving was that sadistic man. And, still young in life, Gamora wished to defend Thanos from Loki's perceptions. Time, close quarters, and Loki's incredible persuasion eventually converted her the way it did most people he met.

He was suave, smooth-talking, and the only man she'd ever met from the Nine Realms. If Thanos got him, she knew the only thing he'd want would be to use him against that system of worlds for which he held no current sway in. She decided, instead, to help. Loki didn't trust her. He didn't trust anyone.

In his attempt to escape her, he only dug himself deeper into Thanos' hands until there was no escape route left to him. Locked, trapped, and alone, Loki made a deal to get himself out of the sadist's dungeon. He would conquer Midgard for Thanos, and bring the second Infinity Stone, the Tesseract, to Thanos.

If he'd trusted Gamora to get him out, he would have never made a deal with Thanos. If Loki had never appeared at all, Gamora might still be his mindless slave. If she hadn't attempted to trust her adopted sister with Loki's existence, he would have never been found out to begin with, and may have passed through Thanos' kingdom without being seen.

Blame fired between the two of them like cannonballs from passing ships. Clint had given up attempting to separate them after the seventh round.

Looking at the situation from Loki's mindset made Clint smile a little. He could sense a sort of emotion between them that may have once been based on a budding physical attachment. As someone who'd fallen in love with Natasha a long time ago, he could understand those feelings immediately. Loki, who firmly stated he'd never loved before in his life, did not translate those feelings with any form of passion. One day he might. But today, with a dead Kree warrior waiting to destroy them, was not that day.

Clint searched around Loki's bedroll to find the Frost Giant's dagger. It wasn't often the man walked around without it, but he made exceptions occasionally when they slept. He pulled back the bottom covers, and blinked down at the floor in surprise. He lifted his head and looked back through the door, where Loki's back was turned to him while Gamora and he continued to dress each other down. Someone found it necessary to arm her.

Clint looked back at the floor. He lowered his hand, and probed the long, finger nail marks carved into the metal. They resembled the claw marks of a trapped animal attempting to escape. A creature screaming in his nightmares and thrashing his way out. The marks were deep, days or weeks in the making.

"Hey, Hawk, I think our dead friend is back!" Quill called from next door.

Clint found the dagger beneath Loki's pillow, and grabbed it. He threw the bed clothes back over the scratches in the floor so Loki wouldn't suspect he knew. When this was over, he imagined they needed to have a rather in-depth conversation about the true secrets Loki was hiding from him. Clint bumped him from behind, and handed over the dagger. The distraction was long enough to end the fighting temporarily.

"If you two are finished making sweet love, then can we please focus on the fact that we all might be dead in twenty minutes?" Clint told them. He shoved by and headed to where Quill reclined on the top of their old mess room cabinets. Most of the doors were flung open, spilling their contents all over the floor. A box of Rice Crispies had exploded, along with another container of Cocoa Puffs and a few things he had no name for. Clint stepped over them to make it onto the cabinet with Quill.

"Is it really Ronin?" he asked, pressing in for a better look. There was a hole in the side of the ship. The wind whipped through a tear in the parachute, and gave them brief glimpses at the herald beyond. He was standing across from the ship with his mallet in one hand. He waited.

"He wasn't always that big," Quill said.

"I seriously hope not."

"So, how exactly did our old, dead enemy end up showing here to shoot us out of the sky?"

"I don't know, but let's see if he bleeds." Clint opened his hand, and called his Asgardian bow. It appeared against his palm. He removed an arrow from his quiver, and set it against the string. Quill backed up to give him a little room. As the parachute fluttered out of the way, Clint slowly released the arrow. The projectile launched across the sandy moon until it stuck directly over the herald's heart. Quill pushed back into the small hole to watch.

"That's it?"

"Do you even know me?" Clint asked dubiously.

The herald raised his hand to remove the arrow from his chest armor, but stopped halfway when a mighty explosion shot him off his feet. Clint and Quill both flew forward into the side of the kitchen tile as the explosion hit the Milano like a fist. The two of them rolled off the cabinet and hit the floor with the pile of pans and cereal. Clint shook off the ringing in his ears and smiled a little at the shocked look on everyone's faces.

"I think I added a little too much nitroglycerine to the latest arrowheads."

"I think my spleen is bleeding!" Quill complained, rolling off of a pan.

Clint dragged himself to his feet, and brushed the Crispies from his hair. "Come on, Quill! That won't keep him down long!"

"You go, I'll catch up next year!" Peter groaned, pushing up on his fists. Standing over him was a cross-armed Rocket, looking utterly dejected.

"You're an embarrassment to me," he said, whipping out a gun taller than himself. "I just don't get how I haven't stabbed you lately. Come on, Groot, let's go kill us a dead guy!"

What excitement! What's coming next? What has Loki screaming in the night? Stay tuned!

Next time: Rinon's motives, dance off, and the return of an evil so great from Clint's own past!

Thank you for being so kind with you reviews! Please keep them up!