Author's Note: Let me give you a recount of the last month for me: PanIC. pAnIC. PanICNNG. Thank you for your patience. Now i'm in the midst of a severe depressive episode and I'm not sure that's better, lol (it's not). Anyway. I read all of your comments and they were all very sweet and I love all of you so much. You all get one free hug and a kiss on the forehead. I hope you have a fantastic week.

One extra long chapter as a thank you. *heart*

Warnings: some violence, blood.

"[Doorbell rings]

—Were you expecting someone?

—Am I ever?"

-Elementary S2.

Chapter Seven:

It's a very peaceful ten minutes as they approach Manhattan.

But, because this is Clint's life, that dictates it's the only peaceful ten minutes.

"Sirs," Jarvis says, a touch of tension in his voice, which makes Clint look up toward his camera, "the Bifrost is currently making a landing on Avengers Tower. I would recommend immediately deviating your course."

Tony swears creatively, jerking up to his feet and disrupting both Steve and Bruce as he does so. Both of them make an effort to right themselves. Clint miserably looks up from the floor toward the ceiling and whatever God is beyond that as he desperately asks why. Why can't we have ten minutes of peace?

Natasha pulls back on the controls, starting to make a big loop, muttering under her breath. "Who? Do you know?" she asks.

"It would appear to be the Warriors Three and the Lady Sif," Jarvis answers after a moment. There's a beat before, "I see no others."

Well, at least there's that very small plus.

"What are they doing here?" Tony hisses, sliding into the co-pilot's seat. From this distance, they're close enough to the Tower that they can see it but far enough that the Warriors shouldn't be able to do likewise. Their timing is impeccable. Tony's gotta come up with an Anti-Asgardian repellant. Clint does not feel like dealing with them on top of a stab wound and everyone's over pushed buttons.

They're going to destroy each other.

I can't do this right now.

"We can't land," Steve says, burying his face in his hands, tense and tired and utterly and completely done, "we have Loki in the 'jet."

Beside Clint, Loki's brow draws together in confusion, like he wants to ask why. There's the slightest edge of tension and dread sitting in his hunching shoulders and tight fingers as if he's bracing himself for a court hearing.

"What are they even doing?" Tony demands, pulling up a screen with feed from the cameras on the Tower. By all accounts, without the audio, the four Asgardians appear to be yelling into nothingness and waving their fists angrily like they're angrily protesting. All they need is a sign and some shoddy penmanship and they'll be unhappy cosplayers out to fight against the mighty evil of entertainment. Truly, Asgardian soldiers at their finest. "They were just here last week to climb all over Thor's back about Loki." Tony continues, then, "Crap. Do they know Thor is missing? Are they here to help? Ugh, I hope not. God would be a cruel son of a gun to bless us with that."

Loki snorts, slowly getting up to his feet. He seems unsteady.

Clint's entire muscular system has decided to fire half its staff, so he can't do much more than sit there and awkwardly crane his neck to try and see the screen, one hand pushed against his stomach. He's useless and tired and hungry and too emotionally spent to be of any use beyond a swear translator. As in, translating all their frustrations into swears.

"I believe they're attempting to get your attention," Loki says.

"No, really? How on earth did you come up with that?" Tony mutters sarcastically.

"They're adamant they must speak with Thor immediately. They refuse to answer why." Jarvis interjects.

"How predictably vague," Loki mutters with some bitterness.

"They seem quite concerned," Jarvis adds. "What would you like me to do?" the question is open-ended and directed at everyone, but Clint still feels the entire collective attention slide to Steve by habit. Tony and Steve are the structural support of the entire team, but Clint thinks Tony hasn't quite caught up with that yet.

"If they want to talk to him, then they probably don't know he's missing," Steve points out. "Unless they think we have him stuffed in a closet somewhere."

"If they did, they wouldn't bother trying to talk." Loki promises. "They'd simply tear apart the Tower. They rarely believe in clear communication."

Alright, Mr. Bitterness. There is a story behind that. Clint doesn't know if he wants to hear it, mostly because he doesn't need another reason to punch the foursome in the face.

"We can't let them see you," Steve says, addressing Loki. "The last thing we need right now is you being hauled back to Asgard." Something shudders in Loki's face at the mere suggestion of it and Clint's stomach tightens with hot sympathy. The captain wipes a hand over his face, looking gray. "We…I don't know."

Loki's jaw sets, and he casts a careful look across all of them, something flickering in his eyes. He looks back at the screen. His shoulders drop a fraction. "In truth, Asgard's assistance in finding Thor would not go unwelcomed. Even if the Warriors are idiots, they are skilled trackers and soldiers…if my return to Asgard's prisons means that Thor would be safe then—"

Resignation. That's what the look was. Loki's big, stupid brain put two and two together and came up with self-sacrifice.

"—that would be worth the cost."

Natasha stands up so quickly she rams the edge of her knee against the dashboard as she turns around to face him. One look at her dark face assures Clint she doesn't feel it. Tony desperately scrambles to grab the controls behind her.

"No." Natasha says flatly. She reaches out a finger and jabs Loki in the chest, hard. "You're being stupid. No."

"Thor—" Loki tries.

"We will find Thor because we're good at our freaking jobs." Natasha growls, enunciating each word. "Not because you threw yourself into the fire for him." She stares at him, cold, hard, and yet, somehow, vulnerable and bare.

Loki's throat works. He seems to have no idea what to do in the face of this, as though the idea of someone wanting to protect him that isn't Thor is completely and utterly foreign. It's several long seconds before Loki says, with a touch of awkwardness, "Agent Romanov, I had no idea you cared so much."

Clint winces for her sake, wondering if Loki even knows how painful that must be for Natasha to hear. Despite her callousness, or maybe in spite of it, of course she cares. Natasha is all heart.

Clint watches as her face contracts, spinning through dozens of emotions and words she wants to shout and realizes oh. It's not just me who actually freaking cares about him now. And of course, that makes sense in hindsight, Natasha, a woman trained to put self-preservation above everything but the mission, wouldn't throw herself over someone to protect them with her body unless she considered them family.

Natasha could say all of this. She could yell or slap him or gut punch him hard enough that despite his advanced healing he'd be hobbling for a week. But she doesn't.

Natasha flicks Loki in the nose. Loki makes a surprised jerk, hand coming up to his face automatically before a startled, dry laugh escapes him. "You're an idiot," she says as though that's a simple fact of the universe and takes her seat again. As she puts on her headset, she says, "Asgard doesn't know you're here until you can defend yourself again, so stop trying to get yourself killed and sit down while we figure out what to do."

Loki rubs at his nose once and takes a step back, stretching his hands out faintly as he mock bows. "Whatever you wish, your majesty."

Natasha rolls her eyes, but there's a fond quirking up of her lip.

"I need you on my PR team again," Tony says, a faint smirk hiding the darkness in his face.

Nobody laughs.

After a two-minute deliberation, they come to the conclusion that the best way to deal with this is to leave Loki in the Quinjet and approach the topic of Thor by letting the Warriors and Sif feed them the information they know first. Loki makes another feeble attempt at a protest, but all of them are pretty dead-set on not letting him return back to Asgard, so it doesn't really go anywhere.

Clint and Steve are also supposed to play up their injuries so they'll leave faster, which was Loki's idea.

Arm slung across Natasha's shoulders and heavily leaning into her, with Bruce and Tony hovering over Steve like he's a proper old man with a shattering spine who might fall over at any second, the five of them hobble out of the 'Jet. They leave Loki behind in the darkness where he will hopefully remain and not do anything stupid, but who knows. Just because he has intelligence markers likely off of whatever charts Asgard uses does not mean he has the wisdom to use it without getting himself killed.

The Warriors are practically huffing and puffing despite the fact they've only been waiting for maybe five minutes.

Sif—the only one whose name Clint really knows, because he's actually talked with all of them maybe four or five times—sweeps her gaze across their group, and her mouth presses into a thinned line as she finds it lacking. "Where is Thor?" she demands.

"Hi to you too," Tony says pointedly.

"Where is our shield brother? It is of the utmost importance that we speak to him immediately." The blond guy says, hand resting on his sword like he intends to beat the answer out of them. Okay, so maybe they really do think they have Thor stuffed in a closest somewhere.

Steve groans, a little over the top and fake, and starts to tumble back. Bruce catches him with ease, helping right him on his crutches. The Warriors barely spare him a glance.

"We don't know," Natasha says. She continues to herd Clint forward, which isn't helping his side at all and he has to bite on his tongue several times from telling her to slow down. "He isn't here right now."

"The Allfather must speak with him," Sif insists, beginning to follow them. "You have just returned from battle, surely he was with you…"

So they don't know no one has seen him in days. Which doesn't make a lot of sense because shouldn't Heimdall have relayed that? Clint kind of got the impression he saw everything. But maybe he wasn't focused on Earth and instead on the giant war going on, like any normal person would have been.

"He wasn't." Tony says. "Why does Odin need to speak with about? We can pass along a message."

The redheaded guy makes an affronted sound. "This is information for Thor only, mortal!"

How is it that he can take a basic, normal word like "mortal" and make it seem like one of the most disgusting creatures they could ever dare to live as?

Sif lifts up a hand to silence him. "Volstagg." She says firmly. Red backs down bodily if not in intent. After a moment to gather her patience together, Sif says like they're stupid, "There have been recent threats made against Thor's life by Alfheim. Odin wants him back in Asgard for his safety. Out here on Midgard"—with you is left unsaid, but clearly implied—"Thor is vulnerable."

Clint's jaw tightens, a spasm going up and down his throat. Too late, sits on the edge of his tongue, almost bubbling out of him in hysterical laughter. Too late. Alfheim can't get to him 'cause he's too busy being tortured by the Chitauri.

There's a moment of silence.

The guilt seems to squirm between all of them like a collective parasite. Thor is vulnerable with them. He is, isn't he? Would Thor have gotten taken on Asgard? Or is it just them that can't protect him?

Tony recovers first, which isn't unexpected. The man has spent his entire life having to do so. "Thor kinda doesn't strike me as the vulnerable type. He's fine, okay? We can talk about this later, but they're injured and need to be seen by our doctors." Tony gestures toward Clint and Steve. "We don't have time to talk."

"Where did you see him last?" Red persists.

"Here-ish." Tony says vaguely, trying to herd them forward, but the Warriors won't have that.

Natasha's hand tightens around his waist, and Clint realizes then how much of his weight he's dumping on her unintentionally. Apparently he's not nearly as fine as he thought he was. He tries to right himself.

The other other other guy, Grimwald? Clint thinks it is, steps cleanly into their walking path, jaw set. Grimwald's eyes are dark and angry. "You misunderstand the seriousness of this. Where is our prince?"

Our.

Not yours. Ours.

There's something about the possessiveness in his tone that makes Clint's chest flare up. Thor doesn't belong to you. You're not the only people he cares about.

"Move." Tony says, shoulders drawing up. Somehow he manages to keep his voice both level and powerful.

"Not until you tell us where he is. You're hiding something." Grimwald growls. His hand tightens on his sword as he takes a step closer. Natasha's other hand drops to her gun. "What happened? Was it Loki? Has that bastard done something to him, because I swear by the gods—"

Sif grabs Grimwald's arm in warning.

Tony laughs. It's a sharp, startled sound like someone kicked it out of him on a reflex. "Loki? Loki isn't here. How many times do we have to tell you that? We don't know where the poor sucker went off to die, but if we had him here, you think we wouldn't have booted him out the front door by now? Why on God's name do you think we have any more of a reason to protect him than you do?"

Anyone who says Tony Stark has no ability to lie has clearly never watched him defend someone before.

The first flickers of doubt begin to show on the Asgardians. Tony grabs hold of it with both hands. "Thor isn't here because sometimes he leaves to go wander in the woods and embrace his inner man or whatever"—this is true, and Clint sees the creases of Sif's face soften with recognition—" and it's not our job to keep track of him. Look, when we see him again—"

"I'm right here, my friends," Thor says behind them.

What.

Clint's brain completely turns off, restarts, and then kicks itself in an effort to process that.

Clint practically topples over himself as he turns around rapidly, heart in his throat. There's a desperate moment of oh my gosh you're okay you're here you're alive that washes through him, powerful, heartwrenching, and awful.

Thor lands on the Tower, and there's a twitching shimmer as his armor catches the light wrong. Alive. Whole. Untainted. What the heck? Where on God's freaking green earth has he been?

He's—

But he was—

How is he—?

Thor moves closer to them, and they all watch, unable to speak, like he's a drifting ghost. So close, unable to be touched. More than one hand tries to reach out for him, but he shies away from it with ease. Bruce's expression clears and clenches abruptly like he smelled something fowl, but Clint can't speak.

Thor looks them over for a moment, cursory and familiar, and Clint drinks in the sight of him before he turns back around to face the Warriors, "My friend, I thank you for your concern for my safety, but the best place for me is here."

Was…has he been wandering around in the woods for the last few days?

How—? Why—? This—

But the Chitauri—?

"Thor," Sif says tightly, casting them a side glance like they're the ones intruding, "Alfheim has made several threats against you. They say it's time you choose a side in this war. Odin is worried they intend to force you."

Visible tension shudders through Thor's hands, relaxes, then he draws back. Alfheim. The land of the Light Elves, right? Why on God's name are all of them so terrified of it? No one is saying it explicitly, but it's pretty obvious.

"Alfheim wouldn't dare to take me here. Midgard is neutral territory and they know this. All the realms would turn against them. I'm safe here." Thor promises. "I'm not returning to Asgard yet. I need to stay here. Please."

A beat passes before the Warriors and Sif share collective, tight looks that speak thousands of words. Sif looks at all of them pointedly before she says something in Asgardian pleadingly. There's a brief back and forth with growing tension between the two before Thor ends it with several repeated "Far vil være verre enn dem" and that nearly beats every other argument out of them.

"Det er ikke en din fars feil," Sif says furiously. "Du valgte dette."

"How?" Thor asks in English, voice completely dead. "How could I have chosen my father's actions?"

Wait. Are they…blaming Thor for Odin's decisions? What the—?

"You could have stayed on Asgard," Blond argues. "You could have left Loki alone. He reaped what he sowed. He's not a good person, Thor, and he never has been." For some reason, the words make Bruce twitch. "You need to let this foolishness go and come home. Vær så snill."

Please.

"You think Loki deserved all of it, that Odin—my father did to him?" Thor asks, and there's something about the tone that makes Clint tense up. It's raw. Natasha's face clenches, dread settling into the creases of her eyes.

She just realized something.

Clint feels like he's missing something painfully obvious.

"Yes," Sif says plainly. "Perhaps not for the rest of his life, but he all but killed you. Forgive me if I'm not as willing to forget that as you are. I know that you care for him, but I can't. Not...not after that."

Thor takes several moments to speak again. "I'm not leaving yet. If the threat grows worse, or Alfheim attempts to make an attack, I'll return with you, but not yet."

"Loki doesn't need you," Hogun says.

"Loki isn't here." Thor says, and at least he isn't outright denying his existence anymore. While it was fun to watch Thor toy with them, it's faster if he acknowledges his existence and moves on.

Sif's mouth sets unhappily. "Fine," she says and starts to turn away before stopping and looking back at him. "Are you injured? I smell blood."

Blood.

Magic.

Thor's shoulders hitch.

It's not Thor.

Oh.

The disappointment is worse than the brief, lulling moment of relief that their friend had been returned to them. That he was safe and alive and whole, just wandering around in the woods to find his inner nature and all that hippy crap. It's not Thor because it's Loki, being a stupid idiot, and using magic again, but actually getting the Warriors and Sif to leave.

"No." Loki says in Thor's voice, a little too quickly by Clint's estimate. "The Avengers have returned from battle. They need a healer. I apologize for cutting this short, but they need to be attended to. Sjáumst, ha det bra." Loki says and stalks toward the entrance to the penthouse. Clint can see him waning the further he goes, but all of them are quick to follow after, Grimwald having finally moved away.

He hears the Warriors and Sif repeat the last phrase, sounding faintly confused, but he doesn't really care anymore. His one goal is to lay down and smack Loki. That's two goals, but whatever.

Sjáumst, ha det. Loki and Thor say it to each other all the time when Thor leaves somewhere. Clint thought it was just a thing between them. Maybe it's just a culture thing?

Loki's illusion drops about a second before he does and takes a prompt plunge toward the floor behind the couch. There's a smacking sound a moment later as he collides with the floor and Loki groans.

Natasha carefully deposits Clint on the couch beside Steve before she, Bruce, and Tony round toward the back to try and assess him. There's a bit of shuffling, swearing, and then Loki says, almost slurred with delirium, "stop! I need to keep it up, stop helping!"

Thor flickers back into view, this time clearly just an illusion. The sight of him makes Clint's chest twist with sadness and longing.

All of them wait breathlessly for the Bifrost to claim the Warriors and Sif again, and it's an agonizing minute before that happens. Sif keeps looking back at them and Clint gets the impression she knows they're filled with crap. They should have told all of them what was going on. It's only going to be worse for them in the long run that they didn't. The rainbow blur of light rattles the entire room before the four are swept off to Asgard, hopefully, to not return and pester them for a minimum of a few days.

Thor immediately drops out of view.

Loki moans hoarsely, the sort of sound a dying man makes when his lungs are rattling apart. It's a sound familiar to Clint on an intimate level from his nightmares and he twitches. I will not panic, I will not panic, I'm fine in the Tower and nothing could be better—

"Oh my gosh, are you dead?" Clint demands, carefully twisting around to poke his head over the edge of the couch. Loki is crumpled against the floor, half upright against the back of the couch. His arms are bleeding again and shaking so bad that it's making his teeth chatter.

"I had it handled," Tony says harshly. Bruce kneels down next to Loki and looks at the bloody mess with waning patience and the edges of panic. "You didn't have to help." Tony persists.

"They—they wouldn't have gone—if—if I didn't," Loki says in protest. He squeezes his eyes shut. "Oh, gods. Alf-Alfheim is—torture. Feared. Everywhere. Thor—impooortannt." Loki swallows thickly, like he's trying not to puke. "I don't…matter."

"You're the biggest, stupidest egotistical jerk that I have ever had the displeasure of knowing." Tony says harshly. Loki looks up at him in confusion and hurt.

"W-what?"

"Tony," Bruce says pointedly. "Is right now the time?"

Apparently so, because the multibillionaire shows no sign of stopping. "Just because you want to flaunt your life around like it's nothing doesn't mean that the rest of us don't care if you get hurt." Tony swears angrily and turns away from him, clasping his fingers behind his head. "You don't have to fix everything yourself, you emo boyband. Would it kill you to let us keep you safe for once or do you—"

The answer to the question is probably no, but Loki is done hearing it anyway. He seizes for several seconds before his eyes roll back in his head and he passes out limply into Bruce's arms. All of them breathe heavily, watching and waiting for something worse.

"Tony," Steve says, a little late, but no less firm, "Shut up."

Tony wisely closes his mouth.

000o000

It's well over an hour later before Natasha and Bruce declare Loki stable, asleep, and under an ungodly amount of painkillers. The only thing that would help him recover faster at this point would be a blood transfusion, but most of their supply from when Loki does feel okay enough to donate for future problems is gone.

With Jarvis carefully monitoring vitals, the five of them sit on the couches and don't talk for long minutes. The silence isn't uncomfortable, but it isn't cozy, the sort of punishing quiet that only comes after a bad job.

The third time that Natasha has gotten up to replace Clint's ice pack, she comes back with an annoyed scowl. "Are we going to talk, or just sit here and contemplate the universe?"

"Were we sitting here to talk?" Tony asks from behind his phone.

"I was under that impression."

Tony turns off his device. "And what do you want to talk about?"

Clint groans softly. "Can we please just let this wait? I'm in pain and I'm high"—he ignores Natasha's immediate "you're on exactly two Tylenol, ptitsa," and continues—"yes, as I said, high, and I just want to sleep. Is anyone in dire emotional distress?" They all look at each other. "Or do we need to talk about anything that can't wait until later?"

"No." Natasha says. "Except what we're going to do about Thor."

There's a brief ensuing, arguing conversation where they realize they can do exactly nothing because they have no way to track him, and that the likelihood of Mjonlir—which they can track to some degree—being with Thor is abysmally low given the circumstances. But lo and behold, in circles they keep going about it.

"Anything we can use to track him down would take days to weeks or even months and I don't know if we have that kind of time to wait," Tony says, shaking his head while rubbing at his temples. "We need to find something faster. If the Chitauri do have him, I don't want to wait around for Thorzilla Goes to the City."

"We don't have a lot of other options." Steve points out. "We don't even know if he's on Earth right now."

Which is a solid, depressing point. Who's to say that the Chitauri didn't teleport Thor across space and they're not currently holding him captive in their mothership-thingy? Tony's face pales considerably at the suggestion.

Bruce rubs at the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. "If Loki could use some sort of tracking magic, this would go faster."

Therein lies the problem, doesn't it? Because Loki can't. Two minutes of trying to impersonate his brother nearly killed him. It would probably take him hours if not days before he could track down Thor properly. He wouldn't last to the end of it, and they're not trading one Asgardian brother for the other.

"Fury will likely set up teams to search the more obvious places." Natasha says, rubbing her clasped fingers over her knuckles, "but we're still looking at a long wait."

"Maybe we should have accepted the Warriors' help." Clint admits with reluctance. "Any extra hands would be great right now."

"Not at the cost of Loki." Steve says. The words seem to pop out before he even thinks twice about them, but Clint stares at him for several long moments. No one else seems to give it any thought beyond agreement, because Natasha is nodding softly.

"Okay, wait," Clint says, unwilling to let the elephant go unaddressed for another five months, "look, are we…Loki is…what…to us now?"

Everyone stares at him. Clint tries not to squirm, adjusting his ice pack.

"He's…" Natasha doesn't seem to have a word to put there. Tony grips at the lower half of his face, tapping his finger against his cheek. Bruce looks at the floor and Steve's face tightens. Clint sighs, bumping his knee into Natasha's as he sits up a little straighter. Ow. Bad idea. That hurts.

Clint bites on the inside of his cheek before saying for all of them, "I don't want to see him hurt, I know that much. I…think somewhere, along the way, I got felled by sentiment."

It's like there's a collective breath of air, as if they've been hiding this from each other. If anyone's made an effort, it's been poorly executed. About the equivalent stealth powers of hiding from security by jumping behind a small sapling.

"Yeah," Tony agrees.

"Does this make us bad people?" Bruce asks, quiet. "That we care after all that he did?"

Are we even good people at this point? Clint thinks to himself. He knows that he rarely feels the part. The weight of the lives he's destroyed sit heavily with him constantly and it's crippling. Sometimes it's all he can do to get out of bed.

I want to do better, Clint told Coulson in that interrogation room what feels like a lifetime and a half ago after he turned himself in. I can't leave this life, but I wish I could.

You will do better, Coulson promised.

Clint never believed him. He still doesn't.

There's a long pause, before Steve says, equally soft, "No. None of us are sinless." If they can't offer second and third chances to do better, they're hypocrites and liars.

Natasha leans forward. "He's sem'ya." She says. Clint's heart clenches. His partner translates a moment later, her voice both gentle and endlessly sad, "Family."

000o000

The rest of the Avengers eventually filter out to try and get some sleep or crawl off to the lab to not think for a while, so Clint ends up by himself on the couch and mindlessly scrolling through TV. Eventually, he comes across season five hundred and thirty-nine of Supernatural and forces himself to sit through hours of episodes that make him want to tear out his eyes. Sometimes Clint thinks that it's a great series, other times he looks at the messed-up relationship between Sam and Dean Winchester and thinks wow that's me and Barney, minus the protective rage monster inside of Dean.

Somewhere between them starting a hunt and the angel showing up, Clint falls into a mindless doze. He dreams of blood and tears and screaming. He dreams of a green-skinned woman shouting at him and another woman with a robotic arm breaking bones. "There are over twenty-five in your arm." She says, "Why don't you count with me?"

One. Overarmsbenet.

Six. Skulderbladet.

Ten. Albuebenet.

Far, hjelpe meg.

"Maybe we should start over." The green woman says.

"I don't know what you want," he rasps, his arm spasming and aching in a way that's impossible to describe. Pain is hot, but it is cold and it's dry and wet all at once. "I can't tell you what you want."

They start on his other arm.

He's crying. He's always crying. Help isn't coming.

Clint wakes up with a jolt, shoving upright and immediately curling over his side with a groan. His breathing is hard and his arm is aching in phantom strains of pain. His fingers feel tight when he moves them. His shoulderblade is throbbing. This isn't mine.

He squeezes his eyes shut tightly. Supernatural characters are arguing in the background. Far, hjelpe meg. He understands the words instinctively. Father, help me. This pain isn't his—it's Loki's, and Swenson was dreaming everything too. He doesn't understand what's going on and it scares him. Endlessly, deeply in it's complete entirity. Somehow this felt easier to handle when he didn't know there were other people involved. It didn't make sense before, but now it feels like it's leaching his brain empty.

How can Swenson be getting dreams of Loki?

Why?

If it is, in fact, related to Loki giving off some sort of dream radiation, why is Swenson getting it up in the Helicarrier when the rest of the Avengers aren't? And if it's not that, but instead a leftover of the scepter, is Selvig dreaming all of this, too? And why? Why is it only after two years that it all started? Wouldn't it have made more sense if it had been a byproduct since the beginning?

Clint squeezes the bridge of his nose, exhaling sharply. Exhaustion sucks at his bones. He feels shaky and tired in a way he can't describe and he knows it's not going to get better. It never gets better. Sometimes he thinks if his body ever got the time to rest, he'd sleep for months.

He just—

He needs to think.

He turns off the TV and grabs the sketchbook that Steve left on the coffee table some time in the last few days. He flips to the back for an empty page and picks up one of the less expensive-looking art pencils to write with.

There are very few things that Steve Rogers will splurge on, but art supplies are one of them. Which is endearing, honestly. Clint saw him heavily debating with Natasha a few weeks ago whether or not to buy a set of twenty markers for a hundred dollars or go for a cheaper brand. Part of Clint kinda hopes that Natasha convinced him to spend the hundred. Steve has millions in pension money that US government awarded him after the Battle of New York as a thank you for "dying" in the second World War—you know, as you do—and Steve has nothing to spend it on. That on top of his S.H.I.E.L.D. job, Steve is loaded for life.

The man deserves some over-the-top expensive markers.

This is all to say that Clint is probably holding a pencil worth anywhere from thirty cents to fifty dollars.

Carefully, he starts to write out everything he knows about the dreams and the invasion in bullet points. With the invasion, he puts a hesitant L tortured by Chitauri? and stares at it for a long time. He doesn't know how he feels about this. He can't dispute the idea after what he saw on the Helicarrier and what Loki said.

Thinking back, Clint doesn't think he's ever heard Loki say he was in cahoots with the Chitauri. Whenever he did talk about the invasion, it was with an air of distaste and faint confusion.

Clint chews on his lip before he adds, L relieved not to have killed a lot of people.

Loki cried because he didn't kill thousands. Clint is reminded once again of Thor, softly murmuring, he had the most gentle soul.

L didn't want to attack NY?

It's a long, long few minutes before Clint finally puts down forced to? next to that.

"Mr. Barton," Jarvis says smoothly, his tone calm. Clint almost startles, hand automatically clamping over the piece of paper like he got caught sneaking notes on a test. He doesn't want to think about what the others would think of him making a bullet-pointed list about Loki and why their brains may be kinda-sorta-connected. It's a very different thing to say I'm fond of this person versus this person is leaching into my psyche. "Dr. Banner is currently seeking company. Would you find it terribly imposing if I sent him your way?"

Clint takes a moment to process the words. "No. That's fine." He says. He taps the pencil anxiously against the pages. Honestly, he doesn't think Bruce would fight him about this. He'd probably help. He knows that everyone thinks he hates Loki the most out of all of them, which isn't true. Even last month, before all this Chitauri-crap went down, Clint was still willing to punch Odin's face in. The reason Loki drives him crazy sometimes isn't that he went on a rampage across New York, it's because Loki can be annoying.

Bruce walks into the room a few minutes later, expression set, stance rigid. He sinks onto the couch next to Clint and buries his head into his hands. He doesn't have his glasses, Clint realizes, which is a little weird. Bruce's vision is kinda sucky.

Clint stops tapping the pencil. "Are you okay?"

"No."

Alright then.

"...Do you want to talk about it?" Clint asks hesitantly. Bruce shakes his head, exhaling hard. He mumbles something Clint doesn't understand and doesn't think he was supposed to. "How can I help?" Clint asks.

Bruce sits up, pushing under his eyes, and shakes his head again. "I don't know. I just want to sit here if you're okay with that." Clint nods, expression softening. Bruce runs a hand through his dark curls. Anxiety is practically oozing off of him. He slowly sinks back into the couch.

Clint considers him for a long few seconds before returning back to his bullet points. He makes sure to brush against Bruce's elbow on purpose every now and then to reassure the chemist that he's not alone, but for the most part, Bruce just sits there and stares at the ceiling, alternating between chewing on fingernails to trying to twist his fingers off.

"Is that Steve's sketchbook?" Bruce asks at length. The words sound like they exhaust him.

"Yep." Clint says guiltlessly. "If he's going to leave it everywhere he's going to suffer the consequences."

"He has four running around the Tower right now, you know that?" Bruce asks.

Clint rolls his eyes, not surprised. He's only seen two but that means nothing. "Archeologists will be excavating the Tower in five hundred years and the only thing that will remain of the Avengers will be somehow no less than two hundred pencils, Natasha's postcard collection, and half of Dum-E." Clint predicts. He considers this for a moment before adding, "And maybe one of my bows. They seem to last forever. You know the oldest bow that we've found is the Holmegaard and it's about ten thousand years old?"

Bruce's eyebrows raise. "Why do you know that?"

Clint shrugs. "It's cool."

Much to Clint's private disappointment, Bruce doesn't poke at that further. Clint has a swath of information on bows. He could write a history book. He's not going to, but he could. It would be four hundred pages long and filled with puns.

Bruce is silent for a while. Clint's stomach starts to pulse and he finally submits, laying down on the couch, his head propped against Bruce's thigh as he hands the notebook and pencil over his head with one hand. "Scribe for me." He commands. His other hand comes to rest on his stomach tightly. He definitely should not have been sitting up for that long.

"Are you okay?" Bruce asks.

"Peachy." Clint says tightly. He appends a moment later, "Just give me a second. I'll tell you if it gets worse."

"Yeah, you will." Bruce says and jabs his head with the butt of the pencil. Clint sqwuaks, flailing a hand to smack him on the arm. Bruce chuckles softly, a rare sound that fills Clint's chest with warmth. He closes his eyes and pins his hands just above the cut, rubbing circles above the skin.

He hears Bruce flip through the pages, and then stop. Seven Ph.D.'s and an IQ over 190 all grind together to put together Clint's intention in seconds. Still, Bruce's mouth fumbles with the processing part, "You're—what are—you're having Swenson's dreams, too." Bruce realizes. Then, a quieter, "This is why you haven't been sleeping?"

How does he…?

See. Okay. Clint told Tony about the not sleeping thing and more often than not he and Tasha sleep in the same room when they can. Steve knows because he's the team leader and needs to be aware of these things. Clint isn't stupid enough to withhold a potential injury risk from him. If Clint can't keep his game up he could get someone hurt or killed and that far outweighs any ego.

"Is it that obvious?" Clint sighs.

"Were you trying to hide it?" Bruce asks in return, and yep. Impressive pro spy skills there, Barton. Bruce was right earlier, it is a wonder that he and Natasha run one-third of S.H.I.E.L.D.; Clint shrugs lazily, careful to push his shoulders out instead of up so he doesn't strain his abdomen.

"I wasn't not trying to," Clint admits.

Bruce taps the pencil against the sketchbook once, clearly thinking. It then occurs to Clint's sluggish, overtired brain that there are a lot of other things written down on there beyond the dreams and his hypothesis about why it's happening. There's also a detailed list of why he thinks Loki may not have been the mastermind of the invasion. Well. Awesome. Actually, no, yeah, there's definitely a lot of incriminating evidence about this whole thing on his part.

A very distant part of his brain slams a hand on alarm bells and starts screaming.

Clint only releases a soft breath, squeezing his eyes tighter, and begins to anxiously twitch his toes. He mentally braces himself—you are not ready on any level to have this type of conversation, Barton, what on God's name are you doing, brace yourself for an emotional backlash—before submitting to the inevitable. "Ask. It's too late for me to back out now anyway."

"I have a lot of questions," Bruce admits, then says carefully, "Maybe you better start from the beginning."

No. Nope, nopety nope no.

Clint pushes his thumb hard into his abdomen. He joins his fingers together and pushes them against his forehead, accidentally digging his elbow into some part of Bruce's knee. "You're not that kind of doctor," Clint mumbles. "This isn't therapy."

"No," Bruce agrees. "It's not. But it doesn't have to be for us to talk. You obviously seem to have no idea what's going on here, so explain it to me."

Clint pushes harder into his face. "Do you feel up to that? Be honest."

"It would be nice to think about something else." There's a faint edge of desperation in Bruce's tone, so whatever mental torments his brain has decided to inflict upon him today must be intense. Clint's desire to talk about everything leading up to this mess is very low, but he has to talk about it with someone. Maybe Bruce will have some ideas that he and Natasha didn't.

Clint starts to explain. First about what little he remembers from the invasion—Loki scared and exhausted. Loki passing out at one point. Clint vaguely remembers trying to get him to rest but Loki refusing to, attacking the Helicarrier—and then how he felt disconnected from Loki. He didn't feel any sort of emotional attachment to him anymore, which was almost worse than being under the scepter's influence.

"Wait—I thought that the scepter was…some sort of blind obedience?" Bruce asks. He's started taking notes on another page of the sketchbook and now Clint feels a little bad for stealing the paper from Steve, "You had to do whatever he told you without being able to think for yourself."

Clint shakes his head. "No. It was…I don't know how to describe it." Mostly because he's never tried to talk about it before. He answered questions from the psychologists. He shared fears with Natasha. He's never…talked about it. "It doesn't instill blind loyalty. It was more like it manipulated emotions. I did what Loki told me to because I…loved him."

"Somehow that makes this exceptionally worse," Bruce says flatly. "It's one thing to follow something blindly while you're trying to fight it, it's another to be forced to think a certain way. That's so messed up."

What I did to you, Loki had said, there is no physical pain that could ever atone for that.

"Yeah," Clint agrees quietly.

Clint explains how for the next few months he'd gotten sporadic memories in the form of dreams about the invasion, but everything still felt distorted and weird. That never changed. He doesn't think he'll ever remember those days in their entirety. Part of him is grateful for that. He doesn't want to know what else he did that wasn't published in a S.H.I.E.L.D. report.

Then, Clint starts talking about when Loki and Thor came back. There's no need to go into detail about the event. Bruce remembers Thor showing up in the Tower and screaming for help while Loki lay in his arms like a slightly less burnt Anakin Skywalker with two more limbs for counting just as well as Clint does.

None of them were there at the time, not even Tony. Clint watched the video later with a stoic Natasha trying to gauge if Loki posed any threat to them.

Thor was a bloody mess, but it was hard to tell where Thor's blood ended and Loki's began. Clint now thinks that's a rather appropriate metaphor for their lives. Loki—lips sewn shut and face a mess of bruises and burns, his body not much better—had just lain there while Thor cried brokenly. It was brutal to witness. Pepper found them both later and called Tony, which set the whole thing off, but still, the image of Thor helpless and desperate haunts him.

Clint remembers seeing Loki for the first time earlier this year and thinking how empty he felt about the entire thing. The invasion had left him furious, but with time the rage had faded to lethargic impassivity. He wasn't angry Loki was there, it just was.

While Hill had adamantly refused to give him medical aid and Loki bled out from his half-severed arms all over everything and Thor practically tried to bargain her his soul, Clint had just stood there. It wasn't until Thor had drawn closer that he felt like something was trying to pull at his brain, faint pressure, vicious agony. He'd passed out at that point and woken up with a migraine that never really went away.

He'd been told later that Swenson had done the same, and assumed it was an effect of the mind control, even if he'd never told anyone that.

The dreams started that night. Violent, bloody, and horrifying. Torture upon layers of torture. Clint thought maybe this is what I don't remember about those days and then realized that there wasn't enough consistency for that to be the case. It changed. Things repeated themselves, yeah, but it wasn't nearly enough to make Clint think it was actually PTSD.

It took him until a few weeks ago to realize that the voice he was hearing wasn't his, but Loki's. And then the guessing game started on why. Eventually, he landed on Loki's mind and his still having a residual connection from the mind control, and while they're both asleep and their defenses down, Loki's brain projects Odin's torture at him.

That fails to explain why he can suddenly speak Chitaurian, but that's beside the point.

Now…now Clint wonders if what he's seeing is Odin torturing Loki or the Chitauri. Because it makes a lot more sense for it to be latter, and Clint doesn't like that.

It's gotta be messed up on so many levels that Loki escaped one form of torture only to be thrown into another.

Bruce listens to the whole thing with minimal questions and a few comments, but otherwise is attentive and scribbles down his notes. At some point, Clint sits up to lean heavily against the couch and a little bit Bruce on accident, and Bruce gets him more Tylenol for the pain.

When Clint's finished talking, Bruce hands the sketchbook over to him and showcases a semi-detailed timeline of events in tiny, slanted handwriting.

August 14th, 2012—Loki invades New York to November 29th, 2015—Swenson also has the dreams are all listed.

He and Bruce discuss what this could mean for a while before deciding about the same as Natasha. They don't know why, they don't know how to fix it, and the best solution would be to talk to someone who actually knows about magic to see if they have any suggestions. Clint does, however, tag on a last, "Do you think that there's a possibility that Loki may have been tortured by the Chitauri?" at the end, something he didn't ask his partner. Clint had explained to Bruce about understanding what was said, but detailed nothing. Those words are for his and Loki's ears only until he gets permission to talk about them.

Bruce hesitates before admitting, "I think there was a lot more going on that we don't understand. Thor and I discussed the possibility of Loki not completely being in control of his actions a few weeks ago at length. Thor thinks that the scepter may have had some sort of influence over him."

The scepter?

As in…Loki being controlled by the scepter?

Oh, no. No, no, no. Clint is not going to poke at the idea of Loki getting the same treatment as him, Swenson, and Selvig right now. That is too much to handle for his already overloaded brain. If Loki was being influenced by the scepter, then who was pulling his strings?

"Oh," Clint says.

Bruce continues, "He doesn't know to what extent. If it was full control or just nudging. I think it's likely, even if the Chitauri didn't intend for it to happen. The scepter played with all of our emotions on the Helicarrier," Clint nods, having heard this story a few different times, "I don't remember picking up the scepter, but I know that I was ready to use it. I don't know." Bruce rubs at the lower half of his face. "My recommendation would be to talk to Loki."

He had completely planned on doing that, but Clint makes a face anyway.

Bruce rolls his eyes. "I saw you two having it out last week about archery. I know you're capable of civil discussion."

Very kind of him not to bring up him comforting Loki as he cried a few hours ago as an example instead. Loki knows as much about archery as Clint does, which means he could co-write the book, and that makes Clint a little miserable. It was fun though. They'd been trying to one-up each other on absurd bow facts. Loki won when he brought up the fact that bows were a human invention that Asgard stole. Beforehand they'd been using only crossbows. Even now, according to Loki, the weapon is still looked down on for being a mortal invention.

Clint just thought it was funny that some ancient human attached a piece of string to a long stick, shot a second stick from it, and Asgard's technologically advanced, magic-laced society was like "amazing, spectacular, fantastic, incredible, magnificent" as if the idea had never occurred to them before.

Clint sighs, defeated. "I know, and I will," he says miserably.

Bruce pointedly jabs him with the pencil again.

Clint groans. "You stab me and I die, sir. Are you so cruel?" He needs stronger medication. And a bed. And something to completely remove any and all chances he could ever have for dreaming again. Maybe he should just ask someone to smack him over the head very hard. More cognitive calibration should do the trick, right?

"Clint?" Bruce asks after a long few minutes of comfortable silence. Clint makes an affirmative sound. "Do you think that if I don't spend every waking moment trying to help people that it makes…what I am…worse?"

Oh boy.

Yeah, that's a loaded one.

Clint had been expecting it at some point, though. Bruce has been in the midst of a bad depressive episode for the last week or so. Hulk made a reappearance about ten days ago after Bruce went on a walk and saw some teenager getting assaulted by his classmates, and Hulk reigned terror on all of them. Beyond lifetime PTSD from almost getting smashed, the kids are fine. Hulk took the victim home and talked to him the best his limited language skills could manage and that was that.

The entire thing to Clint feels like a win, but the thing is—Clint's opinion about it doesn't matter. It isn't cut and dry to Bruce. And maybe there's just a teeny-tiny part of Clint that wishes he'd gotten the same sort of rescue at that age.

"No," Clint says, realizing that he was silent for a little too long. "I don't think you need to help everyone at any second. That's impossible. You need breathing room. Do you think that will honestly make you feel better about the Hulk?"

Bruce is quiet. "No." He says. "But sometimes it seems like all I can do."

"That makes sense," Clint agrees. "I don't think it's based in truth, but I can see why you'd think that way."

Because I have a lot of blood on my hands, too. But I chose to do that. It wasn't an accident like Hulk. That's what the Avengers is, aren't we? We're all people with bloodstains attempting to do better. Like somehow the lives we save will wash out the deaths we caused.

A longer silence. Bruce wipes at his face several times, before his voice breaks and the flood of tears starts to come, "I have seven Ph.D.'s and not one of them can tell me how to help anyone. I wish…that I…I'm so, so tired. I'm tired of fighting for myself, I just want to be protected. But with this—thing inside of me, I'm never going to get that because I can't—" Bruce buries his face into his hands.

When it becomes clear Bruce isn't going to say anything else, Clint says softly, "I'm sorry. Are you okay if I touch you?"

Bruce nods after a long moment and Clint slowly wraps an arm around his bony shoulders. Clint desperately thinks of anything to say that could be helpful but finds himself lacking. "We all love you, Bruce." Clint promises, rubbing his arm slowly. "You're not broken. I promise."

"Can…can I just…I need…you to…" Bruce can't seem to get the words out right. "Can I just sit here? Please?"

"Yeah," Clint promises. "Yeah."

Both of them end up passing out on the couch and though Clint's sleep isn't deep, it's dreamless. Natasha gets them both for dinner after seven p.m., which turns out to be take-out from a local pizza store. It's one that all of them generally favor, but no one really seems to have an appetite. Even Steve, normally ravenous enough to rival Thor, picks through the food. Clint's pretty sure everyone at least tries for a few bites except for Tony, who just miserably pushes the pizza piece around his plate with a fork.

There isn't much conversation beyond a lot of circling around "boy, I sure am exhausted!" and a few comments about how done all of them are with today. That's that and they all go to bed a little after eight with an agreement not to see each other until at least noon the following morning.

Natasha wakes up a little after midnight from a vicious nightmare about Steve and the Chitauri. Clint holds her as she shakes and slips a hand beneath his shirt to rest over the bandage on his stomach as if she can heal it with her fingertips alone. "I thought he was dead," she says. "I saw him go down and I thought that was it. I can't lose this family, not after Yelena."

I can't either.

Not this time.

The gut-raw feeling of utter terror that washes through him at the possibility of losing any of the Avengers, or, yes, even Loki, is something that makes him feel sick to his stomach. Losing Natasha is something that he has not and will never accept the possibility of, but now it's not just her.

"You won't. Steve is okay," Clint promises. "He just needs to heal up. I'm okay."

"I almost lost three of you this week." She protests. "Thor is God knows where. Swenson was going to shoot Loki. He stabbed you."

"Paper cut," he protests weakly. Natasha shakes her head. It had taken well over half an hour to calm her down, holding her to his chest and stroking her hair softly as she heaved out gasping breaths. Family is the only thing Natasha has ever really wanted, and the only thing she feels she can't keep.

They fall asleep wrapped together with Natasha's hand pressed protectively against his stomach.

The next morning isn't much better. Clint sleeps okay through the night with only vague whispers of nightmares and tries his best to put himself together. The stab, cut, whatever he's going to call it, is a lot better today, enough that when he walks it feels less like his hip is detaching from his body. He showers, shaves, puts on a different pair of clothing and socks and generally pretends to be a functioning human. He sees the others doing the same.

They aren't trying to pretend that yesterday didn't happen, but there's no point staying there. As Loki promised, there are no adverse effects on Tony or Steve that Clint can see from the Chitauri's weird mind-thing. It's like it didn't even happen.

Loki crawls out of the medical room looking gray and pasty around three p.m., but before anyone can direct him back to bed, he goes the exhausting distance to the couch, flops down on his stomach with his hands propped underneath himself and falls asleep. At some point, he manages to acquire a blanket, but Clint doesn't see from where.

They all make a periodic effort to poke him and get some water into his body, but Loki can barely stay awake for minutes at a time.

The next couple days aren't any better, which none of them weren't expecting. Having dealt with this a few times before now, they generally know what to expect. After almost a week, Loki finally manages to stay awake for a few scarce hours gathered together, and then a day after that his hyposomnia seems to give up its hold and release him to normal nocturnal patterns.

Although Clint wants to talk with Loki about the Chitauri, the Asgardian is practically sleepwalking. There isn't a time he can.

Throughout the entire debacle, as Loki is riddled with confusion about where and when he is, and tormented by his mind with extreme prejudice, Clint can feel the absence of Thor. He should be here, helping take care of Loki and bothering his brother back to health.

The way that all of them are with each other isn't something that would make sense to other people. They argue and butt heads and generally torment each other to the point of hair-tearing, yes, but it's not just that. There's an awareness of each other. A sense of understanding and acceptance. They don't have to talk to feel comfortable because the silence is just as warm.

And it only causes Thor's disappearance feel so much worse. Everyone leaves space for him, but he's not there to fill it.

Thor should be here and he's not. Instead, somewhere out there, someone is hurting him, and there's nothing Clint can do about it. He tries to tell himself that it won't be like this forever because eventually, they'll find Thor, tomorrow they'll have more information, but tomorrow comes and goes with nothing. And the next day, and the one after that.

Any leads they have on Mjolnir end at nothing. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s searches are useless. They can't even follow the gamma trail of the scepter.

They're eight days out from Swenson's attack, eleven from Thor going missing with nothing to show for it except short tempers. Loki's had two massive disassociation episodes in the span of that. Steve's leg heals up until he's only walking with a slight hitch and then an uneven step on occasion, and Clint's wound follows suit. Clint is bracing himself to talk to Loki about the Chitauri, finally, and is not freaking out about it in the slightest.

(He is. Completely and utterly, and he hates this.)

And then, because God hates Clint Barton, everything goes to crap.

000o000

"I won't work with murderers. I'm done. I found someone, he can get us both out." His voice is shaky. The entire world feels slightly lopsided, as though it's intending to slide off its axis and pour into his soul. He feels sick. The distance between them is feet but feels like inches.

The other man's face twists with anger. Soft blond hair is a mess across his face, his body rigid. His brow is furrowed and tight.

"What are you talkin' about?" Barney demands. "Are you freaking insane? No one just gets out, not from here."

"They killed thirty-seven people, Barney!" he exclaims. "And they laughed. We have to go."

"No one gets out."

He lifts his chin. "I did. I am." He breaks. "Barney, please, come with me. We don't have to keep working for them, we can get out, we don't need to do this."

"This?" Barney repeats. He gestures around them, to the ally, the only place that they can talk without fear of being arrested or killed. Even now he can feel his breath escaping in ragged gasps as he braces for the sirens. "This is our life, little brother. It always has been. Now you want to give that all up? What happened to staying together? What happened to being a better family that Mom and Dad? You're going to leave me, too, huh?"

His chest spasms.

"Barney please," the words are an exhale.

Barney looks at him. Long. Hard. Weighted. His intentions are on display and he allows himself to be read. His hands are beginning to tremble, he can feel it up to his shoulders. Barney's lip curls, then trembles once before swallowed in a wall of rage. "You selfish brat." He growls, putting a hand on his gun. He tenses up in response to it. "Where are you gonna go? You going to run off with your newfound best friend? You promised me, you little piece of crap. You promised you weren't going to leave—"

He rapidly backs up as Barney approaches.

But his mouth has always ran where it shouldn't.

Somewhere, deep inside, he thinks there's always a part of him that believes he can talk his way out of a situation without resorting to his fists.

"I want you to come with me," he promises. "I don't want to leave, I want us both to. Barney—"

His back smacks into a dumpster a second before Barney slams his fist into the space beside his head. The echoing bang makes his head rattle. "Killing all those people was my idea, Clint! I wanted to. They deserved to suffer, they were horrible."

"Wh-what?" he can feel himself going pale. The world is spinning. "You—" He can see their faces. Hear them screaming. "They were innocent! All they did was their freaking jobs!"

"I don't care! You don't get to leave. I need you!" Bareny cries. Tears of panic and pain are beginning to roll down face. "Little brother, please."

He breathes out hard, refusing to tremble. His hand is curled around the knife. "And I can't stay. I'm sorry."

He ducks under Barney's grasp, feinting to avoid any hands, and starts running for the entrance to the ally. There's a popping-hiss sound and his leg gives out. Barney has a gun. He swears, gasping, and tries to get up again anyway. He can feel the tight pressure of the bullet in his thigh, but he can't stop moving.

Barney's hand curls around his shoulder, hauling him back. He stumbles, smashing hard into the side of the building. His vision goes white for a moment. Barney swears, panicked, and desperately whispering demands."Why did you make me do that? Crap, we need to get you to a hospital. You can't leave, see, look what happens? We'll get you patched up," Barney's voice is desperate. Alone. He didn't realize guilt could be this suffocating. Not to this extent.

And yet, the disgust is worse.

"No," he gasps. He slams a hand into Barney's stomach, fighting, knuckles pulsing, "No!"

They fight for the gun, and it gets knocked away from both of them. He doesn't really remember what happens after that, but he distinctly remembers the first crack of Barney's knuckles against his face.

And then when he wouldn't stop. It's dizzying. He tries to fight back, but the blows keep coming, over and over again. His hearing is beginning to go out of focus.

Everything blurs, blinding black light and screaming silence.

He knows the blows stop at some point, but he's in too much pain to care. There's another gunshot. He flinches. He tries to stare up through swollen eyes and can only make out blurry figures in suits with guns. Barney is screaming at him, face twisted up in rage and not a single shred of regret. He wonders if it's going to be the last thing he sees.

"I hope you die! I hope you die in your little boyband! I hope that it all goes horribly wrong and you're sliced open and can't be put back together, Clint! I hate you! I HATE YOU!"

He has a wild, desperate moment to sink into endless despair, all-encompasing and well rounded, because you were the only one that ever loved me and then there's spinning lights, blue and red, and someone is trying to take his pulse and he can't hear anything anymore, he can't hear what they're saying the words are drowning in the hollowness of his chest, filling up with nothing. Someone tries to touch his left ear where Barney slammed it against the wall and a desperate wail escapes him.

His heart is pounding in his chest.

He can't hear it.

A wail builds in his chest, pain, emotional and physical and he empties out his lungs as he screams and—

A siren is going off, loud and piercing.

Loki jerks awake with a shuddering gasp, breathing heavily into the thick darkness. His entire body is numb, his hands—dead and empty and wrong—shaking in the darkness as he trembles. Breathing heavily, he fumbles for a moment before he manages to grab the beaded string with numb fingers and tugs. The lamp bursts to life, only offering meager protection against the stygian. Everything is fuzzy and screaming.

Clint.

Something—

Clint. He has to—

He shoves up, breath faint and thin, something speaking in the background—the AI—but Loki finds himself ignoring it, climbing to his feet, focused steadily on moving. Lights are blinking, red, white, some sort of an alert. It's far away. Everything is so far away. This will be better, his mother said, just focus on something else. She wouldn't even touch him.

He finds himself outside of Barton's door before he can make cohesive thought patterns on what he's doing. He means to knock, demanding rattling answers, but before his hand can land on the door, it's being thrown open. Clint and Natasha jerk back from him in surprise.

They're armed, dressed for a fight, and Loki can do nothing but stare at them, uncomprehending.

For the first time, he looks at Clint's face and sees faint scars from stitches. From a fight. A plethora of them gathered around his right ear. Oh gods. Clint's hearing loss. Blunt force trauma. Did his brother do that to him? Like Thor threw him off the Bifrost?

Clint says something.

Loki makes a faint sound.

Clint grabs his arm, sparking some sort of nerving life into his body again, as if his soul is sucked back inside. Loki exhales in a gasp, hearing the alarms ringing, and Jarvis telling them to move. What time is it? What's going on?

Clint grabs both his arms. Loki twitches. "Hey! Focus! Look at me. What's wrong with you?"

Natasha mutters something in her native tongue. Loki swallows hard. He feels strange and empty, a thousand miles away.

"What?" Loki says, blinking.

"We don't have time for this," Natasha says urgently. She looks at his feet. "Go find shoes. We need to meet with the others."

Shoes? What do shoes have to do with this? Why am I dreaming as you? Why did your brother try to kill you, Barton? "Why?" Loki says, feeling slow.

"Wh—" Clint stops. Stares, actually looking at him and growing more confused and concerned. Concern. Concern? "Because Jane just called. Thor just attacked them and killed Selvig."

Author's Note:

Next chapter: HA. Wouldn't we all like to know that? Before July 19th. Check on Fridays. I generally update on the weekend, as a general rule. *heart*

Thanks so much for all your support. It means the world to me.

What are we thinking, fam? I lovingly, from the depth of my depressed heart, request either a prediction for the next chapter or to know a part of this chapter you really liked. Please *big heart eyes*?