amy. .9: hahahhaha, yeah, I eventually ate dinner. Some old potato salad and an icecream sandwich. #vetthuglife. I do love Alfheimr so much, but we shall see what will happen!

Ms. Hawkeye: The schnauzberries tastes like schnauzberries! Yes, you win, he is alive and he might even stay that way. Kudos to your free shake!

discordchick: I love Rinon. I just cant help it. How it was supposed to go, is he was intended to die immediately after telling them to go to alfheimr. But I just couldn't kill him (go figure! I'm getting soft!) I did say this book would restart everything. Imagine: young Clint again with a family he can't remember, starting life out . . . what will possibly happen?!

5mairer: LOL! I wish i could post the whole story, in a way, but while it may be finished being written, it is at the final editor now to make sure everything remains true to the storyline. I swear, the lovely icanhearthedrums and JR Barton are my forever inspirations!

Batghost: Thor will never NOT break windows. HAHAHAHA

The Spoiled Duchess: I imagine the tears are a little of both!

S3cr3tAssass1n: Shout out! HI!

Chapter 56

It was hard to remember what Clint was like when he first started at SHIELD, almost thirty Earth years prior. For the sake of his sanity, though, Natasha tried. They'd been strangers at first. Barton was assigned to her case, to take her out, as part of SHIELD's defense program. Natasha had it coming, after all. She wasn't the most stable of people during that time.

When Clint finally did meet her, face to face, it was at the end of her sidearm. She shot him, he stabbed her. Together, they tried a few techniques to ensure the other didn't survive, but miraculously, they did. Clint saw something in her then. Against all orders, he decided not to kill her. The rest was history.

Though these first few days sitting at Clint's bedside was not as difficult as the time before, it brought a wall that Natasha had not formed herself. Clint was distant with her, scared, and in many ways horrified. He didn't know what to think or do, so he often said nothing, and watched her or listened instead. He found her fascinating. She was beautiful, of course, but there existed something else; a connection he couldn't quite understand.

"I always liked Alfheimr. There's something about the simplicity here," Natasha said. She'd found herself talking a lot more lately. He liked the sound of her voice. "I like the edge of danger in Woodrenkell and the Wild South. I've seen so little of the rest of it."

"I haven't seen anything beyond this room," Clint replied. He sat up in the bed, and poked at the little pieces of food he'd been offered. He still hadn't started eating. No one pressured him into it.

"That's not quite right," Natasha corrected. "I think you've been here more times than I have. The first time I came, you brought me. We went flying together. I fell in love with this place. I actually went a little crazy for a while, but you helped me through it. Eventually, I got over it all, but it took some time. Maybe I never gave it up."

Clint wanted to ask why he came with her. He wasn't sure he'd like the answer, so he stayed silent. It worked well for Rinon, after all.

"Tony never protests a reason to visit. This is the first time he brought Pepper. She wants to come by, but she doesn't want to worry you either. Did Tony tell you about Benjamin?"

Clint shook his head.

"I won't bother you with that then."

"I don't mind being bothered," Clint said.

She smiled a little at him. A little glimpse of the old Clint filtered in. Sometimes, she wondered if he would just turn back into himself again, or pretend this was all just a charade. It was a pipe dream, at best. She looked down at the ring on his hand he had somehow held onto. How easy would it have been for him to lose it? Their names were inscribed there, side by side. He might never have thought to look for that.

"Let's talk about arrows," she said to change the subject.

"Gosh, I love arrows."

She laughed, which made him smile. She seemed so sad when she sat with him. Seeing this side of her, was refreshing. He scooted a little closer, as if to prevent anyone overhearing them.

"I've got a secret," he told her.

She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. "What?" she whispered back.

Clint opened his palm and the Asgardian bow appeared in his hand. She feigned the excitement lighting up in her eyes. Obviously, Clint had no idea at all where the bow came from, only that he had it now. She might be fooling herself into thinking he believed her interest, but Clint felt something very different.

Natasha never could hide her feelings from him, whether he remembered her or not. Had he loved her once? Were they two halves of the same coin, as the elves would say? In a lapse of judgment, he reached between them, and brushed the hair out of her face. He let his hand rest there against her face. He wanted to know why this woman looked at him the way Fehreh looked at Rinon.

"What is it?" he asked her. She reached up, and held his skin against hers. A tear threatened to fall from her eye.

"Tasha?" he asked again.

Hearing him say her name that way, was too much. The tear trailed down her face, and she stood from the chair. She could tell him, or try. But that might only frighten him. Waking from such a horrible nightmare, only to find he had a wife and daughter he couldn't remember, was something she refused to burden him with. She held out hope, like the others, that Barton might still find his way to them.

The door opened, and Bruce poked his head in. "Everything all right?" he asked, gently.

"Dr . . ." Clint fished for the name, his intimate moment with his wife gone. "Ban – "

Bruce grinned. "Banner. Call me Bruce. I'll take over, Natasha, if you want. I think someone wants you back."

Natasha sent an invisible thank you toward the doctor as she made her escape. She didn't know how Tony did it. He switched completely off, as if Clint was just some nobody he visited in a hospital. She used to be able to do the same. Being a mother, somehow, changed that in her. She thought those feelings would leave the minute Alice was born.

Hormones, she'd liked to think, were the root of her perceived love of Barton, and the acute loss she'd felt when he died. She was a Black Widow. A woman like her never learned to care about anyone beyond herself. That was trained into her. Entering that second room though, seeing little Alice in Thor's large arms, shattered all of her preconceived notions.

"Ah! She comes. I have told you so, and yet you decide to complain regardless," Thor told the child, who watched his lips move in wonder. He dipped the baby down into Natasha's arms again, and stood twiddling his finger in the child's face.

"Anyone ever tell you that you have a talent with kids?" Natasha asked.

"I would be a terrible hand at my own. They would be more spoiled and rotten than I was, which says a great deal of my character, and they would have every trick of Loki in them. I think, for the good of all our sanity, I should resist fatherhood, despite Jane's pleas against the notion," Thor replied, continuing to allow little Alice to grab at his fingers. "How fares our friend?"

"Confused, still. Do you think he'll ever come back? The real him?"

Thor nearly laughed. He removed his fingers from Alice's iron grip, and headed down the corridor to see Clint himself. "Our friend has survived his own demise," Thor said as he went. "If he believes he is the Enchantress herself come to enslave us all, I would be just as satisfied as I am now."

Endlessly optimistic, Natasha thought. Maybe she was wrong to think so much of Barton. She didn't mean to pressure him, but it was completely possible she did. It wasn't so wrong to want him back. Rinon had seen them together in a future where Clint raised their daughter. If she never got him back, the real him, there was that last promise to hold onto. She tried to see some sign of Rinon in the crowd gathered around his bed. He hadn't woken since losing consciousness on Midgard. The strange fragility of the elves, surprised her. She'd seen it first hand on the hospital ships. Many lost their lives. Now that the Avengers had arrived to see after their own, Fehreh hoped Rinon might allow himself the time he needed to recover.

:(:):(:):

"I should say I'm not surprised. I think Clint and you have more in common than any of us know," Bruce said, stepping into the room. He'd caught Rinon in the process of redressing. He had just managed to get one sleeve of his overcoat pulled on, and now attempted the other. Rinon stopped halfway.

"Friend doctor," he said.

Bruce motioned to the clothes. "Planning on making your escape?"

"I may, indeed."

Bruce took up a chair, reached over, and pulled Rinon's arm out of his coat. He shook out the fabric, and folded it over his leg. It was intricate black on the bottom, and rising in hair-thin silver to the sleeves made in white.

"Beautiful," Bruce remarked.

"My wife's hand. She would accept your compliment."

"Fehreh made this?" Bruce looked at it with an extra appreciation.

"She has a talent for it. Now, might I please have my clothes returned?" Rinon held out his hand.

Instead, Bruce stood and moved the coat across the room and far out of his reach. "You may forget that I've been Clint's doctor for longer than I've been a licensed medical professional. He was running out on his care like it was his job. If you don't lie in that bed, get better, and stop all this nonsense, I will treat you exactly the way I treat him." He folded his arms. "I'll sedate you."

Rinon wasn't sure what to think. "Rellya, does he fare well under such methods?"

"He has about as much of an option as you do."

"Have you seen him?"

Bruce sat again. He took Rinon's arm, and slowly worked over its healing bones.

"I have."

Rinon tensed at a particular spot.

Bruce paused there to ease the spasm in him. Bruce liked the mindlessness he could revert to when working with a patient. His hands knew so much routine on their own. Often, he could simply let them go, deftly, and allow his mind to dwell on other things. It wasn't the ideal situation for a doctor, but more of a trap he could never fully escape from. This time, it wasn't future tasks, worries, endeavors, classes, speeches, or operations to come that filled him. It was the small, few minutes-long conversation he'd had over a day ago.

Clint slept forever. Whenever he woke, they could see the smallest improvement to the breaks in his body. Ribs reforming, where there was once a gaping hole. Lungs expanding to their normal volume. His intestines, liver, and stomach, migrating back to their own cavity in his body. Miracles, each of them.

Someone was always beside him his blue eyes focused on the living world. When it was Bruce's turn to see him, he found that terrible uncertainty which plagued Clint's thoughts. Banner saw that first hand once, years ago on Asgard. He'd forgotten the full depth of it, until that moment when Clint looked up at him, and had no idea who Banner was.

Bruce sat in the center of the ice, wondering what in the world happened to him. He was shirtless, shoeless, hugging his arms against his chest as he tried to take in what was happening to him. Tony's first attempt at a portal which could take them to Asgard, worked. However, Bruce had stepped right into it. The Hulk's mass exploded, shattering the dimensions and collapsing the wormhole. Bruce awoke, terrified, cold, and veritably naked on the frozen Asgardian sea behind Frost Giant lines.

Clint stalked forward. With one foot at a time, he tested his footing on the ice to be sure it wouldn't give way. Slowly, he peeked out from behind the last line of ice waves before the area became flattened by the crater. Clint appeared from behind his hiding place just as Odin's wolves rushed from their own. Surrounded on three sides, Bruce could only leap to his feet and shout.

"Whoa! Whoa! Don't eat me! Cl—Clint? OH MY GOD, Clint!" Bruce held himself, shaking, with his half-frozen feet lifting to rub warmth into each other.

Clint pulled back his arrow, leveling for a killing blow. "Who are you?" he demanded. The wolves with him snarled.

Bruce darted forward. "Clint? What do you mean? It's Bruce! Bruce Banner, what are you – Clint it's me!"

The string of Sleiphner's Bow was bright with energy waiting to escape, wanting release. Power surged through Clint's arms and back as he held the arrow. That look in his eyes assessed whether Bruce was a target, just like any other enemy in his life. He had no recognition. No indication of knowing who Bruce actually was. Nothing existed there, but the man Asgard's war was turning him into. He'd been away from home too long. Like a shot, Clint's mind snapped back to itself. It was almost painful to be faced with this shock from his past appearing out of the blue, and quite literally dropping from the sky. He closed his arms together, removing the arrow from the string as he moved toward Bruce.

"Bruce, I – I don't know what came over me. I don't know what I was thinking." He was afraid, embarrassed. The one thing he'd tried so hard to prevent, happened despite himself. With nothing of home to hold onto, Clint threw himself into his work. The Avengers, and his loved ones, were simply let go.

Bruce shook himself from the depths of those memories, and moved on with his inspection of Rinon's other injury. "You were right. He doesn't know us," Bruce admitted.

The elf's face fell. "None of you?"

"None of us. We've been through it before. It's not your fault, we know it happens. We've tried to stop it in the past. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't."

Bruce's assurance had little effect on the depths of Rinon's unhappiness. "I spoke to him every day, or each they allowed me. If not I, then one of the elves. We had no notion he could not hear us. If he had only heard us – "

Bruce stopped fussing with the bandages, they were only a distraction. "It's not your fault," he said. "And you need to look after yourself. We're here now, we have him back, that's what matters. But you need to stop. Alfheimr needs a leader like yourself. If you don't give yourself a chance, then the likelihood of you heading anything beyond this cave, is nil."

"I will be well, I have no doubt," Rinon said, off-handedly. Bruce wanted to stop him, to ask how Rinon knew that for certain, but the elf continued on thoughtlessly. He spoke his concerns aloud, despite the present company. A trait he had once completely rid himself of. "But his mind. . . I thought, somehow, if he were set to right he may yet return home. He would not be trapped in this place, despite his affinity for it. We welcome him, he will be happy, but is such a thing what he would truly desire if he had all the facts?"

"What are you talking about?" Bruce asked, elevating his tone to gain Rinon's attention.

The leader tensed, his chin raised, back straightened. He's said too much.

"You had another vision," Bruce accused. "One about Clint's future, not just his daughter."

Rinon's jaw clamped shut. Bruce could hear the snap from his upper and lower teeth contacting each other.

"Are you saying he never leaves Alfheimr? He doesn't go back home? To Midgard? That never happens?"

Rinon became a perfect statue. He might have been made of marble, carved and planted in the flesh-and-bone creature's place. He was so guarded in his adult life over the things that left his tongue. He berated himself for the temporary weakness. This was not a fair burden to place on the doctor, and he knew it the moment he said it. Apologizing, meant a confirmation. The elf said absolutely nothing.

Bruce's patience wore thin. He wasn't as talented at interrogations as Natasha or Clint were. His mind went back again, watching from behind that glass while the others visited Barton for the first time.

Steve pressing his forehead against the glass as Natasha strode inside. Knowing his chance with her was lost forever long ago and replaced by a new, attainable love he could have never imagined. He'd played this game too long. She'd never been his, not really. Clint had it right their entire lives; Natasha was never a woman to be owned, domesticated. She was an untamed wildfire. A lightning storm.

Clint was the only one she'd ever permit to see into her soul. He stepped right up to that precipice, and gave himself to her. It would never be any other way. Bruce watched those emotions run through their captain. There was nothing he could say that Steve didn't already come to grips with the minute the captain allowed himself to love another woman.

Natasha holding Clint's hand as he slept, turning the ring over in her fingers. Clint woke at that touch. Those confused eyes searched her face for any signs of recognition, and finding none. Bruce found her alone in the corridors, holding their child, and sobbing her mixture of happiness and horror. She had Barton again, but at what cost?

Tony worked like a therapist in Clint's company, and raised hell out of it. No one saw any emotion except gratitude and joy. No one heard a single word of disdain. Tony kept all that in. Bruce saw it, though; that flicker of obsidian marring the purity in Tony's heart. It drove in like a wedge, digging deeper and deeper the longer he spent with the archer who had forgotten everything. Soon, that emotion was going to come out.

Pepper tried her best. She wanted to be in there, wanted to be supportive and have that strength the others mustered up, but she was not them. She felt that loss they suppressed. Clint had been hers once. Taken under her wing like a mother might a son, or an older sister might a young, troubled brother. For him to lose that bond they'd worked so hard, over so long a time, to develop, felt like a stab in her chest. Did she really mean so little to him? Where was that movie-moment where their affinity broke the bounds of cosmic power, and dragged Barton, the real Clint Barton, back to them again?

Thor merely did as he always did. He was a bedrock, his strength attempting to support everyone around him, as if the Asgardian power might somehow help the emotional turmoil like it could solve a physical one. He'd been the only one to break the boundary of sitting by Natasha in her weakest moment. He needed nothing of Clint. All he wanted was to be by the man he thought he had so wronged in life. Thor never forgave himself for inviting Clint to Asgard those years before. The first time Clint really carved a name in the stars, was all by the Asgardian's influence. He would forever hold that hurt in, despite Clint's long-standing forgiveness.

All these memories filtered around the doctor's mind as his gaze never removed from the statue across from him. Rinon was going to be honest with him, even if Bruce had to wait until doomsday to hear it. Fortunately, it did not come to that.

"I have said too much," Rinon whispered.

"You said he might never return home. What does that mean?" Bruce demanded.

Rinon swallowed. "I never meant to say it."

"But you did, so tell me. What did you see that makes you think that? You were wrong, once, maybe this is wrong too."

Rinon shook his head very little. "I was not wrong. Not before. I merely didn't know the full picture. I saw Rellya jump, I heard his scream, saw his burial. I assumed."

Now they were getting somewhere. Bruce had no idea that Rinon knew the same things the Sarhorn predicted. "So the Sarhorn was wrong?"

"He said it may be changed," Rinon corrected.

"And we changed it. This is us changing it?" Bruce went on. His heart beat a little faster in his chest. He felt like someone else should be here, listening to this, but he couldn't think of anyone that might not lose their head.

"I believe so, yes."

"But that's not it. You saw more than that when you touched Alice. Clint raises his daughter."

"I saw them happy together, yes. I do not know whether he ever understands her, or her mother, the way he used to."

"And in that vision, they weren't on Midgard at all," Bruce devised. He felt a little weak at the realization.

Rinon confirmed it.

Unable to take the news sitting down, Bruce got up again. He felt like he needed to get outside, breathe some fresh air or something. Even opening a window might stifle this feeling of claustrophobia. But they were in a cave beneath the peaks of the Blue Skin mountains. Such an idea was impossible to accomplish. After this talk ended, he decided a trip up one of the ridges to take a bath in a snow drift, might be recommended.

"Why wouldn't he leave?" Bruce asked at last. "Give me a reason. If he was healed, why might he never be able to leave this place? Is it just choice? We know he loves it here, that was before this all happened, is that why he stays?"

"You are a man of medicine. Our worlds are very different. It is possible he cannot leave, though he might choose it."

"The air is different here," Bruce whispered to himself, considering his past studies on the world. Clint was surviving, healing, from something no human had the right to walk away from. Elves had died from infection and venom. In the past, when he was nearly murdered by a venomous arrow, he somehow managed to survive it when, by all rights and reason, he should not have.

"Is this place keeping him alive?" Bruce asked, hardly believing his own ideas.

"Elves speak to this realm. You know that well. We direct its movement, request its air, lift its rocks, and shape its land merely by asking. We sing to it with our souls because it is what the world asks of us," Rinon attempted to explain.

Bruce felt as if his eyes had opened for the very first time. He looked at the room around him, and the work within it. The spun fabrics of the chairs and the tables, the bed and the grass floor. The very air seemed to move before his eyes, and he saw it move like a cascade of water from a mountain. It dawned on him at last, the code he couldn't crack. The reason why Alfheimr called to so many travelers, and welcomed all life with arms wide open. Why the planet seemed to invite and yet repel. Its closed borders acting like an exosphere, protecting the souls within.

"It's alive," Bruce said. "This world is alive. All of it. Everything in it."

As if to prove his point, Rinon extended his hand, thought for only a moment, and one of his swords appeared in his hands the way Clint's bow might. He extended the blade in Bruce's direction, inviting him to inspect its authenticity.

"You have a connection with this place," Rinon told him as Bruce's hands tested the blade. "One that allows you to understand it the way an elf might. Our realm lives the way we live. It is an ancient life. We ask it, and it arrives."

As it wasn't infused in Asgardian weaponry, Bruce was able to lift the blade. He stood, holding it. Rinon made a slight motion with his hand, and the blade disappeared. Bruce still felt its weight, though. As if the weapon had merely become invisible. Then, little by little, the hidden weapon disintegrated like grains of sand.

"Clint's bow never leaves him. I had it all wrong. It's this place. Elven metal. It disintegrates and reforms. Follows him wherever he goes." Bruce could hardly believe it.

"You are very bright," Rinon said.

"Is that why he's drawn to this place? Because it's always been drawn to him?" Bruce asked.

Rinon nodded. "I do not know what exactly he sees. I imagine it may be this."

"Did Odin have any idea of this? Of any of it?"

Rinon smiled. "Dr. Banner, I believe you are the only one to ever fully understand the depth of what my realm is. The first I ever learned it from, was my tutor as a child. He understood such things. If you look, hard enough, you might even see it the way I can."

Unsure of himself and the scientific part of his mind making leaps and bounds, Bruce stepped back, and looked around at the room. He saw only a glimmer at first, like a crystal catching the artificial light. He approached the peculiar thing, but the minute he moved, the entire room shifted. His eyes blinked, head rotating to take in the new, strange things around him. Bruce could literally see the air. Like waves of sparkling rainbow light, the air currents flowed around him. He felt as if he'd stepped into Van Gogh's starry night. He lifted his hands, scattering the colors which dispersed in cascades. He panicked when he inhaled, and the colors rushed into him.

"Do not fear," Rinon said. He sat back in amusement and watched the doctor come awake to the natural things at his fingertips.

Bruce walked through the living air, the colors flowing around him like water in a stream. He looked around at the highlights of light in the room's objects, and even Rinon, who seemed to exist in a whitish, starry hue.

"What am I seeing?" Bruce asked. He picked up a cup, filled with dark colors. He upended it. Nothing fell out.

"You are seeing as we do. This is normal for an elf devoted to its study. A second sight, a connection."

Bruce approached the vine-made chair, and ran his hands over the bright green that emitted from it. When he looked around, he found that same green particle floating in the cascades of others. He had a theory. "Earthenden elves can connect to the plants, build things. Is that because they control this green light I see?"

"Very astute," Rinon praised.

The walls were lined in a faint pastel. "And the others can see this." Bruce touched the wall, scattering the color.

"Yes."

Bruce looked at Rinon again. He could see the elf's sword in a clump of unused white particles floating by his hand. Noticing his curiosity, Rinon materialized them into a solid form again. Still, that faint white outlined it. Then he saw the red. It was a striking, deep, ruby-like color that coursed along his chest in horizontal lines, following the wounds attempting to heal. Bruce strode closer, fixing his glasses over his nose to inspect the peculiar particles.

"An Alfheimr healer can inspire their action. Coax them along."

"This planet is repairing you?" Bruce asked, glancing up to see Rinon's expression.

"Yes."

"And when you left to come find us, to tell us about Clint being alive, you were away from Alfheimr and nearly died."

"The work laid down came apart, yes. We might attempt to replicate this place in the confines of our ships, but the Untamed Caves, as you know, do not work under our own understanding. These colors may exist outside of the caves, though not nearly to the degree we have here. Without them, we do not heal. Had I stayed away much longer, I would have lost my life."

"That's the missing element. The thing I couldn't find about this place. You live every day like this? You see everything? The air, the plants, the rocks . . . all of it is like a living hologram. A program that you can tap into and rewrite the code for." Bruce sank back down. He wanted to analyze all of it.

Rinon said, "Having to separate from this place is incredibly difficult for my people. Imagine having this depth of a connection to the natural world, the ability to reach out and communicate with the very life around us, and having that connection severed."

All at once, the second sight vanished. Bruce blinked rapidly as if to bring it back, but the world as he knew it, returned, and banished away the beauty he had once seen. He looked at Rinon for explanation.

"Losing that connection, means losing one's self. I have leant to you the sight of Alfheimr's king. Had you been born a Skydale, you might only see the air. Or a mason might only see the rock."

"You see everything, though."

Rinon inclined his head.

"You think Clint does too."

"As I said, I am not sure. I do suspect that he may. This worlds lives, the way a man might, or an elf, or one of Asgard. It is an ancient being. We live in harmony with it. Alfheimr knows, very well, the sacrifice Rellya has made. I believe this place supports him."

"I could see why he might never leave," Bruce admitted. He sat back, willing the world of colors to return again.

sorry only one chapter tonight, but at least it was a long one!

What's gonna happen?! Will Clint ever Leave? Will He ever get his memories back? Will my Soap Opera ever end?

please review!