Among the Asgardians: The Goddess of Love

Hawkeye's Confession

Once the meeting was adjourned, everyone left except me and Fury. I stayed behind to talk to him. Loki tried to stay with me, but I motioned him to go on. I'll catch up with you later, I said to him in my head.

He nodded and walked slowly out of the room, his eyes still watchful of me as though he was reluctant to let me out of his sight. As soon as he was gone, however, I turned to Fury.

"How is he?" I asked. "Jacob?"

"When Patsy checked on him earlier, he was looking at the wall and yelling at something no one else could see. It was downright weird. Then he started throwing himself at the walls to kill the thing he was yelling at. We had to transfer him to a padded cell. The man's gone insane. I'm about to have him terminated from the Avengers and have him sent to a mental hospital."

"Fury, you can't do that!" I protested. "He's just confused, scared, and angry that I was locked up. Let me speak to him." I was out of my mind with worry. Jacob wasn't mental. His only crime was that he was an enigma. Like an onion, he had many different layers. The outside was bitter and tasteless, but the inside was sweet if you had the patience and the tolerance for pain to peel away the outer part. There were bound to be tears on the way in, yes, but the rewards far outweighed the pain. 

"Sure," Fury said. "I'll let you speak to him if you think it will calm him down. Of course, I'll have agents behind some mirror glass in case he tries to hurt you, but I think he should be fine. I don't think it's us he's mad at. Whatever he thinks he sees is horrifying to him. I can play the footage if you want. Some of it is in a different language, but for the most part, you'll be able to understand." Fury walked over to the table and tapped it twice in a quick, sharp staccato. A small display like a computer screen appeared. On the left, Fury clicked on the top icon, bringing up a video display. "Like it?" he asked. "It's part of the new Stark tech we've incorporated onto this helicarrier."

After pressing the play button, the screen went black. Then I heard banging. "Let me out!" Jacob screamed. More banging. Then, the display lit up and I could see him pacing around his cell, slamming his fists into the walls. "How dare you?" he asked, turning to face the corner. "You're the reason we're in this mess!"

He paced a minute before saying, "Det er helt din feil, dere svin!" (It is entirely your fault, you swine!)

After he had finished speaking these words, Jacob threw himself at the wall in front of him, full on, breaking his nose and opening several gashes on his head. He continued to throw himself at the  concrete like a mockingbird attacking its own reflection in the window of a car. "I'm not a damn swine," he hissed, punching his fist at the blood splatter he'd made on the wall. "Our only condition was that you not hurt her! Now look what you've done. I'm sick of you, you bastard. All you do is take, take, take. You promised me her, and so far you haven't delivered." He sank into a corner and put his head in his hands before speaking again, the sound muffled because his knees were blocking the sound.

"Mine unnskyldninger. Fant du ikke liker å elske med henne?" he said in a way that sounded like a question. (My apologies. Did you not enjoy making love to her?)

Jacob stood back up, a murderous expression on his face. I found myself shrinking back in my chair. Even though he was on the video screen, it was still horrifying to see him like that. His mouth was curled up in a snarl of malice and his lips parted in a thin line over his teeth. His eyes were red and bloodshot. The blood vessels had popped, making his once-beautiful blues look like dead pools of blood. When he spoke, his voice was one of ice-cold venom that shook me to my core.  "It wasn't about that. It never was. Yes, that was amazing for me, but I wanted it to be real. I wanted her to do that because she loved me, not because YOU made her susceptible to her emotions." He let a punch fly at the wall.