Clint returned to the Triskelion as quickly as he could in D.C. traffic. Fury needed to know that Pierce was trying to keep his own tabs on the Avengers, and that Agent Starr now knew about Hydra.

After Clint and Nat's full debrief with Fury (which had been far more comprehensive than the report they crafted for Pierce), the Director had given them the go-ahead to inform the Avengers of the Hydra problem. He hadn't been thrilled about it, but they all agreed that it would be better for Stark, Rogers, and Banner to hear it from two SHIELD agents in an official capacity before Thor could get the chance to fumble his timelines and let something slip.

Fury wasn't going to be happy to hear that the meeting he'd signed off on might've just created bigger problems for them. Agent Starr had looked furious enough to do anything. The only comfort Clint could find in it was that her anger seemed firmly directed towards Hydra, so it was unlikely that she'd be taking what she'd learned back to Pierce.

When he reached the Triskelion, Koenig intercepted him in the lobby and informed him that the building had just gone on lockdown. No one was allowed to leave.

"That include me now?" Clint asked. It wasn't hard to play it cool, but this was bad. Was this because of Agent Starr? What could she have done?

"Nope. Post-lockdown arrivals get one of these." Koenig handed Clint a lanyard that read:

Agent Barton

Clearance Level: 7

Movement Restrictions: None

Clint put the lanyard around his neck, resisting the urge to ask how Koenig could possibly already have that on hand. Koenig had always had the right lanyards on hand as long as Clint had known him, and it had never been clear where or how he got them.

"What triggered lockdown protocol?"

"All I know is it's not any kind of health hazard, and no one's allowed to move between floors. Details are restricted to clearance level eight right now, but the implication was that it'll move to level seven soon."

"Level eight?" said Clint. "Shit." His mind raced. He'd been through a couple of contamination lockdowns before Fitzsimmons had taken over the lab (veteran agents had bets going on how long it would take until they set one off), but the only information restricted in those cases had been scientific mumbo-jumbo about the chemicals involved. If the restrictions were this tight to begin with and it had nothing to do with an experiment gone wrong or a containment problem, the only possibility that seemed to fit was infiltration. Either information had been stolen or there had been a hit inside the building, and they were trying to catch the culprit before they could get away.

No way this was a coincidence. "Where's the Director?"

X

"So SHIELD HQ just went on lockdown," said Stark nonchalantly before taking a bite of his food.

Natasha wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of being impressed that he'd already started accessing information from SHIELD. She'd been the one to suggest it, after all.

"How do you know that?" said Rogers, frowning.

Stark waved the fancy phone he'd probably designed himself. "I've got JARVIS poking around the network. Hasn't gotten in yet, but that protocol came through loud and clear."

From Rogers's expression, this explanation raised more questions than it answered. He didn't ask them. Poor guy.

"If SHIELD is on lockdown, does that mean Barton didn't make it in time?" said Banner. "To stop that agent from doing...whatever she had in mind?"

"Maybe," said Natasha. "But Clint's worked with her, and if he believes she isn't Hydra, then I trust his judgment."

"If Hydra's flown under the radar for sixty-six years, then how can anyone be sure?" said Rogers. "How did you even find out about them, and why only now?"

"They have us to thank for that," said Loki. Natasha caught him shooting a sharp glance at Thor, who took a moody bite of shawarma and said nothing. She didn't think anyone else had seen it. She, Clint, and the Odinsons had discussed how they would handle these kinds of questions. Thor had been a bit unhappy with the idea that they should avoid bringing his status as a time traveler into it if at all possible, but he had agreed. It looked like Loki was going to hold him to that. "We came to Earth weeks ago hoping to establish an alliance between our worlds. We never go into such things blind. Our Gatekeeper observed SHIELD to ensure they were trustworthy, and he saw signs of a conspiracy at work that could become a danger to all the free peoples of this realm. We sought to build good faith by bringing this information to Director Fury."

"And we will build it further by lending our weapons to the fight against Hydra," said Thor.

"How does someone from a different planet decide who the good guys are in an organization of human spies?" said Rogers. Natasha had only been in the man's company for the duration of this meeting, but he had already impressed her multiple times with his sharp observations. Clearly he hadn't been picked as the guinea pig for Project Rebirth for his pretty face.

"It wasn't a difficult decision to make," said Loki.

"Even though this puts you on the side that opposes the guys who named their most advanced bomber The Valkyrie and called their radar system FREYA?" said Rogers, a hint of challenge in his expression.

Loki exchanged a dark look with his brother.

"I would have liked nothing better than to do battle with every last one of them who invoked names from our family and history," Thor growled. "Odin forbade it, even when they slaughtered and subjugated the descendants of his own mortal allies and took the treasure he had entrusted to them to use for evil purposes. He would not involve Asgard in a human war while other humans still stood to win it."

"But you're involved now," said Rogers. He looked like he couldn't decide whether to be angry or reassured by this information. Natasha understood. Asgard could've ended World War II within hours, but at what cost?

"Like I said," said Stark over the rim of the new glass the waitress had brought, "intergalactic warlords on the horizon."

Thor looked very solemnly at Rogers. "Yes. This is why we need to work together, but do not take us for allies of necessity only. I hope we will never again require such dire threats before our realms can come together in friendship."

Natasha still had to marvel at how sincerely Thor wanted this. It was difficult to imagine this group of people working together as a cohesive unit. In her experience, that was the kind of thing that took serious training, yet they must have been able to pull it off if he missed it this badly. As prone to skepticism as she was, she had to root for Thor getting his wish.

"I'm not sure how I'm supposed to contribute to any of this," said Banner with a nervous laugh. "I mean, maybe the Other Guy would be up for punching some intergalactic warlords, but rooting out Hydra agents? That's not exactly part of either of my skill sets."

"It might not just be individual agents," said Natasha. "At some point, they're going to realize we're onto them, and the time for subtle tactics will be over."

"Why not just expose them?" said Stark. Rogers nodded.

"For that, we'd need something to expose," said Natasha. "If we try to make that play too soon, anyone we don't have specific evidence against will just fade into the background at SHIELD and it'll be even harder to find them. They didn't get this far by being reckless, and we won't beat them that way either. Our only advantage right now is that they don't know we know they exist. We can't waste that."

"So between JARVIS and Asgard's Gatekeeper guy, we should have that nut cracked in no time," said Stark.

"Heimdall has nine realms to watch over," said Thor. "He may be able to provide a few names, but he cannot turn his gaze from the borders of Yggdrasil for long. Loki and I are at greater liberty to carry out our duties as we see fit, but even we are unlikely to be able to remain here for longer than days at a time."

"I hate to ask this," said Rogers, "but can we afford to prioritize Hydra right now? How far off is that horizon?" An uncomfortable frisson went around the table—at least among the humans. The idea of letting Hydra continue with whatever plans they had was not a pleasant one, and not just because they'd be able to benefit from any PR gains of successfully defeating extraterrestrial threats. But someone had to ask it.

"Thanos will know soon if he does not already that the House of Odin is done letting him slaughter his way through planets unchallenged," said Thor, "but he is a coward and is unlikely to attack when the odds do not favor him. We may have fewer years than we did before our mission to Sakaar, but whatever we have lost in time, we have gained in our improved position. And we intend to improve it further by seeking more allies and increasing Yggdrasil's defenses."

"Meanwhile," said Loki, "the Dokkalfar cannot make their move before the Convergence, which is another three years off. We nearly have the means of discovering their hiding place, so they may never have the opportunity to attack Earth at all."

Rogers nodded slowly. "Then we take on Hydra first."

X

Despite Clint's lack of movement restrictions, the elevator wouldn't take him to the top floor. He settled for the next one down, and there he found Coulson and Sitwell standing outside a briefing room like a pair of guards. Sitwell was one of the few Thor had already specifically named as Hydra. If he was a typical example, then Clint understood how they had stayed hidden for so long. Lined up along the wall past the two agents were a couple dozen personnel he mostly only knew by sight.

Coulson spotted him and frowned. "Already back from your meeting with Thor and Loki?"

"Nat's still with them, but something came up that the Director needs to hear. It can't wait. Is he in there?"

"He's upstairs," said Sitwell. An agent exited the briefing room and the next in line went inside. "Hill's inside taking statements from everyone who was working up there."

"Statements about what?" said Clint.

"Secretary Pierce was found dead in his office ten minutes ago," said Sitwell. "Something ripped up his chest cavity. I've never seen anything like it."

Clint felt like he'd been punched in the face. He stood there gaping at them for a moment. It had to be Agent Starr. This was insane. They'd only just learned about Hydra, and now its leader was dead before they'd made a single move.

"Fury's overseeing the forensics team personally," said Coulson. "I hope your news is good."

"Depends on Fury, I guess," said Clint.

Coulson rapped the door with his knuckles. Deputy Director Hill emerged a few seconds later. To her inquisitive look, Coulson nodded at Clint. "Barton needs to see the Director."

"Come with me," she said, and briskly led the way to the stairwell access at the end of the hall. Clint followed her up to the top floor, where she pressed her thumb to a pad. The lock clicked and the door opened. "Does this have anything to do with Pierce?" she asked.

He could tell from her tone that Fury had filled her in on the Hydra situation. "Yeah," he said. "But keep doing what you're doing." After a long look, she nodded and headed back down.

Fury stood with his arms folded outside the door to Pierce's office. He turned to face Clint as he approached. He looked like he'd had a very long day. Clint could understand why. Within days, Pierce had gone from being Fury's decades-long colleague to the head of a traitorous organization to dead.

"Director," said Clint. A widening sliver of the office came into view, and he caught a glimpse of blood-spattered carpet and various forensics guys snapping photos and taking samples.

"Barton," said Fury, "if you aren't here to tell me something about aliens or what happened to Pierce, you have five seconds to get off this floor."

"I'm sorry sir," said Clint, while tapping two fingers against his leg. Fury's eye flicked down to them and then snapped back to his face. "Can we talk somewhere secure?"

"This better be good," Fury grumbled, "or I'm gonna have to rethink Hill's promotion and your clearance level."

They walked the short distance up the hall to Fury's office and went inside. Fury touched a button on his desk, and a low electric hum crackled to life. "The Faraday cage is active. We can talk. So what can you tell me about the sudden demise of Alexander Pierce?"

"There was an eavesdropper at our meeting," said Clint. "Ava Starr. Loki caught her a few minutes in, but not before we started talking about Hydra and the man in charge of it. Who happens to be the same man who gave her the assignment."

Fury whistled. "I guess there's not much point to this lockdown then. At least she was smart enough to change up the M.O. she's used in the field."

"How do we respond to this?" said Clint. "Hydra's going to be on high alert with Pierce dead. We don't have anything ready."

Fury looked thoughtful. "No, we can use this. No regime change is ever perfectly seamless. They'll be forced to communicate with each other more until Pierce's successor settles in. We'll be able to spot them easier."

"What about Ava?" said Clint.

"Make contact with her if you can," said Fury. "Tell her to lay low. She'll have a target on her back if Hydra traces this to her."

"But won't the labs show that he was attacked by something that could phase through solid matter?"

"Let me worry about that. There's no other evidence so far. Pierce was as paranoid about surveillance as I am, so there's no footage or audio from his office, and she wouldn't have shown up on any of the other cameras in the building on her way here."

"You think you can spin this so Hydra suspects an inside job?"

"If we can keep Agent Starr off their radar, what other explanation will they have? Everyone else who knows about them has alibis, so even if they did suspect someone had discovered them, there's no one obvious to blame." He fixed Clint with his gaze. "How confident are you that the Avengers will play along?"

"Stark is contrary and unpredictable and Thor is one of the worst liars I've ever met, but they're all against Hydra. I'd give it 92%."

Koenig and his lanyards return! I love Koenig and his lanyards. I feel a bit shakier about the SHIELD stuff on the whole, though. This is why I prefer when the stories are on other planets. I don't want to have to rewatch all of AoS to be able to write this effectively, but I increasingly feel like maybe I'll have to. At least there are two Sif episodes.

Asgard's non-involvement in WWII is something I addressed a lot in "Interventionism," and I think it's a fairly complicated issue. I think on the whole, it's for the best that Odin stays out of Earth business, but he's the one who put the Tesseract in Norway, so he should take more responsibility if it falls into the wrong hands. I think this policy is part of his over-correction from being a conqueror; now he won't intervene unless he absolutely has to.

It might seem weird, but my favorite character moment in the chapter is Steve asking if they should hold off on doing anything about Hydra until after they've dealt with the "intergalactic warlords." No one has a more personal beef with Hydra than Steve, but he can still temporarily set that aside for the sake of the planet if he has to. The runner up is Steve and Tony agreeing about exposing Hydra in order to defeat them. I think that fits with where they both are with their character arcs at this point. Oh, and I've been waiting to incorporate Thor and Loki's extreme displeasure with Nazi types appropriating Norse mythology for basically the entire fic, so it was awesome to finally get a chance to do that.