A/N: Let me know what you think, my lovely reviewers :D

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In those few seconds of feeling Loki's lips upon mine, all I could think about was how hard I had fallen for him, and in such a short time. How had he done it? How had he captured my heart so effortlessly?

To say that I didn't want to feel this way would have been a massive understatement. This was Loki we were talking about! The person who wanted to take over the world, the god who had killed dozens of the people I worked with. He was a monster, and I was repulsed by the fact that I would willingly spend the rest of my days by his side if this feeling never went away.

Soon enough we had to come up for air, and the grim reality of the situation came crashing down on me. Coulson was lying not even ten feet away from where we stood, breathing his last few breaths. Thor was plummeting towards the earth, helpless, and the whole entire ship was falling out of the sky.

I spared a glance up at Loki, tears sparkling in my light blue eyes. I knew that I had to leave him, but my heart was telling me to stay. And God, did I want to. But I knew that despite how I felt about him, I would never betray my country for him. Betray my friends. I couldn't do it.

But that didn't mean that I couldn't enjoy it in the few seconds that I had it.

I reached up and pulled him down to me, kissing him one last time and reveling in the feeling of his lips moving in unison with mine, before roughly pushing myself away from him.

I sprinted back towards Coulson, putting pressure on his stab wound once again.

Damn it. Damn it, god fucking damn it. I knew from just looking at the wound and the blood that it was too severe for him to ever get back up again.

This was my fault. All of this, this happened because of me.  Coulson was my only friend through these years where I had no one. And now he was dying, all because of Loki.

The tears that I had been holding back now flooded my system, and I let out a sob. I clenched my fist into the material of his bloody suit, and I put my head down onto his still form.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," I sobbed into his shoulder, my words running together. "-my fault, it's all my fault." 

There was a noise behind me, and I looked back up through teary eyes to see Loki still standing there, hesitating. With Phil's shuddering body beneath me, the very presence of Loki brought red into my vision. He did this.

"Go," I spat, not trying to conceal the venom in my tone.

"Samantha..." He said, his soft voice causing another sob to pour out of my mouth. I gazed down at Phil below me, my bloody hands still gripping his suit. Why couldn't he just leave? Why was he still here? Everything inside of me ached, though I deserved the pain, after what I've done.

"Go!" I shrieked at him, and this time he listened.

The second he was out of sight, I buried my face into Phil's shoulder again, trying to muffle the sounds of my agony. Everything had gone wrong: Phil was dying in my arms, Thor was lost, and Loki had escaped.

No.

I had let him escape.

After that, I lost track of time. I was still sobbing into Coulson's shoulder when a pair of calloused hands pulled my up onto my feet. I glanced up at the person who had picked me up, and saw that Fury was standing there, telling me to stop bawling and act like the agent I was. At least, I think he was. Everything was blurred together.

I watched numbly as Phil spoke his last words, and at the sight of this innocent man, my friend, lying there on the floor, dying because of something Loki did . . . it broke my heart.

This was my fault.

It wasn't too long before I couldn't stand there anymore, couldn't stand watching my friend die because of me, and I dashed out of the room and down the hallways of the ship. I didn't know where I was running to, or where I'd end up, but at that point I didn't care. Why should I care?

I ran until I was out of breath, ran until my legs ached and my lungs burned and I could no longer take another step, and then stopped, leaning up against the wall for support.

I don't know how I could still cry, but I could, and right now it seemed like the rears would never stop; that they'd keep on falling until I flooded the ship with my sorrow.

A scuffling sound made me look up, and across the hallway from me was Tony.

His face was completely blank and emotionless, and I knew what that meant. He understood the same pain that was coursing through me, and was being tortured by it the same way I was. Upon seeing me, he began to make his way to my side, hurrying his steps when he got closer.

Once he was within an arm's length, I launched myself at him. He wrapped his arms around me, and stroked my wavy hair, shushing me and trying to calm me down. It didn't stop my sobbing; only caused it to grow louder.

"It's okay, sunshine, it's okay,"

At that point, my knees gave out, but Tony was there to catch me. We sank to the floor together, both of our pain laid bare for the other to see.

"It's going to be alright," Tony's voice cracked as he spoke, his pain finally showing through his emotionless mask. As I sobbed, I felt a tear fall from his cheek, landing in my light brown hair.

And so we cried together, sitting there on the ground for an unknown amount of time, trying to comfort each other with our words.

My tears eventually ran dry, and I became silent, hiccuping occasionally into Tony's chest. I snuggled into his arms, trying to make my pain go away, trying to make all of it go away.

How could this have happened? Not too long ago I was getting coffee for agents of SHIELD, and now here I was sitting with Tony Stark, my whole world falling apart in front of my eyes.

I didn't think things could even go this badly, but I suppose I was proven wrong every time.

Eventually, Fury spoke over our communicators, telling us that he wanted to see me, Tony, and Steve at our usual meeting spot. Tony sighed, and pulled me to my feet. He held onto me as we walked, and we slowly made our way to the control room.

When we got to the room, there seemed to be a whole lot of missing people, and I realized that a lot of them must have been killed during Loki's escape. I wondered briefly where Dr. Banner was, but then remembered a strange roaring sound I heard while trying to get to Loki, and realized that he must have changed into the Hulk.

Judging by the fact that the ship wasn't being torn apart, he must have either changed back, or been tossed off of the ship. I hoped for the former, but if he was here, he'd be sitting at this table by now.

I slumped down into a chair besides Steve, and waited for Fury to start talking. He was fingering a deck of cards, ones that I soon realized to be Phil's collection of Captain America trading cards. A sharp pain ran through me at the sight, and my throat tightened. He loved those cards.

"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket. I guess he never did get you to sign them." Fury threw the cards, and they landed in front of Steve. Hesitantly, he reached forward and picked one up, his face full of sadness.

I put a shaking hand on Steve's shoulder, and squeezed gently. His eyes connected with mine, and he swallowed hard, placing the bloody card back onto the table.

"We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, the location of the Cube, Banner, Thor... I got nothing for you. I lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming..."

"Yes, we were going to build an arsenal of weapons with the Tesseract. I never put all of my chips on that number, though, because I was playing something even riskier," Fury paced back and forth, finally telling us the truth.

"There was an idea, and Stark knows this," He began. I looked over at Tony, but he was facing away from me, staring out into nothing. "It was called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring a group of remarkable people, to see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight to battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea," He said.

"In heroes."

Tony shot out of his seat the second the word heroes was mentioned.

Tony shook his head, and walked out of the room, not sparing a single glance back at us. I grimaced, propping my elbows up onto the table and holding my head, which had begun to pound from both the crying and the sheer amount of times it had been thrown up against a wall in the past few hours.

"Well, it's an old fashioned notion." Fury sighed. I looked down at my hands, and stood up, heading after Tony. I heard footsteps behind me, and looked back to see Steve following me. I stopped, and allowed him to catch up, before continuing down to the cell room where I knew Tony would be.

We made it there soon after we had started out, and saw Tony standing by the edge in front of the hatch. I wandered over to his side, and squeezed his hand gently. He looked down at me, staring at me for a long time, before turning and looking back at the wall.

"Was he married?" Steve asked from across the room, and we both knew he was asking about Phil. Tony didn't look away from the wall.

"No. There was a cellist, I think," Tony answered. Steve nodded, looked down at the floor before he said anything more.

"I'm sorry. He seemed like a good man."

Tony scoffed, and moved away from us.

"He was an idiot." He said. I frowned, and noticed Steve doing the same thing.

"Why?" I asked.

"For believing?" Steve added. Tony just shook his head at us.

"For taking on Loki alone." He put his hands in his pocket, walking away from us.

"He was doing his job." Steve said.

"He was out of his league. He should have waited, he should have..." He trailed off, looking heartbreakingly miserable.

"Sometimes there isn't a way out, Tony," Steve said, walking towards Tony.

"Right, I've heard that before..."

Tony moved away from both of us, walking towards the door. He was about to leave when Steve spoke.

"Is this the first time you've lost a soldier?"

"We are not soldiers!" Tony's voice spewed out venom, and I couldn't help my involuntarily flinch at the sound of it. He looked guilty for being so harsh when he caught sight of my face, and tried to calm himself down.

"I'm not marching to Fury's fife..." He said, gentler this time. I shook my head, and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Neither are we, Tony. This isn't about following Fury, it's about doing the right thing. We need to stop Loki." I said, ignoring the way my voice broke while saying his name.

"Loki needs a power source, if we can put together a list-" Steve was cut off by Tony.

"He made it personal." Tony said, realizing something. Steve shook his head at Tony.

"That's not the point." He said, probably worried that Tony was just saying that because of his feelings. Tony nodded pointedly.

"That is the point. That's Loki's point. He hit us all right where we live, and why?"

"To tear us apart," I answered softly, hesitant of what Tony was going to say next.

"Yeah, divide and conquer is great, but he knows he has to take us out to win, right? That's what he wants. He want to beat us, he wants to be seen doing it." Tony paused for a second, before motioning with his finger.

"He wants an audience. Yes, that was just the previews... This is opening night and Loki is a full-tilt diva, right? He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument built to the sky with his name plastered on i-" Tony paused, obviously realizing something important. Steve and I waited, before I motioned for him to continue.

"Son of a bitch."

Tony rushed down the steps and through the door, with us on his tail. He ran down the hallways, heading towards the room with his suit.

"Loki is going for Stark Tower," He said as we ran. Steve's eye's widened and he nodded, immediately splitting off towards his room to get ready for the upcoming fight.

"Sammie darling, you ready to play with the big kids?" Tony asked, ruffling my hair slightly. I scoffed, and punched his arm.

"Are you?" I smiled. Tony smirked, and pointed to his left.

"Go suit up, and wait for us in the docking hanger. Make sure to get us a nice jet,"

And with that, I ran off to my room as fast as I could. I dressed in my sturdiest uniform, and strapped on two of my best guns, and several knives to my ankles. I put my hair in a ponytail, and sprinted out to the hanger.

I chose the jet closest to the exit, and started up all of the systems. I didn't exactly know how to fly it, but I knew enough from spending so much time around S.H.I.E.L.D. that I was able to start it up.

"You ready?"

I heard a voice ask someone from outside of the jet. I froze in my seat, immediately recognizing the voice and who it belonged to. Not knowing what else to do, I slowly walked out of the jet and down the ramp, immediately catching sight of the person. My breath caught in my throat, and my eyes welled up with tears yet again.

"Clint?"

At the sound of my voice, Clint turned around, disbelief written all over his face. He looked like he was normal again, but I couldn't be sure. I turned to Natasha, who was standing beside him, and when she nodded an affirmative, I threw myself into his arms.

"I'm sorry Clint! I'm so so sorry! I'm sorry!" I nearly wailed into his shoulder, and for a second I didn't get any response.

"Sammie?" He asked hesitantly, and pulled away to look at me. When I looked into his eyes, I saw something that I never thought I'd see in my lifetime. He was crying. My brother, the famous Hawkeye, was crying. At that point, I lost it, and threw myself into his arms again.

"I'm sorry for being such an idiot, Clint! I don't hate you, and you were right, I wasn't ready for an assignment, and you always knew what was best for me, but I just couldn't see it at the time! You were always right and I was always wrong, and I'm sorry!" I rambled on into his shoulder.

He shushed me, holding me tight in his arms.

"It's okay Sammie. Shh, shh, it's okay." He said.

"I love you Clint, I love you so much..." I sobbed, and I could feel him nodding.

"I love you too, Sammie."

I pulled away at last, and wiped my tears. I then turned to Natasha, ready to apologize. I opened my mouth to speak, but she beat me to it.

"I'm sorry, Samantha. I truly am."

And that was all I needed to hear. I held out my hand to her, and she took it.

"Alright guys, as much as I love the mushy stuff, we've got to get going," I heard Tony's voice crackle from the inside of my ear. I smiled up at Clint, and together the four of us walked into the jet.

"Just so you guys know, I'm not going to be the one to tell Legolas about his sister and Loki. Just putting it out there." Tony said nonchalantly.

My eyes widened, and I snuck a look over at Clint. He was frozen in place, and was looking at me in absolute disbelief. He glanced over at Natasha and Steve, but they both said nothing and looked pointedly back at me.

Traitors.

Clint's gaze zeroed in on me, and I got the shivers just from his glare.

"What did Stark say?" He asked through gritted teeth.

I laughed nervously, and rubbed my arm feverishly.

"Um, they're giving away free lattes at Starbucks?"

Upon seeing Clint's reaction, I knew that I would be dead even before the battle for Earth had begun.

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A/N: So, that was that. Tell me what you think :D