Hi everyone! A shorter chapter here, mostly Clint and Loki making novel discoveries about themselves/the situation, plus I tried my hand at writing some Hawkeye/family stuff. Enjoy!

Disclaimers: I have never read a Marvel comic in my life. I have watched only a few of the Marvel movies. Therefore, I apologize if I inadvertently go against canon in some way.

I own no characters except the Colonel.

Constructive criticism appreciated. Please, no offensive language!

Please review!

And Finally...the Truth is Revealed…

He awoke from a pitch-dark night of restless sleep. He was sitting straight up, as far as his chains would allow him, panting, his face pale and sweated, his blue eyes wide with the fear of apprehension. Clint allowed his head to drop forward slowly onto his bended knees and a long, shaky breath escaped his trembling lips. Sometimes, those things that are the most familiar to us are the most horrible.

The Colonel had spoken those words when he had left Clint two days ago. Clint had thought they were only words. The usual words a master interrogator might concoct to allow his prisoner something to muse over, something to drive his fearful curiosity to the breaking point, something to occupy his dreams and his slumber. Clint had never imagined them to be anything else. He had not dreamed how very true they would turn out to be. He could never have envisioned the possibilities of their fulfillment. He felt his chest constrict in a series of nausea-inducing contractions. A dark mass of unfiltered light swam before his eyes, and he shoved himself up fully to a sitting position. His head fell forward into a trembling, sweat-coated palm. The thick rattle of the chains sounded harsh in the stillness of the night.

The Colonel had not returned after that one day. Clint had been left to muse and consider and exist in the bare darkness of the cell. That bare, dark, cold, strangely familiar space….

He had fallen into a restless sleep that was somehow at the same time heavy. There was the usual parade of unrelated thoughts and nightmarish shapes that had been invading his sleeping mind of late. And then, suddenly, he was standing in his own room, before his closet, staring at the line of coats filling the racks, the untidy array of shirts and ties and various other items that meant his wife had yet to pay his corner of their bedroom a visit. He was staring at that long, ugly crack that ran the length of the wall, to one side of the coat closet, down deep below, into the cellar… before he had awoken, gasping, sweating, wide-eyed with understanding.

With a sudden, fevered urgency, Clint scrambled to the far wall, the chains straining against the unnatural distance being demanded of them. He hardly noticed the pain. His eyes were searching for a single feature in the concrete wall. A single, running crack that started far above, beside a coat closet. It was there.

His fingers ran over the crack with all the horror of realization. He was in his own home. He was being held a prisoner in his own home. Which meant—

He whirled back from the wall suddenly, his hands clenched into strong, white fists inside the chains. If he was a prisoner in his own home, being held hostage in his own basement, then what of his family? What of Laura? What of Cooper and Lila?

He had been at the farmhouse the night he had been taken prisoner. He recalled it clearly: sitting in the glowing light of the kitchen with Laura, watching Cooper and Lila play a game of scramble. He recalled Laura saying that she was tired and was going to bed early. He had kissed her, her arm had circled his neck in a fond embrace, and then she had bid goodnight to the children and climbed the stairway to their bedroom. Clint had retained his chair a moment longer and then stepped outside to stand under the night sky.

It was something that he did often. The heavens had always fascinated him. He felt that, as an archer, he was more inclined to look up, to see what was above him, than would, say, a sniper. Most especially now that he was coming to terms with the idea that there were worlds beyond the stars. The very notion had been inane to him before: hardly fitting with what the scientific world claimed was truth. After his nightmarish foray as Loki's second mind, the concept seemed less inane and more repulsive. For to admit it as truth was to admit that it had not been a horrible dream, that he had indeed been a portion of that being who had sought to subdue and destroy the entire of his planet. He had lay awake many a night, staring up at the ceiling and wondering. It felt like a dream—like a nightmare. Unreal, unfocused. Yet just when he had all but convinced himself, a lingering flash of Loki's thought would cross his brainwaves and he knew it was real.

He had taken to going outside more often now. The vibrant air helped clear and calm his mind. He would stand under the veil of stars and gaze into them, wondering what it must be like to live beyond them. He was often out there for hours. Laura understood. She saw his pain, his troubled soul, and with that silent affirmation so often felt between close souls, she encouraged him to find peace wherever he could.

He had stepped outside that night, a certain sense of quietness residing within him. The flashback visions were dying, he felt, and he hoped that he might soon find his old, daring self again. He heard the door close behind him, he blinked to accustom himself to the darkness. He stepped further from the house, allowing the stillness and the shadows to wrap him in a comforting shroud. He did not hear the footsteps behind him—not until it was too late. A force struck him on the back of the head, and he knew no more.

They must have simply moved him to the basement. How they had ever found the farmstead in the first place, he had no idea. How they had caught him so unawares, he could not say. They must have overtaken the entire of the farm, they must be holding Laura and the children hostage—unless—Clint caught a breath as the full range of unless dawned on his whirling mind. Unless—the Colonel had decided that hostages took too much thought and time. The fewer alive persons he had to consider and monitor, the easier for him…..

The thought tore a gasp of pain and rage from his throat and he yanked against the chains holding him fast to the walls of his basement. His fingers dug into the iron rings drilled firmly into the concrete. He twisted his wrists, the shreds of blooded skin hardly penetrating his physical perception. It was useless. The Colonel had been faultless with his prisoner's restraints. With a cry of frustration, Clint slammed his hand down against the cold flooring and strained forward so that he could peer into the darkness of the makeshift hall created by iron grates.

"Guards! I must speak with the Colonel!"

His voice was only met by silence—silence as cold and hard as the concrete walls of his basement…

He awoke from a pitch-dark night of restless sleep. He was sitting straight up, his breathing coming in rapid, intense bursts from his lungs. His fists were curled into the bedsheets pooling around him, wet with the sweat of his night terrors.

Loki swung his feet over the bed and stood—too quickly, and a rush of blood caused a brief blackness to cast over his vision. He stood there at the edge of the bed, one hand gripping the footboard, breathing in deeply, allowing his senses to regather themselves. He opened his eyes and strode to the window, thrusting aside the light gauze and permitting his gaze to wander over the expanse of city lights and pulsing street traffic.

It couldn't be called a night terror: not in the true sense of the word. It had simply been a room—a plain, ordinary room, obviously occupied by two people—man and wife. There had been that sense of feminine quality and touch mingled with the specific aura of the male and all that that entailed. In this case, it was a man of action—a man who spent his days beyond the desk. There had been a few pairs of well-worn and well-made boots, a closet with coats of the athletic yet polished variety, at least two backpacks made for more than the weekend camping trip. And there was a bow. More than one, actually, tucked away in a corner of the closet whose immediate flooring and surrounding area seemed swept clean of the last speck of dust. There was a horde of accessories for the active archer, there were three quivers filled with arrows, there was a neat, coiled package of string lying beside the bow. Loki knew the make of that bow, the specific quality of those arrows at once. After all, he had once caught one in his bare hands….

The full revelation of what he was seeing flashed before his mind for the briefest of seconds before the vision suddenly plummeted downward and he was seeing a concrete wall, riddled with a prominent crack, ending with a concrete floor. Then, he awoke.

He stood before the window for a long moment, gazing unseeing over the mingled lights of the traffic and the glass windowed buildings swallowing the night. It had been Barton's house, certainly. Why he should be seeing Barton's house, he had no idea. Why he should be seeing Barton's room in particular, why he should be seeing that unfinished concrete wall and the crack running the length of it—

He checked his thoughts mid-processing as his rationality began to run a new course. Why should he be seeing Barton's room—unless somehow Barton was seeing it too? The place Barton was being held was familiar to the man—Loki had gotten that more than once from various visions. It would be insanely ingenious for any captor to simply keep a man in his own house—in his own basement. Concrete walls, floors, that crack. Barton knew that crack. He had discovered the truth. As Loki had. Perhaps at the very same time. The thought was almost exhilarating.

Loki whirled from the window and snatched up the bathrobe lying at the foot of his bed. The door hit the side of the wall hard as he hurried down the hall. Captain Rogers had asked to be informed of any points of information that might aid in discovering Barton's whereabouts. If this wasn't that, then Loki didn't know what was.