I Don't Sleep (I Dream) 2/3
Three days later his entire team was sitting in the living room of Stark Tower. Clint and Natasha sat side by side, not quite touching, and speaking to each other quietly in what sounded like Russian. That meant that what they were saying was either classified or dirty though sometimes Steve wondered where those lines blurred. Bruce was settled in a large armchair, glasses perched on his nose, flipping through pages of a notebook. Tony was speaking to Pepper near the door and she kissed his cheek as she left. Thor was standing near a window, taking up what felt like half the room, and looking far too casual considering what he was asking them to do.
“All right, let’s get started,” Steve said as everyone sat down to look over their information. “As you know we’ve been hired to perform an extraction followed by an inception on the same target. I’ve given you all the file that Clint has put together but what we are trying to do is find out why Thor’s brother, Loki, is walking away from his family.”
“Not that I’m against getting paid for this sort of thing but have you asked him?” Tony asked.
“Of course. He denies that anything is wrong but we have evidence that he is planning on leaving the family and I cannot lose my brother,” Thor replied.
“So he’s hiding something and we need to break in there and find out what it is. Then we need to change his mind,” Clint said. “I need all the information you can get me about your brother. I don’t care if you think it doesn’t matter, I promise, the smallest thing can affect a dream.”
“Whatever you need, you will have it,” Thor replied.
“Find me someone close to him that he trusts so I can get my forge together,” Natasha said, watching Thor but speaking to Clint.
“Bruce, we need a stable level. If he isn’t trained we shouldn’t need more than one to get this out of him. Whatever it is, it is prominent in his head and we shouldn’t have to dig too deep. You can get started on the Somnacin that isn’t going to drop us into limbo for inception,” Steve said.
“I’ll need someone to test on,” Bruce said.
“I volunteer,” Tony said grinning. Steve should have known better than to expect anything less from the ‘science bros’ as Tony called them on their last job. “I’ll start designing the levels and tweak them as we learn more about this guy.” Tony and Bruce both left the room, discussing how they were going to test the solution while Natasha and Clint were staring blankly at Thor. It was a little uncomfortable and Steve really wanted to diffuse a situation before it even started. The last thing he wanted was for Clint to decide that he did not trust Thor and for Natasha to have to step in. She was still as lethally beautiful as Steve remembered and it made his chest ache when he thought about how Bucky would describe her.
“Let’s get to work, Tasha,” Clint said standing. “Get me that information, Mr. Odinson.” Clint turned and headed for one of the many empty offices where he would no doubt hole himself up for the next few days. Natasha nodded silently and followed.
“They do not seem to like me very much. Is it going to be a problem?” Thor commented even if he did not seem too worried about it.
“Clint and Natasha are the best at what they do for a reason. As long as you don’t try to hide anything from Clint, he’ll get the job done and Natasha will do what she needs to. They are the best,” Steve said, watching them vanish from sight.
“Mr. Barton is the one who said he will not do the inception if the extraction goes poorly, correct?” Thor asked.
“We decided that as a team,” Steve said not wanting to put Clint in the spotlight.
“I will get you your information, Steve, and we will go from there.” Thor smiled and walked toward the elevator to see himself out.
“Mr. Rogers.” JARVIS’ voice made Steve jump but he trusted that the AI would keep that bit of information to himself. “would you like me to load all of your job information onto one private server?”
“After Clint takes a look at your security but don’t compile anything for now, thanks.” Steve ran his fingers through his hair, picked up the file and began to try and learn everything he could about Loki Odinson.
---
Three days later Natasha strolled into the living room and dropped a file on Steve’s lap. He picked it up and began to look through it. Loki was with a woman with long black hair and a radiant smile. He looked more relaxed in those pictures than in any other pictures Clint had managed to find. She sat down next to him and tilted her head to the side, waiting for him to read.
“Who is she?” he asked.
“Her name is Sif Leifdottir, and according to Thor, she has been with his brother for the better part of two years,” Natasha replied. “If there is anyone he trusts with this secret it will be her.”
“So you need to get to her so you can build your forge,” Steve said, closing the file and leaning back in the couch. “Two years? You tend to know someone very well when you know them that long.”
“I’m aware that intimate partners of over a year are the hardest forges, Steve. I have been doing this for a long time,” Natasha said raising an eyebrow.
“It’ll have to be perfect,” he said and Natasha smiled.
“Do you doubt my skills?” she asked.
“I know you wouldn’t give us a green light on a forge unless you were 100% confident in it. I trust you, Natasha,” Steve said. Her green eyes were piercing at they stared at him and it made him feel like he was being evaluated. After their last job together, the first time Bucky had interacted with someone other than Steve, it was Natasha and it did not go well. This was the first time they had been in a room alone since the night she had said some choice things to him in Russian and left without a word. “Look, Nat, I’m--”
“Please don’t apologize,” Natasha said holding up a hand. “If you try to make an excuse, I will be forced to hurt you, and I really don’t want to do that, and if you just try to rationalize it, I will just get upset and still hurt you. James, Bucky, is gone and you can’t exactly control how he turns up in your head. Let Clint and I deal with it.”
“Asking you to shoot him though, even if it’s just a projection, that’s asking--”
“It’s asking a lot but I can do it and so can Clint so let us deal with it. If you need to pull the trigger I hope you will, but with all of us together maybe we can trick him. I’m not mad at you and I never blamed you.” Natasha reached over and touched his shoulder where there was a mess of scar tissue from the accident. “These things happen.” She stood and brushed off her clothes. “Talk to Thor and Clint, try to find me an in with Sif, she will play a part in this job one way or another.” Natasha turned and walked out of the room without waiting for another response from him. She knew he would do what he had to to get her to her mark. Natasha was one of the best for a reason and if Steve felt a little lighter that she had forgiven him, well no one else needed to know that.
---
Clint was three days into his research when Natasha walked into the room sans the file on Sif he had given her. He knew it was because she had been with Steve and that meantthey had probably had a heart to heart about the time Steve’s shade told Natasha she meant nothing to him in the middle of a job, and Steve was now forgiven. Clint was not sure how Natasha managed to forgive him but she had and it was her business. He was far too busy staring at pictures of Loki, unable to shake the feeling of ice in his stomach every time he caught a glimpse of those eyes. There was something about Loki he did not like, something about this job he could not shake, and he blamed that distraction for why Natasha was able to sit down next to him without him noticing.
“You know I gave you that file, not Steve,” he said without looking up.
“I know but he might come up with a way for me to get close to her,” Natasha replied. “Are you going to try and get some sleep tonight? If you drink any more coffee your body might start thinking it needs caffeine to survive.”
“I run point; I’m pretty sure my body really does need coffee to survive,” Clint said flatly, rubbing his eyes. He looked at her and Natasha raised a perfect eyebrow. “I’ll come get some sleep in a bit. I need to find you an in with Sif anyway.”
“Don’t stay up too late,” Natasha said, standing. She kissed the top of his head which felt oddly domestic but Natasha could read him better than anyone else. She could probably see that something was bothering him.
“Tasha,” Clint said softly just before she was out of the room. “I don’t trust Loki, something about him rubs me the wrong way, so I need you to be careful out there.” He was not looking at her but he could practically hear the eye roll.
“I’m always careful,” she replied easily.
“I mean it. I need you to watch your back and then some.” Clint focused on his computer but he could almost make out her reflection in the screen. She was watching him the same way she would watch marks, the way that made people uncomfortable, like they could feel eyes on the back of their heads, but Clint was immune to it after so many years. He just continued to work until he heard her say ‘I promise’ softly. Clint smiled to himself because whatever Natasha saw in him had made her make a promise. That was something she never did and it was a relief to know that she was going to be careful.
---
“Is it ready now?” Tony asked, sticking his head in the room where Bruce was working for something like the fifth time that day. It had only been a week since he had started working on the formula that hopefully would not kill them, but Tony seemed to think it should be ready right now despite being told that these things took time. Bruce looked up and tried to muster up a glare that could make Tony go away, but if anything it seemed to somehow encourage him which made absolutely no sense. “Is it?”
“I told you I would come get you when it’s ready, do you not remember that? I’ve only said it the last three times you’ve come in and asked,” Bruce replied, looking down at his equations and trying to think. Tony had been a little more on edge since Natasha had left to do her work in the field; Tony did not like having her out there despite the fact that he knew she could take care of herself, because it meant that there was no one to pacify Clint. That meant that the fateful moment that Tony would have to fight Clint over that last cup of coffee was not going to end with Natasha holding them both back with her pinky fingers. Bruce was not looking forward to that day.
“Yes, yes, of course, it’s all very exact and fun, but can we please get to the testing part? I’m ready for the experimentation,” Tony said, grinning.
“Shouldn’t you be working on the level?” Bruce asked.
“JARVIS is running a complex simulation to come up with the best possible outcome for the maze.” Tony crossed his arms and stared Bruce down; Bruce simply raised an eyebrow. “Fine, I finished the basics, but until I know all of the details I can’t really finish the level. I’m bored, Bruce, you should experiment on me so I’m not bored anymore.”
“What would you like me to do? Drop you three levels and see if you fall into limbo?” Bruce asked dryly.
“Don’t you have the formula from Yusuf that Cobb’s team used for inception? Why can’t you just tweak that?” Tony asked and Bruce clenched his jaw. “Oh, are you two not being bro’s right now?”
“I don’t need any help thank you,” Bruce grumbled. He went back to trying to ignore Tony but the man was like a fly buzzing in his ear even when he was not saying anything. “What can I do to make you go away?”
“Put me under so I can test something,” Tony replied without hesitation.
“Fine, but I’m sending Pepper in after you if you decide to experiment with limbo. You’re just going to test the stability of the one we’ll be using for the extraction,” Bruce explained as Tony lay down on one of the chairs.
“So, you’ll be, what, shaking the chair or something?” Tony asked as Bruce finished setting up the machine.
“Or something,” Bruce said, smiling. Tony seemed to notice something in that smile but did not get a chance to object before Bruce hit the button and sent him into the dream. He cracked his neck and smiled to himself. “Hey, Clint, can I get your help in here?”
Natasha was not the only one who could figure out how to solve interpersonal problems.
---
Natasha smiled and chose to ignore the way the men in the office were leering at her. Sif was a lawyer and that meant that she had a PA. The PA that had sent out various emails to contests for free vacations probably because he just needed to get away. He was a nice enough man but he did not like his job very much. Thor had seen it as a worthy investment to send the young man on a 30 day cruise that he 'won in a contest.' It was all very last minute and young Natalie Rushman was the first person they could find to fill his shoes. Natasha, as Natalie, had smiled prettily, but made sure she came across as the type of person that did not put up with other people's crap. Sif liked strong women and would be more likely to open up to her. That gave her 30 days to learn her forge, which considering how hard Sif worked should be enough time.
“Natalie, could you bring me that file?” Sif's voice said from over the intercom.
“Right away,” Natasha replied as she gathered the file and walked into Sif's office. The bug that she had in Sif's office had revealed that she planned to meet Loki for dinner that night but she had not said anything to Natasha just yet. “Here you are, ma'am.”
“You can call me Sif, Natalie,” Sif replied, taking her file.
“Of course, Sif,” Natasha replied, smiling. “How late do you plan on staying tonight?”
“I have an appointment at six so we can finish up here and then you can go home,” Sif replied. Not many people knew that Sif was in a relationship with Loki and it seemed like they were both keen to keep it quiet. Natasha had a feeling that even Thor was not supposed to know.
“An appointment? Is this something I need to accompany you to?” Natasha asked eagerly because Natalie was always quick to please.
“No, no, it's after six and you should be home by then,” Sif said, waving her off. To anyone else this would have read as an easy dismissal but Natasha could read through the lines. She knew where Sif was going for dinner but she needed to feel out her reactions a little more.
“True. I was thinking of getting some dinner out tonight. Maybe that cafe on seventh?” Natasha said, knowing that was where Sif was going. She watched as the other woman hesitated, a movement so small that anyone not looking would have missed it, but she did not like the idea of someone seeing her having dinner with Loki.
“It's a Friday night so it's going to be busy wherever you go. I would order in,” Sif suggested.
“I didn't even think of that, thank you,” Natasha replied. She smiled brightly and walked out of the office. At five she waved at her boss and walked out of the office. She put away her work cell phone and pulled out her personal one. There was a single encrypted message from Bruce that eventually revealed a picture of Clint punching a sleeping Tony in the face. If it was not completely incriminating she would have kept it forever. Instead she committed the picture to memory and deleted it from the phone.
She had a small apartment across town where Natasha took off Natalie and began to slip into another skin. Amber was a high class socialite from Russia that liked parties and expensive vodka. She was putting an absurd amount of bobby pins in her hair when the phone rang. One glance at the number and she knew exactly who was calling.
"Clint, I'm working," she said casually.
"I know, I just wanted to know what you thought of the picture," Clint replied with false cheer.
"How did it end?" Natasha asked, balancing the phone on her shoulder as she pinned more of her hair back.
"I just gave him a fat lip. I didn't want Pepper angry at me. The only person scarier than Pepper angry is you angry." Clint was smiling but Natasha could picture it in her head and it was forced. "When the time came I got the last cup of coffee."
"I'm so proud," Natasha said as she finished her hair. "Tell Tony I will have specifics for him tonight."
"Keep radio contact, Tash." Clint hung up without another word and Natasha pulled on the blond wig. A few more touches of makeup and she was Amber. Natasha walked downstairs and called a cab. When she pulled up to the cafe where Sif would be meeting Loki, she was not surprised that it was a place where someone could vanish from other patrons. Low lights and dark corners with small tables. She spotted Sif right away and managed to sweet talk a table nearby where she would be able to see both of their faces. She ordered wine and sipped it as she took in each detail of Sif. How relaxed her shoulders were, hands folded on the table, the way she seemed to know that Loki was not going to stand her up. At six on the dot, Sif's dark eyes lit up a little and she smiled brightly. Natasha looked at the door and watched Loki walk in.
Loki was a tall man, over six foot, with longish black hair and striking green eyes. He had the aura of a man that had all of the aces accounted for, and despite his warm smile, the hairs on the back of Natasha's neck stood on end. They greeted each other with the familiarity of two people that were intimate and began to talk softly. Natasha wrote down everything she could on her phone, each facial twitch and eye movement, nothing was considered pointless. The more she watched them, the more she learned about both of them, but Natasha could not shake the lead in the pit of her stomach. When Sif took a break to use the restroom Natasha emailed Tony her level suggestions. Loki had not spared her a glance but she could almost feel his eyes watching her every move. Sif returned and Natasha went back to observing.
---
A little over a month later Steve watched as Bruce slapped Tony across the face to test the stability for their extraction. Tony did not even twitch and Bruce smirked as he looked at Steve. Steve grinned and walked over to Tony, tipping his chair as he jerked awake. Tony grunted as he hit the ground, his eyes a little glazed over but otherwise focused. He glared at Steve and mumbled something about trap doors under his breath. The level was done and Clint was so buried in his research that he was barely talking in complete sentences. Natasha was due back in a few hours where she would hopefully report on a perfect forge.
"Thor Odinson has just entered the building," JARVIS announced.
"Does he know Natasha is due back?" Bruce asked.
"I would assume so," Steve replied, offering Tony a hand. Tony took it and the three of them walked into the main room just as Thor walked out of the elevator.
"Gentlemen, how is our progress?" Thor asked in a booming voice.
"We're getting closer," Steve said as Clint walked in the room.
"I've looked everywhere but I can't find out when this guy found out about dreaming," Clint announced, looking at Thor. "Are you sure you don’t know how much he knows?"
"My brother knows nothing about dreamshare as I have told you," Thor said slowly.
"I thought all of your research said he doesn't know," Steve said, remembering that ignorance was a point in their favor.
"He knows," Clint said lowly.
"Do you have any evidence to prove that?" Bruce asked. Clint glared but said nothing.
"He knows more than he is letting on," a voice from behind them said, and they all turned to see Natasha walking into the tower. "And no, I don't have anything to prove this aside from instinct."
"I can't cancel a job based on instincts," Steve said after a long silence. Clint looked annoyed but Natasha did not look surprised. "Is the forge ready?"
"Yes, we are good to go," Natasha replied, walking over to Clint and putting a hand on the small of his back. He seemed to relax marginally but he still glared at Steve which Steve chose to ignore.
"Let's start to plan the snatch and grab then. Does he have any surgeries or anything planned?" Steve asked, watching Clint.
"No, we're going to have to break in," Clint said.
"He will stay at my place then. That will be easier, yes?" Thor suggested.
“Yes,” Steve said carefully. “That will work great. Let’s work on a date and figure out the last of the details.” The rest of the team nodded as they all went their separate ways. Steve really wanted to jump into the dream and confront his shade of Bucky before the job. He wanted to make sure that everything was going to be okay since they did not have another mechanic, since Bucky knew everyone that was going into the dream, but Bruce would find that odd. So he straightened his shoulders and began to look into what day would be best to break into Loki’s mind.
---
A week later and they were ready to perform the extraction. Loki was going to spend the night at Thor’s where it would be relatively easy to drug him. From there they would drop into the dream and get the information that they needed to perform the inception. On a technical level the extraction seemed very textbook but there was something about the entire situation that had Clint and Natasha on edge. While Natasha said that her forge was perfect, Steve had never seen her uneasy about a job before. Clint was much more vocal about the fact that he sincerely believed that Loki knew about dreaming and they were about to get torn apart. “Oh wait, I’m the dreamer, they’re going to tear me apart,” he said the night before and he vanished into his room. Steve could not call off a job because Clint was convinced of something that was not there .
Thor opened the door and they all slowly filed into his apartment. It was quiet and there was a water glass on the table that had been drugged with a sedative that would be out of Loki’s system by the time the dream ended. There would be no evidence that anything ever happened, none that any crime unit could trace, and Steve watched Loki sleep for a moment as Bruce set up the machine. There was something about the man that felt different in a way he could not describe, and the little smirk on his lips as he slept was a little unnerving.
“Okay, let’s rehash,” Steve said. “Bruce and Tony will stay topside with Thor to keep an eye on our vitals and Loki. Clint will be on the roof of the next building with a rifle ready to shoot anyone that looks at us funny. Nat will be forging Sif who will meet Loki for dinner and I’ll go to the safe in the bank across the street when he drops all of his secrets in the vault. Clint or I will kick ourselves out when we have everything we need. Everyone set?” There was a series of nods throughout the group as Tony and Bruce helped set up everyone’s IV’s.
“One of these days I’ll get you to test the stability of the dream, Barton,” Tony said as he finished Clint’s IV line.
“We’ll see,” Clint said, smirking.
“Ready?” Bruce asked and everyone nodded. “Sweet dreams.” He pushed the button and the Somnacin rushed like ice through his veins as the world faded into white.
---
Steve blinked and he was standing in the middle of the city streets. Projections moved effortlessly around him and he stood still for a moment to see if they would react to his presence. A minute passed, then two, and no one tried to stab him. He felt out the dream in general, how calm it was and the feeling in the air, and everything felt fine. Steve relaxed a little and walked toward the apartment building next door to the bank where he was meeting everyone. It had plenty of windows and the perfect vantage points for Clint to watch them and enough places to run if they caught on to where he was. Steve knocked on the door twice and it opened to reveal Clint looking unimpressed.
“The dream feels calm,” he said as he walked in.
“I know,” Clint replied and he walked into the apartment without a word. Natasha was already there and changing into Sif in the full length mirror. Her long red hair turned black and she cracked her neck as her body changed into that of another person. Clint was putting together his rifle and looked out at the cafe through the scope. “Target in sight. Entered the cafe on a cellphone.”
“Then I’ll be on my way,” Natasha said as Sif walking out the door. Clint did not say anything as he watched the street. Steve wanted to find some way to assure him that everything was going to be fine, that this job was going to be fine, but nothing came. Steve closed the door, locked it and followed several steps behind Natasha. He watched as Natasha sat down at the table with Loki and the two of them began to talk. Natasha was an extractor in her own right, most forgers were, but she needed to stay with Loki while Steve got the actual information. There was no sign of Bucky and Steve did not know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“Loki, what is bothering you these days?” Natasha asked as Sif after some time in between conversation. “You have been distant from me.”
“Nothing is bothering me,” Loki denied, and if Steve could not read people as well as he could he would have bought that lie.
“Things are quiet up here,” Clint said over the blue tooth. “Very little movement from all sides and no one is looking at you.” Clint was a lethal sniper in the real world, but in a dream he was like something out of a superhero comic.
“Natasha is baiting him; standby,” Steve replied.
“You can trust me, Loki, you know that, don’t you?” Natasha asked.
“Of course,” Loki said leaning forward. “But this is different.”
“I will always keep your secrets safe, locked away, where no one will ever find them. Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?” Natasha asked, and that was the word he was looking for. Loki’s eyes flicked to the bank across the street, just for a second, but he shook his head.
“There is nothing to tell. I have nothing hidden away,” Loki said. Natasha sighed and took a drink of her water. That was the signal that the information should be hidden and Steve was on his feet in seconds. As he crossed the street to the bank Steve could have sworn for a moment he saw Bucky watching him, smiling, but the second passed and there were just nameless projections.
“Cover Natasha. I’m going in,” Steve said over the blue tooth.
“Affirmative. Good luck,” Clint replied. Steve walked into the bank and smiled brightly at the teller.
“I need to open a safety deposit box,” Steve said. The teller raised an eyebrow but had someone escort him back. By the time he was left alone Steve had already found the box he was looking for. There was no one else around and the dream remained calm. Clint did not say anything over the blue tooth and no one came running when Steve popped the box open. There were a few small rooms off to the side where he could look through the box. There were plenty of secrets, lots of papers, but they were looking for something specific. Steve was confident he would know what it was when he found it.
The file had lots of small secrets, bank statements and mistakes made in his past, but these were not what he was looking for. Somewhere in that file was a secret so terrible it was making a brother walk away from his entire family. It was hidden at the back of the file, buried between other pages, as if it was something that Loki himself had tried to forget but could not. Steve pulled the paper out and looked it over. Something horrible clenched in his stomach and he wanted to punch a wall. This was much more personal than he ever thought it could be; this was terrible, this was pretty much the worst possible thing that could happen for the job.
“I’m shooting myself out. I’ll give you the kick topside,” Steve said, pulling out his gun.
“Wait, what? Steve, what did you find?” Clint asked but Steve ignored him, putting the gun to his head.
“We never should have taken this job,” Steve said as he pulled the trigger and the dream faded away.
---
It was nearly three in the morning by the time they all gathered at Stark Tower. Clint was the only one that seemed eager about learning what Steve found in that safe while everyone else seemed to think that it could wait until morning. Tony was making a pot of coffee and drinking it like it was the nectar of the gods when they all sat down to discuss this.
“Did we really have to do this now? Some of us didn’t go into the dream and get any sleep,” Tony said.
“What did you find?” Clint asked.
“Yes, I thought we were meeting in the morning. I do not like the idea of leaving my brother alone like that,” Thor said clearly annoyed.
“Your brother is not really your brother,” Steve said, crossing his arms tightly across his chest. “Loki was adopted. He's done research on his parents, the Laufeyson's, were a bunch of con people. They were the type of con people that took money from poor families and left them bankrupt. He's deeply, deeply ashamed of them. The only thing he hates more than them is the way he feels like an outsider to the rest of the Odinson family.” A heavy silence fell over the room as what this meant for their job began to sink in for his team members. Something like this was deeply personal and it was not something that one would normally try to change someone’s mind about.
“This would explain his distance toward me,” Thor said after a long silence.
“How are we supposed to change his mind about family when he’s adopted? Who knows how deep those issues run?” Clint said, his voice rising. “How are we supposed to implant something like family acceptance in someone’s head?” He ran his hands through his short hair and sent it flying in all directions. “I told you we shouldn’t have taken this job.” Clint turned and walked out of the room without another word.
“How did the extraction go?” Bruce asked.
“It went perfectly,” Natasha replied. “No one even had to fire a single shot.”
“If the extraction went well, will you continue with this job?” Thor asked. All eyes were on Steve as he tried to come up with an answer that was not going to ruin either the job or his relationship with his team.
“We need some time to discuss what our next move will be,” Steve said.
“This will change him. If we continue with this job I will not just keep my brother I will have changed him,” Thor said softly.
“You're going to have to decide if the risk is worth it.” Natasha crossed her arms across her chest and fixed her gaze on Thor. “You're going to have to decide if the risk of keeping your brother is worth changing who your brother might be fundamentally.” It was the hang up about the job that no one had brought up. Changing a decision was one thing but this was going to change Loki's thoughts on a basic level. Thor nodded and wished them all a goodnight as he left the tower.
“I hope you have a great plan for incepting someone with love and a sense of belonging to their family because that’s not something you can fake,” Tony said. He did not wait for Steve to respond as he downed the rest of his coffee and walked toward his bedroom. Bruce glanced at Steve, shrugged a little and walked toward his lab. Natasha was still as she watched him but eventually followed Clint out of the room. Steve sighed and picked up Tony’s empty mug to put it in the sink. All he could hope for now was that everyone would cool off and they could have this discussion in the morning.
“Kill the lights, JARVIS,” Steve said and the rooms faded into darkness as he walked down the hallway toward his bedroom.
---
Steve was not surprised when he woke up to find Clint waiting for him in the living room. There were dark circles under his eyes that spoke of very little sleep and he looked extremely annoyed. There was no way for this conversation to end well. He was also not nearly awake enough for this screaming match.
"Shall we step outside?" Steve asked and he walked toward the balcony, knowing that Clint was going to follow him. As soon as the door closed he turned and faced his point man. "You want to pull out."
"No, we should pull out. This is too personal for us. There could be years of issues that we have no way of knowing about. We would be going in blind," Clint said.
"We said we would pull out if the extraction went south. In your professional opinion, how did the extraction go?" Steve asked.
"Don't patronize me, Rogers," Clint snapped. "The extraction was textbook."
"Exactly, why would we walk away when the extraction went so well?" Steve asked.
"Don't be thick, Steve, when was the last time you had an extraction go off without a hitch?" Clint scoffed. "No team of mine is--"
"But it's not your team; it's mine. I'm the one paying and that means it's my call. We're going in and if you don't like it, you can walk away." It had been years since Steve had had to pull rank on Clint but there was something in his tone that just hit Steve's last nerve. Clint's entire expression shut down in a way Steve had not seen since Bucky died. This was Clint the soldier, Clint the sniper, and a total stranger.
"Yes, sir," Clint said and Steve felt his stomach clench as Clint saluted him. Without another word Clint turned and walked back into the tower. The that look on Clint's face was betrayed and furious and Steve hated being the reason it was there even more but he was not going to walk away from this job because Clint was convinced something was wrong.
Steve stayed outside for a few more minutes before he walked back inside. He was not at all surprised to see Natasha sitting on the couch reading. He was 100% sure that she had heard every word of his conversation with Clint. Whatever she had to say Steve was 100% sure he was not iin the right frame of mind to deal with it rationally.
"If you're going to yell at me could you at least wait until I've had my coffee?" he said.
"Why would I yell at you?" Natasha asked, looking up from her book with a raised eyebrow.
"You don't have any comments about my conversation with Clint?" Steve asked, surprised.
"Of course I do, but not anything you want to hear right now," she said, shrugging. "Clint is a sniper, he sees better from a distance. Just give him some time to see things with some space and he'll be okay. You were right." Steve sometimes forgot how well Natasha could read people, to the point that it was a little creepy, and he was thankful for that. He walked over and sat down next to her. "You miss Bucky."
"Every single day," Steve said without hesitation. "You might have to shoot him."
“I’m sure he’ll deserve it for one reason or another,” Natasha said, shrugging again. They sat together in a comfortable silence for a few minutes and Steve realized how much he had missed just sitting around with his friends, when his teammates were his friends, and how much that had changed over the years.
“Do you think we should go through with this job?” he asked ,not sure if he was really ready to hear what she had to say. Natasha closed her book and stretched.
“Any other extractor would have made the same decision,” she said before she turned and left the room. Steve was tempted to remind her that he was not just any normal extractor, but by the time he found the words she was already gone. He laid down on the couch and closed his eyes.
---
Three weeks later they had a plan. Clint spent the entire first week calling Steve ‘sir’ instead of his name, but by week two he was ‘Steve’ again. Thor looked pleased when he told him that they were going to try and perform the inception but that it would not be easy. They all looked a little relieved when Steve reminded Thor that it was an imperfect art, that there were no guarantees, because Clint had been right when he had said that this was a deeply personal issue that was going to be hard to tackle. At least each team member at some point over the next three weeks threatened to quit. When Natasha tried to walk away, Steve all but begged her to stay, but that was a secret that was going to stay between them (and JARVIS) for the foreseeable future.
The first level would be Bruce’s dream; an office building where Natasha would pose as a secretary. She would mention Thor and that he kept calling the office to check in on Loki to make sure that he was okay. She would drug his coffee and they would drop down a level. Bruce would lock the doors and wait them out.
The second level would be Clint’s; an apartment building shared by Thor and Loki that they still owned. Steve would pose as a contractor while Natasha would pose as Thor. Steve would talk about memories while Natasha egged him on. She would drug his beer and Clint would keep the projections busy.
The third level would be Tony’s; it would be a city so complex that the only person who stood a chance of memorizing it was the person who designed it. Tony was not pleased that he would be the dreamer since that meant that the projections could come after him but they needed Natasha safe. She would be posing as Sif and they would go over a copy of the will left by Loki and Thor’s father. It was not accurate, even Clint was not that good, and Thor did not know the details either, but it was the best shot they had to convince Loki that he was loved by his family.
Steve was looking over some papers when Bruce walked in, grinning from ear to ear. His hair was a mess and it looked like he was running on pure caffeine at this point, but there was something promising about that smile.
“I think I got it,” Bruce announced. “I mean we have no way of testing it outside of dropping down into the dream and seeing if we fall into limbo, but I'm 97.4% sure that if we die on any level of that dream that we won’t drop.”
“I like those odds,” Steve replied. The elevator opened and Thor strolled in. He looked a bit too confident for someone that was about to try and brainwash his brother, but Steve tried not to think about that too much. Thor’s heart was in the right place even if he was going about this the wrong way. When he had mentioned that to Tony a few weeks earlier, Tony had just reminded him that they were not here to judge anyone. He then ranted about how they were not entirely the protagonists in this story because of what they did until Pepper came in and dragged Tony away, reminding him that he was not a comic book style hero nor the star of an action movie.
“Gentlemen, how are things proceeding?” Thor asked.
“I think we’ve passed our last major hurdle so we can start moving forward with the actual date,” Steve replied.
“Good. I wanted to stop by and tell you that I would like to come into the dream with you,” Thor said calmly. Steve blinked a few times and glanced at Bruce whose eyes were a little wider than usual.
“This is going to be a delicate job, Mr. Odinson, we don’t really have room for tourists,” Steve said carefully.
“And I’d like to remind you, Mr. Rogers, that this is my brother and I will do anything to keep from losing him. I am going into the dreams with you,” Thor said. There was no room for any argument in his tone and Clint was not going to be happy at all. They were just going to have to take Thor with them three levels down to keep an eye on him.
“I’ll make it work,” Steve said.
Over the next three days they decided on a date and a time. Everyone was very antsy at the idea of a tourist coming in on a job like this but they all conceded when he explained that he was not exactly given a choice in the matter. Clint mouthed off but began to make adjustments to his own level as he went along. Steve just hoped that Thor knew how to use a gun well enough. Clint had taken him down a few times but always came back grumbling about how it would probably be more effective to let the man beat projections to death with a blunt object.
Everyone had different ways of dealing with the night before a job. Bruce was talking quietly to Betty on the phone and smiling to himself. He would not touch his equations or his chemicals tonight and would most likely fall asleep listening to Betty’s voice. Tony was out to dinner with Pepper and the two of them would stay up late working on building designs in the real world and drinking outrageously expensive champagne. Clint and Natasha locked themselves in their room with a pile of junk food and terrible movies that they would watch until late in the night. If they knew they were going to do a dangerous job, they said ‘goodbye’ instead of ‘goodnight’ when they started to get tired.
Steve considered himself boring because he usually just went to bed early. When he was younger and Bucky was still alive they would go out for drinks and Bucky would hit on every woman in a ten foot radius. He never took anyone home and he smiled easily by the end of the night. The first few weeks after he died, Steve would go under by himself, but taunting his shade seemed like a bad idea. So Steve laid down relatively early and closed his eyes, hoping to finally get some sleep before he risked his life for yet another job the following day.
---
Steve realized that he was in a natural dream right away. It had been years since he had had a natural dream and it was just his luck that he would get one the night before a major job. Despite being lucid he also knew this dream because he had seen it play out before. He saw it every time he closed his eyes and he wanted to wake himself up. He knew where he was and what was going on because this was not just a dream, not a nightmare, but a memory.
Steve had met Bucky when they were both kids growing up in Brooklyn. They had quickly become friends and remained that way all throughout grade school. When Steve decided that he wanted to join the army, he had prepared himself for days to tell Bucky only to find out that Bucky had enlisted the day before, unbeknownst to Steve’s plans. After boot camp, they got shipped off to different places in the world but remained in touch. It was after there was radio silence from Bucky for a month that Steve realized he cared about his friend on a much deeper level, that he was probably in love with him, and that had scared him more than the prospect of dying in combat ever could.
He joined Project Somnacin just before it disbanded so he had not had as much time with the PASIV as he would have liked, but in that little time he learned so much. Steve also learned that Bucky had been killed in combat overseas and that was the first time he saw Bucky in his subconscious. When he told the project coordinators, they said they were going to report it to Professor Miles, but the program fell apart not long after and they kicked Steve back out into the real world like he had never really mattered. When Bucky showed up three months later, a PASIV in one hand and sporting a shit eating grin, Steve decked him and then almost broke his ribs with a bone crushing hug.
Bucky was what they called a mechanic, tech support really, a person who knew the PASIV better than anyone else. He had told Steve about how he met this woman named Natasha who could change her appearance in dreams and a guy named Clint who ran point and took apart the best laid plans with startling efficiency; he had told him about how they needed an extractor for the team that he was putting together and there was no one better to lead it than Steve. Steve remembered agreeing without thinking twice.
Over the next three years they acquired Bruce as a chemist and Tony as their architect. Steve knew that Bucky and Natasha were together, but six months after the entire team was put together, Bucky showed up at Steve’s hotel room door, reeking of whiskey, saying he had left Natasha and kissed him. Steve did not stop to consider the consequences to the team or even anyone else’s feelings; he finally had the man he had loved for years. Natasha was okay, thankfully, and the team ran perfectly. They performed jobs that no one else would dare take. They had a lot of laughs, some good times, even more great times, and those three years were three of the best years of Steve’s life.
Steve wished this was one of those great times but he knew what day he was dreaming about right now. It was an extraction against a mob boss that had gone south. Clint had stayed behind with Natasha to try and hold the bodyguards off as Tony and Bruce took off down the stairs and Bucky and Steve out the window and across the fire escapes. Steve said the things that he had said that day despite his awareness of how this was going to end. He and Bucky came to a gap across the balconies ten stories down. Steve kicked the rusted railing aside so they would have space to jump.
“We need to jump!” Bucky said, clutching the PASIV in hand as the sound of voices began to close in. “You go first.” Steve nodded and jumped across the eight foot gap. He gripped the railing tightly and swung himself over.
“Toss me the PASIV,” Steve yelled and Bucky nodded, throwing the multi million dollar machine at Steve. Steve could feel Bucky's relief as he caught it. “All right, now you, come on!” Bucky nodded and went to make the jump. Just like that day it felt like time slowed down. Just as Bucky was about to jump, they must have been spotted and a bullet grazed his leg. He stumbled and Steve reached out barely catching Bucky so he did not fall to his death. The angle was all wrong but Steve could hold on, he was strong enough. “I got you, buddy, I got you!” Steve reached out so Bucky could take his other hand and their fingers were about to touch when a bullet tore through Steve’s arm.
He should have hung on, he wanted to, but the pain was so sudden that his instincts got the better of him and Bucky slipped from his hand. Steve watched (again and again and again he relived this nightmare) as his best friend and the man he loved plummeted to the ground below. Bucky was scared and he opened his mouth to say something but gravity was heartless and he hit the ground before he could say anything. Killed on impact, an accident, it was an accident, Steve, they had said. Steve could feel the blood running down in his arm, the dull pain of the bullet wound, as if it all had just happened again. Unlike reality, this was a dream, and now he tilted his head back and screamed in anguish.
---
Steve jerked awake and saw that the sun had risen. He was covered in a thick layer of sweat and his heart felt like it was trying to beat out of his chest. There were tears in his eyes and he hoped he had not really been screaming. No one needed to know that he still had nightmares about the person he had let down. There was a job to do and he had to focus on the task at hand. Steve took a few deep breaths and got out of bed.
They were meeting at Thor’s apartment at 2300. Loki was going to stay the night again and they were going to do the job in the safety of a locked apartment with Hogun standing over his boss. Tony had somehow convinced Pepper to watch over the machine since she knew the basics if nothing else. Everyone was quiet as Thor let them in, and there were only a few spoken words as they set up. Tony said something to Pepper quietly, Thor clapped Hogun on the shoulder, Bruce sent a quick text; Natasha stared at the sleeping Loki for only a moment before she knelt down and helped Clint set up the PASIV. They put in their lines and Steve ignored the pinch of the needle.
“Is everything ready?” Pepper asked.
“Machine is a go, Pep,” Bruce said, throwing up a thumbs up.
“Is everyone ready?” Steve asked and his entire team nodded. “Send us under, Pepper.”
“Good luck,” Pepper said as she pushed the button and the world faded away in a bright white light.
---
Steve blinked away the bright light as the dream focused. He was in the lobby of an office building with projections moving around him. He could feel a gun attached to his hip and he waited to see if anything would happen. The projections continued to move past him like he belonged. Steve breathed a sigh of relief but kept his guard up. Fortunately the elevator was not occupied by anyone but himself. It gave him time to get the feel of the dream. It felt stable enough but that did not mean that things could not fall apart. Steve had seen stable dreams blow up in his face enough to know that it could go very wrong very quickly. Clint was rarely wrong and his adamance that there was more than met the eye with Loki did not help ease the tension out of Steve's shoulders.
The elevator doors opened and revealed a row of bright windows. Tony had designed the dream to have lots of bright windows so Clint would have plenty of sightlines from across the way. The two buildings were attached via a sky walk so if things got to be too much for Clint he could make it across quickly. Steve did not know what Bruce had up his sleeve about the level and what he was going to use as protection. Bruce tended to set up booby traps and tripwires when things went bad. Steve kept an eye open for anything because Bruce was not likely to dream any of them up before the projections caught on. If the dream was already compromised, there was no point in being subtle.
Steve knocked on an office door twice and it opened to reveal Natasha. She smiled briefly and stepped aside to let him in. Bruce was already there messing with a PASIV with Tony hovering nearby. Thor was off in the corner looking extremely stoic.
“Have we heard from Clint?” Steve asked.
“I'm in position,” a disembodied voice said from a speaker. “So far, so quiet. No one has even glanced in your direction.”
“Do you have eyes on Loki?” Natasha straightened her clothes in front of a full sized mirror.
“Yes. So far he seems calm and does not look like he suspects anything yet,” Clint said. Steve chose to ignore the 'yet in that statement.
“Are you ready?” Steve asked and Natasha raised an eyebrow. She was going to be Sif's PA coming in to bring Loki a file from her firm. It was not an uncommon thing to happen between the two of them and when Loki was not looking, Natasha was going to spike his coffee. When he started to get woozy she was going to escort him to the conference room where Bruce would be waiting with the PASIV.
“That was a stupid question, Steve,” Tony said smiling.
“I've got your back, Tasha,” Clint said.
“I know,” she said. Natasha straightened her back and a warm smile spread across her lips. Even when she looked like herself there was still some physical changes in her when she became a different persona. Natasha, now Natalie, took a file off of the table and walked out of the room. Steve was going to call her cell as soon as Clint gave the word and they would begin.
<-- back forward -->
“All right, let’s get started,” Steve said as everyone sat down to look over their information. “As you know we’ve been hired to perform an extraction followed by an inception on the same target. I’ve given you all the file that Clint has put together but what we are trying to do is find out why Thor’s brother, Loki, is walking away from his family.”
“Not that I’m against getting paid for this sort of thing but have you asked him?” Tony asked.
“Of course. He denies that anything is wrong but we have evidence that he is planning on leaving the family and I cannot lose my brother,” Thor replied.
“So he’s hiding something and we need to break in there and find out what it is. Then we need to change his mind,” Clint said. “I need all the information you can get me about your brother. I don’t care if you think it doesn’t matter, I promise, the smallest thing can affect a dream.”
“Whatever you need, you will have it,” Thor replied.
“Find me someone close to him that he trusts so I can get my forge together,” Natasha said, watching Thor but speaking to Clint.
“Bruce, we need a stable level. If he isn’t trained we shouldn’t need more than one to get this out of him. Whatever it is, it is prominent in his head and we shouldn’t have to dig too deep. You can get started on the Somnacin that isn’t going to drop us into limbo for inception,” Steve said.
“I’ll need someone to test on,” Bruce said.
“I volunteer,” Tony said grinning. Steve should have known better than to expect anything less from the ‘science bros’ as Tony called them on their last job. “I’ll start designing the levels and tweak them as we learn more about this guy.” Tony and Bruce both left the room, discussing how they were going to test the solution while Natasha and Clint were staring blankly at Thor. It was a little uncomfortable and Steve really wanted to diffuse a situation before it even started. The last thing he wanted was for Clint to decide that he did not trust Thor and for Natasha to have to step in. She was still as lethally beautiful as Steve remembered and it made his chest ache when he thought about how Bucky would describe her.
“Let’s get to work, Tasha,” Clint said standing. “Get me that information, Mr. Odinson.” Clint turned and headed for one of the many empty offices where he would no doubt hole himself up for the next few days. Natasha nodded silently and followed.
“They do not seem to like me very much. Is it going to be a problem?” Thor commented even if he did not seem too worried about it.
“Clint and Natasha are the best at what they do for a reason. As long as you don’t try to hide anything from Clint, he’ll get the job done and Natasha will do what she needs to. They are the best,” Steve said, watching them vanish from sight.
“Mr. Barton is the one who said he will not do the inception if the extraction goes poorly, correct?” Thor asked.
“We decided that as a team,” Steve said not wanting to put Clint in the spotlight.
“I will get you your information, Steve, and we will go from there.” Thor smiled and walked toward the elevator to see himself out.
“Mr. Rogers.” JARVIS’ voice made Steve jump but he trusted that the AI would keep that bit of information to himself. “would you like me to load all of your job information onto one private server?”
“After Clint takes a look at your security but don’t compile anything for now, thanks.” Steve ran his fingers through his hair, picked up the file and began to try and learn everything he could about Loki Odinson.
---
Three days later Natasha strolled into the living room and dropped a file on Steve’s lap. He picked it up and began to look through it. Loki was with a woman with long black hair and a radiant smile. He looked more relaxed in those pictures than in any other pictures Clint had managed to find. She sat down next to him and tilted her head to the side, waiting for him to read.
“Who is she?” he asked.
“Her name is Sif Leifdottir, and according to Thor, she has been with his brother for the better part of two years,” Natasha replied. “If there is anyone he trusts with this secret it will be her.”
“So you need to get to her so you can build your forge,” Steve said, closing the file and leaning back in the couch. “Two years? You tend to know someone very well when you know them that long.”
“I’m aware that intimate partners of over a year are the hardest forges, Steve. I have been doing this for a long time,” Natasha said raising an eyebrow.
“It’ll have to be perfect,” he said and Natasha smiled.
“Do you doubt my skills?” she asked.
“I know you wouldn’t give us a green light on a forge unless you were 100% confident in it. I trust you, Natasha,” Steve said. Her green eyes were piercing at they stared at him and it made him feel like he was being evaluated. After their last job together, the first time Bucky had interacted with someone other than Steve, it was Natasha and it did not go well. This was the first time they had been in a room alone since the night she had said some choice things to him in Russian and left without a word. “Look, Nat, I’m--”
“Please don’t apologize,” Natasha said holding up a hand. “If you try to make an excuse, I will be forced to hurt you, and I really don’t want to do that, and if you just try to rationalize it, I will just get upset and still hurt you. James, Bucky, is gone and you can’t exactly control how he turns up in your head. Let Clint and I deal with it.”
“Asking you to shoot him though, even if it’s just a projection, that’s asking--”
“It’s asking a lot but I can do it and so can Clint so let us deal with it. If you need to pull the trigger I hope you will, but with all of us together maybe we can trick him. I’m not mad at you and I never blamed you.” Natasha reached over and touched his shoulder where there was a mess of scar tissue from the accident. “These things happen.” She stood and brushed off her clothes. “Talk to Thor and Clint, try to find me an in with Sif, she will play a part in this job one way or another.” Natasha turned and walked out of the room without waiting for another response from him. She knew he would do what he had to to get her to her mark. Natasha was one of the best for a reason and if Steve felt a little lighter that she had forgiven him, well no one else needed to know that.
---
Clint was three days into his research when Natasha walked into the room sans the file on Sif he had given her. He knew it was because she had been with Steve and that meantthey had probably had a heart to heart about the time Steve’s shade told Natasha she meant nothing to him in the middle of a job, and Steve was now forgiven. Clint was not sure how Natasha managed to forgive him but she had and it was her business. He was far too busy staring at pictures of Loki, unable to shake the feeling of ice in his stomach every time he caught a glimpse of those eyes. There was something about Loki he did not like, something about this job he could not shake, and he blamed that distraction for why Natasha was able to sit down next to him without him noticing.
“You know I gave you that file, not Steve,” he said without looking up.
“I know but he might come up with a way for me to get close to her,” Natasha replied. “Are you going to try and get some sleep tonight? If you drink any more coffee your body might start thinking it needs caffeine to survive.”
“I run point; I’m pretty sure my body really does need coffee to survive,” Clint said flatly, rubbing his eyes. He looked at her and Natasha raised a perfect eyebrow. “I’ll come get some sleep in a bit. I need to find you an in with Sif anyway.”
“Don’t stay up too late,” Natasha said, standing. She kissed the top of his head which felt oddly domestic but Natasha could read him better than anyone else. She could probably see that something was bothering him.
“Tasha,” Clint said softly just before she was out of the room. “I don’t trust Loki, something about him rubs me the wrong way, so I need you to be careful out there.” He was not looking at her but he could practically hear the eye roll.
“I’m always careful,” she replied easily.
“I mean it. I need you to watch your back and then some.” Clint focused on his computer but he could almost make out her reflection in the screen. She was watching him the same way she would watch marks, the way that made people uncomfortable, like they could feel eyes on the back of their heads, but Clint was immune to it after so many years. He just continued to work until he heard her say ‘I promise’ softly. Clint smiled to himself because whatever Natasha saw in him had made her make a promise. That was something she never did and it was a relief to know that she was going to be careful.
---
“Is it ready now?” Tony asked, sticking his head in the room where Bruce was working for something like the fifth time that day. It had only been a week since he had started working on the formula that hopefully would not kill them, but Tony seemed to think it should be ready right now despite being told that these things took time. Bruce looked up and tried to muster up a glare that could make Tony go away, but if anything it seemed to somehow encourage him which made absolutely no sense. “Is it?”
“I told you I would come get you when it’s ready, do you not remember that? I’ve only said it the last three times you’ve come in and asked,” Bruce replied, looking down at his equations and trying to think. Tony had been a little more on edge since Natasha had left to do her work in the field; Tony did not like having her out there despite the fact that he knew she could take care of herself, because it meant that there was no one to pacify Clint. That meant that the fateful moment that Tony would have to fight Clint over that last cup of coffee was not going to end with Natasha holding them both back with her pinky fingers. Bruce was not looking forward to that day.
“Yes, yes, of course, it’s all very exact and fun, but can we please get to the testing part? I’m ready for the experimentation,” Tony said, grinning.
“Shouldn’t you be working on the level?” Bruce asked.
“JARVIS is running a complex simulation to come up with the best possible outcome for the maze.” Tony crossed his arms and stared Bruce down; Bruce simply raised an eyebrow. “Fine, I finished the basics, but until I know all of the details I can’t really finish the level. I’m bored, Bruce, you should experiment on me so I’m not bored anymore.”
“What would you like me to do? Drop you three levels and see if you fall into limbo?” Bruce asked dryly.
“Don’t you have the formula from Yusuf that Cobb’s team used for inception? Why can’t you just tweak that?” Tony asked and Bruce clenched his jaw. “Oh, are you two not being bro’s right now?”
“I don’t need any help thank you,” Bruce grumbled. He went back to trying to ignore Tony but the man was like a fly buzzing in his ear even when he was not saying anything. “What can I do to make you go away?”
“Put me under so I can test something,” Tony replied without hesitation.
“Fine, but I’m sending Pepper in after you if you decide to experiment with limbo. You’re just going to test the stability of the one we’ll be using for the extraction,” Bruce explained as Tony lay down on one of the chairs.
“So, you’ll be, what, shaking the chair or something?” Tony asked as Bruce finished setting up the machine.
“Or something,” Bruce said, smiling. Tony seemed to notice something in that smile but did not get a chance to object before Bruce hit the button and sent him into the dream. He cracked his neck and smiled to himself. “Hey, Clint, can I get your help in here?”
Natasha was not the only one who could figure out how to solve interpersonal problems.
---
Natasha smiled and chose to ignore the way the men in the office were leering at her. Sif was a lawyer and that meant that she had a PA. The PA that had sent out various emails to contests for free vacations probably because he just needed to get away. He was a nice enough man but he did not like his job very much. Thor had seen it as a worthy investment to send the young man on a 30 day cruise that he 'won in a contest.' It was all very last minute and young Natalie Rushman was the first person they could find to fill his shoes. Natasha, as Natalie, had smiled prettily, but made sure she came across as the type of person that did not put up with other people's crap. Sif liked strong women and would be more likely to open up to her. That gave her 30 days to learn her forge, which considering how hard Sif worked should be enough time.
“Natalie, could you bring me that file?” Sif's voice said from over the intercom.
“Right away,” Natasha replied as she gathered the file and walked into Sif's office. The bug that she had in Sif's office had revealed that she planned to meet Loki for dinner that night but she had not said anything to Natasha just yet. “Here you are, ma'am.”
“You can call me Sif, Natalie,” Sif replied, taking her file.
“Of course, Sif,” Natasha replied, smiling. “How late do you plan on staying tonight?”
“I have an appointment at six so we can finish up here and then you can go home,” Sif replied. Not many people knew that Sif was in a relationship with Loki and it seemed like they were both keen to keep it quiet. Natasha had a feeling that even Thor was not supposed to know.
“An appointment? Is this something I need to accompany you to?” Natasha asked eagerly because Natalie was always quick to please.
“No, no, it's after six and you should be home by then,” Sif said, waving her off. To anyone else this would have read as an easy dismissal but Natasha could read through the lines. She knew where Sif was going for dinner but she needed to feel out her reactions a little more.
“True. I was thinking of getting some dinner out tonight. Maybe that cafe on seventh?” Natasha said, knowing that was where Sif was going. She watched as the other woman hesitated, a movement so small that anyone not looking would have missed it, but she did not like the idea of someone seeing her having dinner with Loki.
“It's a Friday night so it's going to be busy wherever you go. I would order in,” Sif suggested.
“I didn't even think of that, thank you,” Natasha replied. She smiled brightly and walked out of the office. At five she waved at her boss and walked out of the office. She put away her work cell phone and pulled out her personal one. There was a single encrypted message from Bruce that eventually revealed a picture of Clint punching a sleeping Tony in the face. If it was not completely incriminating she would have kept it forever. Instead she committed the picture to memory and deleted it from the phone.
She had a small apartment across town where Natasha took off Natalie and began to slip into another skin. Amber was a high class socialite from Russia that liked parties and expensive vodka. She was putting an absurd amount of bobby pins in her hair when the phone rang. One glance at the number and she knew exactly who was calling.
"Clint, I'm working," she said casually.
"I know, I just wanted to know what you thought of the picture," Clint replied with false cheer.
"How did it end?" Natasha asked, balancing the phone on her shoulder as she pinned more of her hair back.
"I just gave him a fat lip. I didn't want Pepper angry at me. The only person scarier than Pepper angry is you angry." Clint was smiling but Natasha could picture it in her head and it was forced. "When the time came I got the last cup of coffee."
"I'm so proud," Natasha said as she finished her hair. "Tell Tony I will have specifics for him tonight."
"Keep radio contact, Tash." Clint hung up without another word and Natasha pulled on the blond wig. A few more touches of makeup and she was Amber. Natasha walked downstairs and called a cab. When she pulled up to the cafe where Sif would be meeting Loki, she was not surprised that it was a place where someone could vanish from other patrons. Low lights and dark corners with small tables. She spotted Sif right away and managed to sweet talk a table nearby where she would be able to see both of their faces. She ordered wine and sipped it as she took in each detail of Sif. How relaxed her shoulders were, hands folded on the table, the way she seemed to know that Loki was not going to stand her up. At six on the dot, Sif's dark eyes lit up a little and she smiled brightly. Natasha looked at the door and watched Loki walk in.
Loki was a tall man, over six foot, with longish black hair and striking green eyes. He had the aura of a man that had all of the aces accounted for, and despite his warm smile, the hairs on the back of Natasha's neck stood on end. They greeted each other with the familiarity of two people that were intimate and began to talk softly. Natasha wrote down everything she could on her phone, each facial twitch and eye movement, nothing was considered pointless. The more she watched them, the more she learned about both of them, but Natasha could not shake the lead in the pit of her stomach. When Sif took a break to use the restroom Natasha emailed Tony her level suggestions. Loki had not spared her a glance but she could almost feel his eyes watching her every move. Sif returned and Natasha went back to observing.
---
A little over a month later Steve watched as Bruce slapped Tony across the face to test the stability for their extraction. Tony did not even twitch and Bruce smirked as he looked at Steve. Steve grinned and walked over to Tony, tipping his chair as he jerked awake. Tony grunted as he hit the ground, his eyes a little glazed over but otherwise focused. He glared at Steve and mumbled something about trap doors under his breath. The level was done and Clint was so buried in his research that he was barely talking in complete sentences. Natasha was due back in a few hours where she would hopefully report on a perfect forge.
"Thor Odinson has just entered the building," JARVIS announced.
"Does he know Natasha is due back?" Bruce asked.
"I would assume so," Steve replied, offering Tony a hand. Tony took it and the three of them walked into the main room just as Thor walked out of the elevator.
"Gentlemen, how is our progress?" Thor asked in a booming voice.
"We're getting closer," Steve said as Clint walked in the room.
"I've looked everywhere but I can't find out when this guy found out about dreaming," Clint announced, looking at Thor. "Are you sure you don’t know how much he knows?"
"My brother knows nothing about dreamshare as I have told you," Thor said slowly.
"I thought all of your research said he doesn't know," Steve said, remembering that ignorance was a point in their favor.
"He knows," Clint said lowly.
"Do you have any evidence to prove that?" Bruce asked. Clint glared but said nothing.
"He knows more than he is letting on," a voice from behind them said, and they all turned to see Natasha walking into the tower. "And no, I don't have anything to prove this aside from instinct."
"I can't cancel a job based on instincts," Steve said after a long silence. Clint looked annoyed but Natasha did not look surprised. "Is the forge ready?"
"Yes, we are good to go," Natasha replied, walking over to Clint and putting a hand on the small of his back. He seemed to relax marginally but he still glared at Steve which Steve chose to ignore.
"Let's start to plan the snatch and grab then. Does he have any surgeries or anything planned?" Steve asked, watching Clint.
"No, we're going to have to break in," Clint said.
"He will stay at my place then. That will be easier, yes?" Thor suggested.
“Yes,” Steve said carefully. “That will work great. Let’s work on a date and figure out the last of the details.” The rest of the team nodded as they all went their separate ways. Steve really wanted to jump into the dream and confront his shade of Bucky before the job. He wanted to make sure that everything was going to be okay since they did not have another mechanic, since Bucky knew everyone that was going into the dream, but Bruce would find that odd. So he straightened his shoulders and began to look into what day would be best to break into Loki’s mind.
---
A week later and they were ready to perform the extraction. Loki was going to spend the night at Thor’s where it would be relatively easy to drug him. From there they would drop into the dream and get the information that they needed to perform the inception. On a technical level the extraction seemed very textbook but there was something about the entire situation that had Clint and Natasha on edge. While Natasha said that her forge was perfect, Steve had never seen her uneasy about a job before. Clint was much more vocal about the fact that he sincerely believed that Loki knew about dreaming and they were about to get torn apart. “Oh wait, I’m the dreamer, they’re going to tear me apart,” he said the night before and he vanished into his room. Steve could not call off a job because Clint was convinced of something that was not there .
Thor opened the door and they all slowly filed into his apartment. It was quiet and there was a water glass on the table that had been drugged with a sedative that would be out of Loki’s system by the time the dream ended. There would be no evidence that anything ever happened, none that any crime unit could trace, and Steve watched Loki sleep for a moment as Bruce set up the machine. There was something about the man that felt different in a way he could not describe, and the little smirk on his lips as he slept was a little unnerving.
“Okay, let’s rehash,” Steve said. “Bruce and Tony will stay topside with Thor to keep an eye on our vitals and Loki. Clint will be on the roof of the next building with a rifle ready to shoot anyone that looks at us funny. Nat will be forging Sif who will meet Loki for dinner and I’ll go to the safe in the bank across the street when he drops all of his secrets in the vault. Clint or I will kick ourselves out when we have everything we need. Everyone set?” There was a series of nods throughout the group as Tony and Bruce helped set up everyone’s IV’s.
“One of these days I’ll get you to test the stability of the dream, Barton,” Tony said as he finished Clint’s IV line.
“We’ll see,” Clint said, smirking.
“Ready?” Bruce asked and everyone nodded. “Sweet dreams.” He pushed the button and the Somnacin rushed like ice through his veins as the world faded into white.
---
Steve blinked and he was standing in the middle of the city streets. Projections moved effortlessly around him and he stood still for a moment to see if they would react to his presence. A minute passed, then two, and no one tried to stab him. He felt out the dream in general, how calm it was and the feeling in the air, and everything felt fine. Steve relaxed a little and walked toward the apartment building next door to the bank where he was meeting everyone. It had plenty of windows and the perfect vantage points for Clint to watch them and enough places to run if they caught on to where he was. Steve knocked on the door twice and it opened to reveal Clint looking unimpressed.
“The dream feels calm,” he said as he walked in.
“I know,” Clint replied and he walked into the apartment without a word. Natasha was already there and changing into Sif in the full length mirror. Her long red hair turned black and she cracked her neck as her body changed into that of another person. Clint was putting together his rifle and looked out at the cafe through the scope. “Target in sight. Entered the cafe on a cellphone.”
“Then I’ll be on my way,” Natasha said as Sif walking out the door. Clint did not say anything as he watched the street. Steve wanted to find some way to assure him that everything was going to be fine, that this job was going to be fine, but nothing came. Steve closed the door, locked it and followed several steps behind Natasha. He watched as Natasha sat down at the table with Loki and the two of them began to talk. Natasha was an extractor in her own right, most forgers were, but she needed to stay with Loki while Steve got the actual information. There was no sign of Bucky and Steve did not know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“Loki, what is bothering you these days?” Natasha asked as Sif after some time in between conversation. “You have been distant from me.”
“Nothing is bothering me,” Loki denied, and if Steve could not read people as well as he could he would have bought that lie.
“Things are quiet up here,” Clint said over the blue tooth. “Very little movement from all sides and no one is looking at you.” Clint was a lethal sniper in the real world, but in a dream he was like something out of a superhero comic.
“Natasha is baiting him; standby,” Steve replied.
“You can trust me, Loki, you know that, don’t you?” Natasha asked.
“Of course,” Loki said leaning forward. “But this is different.”
“I will always keep your secrets safe, locked away, where no one will ever find them. Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?” Natasha asked, and that was the word he was looking for. Loki’s eyes flicked to the bank across the street, just for a second, but he shook his head.
“There is nothing to tell. I have nothing hidden away,” Loki said. Natasha sighed and took a drink of her water. That was the signal that the information should be hidden and Steve was on his feet in seconds. As he crossed the street to the bank Steve could have sworn for a moment he saw Bucky watching him, smiling, but the second passed and there were just nameless projections.
“Cover Natasha. I’m going in,” Steve said over the blue tooth.
“Affirmative. Good luck,” Clint replied. Steve walked into the bank and smiled brightly at the teller.
“I need to open a safety deposit box,” Steve said. The teller raised an eyebrow but had someone escort him back. By the time he was left alone Steve had already found the box he was looking for. There was no one else around and the dream remained calm. Clint did not say anything over the blue tooth and no one came running when Steve popped the box open. There were a few small rooms off to the side where he could look through the box. There were plenty of secrets, lots of papers, but they were looking for something specific. Steve was confident he would know what it was when he found it.
The file had lots of small secrets, bank statements and mistakes made in his past, but these were not what he was looking for. Somewhere in that file was a secret so terrible it was making a brother walk away from his entire family. It was hidden at the back of the file, buried between other pages, as if it was something that Loki himself had tried to forget but could not. Steve pulled the paper out and looked it over. Something horrible clenched in his stomach and he wanted to punch a wall. This was much more personal than he ever thought it could be; this was terrible, this was pretty much the worst possible thing that could happen for the job.
“I’m shooting myself out. I’ll give you the kick topside,” Steve said, pulling out his gun.
“Wait, what? Steve, what did you find?” Clint asked but Steve ignored him, putting the gun to his head.
“We never should have taken this job,” Steve said as he pulled the trigger and the dream faded away.
---
It was nearly three in the morning by the time they all gathered at Stark Tower. Clint was the only one that seemed eager about learning what Steve found in that safe while everyone else seemed to think that it could wait until morning. Tony was making a pot of coffee and drinking it like it was the nectar of the gods when they all sat down to discuss this.
“Did we really have to do this now? Some of us didn’t go into the dream and get any sleep,” Tony said.
“What did you find?” Clint asked.
“Yes, I thought we were meeting in the morning. I do not like the idea of leaving my brother alone like that,” Thor said clearly annoyed.
“Your brother is not really your brother,” Steve said, crossing his arms tightly across his chest. “Loki was adopted. He's done research on his parents, the Laufeyson's, were a bunch of con people. They were the type of con people that took money from poor families and left them bankrupt. He's deeply, deeply ashamed of them. The only thing he hates more than them is the way he feels like an outsider to the rest of the Odinson family.” A heavy silence fell over the room as what this meant for their job began to sink in for his team members. Something like this was deeply personal and it was not something that one would normally try to change someone’s mind about.
“This would explain his distance toward me,” Thor said after a long silence.
“How are we supposed to change his mind about family when he’s adopted? Who knows how deep those issues run?” Clint said, his voice rising. “How are we supposed to implant something like family acceptance in someone’s head?” He ran his hands through his short hair and sent it flying in all directions. “I told you we shouldn’t have taken this job.” Clint turned and walked out of the room without another word.
“How did the extraction go?” Bruce asked.
“It went perfectly,” Natasha replied. “No one even had to fire a single shot.”
“If the extraction went well, will you continue with this job?” Thor asked. All eyes were on Steve as he tried to come up with an answer that was not going to ruin either the job or his relationship with his team.
“We need some time to discuss what our next move will be,” Steve said.
“This will change him. If we continue with this job I will not just keep my brother I will have changed him,” Thor said softly.
“You're going to have to decide if the risk is worth it.” Natasha crossed her arms across her chest and fixed her gaze on Thor. “You're going to have to decide if the risk of keeping your brother is worth changing who your brother might be fundamentally.” It was the hang up about the job that no one had brought up. Changing a decision was one thing but this was going to change Loki's thoughts on a basic level. Thor nodded and wished them all a goodnight as he left the tower.
“I hope you have a great plan for incepting someone with love and a sense of belonging to their family because that’s not something you can fake,” Tony said. He did not wait for Steve to respond as he downed the rest of his coffee and walked toward his bedroom. Bruce glanced at Steve, shrugged a little and walked toward his lab. Natasha was still as she watched him but eventually followed Clint out of the room. Steve sighed and picked up Tony’s empty mug to put it in the sink. All he could hope for now was that everyone would cool off and they could have this discussion in the morning.
“Kill the lights, JARVIS,” Steve said and the rooms faded into darkness as he walked down the hallway toward his bedroom.
---
Steve was not surprised when he woke up to find Clint waiting for him in the living room. There were dark circles under his eyes that spoke of very little sleep and he looked extremely annoyed. There was no way for this conversation to end well. He was also not nearly awake enough for this screaming match.
"Shall we step outside?" Steve asked and he walked toward the balcony, knowing that Clint was going to follow him. As soon as the door closed he turned and faced his point man. "You want to pull out."
"No, we should pull out. This is too personal for us. There could be years of issues that we have no way of knowing about. We would be going in blind," Clint said.
"We said we would pull out if the extraction went south. In your professional opinion, how did the extraction go?" Steve asked.
"Don't patronize me, Rogers," Clint snapped. "The extraction was textbook."
"Exactly, why would we walk away when the extraction went so well?" Steve asked.
"Don't be thick, Steve, when was the last time you had an extraction go off without a hitch?" Clint scoffed. "No team of mine is--"
"But it's not your team; it's mine. I'm the one paying and that means it's my call. We're going in and if you don't like it, you can walk away." It had been years since Steve had had to pull rank on Clint but there was something in his tone that just hit Steve's last nerve. Clint's entire expression shut down in a way Steve had not seen since Bucky died. This was Clint the soldier, Clint the sniper, and a total stranger.
"Yes, sir," Clint said and Steve felt his stomach clench as Clint saluted him. Without another word Clint turned and walked back into the tower. The that look on Clint's face was betrayed and furious and Steve hated being the reason it was there even more but he was not going to walk away from this job because Clint was convinced something was wrong.
Steve stayed outside for a few more minutes before he walked back inside. He was not at all surprised to see Natasha sitting on the couch reading. He was 100% sure that she had heard every word of his conversation with Clint. Whatever she had to say Steve was 100% sure he was not iin the right frame of mind to deal with it rationally.
"If you're going to yell at me could you at least wait until I've had my coffee?" he said.
"Why would I yell at you?" Natasha asked, looking up from her book with a raised eyebrow.
"You don't have any comments about my conversation with Clint?" Steve asked, surprised.
"Of course I do, but not anything you want to hear right now," she said, shrugging. "Clint is a sniper, he sees better from a distance. Just give him some time to see things with some space and he'll be okay. You were right." Steve sometimes forgot how well Natasha could read people, to the point that it was a little creepy, and he was thankful for that. He walked over and sat down next to her. "You miss Bucky."
"Every single day," Steve said without hesitation. "You might have to shoot him."
“I’m sure he’ll deserve it for one reason or another,” Natasha said, shrugging again. They sat together in a comfortable silence for a few minutes and Steve realized how much he had missed just sitting around with his friends, when his teammates were his friends, and how much that had changed over the years.
“Do you think we should go through with this job?” he asked ,not sure if he was really ready to hear what she had to say. Natasha closed her book and stretched.
“Any other extractor would have made the same decision,” she said before she turned and left the room. Steve was tempted to remind her that he was not just any normal extractor, but by the time he found the words she was already gone. He laid down on the couch and closed his eyes.
---
Three weeks later they had a plan. Clint spent the entire first week calling Steve ‘sir’ instead of his name, but by week two he was ‘Steve’ again. Thor looked pleased when he told him that they were going to try and perform the inception but that it would not be easy. They all looked a little relieved when Steve reminded Thor that it was an imperfect art, that there were no guarantees, because Clint had been right when he had said that this was a deeply personal issue that was going to be hard to tackle. At least each team member at some point over the next three weeks threatened to quit. When Natasha tried to walk away, Steve all but begged her to stay, but that was a secret that was going to stay between them (and JARVIS) for the foreseeable future.
The first level would be Bruce’s dream; an office building where Natasha would pose as a secretary. She would mention Thor and that he kept calling the office to check in on Loki to make sure that he was okay. She would drug his coffee and they would drop down a level. Bruce would lock the doors and wait them out.
The second level would be Clint’s; an apartment building shared by Thor and Loki that they still owned. Steve would pose as a contractor while Natasha would pose as Thor. Steve would talk about memories while Natasha egged him on. She would drug his beer and Clint would keep the projections busy.
The third level would be Tony’s; it would be a city so complex that the only person who stood a chance of memorizing it was the person who designed it. Tony was not pleased that he would be the dreamer since that meant that the projections could come after him but they needed Natasha safe. She would be posing as Sif and they would go over a copy of the will left by Loki and Thor’s father. It was not accurate, even Clint was not that good, and Thor did not know the details either, but it was the best shot they had to convince Loki that he was loved by his family.
Steve was looking over some papers when Bruce walked in, grinning from ear to ear. His hair was a mess and it looked like he was running on pure caffeine at this point, but there was something promising about that smile.
“I think I got it,” Bruce announced. “I mean we have no way of testing it outside of dropping down into the dream and seeing if we fall into limbo, but I'm 97.4% sure that if we die on any level of that dream that we won’t drop.”
“I like those odds,” Steve replied. The elevator opened and Thor strolled in. He looked a bit too confident for someone that was about to try and brainwash his brother, but Steve tried not to think about that too much. Thor’s heart was in the right place even if he was going about this the wrong way. When he had mentioned that to Tony a few weeks earlier, Tony had just reminded him that they were not here to judge anyone. He then ranted about how they were not entirely the protagonists in this story because of what they did until Pepper came in and dragged Tony away, reminding him that he was not a comic book style hero nor the star of an action movie.
“Gentlemen, how are things proceeding?” Thor asked.
“I think we’ve passed our last major hurdle so we can start moving forward with the actual date,” Steve replied.
“Good. I wanted to stop by and tell you that I would like to come into the dream with you,” Thor said calmly. Steve blinked a few times and glanced at Bruce whose eyes were a little wider than usual.
“This is going to be a delicate job, Mr. Odinson, we don’t really have room for tourists,” Steve said carefully.
“And I’d like to remind you, Mr. Rogers, that this is my brother and I will do anything to keep from losing him. I am going into the dreams with you,” Thor said. There was no room for any argument in his tone and Clint was not going to be happy at all. They were just going to have to take Thor with them three levels down to keep an eye on him.
“I’ll make it work,” Steve said.
Over the next three days they decided on a date and a time. Everyone was very antsy at the idea of a tourist coming in on a job like this but they all conceded when he explained that he was not exactly given a choice in the matter. Clint mouthed off but began to make adjustments to his own level as he went along. Steve just hoped that Thor knew how to use a gun well enough. Clint had taken him down a few times but always came back grumbling about how it would probably be more effective to let the man beat projections to death with a blunt object.
Everyone had different ways of dealing with the night before a job. Bruce was talking quietly to Betty on the phone and smiling to himself. He would not touch his equations or his chemicals tonight and would most likely fall asleep listening to Betty’s voice. Tony was out to dinner with Pepper and the two of them would stay up late working on building designs in the real world and drinking outrageously expensive champagne. Clint and Natasha locked themselves in their room with a pile of junk food and terrible movies that they would watch until late in the night. If they knew they were going to do a dangerous job, they said ‘goodbye’ instead of ‘goodnight’ when they started to get tired.
Steve considered himself boring because he usually just went to bed early. When he was younger and Bucky was still alive they would go out for drinks and Bucky would hit on every woman in a ten foot radius. He never took anyone home and he smiled easily by the end of the night. The first few weeks after he died, Steve would go under by himself, but taunting his shade seemed like a bad idea. So Steve laid down relatively early and closed his eyes, hoping to finally get some sleep before he risked his life for yet another job the following day.
---
Steve realized that he was in a natural dream right away. It had been years since he had had a natural dream and it was just his luck that he would get one the night before a major job. Despite being lucid he also knew this dream because he had seen it play out before. He saw it every time he closed his eyes and he wanted to wake himself up. He knew where he was and what was going on because this was not just a dream, not a nightmare, but a memory.
Steve had met Bucky when they were both kids growing up in Brooklyn. They had quickly become friends and remained that way all throughout grade school. When Steve decided that he wanted to join the army, he had prepared himself for days to tell Bucky only to find out that Bucky had enlisted the day before, unbeknownst to Steve’s plans. After boot camp, they got shipped off to different places in the world but remained in touch. It was after there was radio silence from Bucky for a month that Steve realized he cared about his friend on a much deeper level, that he was probably in love with him, and that had scared him more than the prospect of dying in combat ever could.
He joined Project Somnacin just before it disbanded so he had not had as much time with the PASIV as he would have liked, but in that little time he learned so much. Steve also learned that Bucky had been killed in combat overseas and that was the first time he saw Bucky in his subconscious. When he told the project coordinators, they said they were going to report it to Professor Miles, but the program fell apart not long after and they kicked Steve back out into the real world like he had never really mattered. When Bucky showed up three months later, a PASIV in one hand and sporting a shit eating grin, Steve decked him and then almost broke his ribs with a bone crushing hug.
Bucky was what they called a mechanic, tech support really, a person who knew the PASIV better than anyone else. He had told Steve about how he met this woman named Natasha who could change her appearance in dreams and a guy named Clint who ran point and took apart the best laid plans with startling efficiency; he had told him about how they needed an extractor for the team that he was putting together and there was no one better to lead it than Steve. Steve remembered agreeing without thinking twice.
Over the next three years they acquired Bruce as a chemist and Tony as their architect. Steve knew that Bucky and Natasha were together, but six months after the entire team was put together, Bucky showed up at Steve’s hotel room door, reeking of whiskey, saying he had left Natasha and kissed him. Steve did not stop to consider the consequences to the team or even anyone else’s feelings; he finally had the man he had loved for years. Natasha was okay, thankfully, and the team ran perfectly. They performed jobs that no one else would dare take. They had a lot of laughs, some good times, even more great times, and those three years were three of the best years of Steve’s life.
Steve wished this was one of those great times but he knew what day he was dreaming about right now. It was an extraction against a mob boss that had gone south. Clint had stayed behind with Natasha to try and hold the bodyguards off as Tony and Bruce took off down the stairs and Bucky and Steve out the window and across the fire escapes. Steve said the things that he had said that day despite his awareness of how this was going to end. He and Bucky came to a gap across the balconies ten stories down. Steve kicked the rusted railing aside so they would have space to jump.
“We need to jump!” Bucky said, clutching the PASIV in hand as the sound of voices began to close in. “You go first.” Steve nodded and jumped across the eight foot gap. He gripped the railing tightly and swung himself over.
“Toss me the PASIV,” Steve yelled and Bucky nodded, throwing the multi million dollar machine at Steve. Steve could feel Bucky's relief as he caught it. “All right, now you, come on!” Bucky nodded and went to make the jump. Just like that day it felt like time slowed down. Just as Bucky was about to jump, they must have been spotted and a bullet grazed his leg. He stumbled and Steve reached out barely catching Bucky so he did not fall to his death. The angle was all wrong but Steve could hold on, he was strong enough. “I got you, buddy, I got you!” Steve reached out so Bucky could take his other hand and their fingers were about to touch when a bullet tore through Steve’s arm.
He should have hung on, he wanted to, but the pain was so sudden that his instincts got the better of him and Bucky slipped from his hand. Steve watched (again and again and again he relived this nightmare) as his best friend and the man he loved plummeted to the ground below. Bucky was scared and he opened his mouth to say something but gravity was heartless and he hit the ground before he could say anything. Killed on impact, an accident, it was an accident, Steve, they had said. Steve could feel the blood running down in his arm, the dull pain of the bullet wound, as if it all had just happened again. Unlike reality, this was a dream, and now he tilted his head back and screamed in anguish.
---
Steve jerked awake and saw that the sun had risen. He was covered in a thick layer of sweat and his heart felt like it was trying to beat out of his chest. There were tears in his eyes and he hoped he had not really been screaming. No one needed to know that he still had nightmares about the person he had let down. There was a job to do and he had to focus on the task at hand. Steve took a few deep breaths and got out of bed.
They were meeting at Thor’s apartment at 2300. Loki was going to stay the night again and they were going to do the job in the safety of a locked apartment with Hogun standing over his boss. Tony had somehow convinced Pepper to watch over the machine since she knew the basics if nothing else. Everyone was quiet as Thor let them in, and there were only a few spoken words as they set up. Tony said something to Pepper quietly, Thor clapped Hogun on the shoulder, Bruce sent a quick text; Natasha stared at the sleeping Loki for only a moment before she knelt down and helped Clint set up the PASIV. They put in their lines and Steve ignored the pinch of the needle.
“Is everything ready?” Pepper asked.
“Machine is a go, Pep,” Bruce said, throwing up a thumbs up.
“Is everyone ready?” Steve asked and his entire team nodded. “Send us under, Pepper.”
“Good luck,” Pepper said as she pushed the button and the world faded away in a bright white light.
---
Steve blinked away the bright light as the dream focused. He was in the lobby of an office building with projections moving around him. He could feel a gun attached to his hip and he waited to see if anything would happen. The projections continued to move past him like he belonged. Steve breathed a sigh of relief but kept his guard up. Fortunately the elevator was not occupied by anyone but himself. It gave him time to get the feel of the dream. It felt stable enough but that did not mean that things could not fall apart. Steve had seen stable dreams blow up in his face enough to know that it could go very wrong very quickly. Clint was rarely wrong and his adamance that there was more than met the eye with Loki did not help ease the tension out of Steve's shoulders.
The elevator doors opened and revealed a row of bright windows. Tony had designed the dream to have lots of bright windows so Clint would have plenty of sightlines from across the way. The two buildings were attached via a sky walk so if things got to be too much for Clint he could make it across quickly. Steve did not know what Bruce had up his sleeve about the level and what he was going to use as protection. Bruce tended to set up booby traps and tripwires when things went bad. Steve kept an eye open for anything because Bruce was not likely to dream any of them up before the projections caught on. If the dream was already compromised, there was no point in being subtle.
Steve knocked on an office door twice and it opened to reveal Natasha. She smiled briefly and stepped aside to let him in. Bruce was already there messing with a PASIV with Tony hovering nearby. Thor was off in the corner looking extremely stoic.
“Have we heard from Clint?” Steve asked.
“I'm in position,” a disembodied voice said from a speaker. “So far, so quiet. No one has even glanced in your direction.”
“Do you have eyes on Loki?” Natasha straightened her clothes in front of a full sized mirror.
“Yes. So far he seems calm and does not look like he suspects anything yet,” Clint said. Steve chose to ignore the 'yet in that statement.
“Are you ready?” Steve asked and Natasha raised an eyebrow. She was going to be Sif's PA coming in to bring Loki a file from her firm. It was not an uncommon thing to happen between the two of them and when Loki was not looking, Natasha was going to spike his coffee. When he started to get woozy she was going to escort him to the conference room where Bruce would be waiting with the PASIV.
“That was a stupid question, Steve,” Tony said smiling.
“I've got your back, Tasha,” Clint said.
“I know,” she said. Natasha straightened her back and a warm smile spread across her lips. Even when she looked like herself there was still some physical changes in her when she became a different persona. Natasha, now Natalie, took a file off of the table and walked out of the room. Steve was going to call her cell as soon as Clint gave the word and they would begin.
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