Little Hawk

Story time

It took a bit for Clint to catch his breath after spilling his guts to the team the way he did, but damn did it feel good. He may have been unconscious for like a day or two but it had felt like years to Clint. He felt older, like he had managed to triple in age.

"Loki showed me his memories, he showed me everything and what led him to where he is now," Clint starts, glancing at all the others standing in the room with him.

"Why would he do that?" Bruce murmurs, staring at the ground with furrowed brows, "that's an unnecessary vulnerability he's showing you."

"it could be an attempt to get some sympathy." Nat answers, glancing over at Thor.

"I don't think that was his reason, nat. He showed me them, not to get me to join his side or sympathize with him or something like that. He showed me his memories, that weakness, because he doesn't think he will survive this. He knows he won't because he doesn't plan to. He's been sabotaging the entire operation from the very beginning. He could've killed Fury, Coulson, he could've killed me for christ's sake! He didn't need me, all he needed was to get Selvig and open the damn portal. I'm also pretty sure we're all certain he's not the one behind this attack! That is a shell of the man that had previously been there, his mind is a bunch of lose screws."

The silence fills the room as Clint looks toward each person.

"Loki needs help. not another prison or warden." he turns his heated eyes to thor, the god staring down at his feet.

"What did you see barton?"

"I saw him have his kids taken away from him time after time, saw him get pushed aside and forgotten by everyone in his family, saw him let go and fall from a rainbow bridge-" thor makes a choked noise at that, curling in on himself a bit.

"Yea I saw that Thor. I saw you sew his mouth shut, I saw you drag him into battle after battle and never show any appreciation for him when he comes close to death time after time again. You say you care about him but from what I saw, that's a lie." Clint snarls again and Thor finally lifts his head up to make eye contact with Clint.

"Loki is a master of lies. He could have easily twisted the memories you saw-"

"Now why would he show me fake memories of him slicing his wrists? Of learning that he was never one of you to begin with? What about having to deal with the grief of losing child after child?"

"You speak of children... But that's wrong-" Thor starts and Clint snorts, "I saw him give birth dude. I don't think I'm wrong about that." Thors eyes seem to bulge out of their sockets at that.

"Give birth?" steve questions hesitantly.

"Don't ask." Clint sighs, rubbing his face.

"Look, we need to focus on finding Loki and preventing any invasion from happening." Nat buts in, "now, does anyone have any idea where he would go?"

"Sir there seems to be an intruder in the penthouse," JARVIS speaks up, and Tony and Steve both freeze.

"Where's Peter?" steve breathes, eyes wide and face pale.

"The young master is currently in the penthouse-" Tony and Steve are both already storming out of the room, rushing away.

~

Selvig was on the roof, setting up the tesseract. Loki had situated himself in the largest portion of the tower, staring out the windows at the city below. He gripped the staff between both his hands, knuckles turning white with the force he was applying.

He just had to wait and watch. The portal will open, and the invasion will begin, but it wouldn't last. He had made sure. He would be with the tesseract when it would overload and finally, he'll be free. The building had seemed to go into lockdown moments after he had appeared. That was fine, whatever was watching him would appear and it would be so easy to take them out.