#recurved

White-gloved hands held a thin StarkPad up close to the crimson-haired alien’s face – far closer than it needed to be. It wasn’t like he hadn’t learned in six thousand years or however long he’d been reading that this would not improve his understanding of the situation presented on the screen. Eros’s blue eyes were wide, horned eyebrows high and furrowed in confusion as he walked through the sterile hall, all serious and drab grays lit up by severe fluorescents. It just made the Avenger’s natural garishness stand out even more, as if highlighting that his presence at S.H.I.E.L.D. was always a bit odd.

It was possible that the Titan was not, in fact, confused. It could have been that he’d rather not have to deal with the information he was reading. It was about Chitauri technology recovered from the Battle of New York, and the diagrams that were made elucidated that said technology had an alarming similarity to devices of Titanian design. He had already been 99.999% sure that his brother was behind the thwarted invasion, but as usual he’d hoped for the .001%. He still did – maybe it was a coincidence.

In his confused – if not slightly distressed – distraction and in his (presumed) solitude buffered by the thick metal walls, the empath let his mental guard down a bit, like one might relax their jaw which they didn’t even know they were clenching. He’d have to get a firsthand look at the equipment, especially at what appeared to be a trashed navigation system. The engineers at S.H.I.E.L.D. were more than competent, but they were still dealing with technology they didn’t have a frame of reference for studying, so maybe there was something misrepresented in the analyses. Or maybe . . .

. . . There was someone else in the general vicinity, coming from somewhere on the left. He couldn’t quite make out anything other than that there was a person and that they were feeling – that was, had emotions – as people generally do. In other circumstances his sensitivity would allow him to already figure out who it was – someone he knew, or a stranger – based on the unique characteristics of their emotions; however the walls here were thick and dense enough to muffle that (though not as much as Eternal had thought – an unsurprising consequence of his detrimental hypersensitivity).

The person wasn’t making much noise but they were getting closer. The emotional information that they emitted became clearer and more intense, until the point that Eros could –

– Well how about that? It was Clint Barton. Hawkeye. Someone he hadn’t seen in – well since the last time he’d been on Earth before this. Starfox lowered the tablet from his face to reveal a giant shit-eating grin just waiting for Barton to turn the corner.