Author's Note:

Warnings: language, some violence, blood, anxiety.

Chapter Five:

C'mon, c'mon, Clint shakes Loki violently, grasping fistfuls of his clothing. The straitjacket bunches in his hands, curling painfully against his broken fingers. Loki doesn't respond.

Damn it.

A sternum rub does nothing. Loki looks gray. Clint feels gray. He's bleeding somewhere, he can feel the dizzying headrush from blood loss. Why now? Loki couldn't hold it together for ten minutes? C'mon, man. Seriously?

This is completely fine.

Clint's going to scream.

Loki is lying unconscious with no obvious reason why. There are dead people in front of him. Clint can smell the blood. His single hearing aid is making a very faint buzzy sound and Clint feels ready to smash it into pieces. Injuries. He should...he should definitely look for injuries.

He does not feel right.

Loki's arm is beginning to stain the straitjacket red.

Clint looks down at his own arm, the scars from the stitches. Loki's skin is sewn into his body.

Steve is making thin, wheezing sounds behind him, and Clint is trying his best not to let the hysteria grasp him with both fists and drag him into a panic attack. It's hard. There is no rationality to this, how can there be? He argues himself into where? Yeah, it's totally okay that Loki's skin was stuffed into his body. That he's in a hall of bodies. That he just saved Loki. Steve is...Steve is absolutely panicking and Clint is just holding Loki and he can't move and nothing about this is fine.

"Bucky, oh my god," Steve whispers. His breathing is picking up speed, or maybe it's Clint. He can barely make out his own breathing. He doesn't know where his other hearing aid is, but it's making him feel wobbly like he's about to slip off a tilted platform.

"Oh god," Steve makes a gagging sound. Clint's not at an angle to see if he was actually sick, nor does he want to be.

Bucky?

Who the hell is Bucky to Steve? Why was Bucky in the Dante Pit?

"Cap," Clint breathes, his voice barely audible, "Steve."

Loki is still unconscious, and he won't wake up. His eyes aren't moving under the sockets, his mouth is slightly ajar and there's blood slowly leaking out the side. Clint can see the STRIKE team slowly starting to get up again because this isn't a movie. The bad guys don't stay down just because you hit them once. Unless they're dead or something is broken, people get back up. And they didn't kill them. Not if they could help it. There are weapons everywhere and Clint doesn't think he could shoot the wall if he tried.

He doesn't know what happened to his gun.

Clint gives up on getting Loki to move on his own, and grabs him under the arms as he starts to get up. The fierce swirl of lights makes his head spin and he crumples to his knees next to the Asgardian, swallowing back bile. He swears under his breath, violently, stringing words together in multiple languages.

"Cap!" Clint shouts. "Help me!"

"But I can't…Bucky…" Steve is crying.

"Cap!"

"I can't just leave him!" Steve shouts. The violence in his voice makes Clint's entire body lock up on instinct. His fingers tighten around Loki, trying to protect him, and he allows a moment of disgust to wash through him before he twists around to look. Steve is kneeling next to Bucky, his hands grabbing any part of him he can reach. The desperation is painful to witness. Clint recognizes the look in his eye as one he's seen in Natasha's when she's looking at him.

Bucky.

Steve loves him.

Fierce platonic love or Steve has actually been gay this entire time, it really doesn't matter. Clint does not have the brainpower to deal with this right now. There's blood on Steve's armor and there's blood on his hands, but the stab wound seems to have been forgotten in favor of Bucky, who is beginning to slowly regain consciousness. Given that the last time Bucky was awake he stabbed Steve, Clint decides a reunion can wait. They can kiss and make up later.

"Steve!" Clint shouts, allowing some of the very real panic to seep into his voice. "Not now! Help me!"

Steve finally looks at him. The sight of Clint seems to shake him from his reverie, but he doesn't move. His hands cling to Bucky like he's the center of the universe, and if he lets go, the world will stop spinning. He doesn't know what to do, and he's in shock. He's not moving unless God interferes and Clint unfortunately doesn't have him on speed dial.

Fine. Goddamn it. Fine.

Clint squeezes his eyes shut against the nausea and grabs Loki tighter. He shoves up to his feet and manages to pull Loki a few feet away from the cell before there's the unmistakable sound of a gun cocking.

Clint freezes and snaps his eyes open. The blurring light makes him sick. His balance leaves him to die alone, and he crumples to his knees, Loki falling against his chest. One of the agents has found a gun and he's pointing it at Clint. There's blood spilling down the side of his head, and he looks about as healthy as Clint feels. But that doesn't make him any less dangerous.

"Drop him," the agent demands.

"Dude, I promise if you just wait a second, I will do that without a bullet to the brain," Clint promises. His fingers dig deeper into Loki's upper arms, but it's not helping. He's absolutely going to leave bruises. If they get out of this alive, Loki probably won't care. Maybe.

The agent's eyes narrow. His hand is shaking.

In the corner of his eye, Bucky's metal hand curls into a fist. Steve is still a mess and he's not paying attention and he's definitely going to get his brains bashed in.

"Steve-"

A gun discharges and Clint jerks, throwing himself over Loki's body without thinking. It's a subconscious habit. Remnants from the control. Muscle memory. It's not. He knows that it's not. It's years of honed instinct. Protect the vulnerable. And that's what Loki is, isn't he?

Vulnerable.

All of this is insane. Loki and vulnerable do not belong in the same library, let alone sentence.

He hears something smash and there are more guns. Louder. Deeper. AR-15s. The agents didn't have those. Clint pulls himself over Loki further, covering his chest. He can feel how cold Loki's skin is. What was it that Bruce said about it? That he's not endothermic?

Breathe.

Wait.

The gunfire feels like it lasts a decade. It can't be more than a minute. Clint doesn't move until the gunfire stops, doesn't breathe, and waits for a stray bullet to catch him. It doesn't. When he raises his head, the first thing he sees is the blood. It's smeared and breaks the illusion of the mirroring hallway. The US military is moving through the massacre, weapons raised. Ross's men.

Clint sucks in a deep breath, pulling Loki closer.

The General himself appears in front of Clint a few moments later. His expression is incensed, like the fact he had to get dragged out of bed to do his job is an insult to his very existence. Poor baby. He's suffered so much today. He leans down in front of Clint and forces Clint to hold his stare. He opens his mouth-

Steve sucks in a desperate gasp, "No, wait! Wait!"

Clint whips his head around and sees that the Captain is being hauled off of Bucky's prone form. There are bullet holes in his armor. Steve's face is deathly pale. "No, you can't take him! Don't hurt him!" Steve lurches, and several of Ross's men have to grab him to stop him from getting any further. Bucky, the only survivor, is hauled up to his feet. There's a wild, bewildered look in his eyes, but he says nothing, gaze pinned on Steve.

"Bucky! Bucky!"

"That's enough, Captain Rogers!" Ross snaps, surging to his feet. "We will deal with the invaders how we see fit."

Steve turns panicking, frantic eyes on Ross. Clint has never seen him look so…weak. Steve would clearly prostrate himself if he thought it would help. "Don't hurt him. Please. Please. You have to interrogate someone, don't you? He's-"

"Take him," Ross says to his men, ignoring Steve crumpling into pieces in front of him. Clint can see the splintering, and it terrifies him. Steve is warm, but distant, this isn't like him. Not the calm, collected image that Clint had put together in his head. Steve is raw.

"And Commander Cox, get Captain Rogers to the medical ward. If he's going to throw himself in front of bullets, he can deal with the consequences of that." Ross adds.

He what?

Oh, Clint's definitely going to kill him.

"I can handle-" Steve breathes.

"This isn't a negotiation." Ross snaps. Steve looks ready to fight, but his body doesn't let him. Clint doesn't know how many bullets he took, but apparently, it was enough, because he's not really standing anymore. Clint tries to catch Steve's gaze as the soldiers start to haul him down the hall, but Steve avoids his eyes and lets himself get pulled out, leaving Clint alone.

Who the hell is Bucky?

Clint breathes in. Loki is still crumpled on the floor, half in his lap, and all of this feels so surreal it's almost funny. No, it is. Clint can't help the bubbling snort that escapes him. Steve got shot, Clint has a concussion, and he's clinging to Loki. Perfectly normal behavior. Average Tuesday.

What day of the week is it, again?

God. Steve.

"I told you that we have this handled," Ross says with limited patience to him. "The Avengers presence here is entirely unnecessary. Let go. We can take him from here, Mr. Barton."

Agent. It's Agent.

Clint looks down at the bruises on Loki's face from the muzzle. His fingers dig further into Loki's arms. "No," he whispers. He didn't mean to say it, but his concussion is not really allowing any sort of filter and for once, he's a little grateful. He can't just watch this keep happening. Clint has some of Loki's skin stitched into his freaking arm. There's skirting around ethical decisions and then there's this.

"No?" Ross repeats. He sounds like he's attempting to give Clint the chance to rethink that.

"No," Clint says with more force. He lifts his head up to meet Ross's eyes. "I know what you did with him. What you did to me. You go through me to get to him."

There's a flicker. Ross doesn't give anything obvious away, but his face clenches at the corners. He squats down in front of Clint, "I think," Ross's voice is low, and dangerous, a man aware that he has all the power in the situation, "that you're not going to get much of a choice, are you? You're at the bottom of the food chain and you know that. Do you think that anyone cares what happens to you? No. That's why you were chosen for the experiment. You can be another nameless body that we toss into the streets. Where's your team, huh, Barton? If you mattered, don't you think they'd be here?" Ross leans in closer, breathing on his face, "If you fight for your beloved master's freedom, I will bury you so deep that you forget what daylight looks like."

Master.

That's not-That's not what this is. That's not what this is.

Clint's chest hitches. His grip on Loki goes lax. He can't go back to the Dante Pit. He can't. "You-you can't-"

"Oh," Ross smiles, "but I can. Let go. He's not going anywhere, and neither are you."

There are bodies in this hallway. There's blood smeared everywhere. They didn't have to kill them. They were down. They were contained and Ross still had his men shoot all of them anyway. If Steve hadn't taken those bullets for Bucky, then there wouldn't be any survivors. Will they still shoot Bucky just for the principle of it?

God. Sitwell. Is he alive?

Ross must see something in his expression because he nods to himself and takes a step back. "Commander Cox," he doesn't say anything else, but a large man steps forward and grabs Loki's thin arm, hauling him away from Clint. Clint grabs Loki's wrist to stop him.

The moment that they make skin-on-skin contact, something forceful lurches inside of his right arm, crawling and pushing up against the skin like there's some sort of snake trying to wrestle its way free from his body. Clint exclaims something wordless and ragged, jerking back, and Loki sucks in a gasping breath, his eyes snapping open.

Clint's skin is glowing green.

Underneath his skin, his veins are glowing. His hand is shaking and Clint grabs his wrist to stop it, but it doesn't help. His vision goes white. Tinting gray. He's going to pass out. Absolutely, one hundred percent pass out. The pain is indescribable, but it's getting worse, and it's so cold. So, so cold, wrenching through his arm up toward his heart and God, he's.

God, please just let him pass out-

A hand, warm, covers his, and the pain stops.

His entire body slumps, and he nearly crashes into Loki, who snaps out his other hand to push Clint upright. Clint stares into his unseeing gray eyes for a long moment. The look on Loki's face makes Clint feel like he's bleeding pain.

Loki's long fingers are wrapped around Clint's wrist and glowing softly. Clint can see him pulling the light out from Clint's body into his own. He doesn't understand, but it's clear that whatever Loki is doing is helping.

Clint stares at him.

Loki licks his dry lips, "Barton." He knows. Clint can hear it in his voice. The word is hoarse and filled with a level of pity that pulls together the last scraps of Clint's scattered emotions into a knife. Pity. Pity? No. He doesn't get to play this game. Not after what he did.

Clint wrenches his hand away. While the pain doesn't immediately come back, a headache does surge to the forefront of his mind. "No. No, you don't do that. I don't want your freaking pity over something that's your fault in the first place."

It's not fair and he knows that. This isn't Loki's fault. It's Ross's, but Loki is there and Clint can attack him without repercussions and he hates himself for it. He wants to fight. He wants to hurt something. He wants to sleep.

Loki's face closes off.

"What were you doing? What the hell happened?" Ross demands. Clint nearly jumps. He'd forgotten he was there. Commander Cox is standing just behind Loki, a gun pushed into the back of Loki's skull. The sorcerer's entire body is stiff at the threat, and he keeps his hands in sight of the man. His eyes are staring forward blankly.

Loki says nothing, lips pressed together tightly.

"What happened?" The question is directed at Clint. "What did you do?"

"Nothing!" Clint exclaims. "It wasn't me! It just-"

It just what? God, what was that? And what did Loki do to make it go away? Because he did. Loki helped him. He didn't have to do that. He chose to. The realization makes Clint tense up. His eyes land on Loki again, but the Asgardian doesn't seem aware of it. He might be more focused on the gun, though.

Why would Loki help him? Just like that? No strings attached?

Ross turns dark eyes to Loki. "What did you do?" the question isn't shouted, it's controlled. The foreshadow of something violent. Clint's heart picks up speed. His stomach is making its best effort to squeeze into a black hole.

Loki doesn't say anything, just curls his hands into fists on his legs.

Ross backhands Loki across the face. "Answer me, psychopath!" The blow is violent enough that Loki crumples to the floor, breathing heavily. He doesn't get up, just lays there for long seconds before he starts to laugh quietly. The sound is dry and filled with mockery.

He's said nothing to Ross, but managed to piss him off more than any person Clint has seen. Ross grabs Loki by the front of his shirt and hauls him to his feet, slamming him against a nearby wall. Loki doesn't stop laughing, if anything, the violence seems to encourage it.

Clint carefully gets to his feet. He swallows thickly. He can do this. He's not going to fall over. God, his head hurts.

"Ross-" Clint tries.

Ross backhands Loki again. Loki spits at him, but it misses, and the blood lands on his shoulder instead of in his face. "This is funny to you?" Ross snarls.

"Yes," Loki's hoarse voice promises, his smile filled with bitterness. "You've turned Clint Barton into a ticking bomb you don't even know what you did. Congratulations, General. I will be a footnote in my history, but you? Books will be written about you on Asgard, detailing the depths of your breathtaking inanity."

Another blow.

Loki laughs again, the sound pained. "Beat me all you want. I've been taken apart in ways that you can't imagine, the pain you cause is nothing."

"Is that so?" Ross asks, and all at once, he pulls back, letting Loki stagger uncertainly to his feet. Ross takes another step and Clint realizes what he's doing. Loki can't see where he is, he's intentionally vanishing from Loki's immediate perception just to disorient him. Bastard. The agitation on Loki's face tells Clint he's very aware of this himself. "I saw you earlier, boy. You were going to slit your throat to get out of this. Tell me again how this is nothing to you?"

Loki's breath catches.

"Okay, you-" Clint tries again. Ross ignores him. He's annoying apt at that. It's like no one exists in a room unless he gives them permission to.

"Gag him, put him back in the cell. We'll just run tests on Barton," Ross says and waves a hand in dismissal. Clint takes a step back in panic. No. No. This isn't the Dante Pit. Fury said he was going to get him out. He wasn't supposed to go through this again and Loki's skin is on his arm and he can't make that go away but he doesn't know what happened and Loki does and why don't they ask him? Why can't they-

No.

No!

Commander Cox moves forward to seize Loki. Someone grabs Clint's arm, and there's a gun, and he gets wrenched a step that makes the entire world slide off its axis. While he's doing his best not to puke out everything he's eaten since birth, Loki starts to fight the guards. He doesn't plead with them, or tell them to stop, like the instinct got beaten out of him a long time ago.

Despite Loki's best efforts, the gag gets put back on.

Commander Cox grabs Loki's injured arm and digs his fingernails into the open wound until blood stains the straitjacket and Loki makes a muffled screeching sound. And because God hates Clint Barton, that's also, of course, when the rest of the Avengers come around the corner, weapons raised.

Including Thor.

Thor, who takes one look at the scene, and the blood, and his brother crumpled to his knees at the feet of Commander Cox in agony. Clint sees the moment that Thor decides no one is walking away from this alive. The Asgardian's face darkens, leaching away any of the familiar warmth and leaving not cold but burning. The air comes to life with static energy, and the lights in the hall flicker.

Clint can taste ozone. His stomach gives up on life and Clint falls to his knees and dry heaves. He doesn't throw up, much to his consternation, but he feels it build and dig into the base of his throat, begging for relief.

"Unhand my brother, or there will be consequences."

"Your brother just got a dozen people killed, he stays here," Ross says to Thor with a scoff. Dude, he's gotta have a death wish to say that to Thor's face right now.

The hand grabbing his arm releases him sharply and Clint blurrily makes out Natasha shoving the soldier back before she kneels next to him. She grabs his shoulder, then his face, turning him. Her face is a bunch of shapes crumpled together, sort of like stained glass. He tries for something weak and reassuring on instinct, but she sees through him.

Bruce grabs Thor's arm to stop him from advancing on Ross. There's a chasm between Thor and Loki, and in between it are the bodies Ross caused and all the blood. If Thor crosses that threshold, he's not walking away with clean hands.

"He stays for his safety," Ross adds after a moment. Does he think that's going to appease Thor? Like, honestly?

Clint closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath. His hand is shaking and it's not from what Loki did. His head doesn't feel right. Steve was shot. He doesn't know what happened, if he's okay, if he's alive. Loki is an asshole, but he knows that, at least. The one thing that's remained the same.

"His safety," Thor's voice is toneless.

"We don't know if it's the last of it, do we?" Ross asks. "Whoever attacked may just be getting started."

"And you believe your security to be enough?" Thor asks, and his eyes move away from Loki to land on Ross. "They took him from your cell. You were lucky things didn't escalate further."

Escalate to what?

"It wasn't luck, it was preparation. Your brother will be fine." Ross is reaching the end of his patience, and while Clint is mildly curious in a morbid way about what will happen if Ross pokes Thor the right way, he's not stupid enough to just let it happen. There's been enough blood today, and Thor killing Ross and Commander Cox isn't going to fix anything. So he does the only thing he can think of to de-escalate the situation, which is to give them something else to focus on, and goes completely limp in Natasha's arms.

"Clint?" Natasha immediately grabs his face. Her fingers are freezing against his skin, but he keeps his muscles lax. Honestly, the darkness is kind of nice, it's helping his headache in ways that the blurring light wasn't. "Clint! Hey!"

"Does he have a pulse?" Thor sounds closer. Natasha's fingers search his neck. She must give a nonverbal cue of confirmation because Thor's next question is unrelated, "What happened to him?"

"Ask your brother," Ross snaps. "Their hands made contact and then this green…light shot up Barton's arm. It looked like it was trying to crawl out of his body. It only stopped when your brother grabbed him."

A hand touches his neck. It's different fingers than Natasha's, rough and calloused. "His pulse is too fast," Bruce murmurs a moment later. Yeah, well Clint does feel soaked in sweat so the adrenaline rush was a bitch.

"Is that blood?" Tony asks.

Natasha's hand moves down to his stomach and his shirt is pulled up. Natasha swears. "Yes. He needs medical."

"What hand?" Thor asks. He must be leaning over Clint.

"What?" Ross asks.

"What hand was glowing?" Thor repeats impatiently. Thor wasn't there, Clint remembers. He doesn't know about the Frankenstien job. Isn't that what Fury said to do? Talk to Thor because he's the only one who might have any idea what happened. What it means.

You've turned Clint Barton into a time bomb...

"His right," Ross says.

Thor grabs Clint's arm and twists it around. There's a beat. With far more care than Clint would have thought Thor capable of, Thor sets Clint's hand on his stomach. The ozone taste is getting worse. Clint's entire body is beginning to feel prickly and itchy from the static electricity. "Thor," Natasha says urgently, "later."

"You don't understand-"

"I'm not saying never, just not now. We need to get him to medical."

The word is thin, "Fine." Thor's hands move under Clint's knees and back, and then he lifts Clint off the ground like he doesn't weigh anything, and holy shit okay. Clint has done his fair share of firemen carries, but whenever he's been on the receiving end he's been unconscious. And if not that, then it's getting dragged, which is really not the same. He feels simultaneously like a helpless child, and like he's never been safer in his life.

"Loki, er han trygg?"

What language was that? Was that Norwegian? Clint doesn't speak it, but he knows enough to know that that was the shittest pronounced Norwegian Clint has ever heard in his life. It can't be Norwegian, Thor and Loki do not have Norwegian accents. It's like some weird, very tired Austrialian-British.

Whatever language it was, the nonverbal answer Loki gives isn't a comforting one because Thor's hands tighten over Clint's for a moment. He takes in a deep breath before moving, and Clint thanks whatever listening that this didn't end with Ross's head bashed in.

000o000

Fury and Hill meet them in medical several hours later, and Natasha watches them both from where she's sitting on one side of Clint's hospital bed. He didn't pass out until they gave him the pain medication to perform the stitches on his abdomen. Superficial cut, six stitches. Concussion. Bruises that will turn into a rainbow of ugly colors over the next several days. He's lucky to be alive.

Lucky. They're all lucky.

Laying on the bed, crammed between all the pale white and medical equipment, her partner looks small. Thin. Frail.

Natasha is going to kill Ross. Slowly-

Intimatly, in every way he knows you fear…Natasha shoves the thought off. Ross has said nothing about Loki, but she knows that he's itching to understand what happened. He wants to run tests, when he visited Clint earlier, she could see the hungry look in his eyes. There are no security cameras to scour over, they were disabled before Loki was taken.

Natasha doesn't care what happened, just that Clint is okay.

"Where's Rogers?" Fury demands.

"Surgery," Tony answers thinly from behind his phone. His hair is messy, and he still hasn't removed his sunglasses. The coffee cup he's holding doesn't look like it's below number three. "They have a surgical center here, apparently. Did you know that?"

"I did," Fury answers evenly. "Barton?"

"Alive," Natasha promises. Her gaze flickers up to Thor, sitting next to Bruce, his mouth pushed against his joined fingers. His expression is neutral, but she watches the burning anger in his eyes. He's said nothing since Clint was released, but Natasha saw the flickering look of horror that he gave his brother when he saw Clint's arm. And the dark thing that had flashed across Loki's face when Thor spoke to him.

Fury sinks heavily in the chair on Clint's left, Hill standing next to him. The deputy director's expression is tight. Natasha can see the tension between the two of them and studies it carefully. They just argued, and it was something that bordered on violence. They're trying to present a united front and failing. Interesting. And the source of their mutual frustration is not, as she initially imagined, Loki.

It's Clint.

Hill's eyes are avoiding him, but Fury won't stop staring. And that, veiled in his eyes, is guilt. Natasha sits up. "No."

"Romanov?" Fury looks up at her.

"You're not leaving him here," Natasha can't believe she even has to say this. "Do you know what you did to him, leaving him in the Dante Pit? And now you want to leave him on the Raft with Ross?"

"Natasha," Fury sighs, letting her name seep out between his teeth like it's a prayer. "Let me explain."

"Are you kidding me?" Tony demands, finally looking up from his phone. "No. Did you forget what Ross is doing to Loki? What he did to Bruce? This isn't some sort of-this building isn't run by the hands of angels. If you leave Clint here, you will break him. How do you not get that? God, you're one cold son of a bitch, you know that?"

"Do you think I want to?!" Fury surges to his feet and the real show of anger makes Natasha pull back. "Stark, think what you want about me, but despite my best efforts, I'm not heartless. I'm not putting Clint back in the Dante Pit, but the only person who might have a basic understanding of what happened is Ross. He did something to him that we don't understand. Maybe he can fix it."

"Fix it? Since when has Ross fixed anything-!?" Tony exclaims.

"Do you have a better plan?"

"Not leaving him here would be a start." Tony nods. "Bare minimum, but apparently it needs to be said. Did you forget about the fact that someone tried to take Loki today? What if they figure out that Clint is somehow connected to him again? He's human, Loki's not. They could hurt him."

"I know that," Fury says.

"Do you?" Natasha demands, pulling her eyes up from her partner.

"Secretary Pierce sent the team to collect Loki," Hill interjects. "We know who did it. We know why. What we don't understand is what happened with Clint, and Ross may be able to fix it."

Fix it.

That's exactly what Ross does, isn't it? What he did with Bruce. With Loki. Ross isn't a fixer. He takes broken things and shatters them beyond repair.

"No. He can't." Thor says quietly and sits up. All of them look at him, but Thor is looking at the floor. "Loki's magic has infused with his blood somehow. That's why it connected when they touched. It's not something that can be fixed, only managed. General Ross will not be able to help. Loki can."

Loki.

Bozhe moi.

No.

"How do you know that?" Bruce asks.

Thor runs his hands through his hair. "On Asgard, everyone is taught to recognize and read magical auras as children. Clint has Loki's. There's no reason for him to have that unless Loki's magic hadn't infused with him."

"That doesn't sound...terrible?" Tony doesn't sound certain of that. "He just, um, has some of Loki's magic, right?"

Clint will despise that.

"No," Thor shakes his head, "you don't understand. Midgardian magic is different than Asgardian on purpose. We're not the same on a cellular level. Our bodies are structurally different, we can handle power that you can't. Clint is dying. Loki's magic is poisoning him. I don't completely understand what happened, but it's likely that Clint will implode and take a city out with him in the process."

Natasha's eyes widen. Her hand tightens around Clint's. "What?"

"When?" Fury demands. "What's the timetable for this?"

Thor looks miserable. "Weeks, months? I'm uncertain. Soon."

Weeks? No. Not now. Not after she just got him back. Clint was the only one who survived the initial trials and now he's going to die anyway? This isn't fair. Ross did this to him. Natasha let it happen because she should have gotten Clint out of the Dante Pit sooner.

Fury glances once at the closed door before sinking back into his seat. He and Hill share another knowing look. "Loki can't stay here," Fury says, and yeah, no shit, "Secretary Pierce is aware of what's going on, he just doesn't care. In fact, I'm beginning to think it was his idea."

Secretary Pierce signed off on human experimentation? He always struck her as a brisk, unfeeling man, but not a sadist. It's one thing to turn a blind eye to Ross, another to ask Ross to get involved.

"Alexander Pierce," Bruce repeats dubiously. "The man who won a Nobel Peace Prize?"

"Apparently he's been at the devil's sacrament in his free time," Hill says flatly.

No one laughs.

Fury releases a heavy sigh. "Leaving Barton here was never a real possibility, just something I toyed with. Until we understand what's going on behind the scenes, I need Loki out of the equation. He's too much of a wild card, and since we don't know what the endgame is with his magic, I don't want there to be any more moves made with it."

"There's also the egregious violation of human rights," Tony points out.

"And that," Fury agrees without missing a beat.

Natasha bites the inside of her cheek, trying to quell her emotions. They're fluttering in her stomach and it's making it hard to concentrate. "What do you think is going on, sir?" Natasha asks.

Fury is quiet a second too long. "I'm not sure."

"Where are you hoping to put him?" Bruce asks. "He's smart and he's powerful. There aren't a lot of places I can think of that can hold him. That's why he's here. Can we take him back to Asgard?"

Another planet would make it difficult for Ross to keep shaving off parts.

Thor shakes his head. "Not without the Tesseract. The Bifrost is still being repaired and the dark energy my father used to send me here only works one way."

Natasha's eyes land on Thor. Odin didn't give him any sort of backup plan? He stranded his son on a planet he knew was being invaded by a hostile army and wouldn't let him go home until he brought back Loki? If the only way back to Asgard is the Tesseract, did Thor know that he was signing up for something that, if he failed, would be a one-way trip?

"This will only be temporary," Fury says. "It doesn't have to hold him for long."

"S.H.I.E.L.D. base?" Natasha suggests.

Fury shakes his head. "I don't want this getting back to Pierce."

The admission makes Natasha's stomach clench tighter. He doesn't trust him that much? That's not a suspicion. What did Fury find on him?

"Stark Tower." Fury offers and Tony stills. His expression is clenched, but impossible to read. "It's the last place I would think to look for him. He was openly and publicly defeated there, and with an ego as large as his, it's not the obvious choice. Loki wouldn't go there, and everyone knows that you two don't like each other."

"Yes, but—" Tony starts to protest.

"Stark," Fury says, "I wouldn't ask this unless I was desperate, and I am. We can't take this lightly. It would be for a few weeks, a couple of months at the most." He reassures.

Months?

Tony expression flashes with frustration for a moment, but he exhales a deep breath and taps his fingers against his folded arms. "Fine, a few weeks." He agrees. "I don't have any more desire to be thrown from a window again than the next person, so what are we supposed to do about security?"

They don't.

They get eviscerated.

Loki had the power to shut down the entire Raft. What are they against that? Loki didn't use his magic in the attack, he just used the scepter. They got lucky. If Loki had turned a fraction of that power on them, they would be dead. Natasha knows that.

"If Loki's missing, there's no reason for any of you to still be here, all of you can join the party," Fury says and gestures towards the rest of the Avengers. Tony and Bruce share a slight look of surprise. "And if all else fails, the Hulk should be enough to take him off his feet again."

Great.

Well, at least the plan isn't complicated.

"As soon as Captain Rogers is out of surgery, Loki leaves," Fury says. That's what? A couple of hours? God, this entire thing is going to turn into a mess. They're going to rush Steve post-op out of here, and Clint is half dead and everything is going to go to shit and stay there.

"I'll bring the party hats," Natasha says, her voice dry.

Fury gets to his feet and buttons his coat. "You have twelve hours."

Author's Note:

Next chapter: Dude, I have no idea. I'm making a very, veeerrry tentative attempt to try and give one update every WIP I have before the end of this year, so probably not until January at the earliest.

Also I would like to personally thank eraser_cat19 for this chapter, because they left a well-intended comment of appreciation lamenting the fact that the fic would never be updated again on Sunday (?) this week and the spite monster got dragged to life inside of me and I was like "no. the fic is not discontinued. we get a chapter this weekend." I'd also been thinking about an update for a few weeks anyway, but thanks! (in a non-sarcastic way, i promise) This chapter wouldn't be here today without you. 3

Anyway, so yeah, if I discontinue fics, I put "discontinued" on it and I will tell you. Hiatus is literally just a break for me. The Blodig Skog, another fic I wrote, was on semi-permanent hiatus for about 15 months before I came back and finished it in like...6 weeks?

I adore all of you, please leave your thoughts if you're comfortable with it. 33