Author's Note: Thanks for your patience. I got done working two hell weeks with an undesirable amount of shifts and then my body decided "actually, I'm good" and I got super sick for a few days. Not COVID, thankfully. I am doing much better now, but that's why it was delayed. Sorry. :) Thanks so much for your continued support, you guys are THE BEST.

Disclaimer: No.

Warnings: Implied/referenced torture, anxiety attacks.

"Even though they say time heals all wounds,

The scars are still freaking there,

I can't forget what happened,

I can't forget how I felt."

-Unknown

Chapter Three:

Clint doesn't remember being taken to S.H.I.E.L.D. for the first time. When Coulson dragged his sorry butt there for medical after Barney tried to beat him to death, Clint was unconscious. He'd spent a majority of his life in the Circus of Crime running from the organization. He was terrified. He remembers waking up in the hospital, handcuffed to the bed with Coulson sitting beside him and staring at him critically; security inside and out of the room, waiting for him to make the wrong move so they could hurt him.

Clint thought anything would be an incentive for that.

Natasha told him she felt similar after Budapest.

Standing at the edge of the Quinjet's ramp, with Loki in front of him and being flocked by security all too happy to wave around weapons at him, Clint wonders if Loki feels it, too. That same overwhelming, gut-wrenching terror that one wrong word will get you shot. S.H.I.E.L.D. is built on top of some of the most personable people that Clint knows. You have to be if you want the general public to work with you. They aren't stoic machines.

This also means that they care, and Loki hurt some of them or their loved ones, and the unfortunate thing about S.H.I.E.L.D, Clint has realized, is that it holds grudges.

Clint has to bite his tongue several times while they're walking to the conference room Fury wants them in to stop himself from berating someone who is pushing Loki, saying something nasty to him, or scowling as they walk past. It feels like every agent on the Helicarrier is making a point to show they're armed and dangerous. Clint doesn't exactly know what they expect Loki to do in response to it, fall to his knees and grovel in fear? He's too stubborn for that.

Clint gets why they're doing it.

He does.

He thinks, if circumstances had been different, he would do the same.

So he's unsure why there's this tight feeling in his chest and he wants to smack the next agent who gets handsy. He doesn't care if Loki is treated a little roughly. He doesn't. Loki, for his part, seems a little tense, but he doesn't try to fight the guards, verbally or otherwise. He lets them push him through the halls as if he's realized that fighting is futile and useless. Loki isn't bothered by it—honestly, he seems more annoyed than anything else—so Clint tries not to be, too, biting on his tongue and ducking his head.

The walk is long. Not because of distance, but the atmosphere.

Clint almost thinks it's a little funny in a dark way how terrified the agents are by Loki. They're so desperate to assert control over this powerful Asgardian, to beat him down and show him why he should be cowering, and Loki is in sweatpants, a loose black T-shirt that he stole from Thor, who stole it from Tony at some point, and a dark gray jacket. He looks like he's going to the gym. It's not exactly the clothing of a murderer. And yeah, yeah, appearances can be deceiving and all that, but still. One of Loki's shoelaces is dangerously close to becoming untied, and Clint keeps waiting for Loki to trip over it. He's seen the battle of Loki versus balance the last five months. Loki's going to lose, it's inevitable.

But pointing that out feels a little weird right now.

It's just. Maybe he has a different perspective than the agents, and that's why he feels tight. He's seen a side of Loki that none of them have and never will.

When they at last reach the conference room, the security team stops along the edges of the hall, two dozen bodies lined up in black with weapons, looking like a wall of faceless statues. Clint warily hurries past them to the door, where Hill is typing in the security code. There's a loud beep before the lock gives with a hiss of air and Hill pushes open the door.

They all file into the large gray room after her. It's windowless, but a wide TV screen is attached to the far wall, a separate door alongside the east, leading somewhere Clint can't place. The only other exit is the door they came in through, which Clint carefully files away in the back of his mind. A large, long oval-shaped table takes up a majority of the space with ten office chairs lined around it. There's a stray notepad stamped with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo in the center of the table like a wayward centerpiece, a half dozen pens around it. Beside that is, predictably, an open tissue box.

Clint doesn't know what it is, but he's never been in a S.H.I.E.L.D. conference room without one. It's like the janitorial staff is worried that a group of covert spies and government officials are going to spontaneously burst into tears and have a heart to heart while in the midst of a meeting. It's thoughtful, really, just strange.

Natasha and Steve are seated in the chairs on the far left of the table, a pair of crutches leaning against the wall behind Steve. Clint takes them both in with hard scrutiny. He hasn't seen either of them since they left for France six days ago, but it seems like it's been longer. Far longer. Natasha's long red hair is a mess, the braid falling apart in loose, wavy fragments, her lips dry and chapping. Her makeup looks like it was cleaned up from yesterday and her posture is hunched forward in exhaustion. All of it is subtle. If Clint didn't know her as well as he did, he wouldn't even notice.

This, more than anything, tells Clint how awful she's feeling.

Red Room loved their femme fatales. Natasha was taught to apply makeup before she could talk. Had to be appealing, had to be beautiful and sexualized, draw in the prey and kill them. Clint's pretty sure she could do it with only a third of her fingers and half her leg falling off. It's a habit that Clint hasn't seen her break, and one he privately thinks she's terrified to even try. It's also why Clint learned pretty quickly that calling Natasha beautiful only makes her sick to her stomach. She doesn't want to be beautiful, she wants to be a person.

So the fact that she doesn't care to refresh her appearance, hasn't even bothered to, makes his chest tight.

Oh, Tash…

Steve looks pale and worn. His expression is pinched, his eyes hazy and slightly glassy. One hand is pushed up against his side elusively, his entire body leaning away from the obvious injury. Unlike Natasha, who is still dressed in her Widow tack gear, Steve is in a loose gray, long-sleeve shirt and sweatpants with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo stamped across the front. He looks awful, but is obviously trying to hide it. With the sweat gathering around his brow and the clear feverish highlight on his cheeks, he's doing a pretty poor job of it.

But Steve will try anyway, he'll hide it until he breaks, because Steve thinks him being in pain is annoying and a problem. Which is stupid, but none of them have successfully been able to grill that into his thick head. Clint decided a while ago he wants to get a time machine solely so he can go back to 1940 and smack pretty much all of Steve's superior officers in World War ll.

Tony takes one look at both of them and swears loudly. "You should be in medical," he decides after half a second. "Like, really be in medical—why the heck aren't they in medical?" That question is directed toward Fury, standing beside the end of the table, one hand gripped around the back of the chair, as tall and imposing as ever.

"We're fine, Tony," Steve says weakly, pushing up against the armrest to try and slowly wean his way into an upright position. It's not working very well for him, because he doesn't have the strength to stay that way and immediately slumps again. Natasha stops staring at Clint to reach over and help him ease down.

"Yeah," Clint scoffs, "and I'm the President."

Steve grimaces.

Hill makes her way across the room, coolly coming to a stop beside Fury. The two of them talk briefly. Clint squints at, but can only make out a few words with lipreading. He's not exactly sure if his translations are right from this far away, but it's something about Loki not being the one with the staff.

Which Clint sort of wants to laugh at, even though he knows it's true. But it's not for the same reason as Hill's. This long stuck with Loki, Clint has a pretty decent grasp of his capabilities now. But Hill doesn't. What, she took one good look at the Asgardian and decided he was too bed rumpled to have traveled to and from France last night? Maybe this is why the scepter is gone because S.H.I.E.L.D can't read people for crap.

Tony walks toward their teammates and starts to verbally poke at Steve in concern, who's too exhausted to do anything other than make a grumpy old man sound and bury his head into his hands. It's kind of funny in an endearing way.

Loki steps into place beside Clint, hands still bound together, something strange on his expression as he watches Nat, Tony, and Steve. Clint can't quite place it, but it looks sort of like concern or longing.

Clint bites on the inside of his cheek, refusing to think about that.

Bruce, having exchanged a few soft words with Natasha, takes the seat one down from her. Which leaves the spot next to her open, which is both thoughtful and touching and makes Clint sort of want to smack him because was it that obvious that Clint wants to sit next to Natasha and cling to her? Bruce, unlike Hill, apparently, is much better at reading people than Clint gives him credit for.

Clint looks at Loki again, watching them wordlessly, before walking toward the seat beside his partner and sliding into it. Even being close to her makes something in his chest release with relief. Natasha looks up at him, her green eyes tight.

"Are you okay?" she asks softly. Clint can hear the faintest edge of a thick Russian brogue slipping into her voice, which only happens when she's tired. How long has she been awake? What have she and Steve been doing to leave Natasha emotionally a mess and Steve half dead? Looking for the scepter is one thing, but this—them, how they are—doesn't just happen accidentally.

"Long few days," Clint admits, rubbing at his forehead. "Which I see you've had yourself."

"Hm." She sighs.

"Are you hurt?" he asks. He knows she already told him over the phone, but he suddenly doubts her earlier assessment.

Natasha quirks an eyebrow but says nothing more, lips pinched.

"If you're done saying I love you," Fury looks pointedly at Steve and Tony, the latter of whom smirks. Steve buries his head in his hands. "I think we have more important matters at hand then whether or not Captain Rogers needs to be in medical."

"Which he does," Tony says pointedly, plopping into the seat on the other side of Steve. Clint watches with faint amusement as Steve obliquely smacks the engineer's arm underneath the table. Children. Tony sends him a look, but Steve meets it with vigor.

"Captain Rogers needs to be here," Hill says thinly, "he can still function and we'll need all the hands that we can get."

He can still function? That's the bare minimum requirement? Steve's half-dead, but sure, his heart's still beating, drag him out here. They do know that he's human, right? This is why Steve will never get past the whole his injuries are an inconvenience, because to everyone else, they are. And it makes Clint want to scream.

Loki sighs softly, propping his elbows on the back of the chair he's leaning against to drape his bound hands over, and says, "Spare us the flowering, Deputy Director. I believe we're all aware that there is a crisis. What does this have to do with my brother?"

"Are you going to sit down?" Fury asks with a raised eyebrow.

Loki stares at him.

Fury rolls his eye, apparently having determined that no, he's not, and turns toward the screen. He pulls a tablet out of his coat and does something with it, fingers moving rapidly across the device. There's a soft click before a thermal map of Bordeaux appears on the larger screen, rapidly moving through timestamps across a twenty-four-hour period. Random hot spots like little flashes of repeating fireworks keep popping up all over the city. As time passes, they group up around where Clint knows there's a S.H.I.E.L.D. base. It isn't frequent, maybe every couple of hours, but the spots start rapidly gathering together inside and out of the base. The timestamp puts this as last Friday, five days ago.

Clint's brow furrows. This isn't something that can be attributed to fire or guns, or pretty much anything that Clint can think of off the top of his head. What…is that?

Bruce leans forward, his expression grim. "Is that gamma radiation?"

How the heck does he just know that?

"As far as our experts could tell, yes," Hill confirms. Her eyebrows raise. "How did you know?"

"It looks like a pulsar," Bruce explains.

A what?

At their blank expressions, Tony explains, somehow managing to have grabbed one of the pens without Clint noticing and is now playing with the cap by pulling it off and on. "It's a type of star where the light pulses at regulated intervals. It gives off gamma radiation."

Ah.

That's…uh.

"Hate to be the bearer of bad news," Clint says, flattening his hand on the tabletop, not entirely sure if he's serious or not as he says, "but I don't think a wandering pulsar stole the scepter."

He can practically hear Loki's eye roll. "Given that pulsars are more than twelve miles across and easily have the mass of your sun, yes, I doubt that is the culprit, Barton." Loki remarks dryly.

"So cross stars off the list," Tony says in a deadpan and fake crosses something off with his pen, "got it. We'll have the scepter's kidnapper in no time at this rate."

"Excellent deductive work," Natasha says flatly.

"I try."

Clint swallows a huff of amusement.

Fury ignores them in favor of staring at Loki pointedly for a long minute. Upon realizing that the Director is doing so, Loki stops playing with his shaking fingers and meets his eye. "What, Director?"

"This isn't Asgard?" Fury asks, gesturing toward the screen with one hand and setting the tablet down with the other.

Clint's brow furrows.

Loki's expression flits with open surprise. His eyebrows shoot up, his eyes widening a fraction. "What? Why would this be Asgard? The Bifrost looks nothing like that, I assure you, it's a steady stream of heat and light, not that. This looks more like—" Loki stops, his fingers anxiously scraping at each other. His brow furrows.

"Like what?" Fury prods, folding his arms across his chest.

Loki frowns, his eyes tighten, but he tries for indifference, "None of your concern, I'm afraid."

He has no idea. That's Loki's BS tone. Loki recognizes it, but he doesn't know what it is, which is awesome. Clint grits his teeth together, trying not to feel frustrated. He stares up at the flickering lights across the timestamps and realizes that it does look like how Tony described a pulsar. Repeated flashing lights, almost like someone turning a flashlight on and off.

Or…maybe…it kind of looks like multiple things landing in the same spot.

"It's our concern if it has to do with international security," Fury says hotly. "You don't get to decide which information is pertinent. Are you sure this isn't Asgard?"

Loki bristles, "I told you—"

"The same spots are in New York," Fury interrupts, flicking a finger across his tablet and showcasing the same pulsing hotspots across Manhattan. Clint notes that the time frame of these is much shorter. Two big spurts about an hour apart, blinking in and out. The timestamp says that these happened on Friday, just like the one in France. Holy crap. How did they not notice this? It's not like aliens were dropping from the sky into the middle of the city, Clint's pretty sure that would have been obvious. Fury continues, "And no one has seen your brother since New York, which means that unless what happened in Bordeaux is different than here, which I doubt, these things took him and the scepter, and if you know anything about this, you're going to tell me."

Loki looks flustered, but angry, and, Clint realizes after a moment, desperate. Clint feels his jaw tighten. "I don't know what it is," Loki says levelly. "I recognize it, but I don't know from where."

"That's convenient," Fury says flatly. Natasha shifts, biting at her lower lip. Anxious tic. Clint glances at her, confused.

"It's the truth," Loki defends, "I don't know what they are. I have lived for a very long time, Director, it's not out of the possibility this is something I saw in my youth. It's not Asgard, that much I can confirm. Asgard doesn't have an interstellar teleportation device that creates those sort of heat spots."

Apparently trying to cover all his bases, Fury presses, "So this has nothing to do with the Asgardian civil war, then?"

Clint winces, biting sharply on a swear. Tony doesn't bother to filter himself.

Of all the stupid things that Fury had to bring up, why did he feel the slightest bit compelled to mention that? Loki already told him that Asgard had nothing to do with it! Multiple times. He didn't need to bring up the stupid—

Crappity crap, freaking—

Loki stares at the Director blankly, his body rigid. "The what?" He asks. Clint can see the realization strike Fury that Loki doesn't know about the same moment that Loki realizes that they do. His gaze flits between them all, heavy and furious, and Clint practically squirms beneath his stare.

There's a breathless, painful lull.

Fury's eye lands on Steve. "You didn't tell him?" Fury accuses. Steve flinches, staring hard into the tabletop, his hands anxiously pushing against the edge. "Why for the love of God—"

"Thor decided it would be best," Steve says quickly. His eyes lift to meet Fury's, but Clint can still see that inwardly, Steve is scrambling. Too exhausted to come up with an excuse, too tired to face the Director's wrath. The super soldier adamantly ignores Loki's entire existence, as if knowing that looking Loki in the eyes would crumple him.

"Asgard is at war?" Loki repeats, and though he sounds confused, his voice thick with disbelief and surprise. Then, flustered, "Thor didn't—why wouldn't he—?"

Yeah, so, Thor has not made good on his promise that he would explain everything, and to be honest, Clint doesn't blame him. This is just one more thing. Clint doesn't know how he's expecting Loki to react to the news, but his stomach is twisted up with dread and wariness.

Delight.

Clint thinks that Loki is going to be delighted, and he wonders if this is why Thor avoided telling him. Nothing quite like having one of the once-leaders of the planet laugh at the slaughter of the people they're supposed to protect. Clint doesn't want to be here. He doesn't want to see this. After Thor's continued devastation and heavy heart about the whole thing, he doesn't want to see Loki's glee.

Clint's entire body stiffens, but it's too late to stand up and leave.

Crap.

Loki and Thor have argued about Asgard, mostly in Asgardian, but judging off of Thor's reactions, what little Loki does have to say about is rarely good. Clint doesn't really want to see that here, in his native language, where they don't pronounce Asgard as oosgar and he doesn't have to see Loki laugh at the bloodshed of his people.

Oosgar. Still the stupidest thing.

Lightly glossing over the intense feeling of anxiety washing through his body, Clint still feels baffled by the pronunciation. He asked Thor to write out Asgard for him in English once, and then stared at the corresponding "Ásgarðr" he got in response with confusion. That's clearly Asgardr, he'd tried to argue, but Thor had just shaken his head and explained that you don't pronounce the ðr and somehow the Á turns into oo.

Natasha's hand reaches out in response to him, and Clint doesn't jump, but it's a near thing as he's jolted back to reality. Natasha grips his wrist tightly, her gloved fingers pushing against his pulse point. Something about it feels both confiding and welcomed.

"Asgard is in the middle of a civil war and dragged the rest of the Nine into it, and it's your fault, now you know. Mazel tov. I guess that means you can't tell us whether or not Thor's disappearance is connected to that." Fury says, his tone somehow both flat and annoyed all at once.

The compassion is oozing.

"Okay," Tony says, sitting forward a little, "maybe blaming all of it on Lokes isn't exactly the most accurate assessment."

Loki doesn't look like he cares about the placid defense.

The Asgardian's jaw moves soundlessly for several seconds as if he can't get himself to speak. Rapid, fleeting emotions pass over his expression by the dozens in seconds. None of them are happy. His shaking hands clench, his face paling, and Clint gets the impression that Loki is trying hard not to dissolve into emotion (whatever that may be) or throw up.

And Clint feels himself spinning suddenly, the words lost one doesn't have a home to return to sitting on his chest heavily. The world blinks, like an afterimage, and he sees the cell and a large, looming figure, feels restraints and the heat, Clint is—

Tumbling.

Sitting.

In the chair. Natasha is gripping his hand. And his heart rate is spiked, his breathing unsteady, but he's here, and Fury's patience is not something to die for.

Present, present, present.

Sandwich.

Tomatoes.

The civil war wasn't Loki's fault.

"Dude," Clint finds himself saying in frustration without meaning to. Loki's distress isn't exactly hiding. Natasha's fingers tighten around his wrist. The pressure keeps him from falling again. (Oh, man it's happening everywhere not when I'm just asleep and what the heck is going on I'm crazy crazy crazy crazy). Fury's gaze lands on him and Clint quickly corrects himself to a more genteel, "Sir."

"Do you have something to say, Barton?" Fury asks.

"No." Clint says quickly.

Why did he have to say anything? That just came out of him like a gut punch.

"Why," Loki's voice is soft, but hard, and Clint finds himself looking up toward it by instinct. "Why would Thor not tell me? Why is he not on Asgard, fighting in this—this—" Loki doesn't seem to have a word for it.

He's not happy about the war, Clint realizes.

He's terrified.

There is no gleeful laughter or malicious spitting that they're getting what they deserve, no delight about how he'll take the throne of the ashes and bathe himself in their blood. Loki just…he's not vitriolic. He's upset.

"Apparently," and Hill's voice shows how highly she thinks of this idea, "you took precedence. We don't have time to go over all the details with you. We need to focus on this." She gestures to the screen.

"For the record," Tony says, and Fury makes a sound of impatience. "I thought it would be better to tell you, but Thor insisted it would be better if we waited. You were…" Tony struggles to find a word to sum up Loki's condition, and Clint grimaces, thinking of acid-burnt skin, broken bones, leaking eyes, and torn muscle with hasty tourniquets, "uh, preoccupied with being half-dead and everything, so Thor thought it would be better to tell you until you regained your 'full strength' or however he put it."

Loki's jaw grits. "And he felt no desire to tell me in the months that I was fine?"

"I mean," Tony says delicately, pushing the cap onto the pen, "you're not exactly winning a health prize or anything right now. And I think Thor sort of hoped that it would resolve itself."

"Loki," Steve says, weak but sincere and completely ignoring the two agents glaring at him, "we'll talk about this later, I promise. Finding Thor is more important right now."

Loki's eyes bore into the captain, but his mouth tightens. His trembling hands clench. He looks up toward the screen, his gaze sharp. "Whatever that is," his voice is barely controlled, "it may very well have to do with the—war. I wouldn't know. Even if this is just contained within the Nine, I still don't recognize the source. I would have to study this further in order to tell you."

Fury's lips tighten. He and Hill share a brief glance, unhappy.

"That…wasn't the answer you wanted," Tony says.

"I had hoped this was some sort of Asgardian spat," Fury confesses and grips the edge of his coat. One of his few anxious tics. Well, this is great. Somehow the situation keeps leveling up in the worst way. Does explain why he's being a bit of a blockhead. He's worried enough that it's showing. Clint learned a long time ago that Nick Fury worries every day, every hour, all the time. It's when it starts to show that you should brace for nukes.

"Forgive my people for disappointing you," Loki says sarcastically.

Fury releases his coat, picking up his tablet from the table. "Even if this was some sort of Asgardian pissy fight, it wouldn't solve our problem. I'd just hoped that explained where Thor went because that option is a lot friendlier than the alternative."

Fury swipes a new image on the screen and Clint feels his insides go cold.

Natasha's fingers, warm, but impersonal with the glove, slide down to interlock with his, her gaze on him, not the image as if she already knows what it is. Clint feels numb. He can't grip her back. Can't give support. Can't think. Can't move. Can't—

(On his knees, unable to stand, begging for them to stop until he's hoarse, the pain of the blades and they're laughing and laughing—)

Tony swears loudly. He stops playing with the pen, turning his chair to take in the image, his body rigid. "Is this recent?" he asks, breath faint.

Clint can't think.

He knows he should reach out and slap the engineer or something to force him to focus and stay present, but his mind is—too much. Too heavy. Too hard. Not his.

On the screen is the image of a group of Chitauri in Manhattan from a distance via a street camera, maybe a half dozen, armed and dangerous. Clint can't tell what they're there for, only that he didn't hear about any brutal mutilations or murders this week. Whatever they did, it wasn't violent or they hid it so well no one could tell.

"They took the scepter," Natasha says quietly.

"You—" Clint's mouth works tightly. His jaw muscles are bunching. He's going to be sick.

It's not over it's never over I walk away but I don't walk away because I can't escape it, I can't escape Loki or his mind-screwing or the anything and it's always back and back and I'm spinning spinning spinning spinning—

You and me or you are me?

Tony swears again.

Clint breathes out in a faint, wispy wheeze.

When he dares to look up at Loki, he sees that the Asgardian's eyes are dead. His expression is pinched, his lips tight, but there's something almost haunted about it, rather than pleased. Which that would make sense right? Loki being happy his allies showed up? But it doesn't because nothing about Loki makes sense today.

"We found them in France," Steve confirms, shifting a little, his focus clearly on Tony's stiff form beside him. "We almost got the scepter back from them but they, uh," Steve's hand unconsciously moves to his side, "got a hit in."

Steve got hit in the stomach by something that blew up a Quinjet's propeller in one shot.

And he's moving.

Because he doesn't need to be in medical, Clint's butt.

"The Chitauri have the scepter." Bruce says, stating blankly what everyone else doesn't want to. The chemist's face is closed off, his fingers anxiously twisting each other. He looks up at the screen, something resigned in his voice as he asks, "that was five days ago?"

"Yes." Hill answers.

Thor disappeared five days ago.

Thor's phone pinged off of New York five days ago.

Thor's last known location was Manhattan. Thor never made it to Jane's because he never left New York. Something took him. Chituari took him. And now they're doing God-knows-what to him, and he's been in their hands for five days. Clint was possessed by Loki for a little over three and managed to nearly kill thousands.

Thor is…bigger, stronger, powerful.

"How…" Tony's voice is a carefully controlled façade. "How are they even here? We blew up their mothership. They all died when that nuke hit them. They collapsed. We cleaned up their bodies. There is no way for them to be here!"

"We don't know," Fury answers grimly, shifting a little. "But last week they woke up, and nothing we've tried has killed them again. We've contained what we could, but those are some of the stragglers that escaped. There were about twenty of them."

Twenty?

"And you didn't think it was important to tell us?!" Tony's control slips, leaving only scrabbling, desperate panic. He gets to his feet, the pen death-clenched in one fist. "The Chitauri wake up and start running around and escape and you think, 'hey, that's no problem', but the moment that they go after the scepter that's when you're game? We could have prevented all of this if you'd told us! Thor wouldn't be out there with them, God knows what happening to him—!"

"This may come as a surprise to you, Stark, but S.H.I.E.L.D. has existed for a long time without the Avengers," Hill snaps, obviously frustrated. "We don't come to you with every problem because we don't need to. We had the situation under control. You're our hired help, not the other way around."

"Ha!" Tony snorts.

"Tony," Steve says, reaching up to rest a hand on a coiled forearm. Tony's releases a sharp, clenched breath, his eyes pinned on Hill furiously. Steve repeats his name, softer, trying to encourage him to sit down.

"No, you know what, I'm with Tony," Clint says, his chest doing an anxious twisty jump-thing. His entire body is numb. His hands are shaking. Natasha keeps trying to get him to squeeze her hand but he won't. Not panicking means that this is okay and it's not. It's not okay on any level. "You should have called us when the Chitauri woke up. You don't even know what happened, and you have two of the most brilliant minds on the planet sitting at the table and—"

"We had it under control." Fury argues.

Clint laughs, his voice high. "The scepter missing and Thor a budding sequel is control?"

Fury's voice is cold. "Agent Barton, that's enough. Stark, don't start!"

Clint makes a sound of protest, ready to launch into another round of accusations because his hands are shaking and his body is falling apart and he can feel the burns he can feel the burns he can—but Loki cuts them all off when he says, his words slightly tight, "It has become clearer and clearer to me that Thor has not explained what the Chitauri are to you."

Argument momentarily put to the side, all of them look at the Asgardian instead.

Loki breathes out, his trembling fingers clenched together so tightly they're going white. He's too still. Something's wrong. Loki wets his lips, "The Chitarui are not what your people would call robots, as you seem to think. The destruction of the mothership did not...turn them off, it merely put them in a stasis like death. They didn't rot, did they, Director?"

Fury's mouth tightens. "A few did."

Loki nods. "I expected as much. The kill shot must be to the head and heart. All of you are trained to kill in that manner and did so at least a few times. If you don't, the wound isn't fatal. The Chitauri's heart is the mothership, it beats for them. They are bound to it, but not one vessel only. All that it would take for the Chitauri to wake up again is for another vessel to take on their life force. It is a type of soul magic that is far too advanced for any of you to understand, but in short, the Chitauri are awake because another mothership has demanded them to be."

Clint's fingers feel cold. His chest is hot. His breathing is sharp. Bruce's lukewarm and reaches under the table and rests on his knee encouragingly. Clint's jaw clenches, his hand tightening against Natasha's instinctively.

What does that mean that someone reactivated the Chitauri?

"Weren't…you found some random army up in space, right? Who the heck cares about whether or not you actually conquered Earth?" Tony demands, his breathing cramped. Clint's eyes jump to him. Steve is gripping the engineer's wrist tightly.

Natasha knew, Clint realizes.

They were attacked by Chitauri yesterday. Natasha didn't tell him then, but she knew this was coming and she didn't grab his hand in support, it was to keep him down so he wouldn't make a scene. Clint doesn't. He can't. This hurts and aches and he wants it all to stop. His head is spinning.

Loki's lips purse.

"Stark's got a point. What? The Chitauri learn that you're taking a vacation on Earth and decide to stop by and see how it's going?" Fury asks sarcastically. "If they're suddenly active, do you have anything to do with that?"

The younger Asgardian tenses up further. Somebody kicks him, he's going to shatter. "I'm not behind every—No. I had nothing to do with it," Loki says coldly. "The Chitauri were a necessary evil, but not my companion of choice. I have no idea why they took the scepter or if they have Thor."

"Why should we believe you?" Hill asks, her eyebrow raised.

Loki's teeth set. "You have no reason to. But the longer they hold my brother, the worse the outcome becomes. You say you still have some captured. Let me speak to them—"

Fury laughs, sharp, hard, and bitter. "Do I look stupid to you?"

Loki's eyes flash.

"Do you even speak their language?" Hill presses. "None of our linguists have had any luck."

"Yes." Loki says harshly. "Yes, I speak it. An army is hardly effective if you can't communicate."

"The answer is still no." Fury says firmly, shaking his head. "I'm not giving you access to your allies so you can create an even bigger headache for us than the potential of Thor under the control of the scepter already is. You don't get to have that win."

Loki slams his hands on the chair, and Clint flinches. Loki says, furious, "I am not trying to trick you! All I want is to find Thor! Talking with the Chitauri is the most efficient way to do that. If you won't give my your blessing, fine. But rest assured that I will find a way to break in myself. You have a choice of watching or not. That's it."

Fury stares at him.

Loki meets his gaze with equal vigor.

The tension is thick and palpable, someone waiting for it to give. An unstoppable force, an immovable object. Tick tock, tick tock.

"Fine." Fury grits between his teeth after a moment of silent internal deliberation. "You have five minutes."

Loki doesn't look any more relieved at being given permission than he would at being told he's about to be stabbed. "Thank you." The words, Clint can tell, are completely insincere. Loki almost seems disappointed, as if part of him was hoping Fury would refuse.

Author's Note:

Next chapter: April 8th.