"It's smart." Something Fury has in god damn spades. The spy. At least twenty steps ahead of everyone.

(And Clint and Loki had been one or two more steps ahead of that. Maybe set that thought into a little box of its own, shove it under the bed.)

"Too powerful to risk letting it fall in anyone else's hands. If he's not sure he can trust it, then it never has to get used again. If he does have faith in it, it's only gonna come back out when one of us does something stupid and shuffles off our meager mortal coils. Whatever it is, he's waiting to see what happens to you. Means if he has to, it can get thrown back together in a hurry. And probably dismantled just as fast. If it's mechanical, anyway. If it's chemical, there'll be one sample stored somewhere, because the alternative is synthesize some up in a hurry and at that point it implies it's simple enough to synthesize in a hurry, which means someone else would've stumbled on it by now."

But they have Stark, and they have Banner, and the power of those two together will figure something out. Clint pulls his feet from the desk at last.

"I haven't really talked to him about it anyway. Know it won't change anything."