Revelations

Almost an hour had passed since Loki’s arrival aboard the Helicarrier. Adelina stood across from one of the larger monitors, in a makeshift conference room that sat above the command center, joined by Banner and those who had participated in the capture of their new hostage. Or were they hostages to him, Adelina wondered, as Fury appeared on the screen, facing the cell where Loki remained standing, a bored expression upon his face as he gauged his surroundings.

“In case it’s unclear,” Fury began, stridently, “you try to escape… You so much as scratch that glass…” He paused to press a button and Adelina watched as a hatch was released beneath Loki’s cell, the strangled sound of the wind echoing through the chamber. “Thirty thousand feet, straight down in a steel trap. You get how that works?” He closed the hatch before raising his index finger towards Loki. “Ant.” He gestured towards the button. “Boot.” Adelina snorted, crossing her arms as she leaned back against the railing that encompassed the perimeter of the loft.

“It’s an impressive cage,” Loki commended with an amused tone, before adding, “Not built, I think, for me.” He smirked at Fury, standing still at the edge of the glass barrier.

“Built for something a lot stronger than you,” Fury declared.

“Oh, I’ve heard.” Loki turned away from Fury as he spoke, looking directly into the camera. Adelina narrowed her eyes at his image before sparing a glance towards Banner who was clearly uncomfortable with the sudden interest in him as his jaw twitched. “The mindless beast, makes play he’s still a man. How desperate are you, that you call upon such lost creatures to defend you?”

“How desperate am I?” Fury retorted, voice rising with each word spoken. “You threaten my world with war. You steal a force you can’t hope to control. You talk about peace and you kill ‘cause it’s fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did.”

“It burns you to come so close,” Loki replied, not an ounce of concern regarding Fury’s threat as he leisurely paced the glass wall. “To have the Tesseract - to have power, unlimited power. And for what? A warm light for all mankind to share…? And then to be reminded what real power is.” He paused, stopping mid-stride as he turned his gaze back to the camera. “Or, I suppose you already know, and that is why you choose to keep the woman whose rage knows no end under your command, forced to bend to your will…” Adelina inhaled, her lips forming a thin line as she could practically feel his eyes burning into her, as if he desired to etch the words into her skin with careful precision. As he turned away from the screen, she released the breath she hadn’t meant to hold, suddenly well aware of the agents around her as their curious gazes washed over her.

“Let me know if Real Power wants a magazine or something,” Fury quipped, openly ignoring the god’s final remarks as he exited the room. Loki’s image flitted across the screen once more, the smirk on his face clear evidence of his willingness - his desire- to be there, before Romanoff pressed a button on the monitor and the image faded into nothingness.

The room was silent for a minute or so before Banner dared to break it.

“He really grows on you, doesn’t he?” The scientist joked, crossing his arms as he looked towards the others.

“Loki’s gonna drag this out,” Rogers said before turning to face the God of Thunder, whom Adelina had barely had time to introduce herself to upon his hasty arrival. She didn’t quite yet know what to make of him. “So, Thor, what’s his play?”

“He has an army called the Chitauri,” Thor began, looking to the ground as he spoke, tonelessly, as if he hadn’t yet come to terms with his brother’s actions. “They’re not of Asgard… or any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the earth…in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract.” He finally lifted his head, dropping the hand that had rested beneath his chin and meeting Adelina’s gaze for half of second before looking elsewhere. She had already caught him staring at her, inquisitively, several times over the past hour, but decided to address it at a later time.

“An army? From outer space?” The Captain questioned, his brows furrowed as he looked to Thor to clarify. Adelina snorted.

“Is it that shocking, water boy?” She chided, earning a glare from the man. The room was too quiet, too foreboding, for her liking.

“Excuse me?”

“So he’s building another portal,” Banner interjected before Adelina could respond with another childish remark regarding the Captain’s own naivety. “That’s what he needs Erik Selvig for.”

“Selvig?” Thor inquired, turning towards Banner with furrowed brows.

“He’s an astrophysicist,” Adelina answered.

“He’s a friend,” Thor said softly, meeting her eyes as lines of worried frustration raked across his forehead.

“Loki has him under some kind of spell, along with one of ours,” Romanoff explained, finally breaking her silence with a slight rasp to her voice that revealed only a fraction of her concern for Barton’s well-being.

“I wanna know why Loki let us take him. He’s not leading an army from here,” Rogers wondered aloud. Adelina nodded in silent agreement, keeping her own thoughts on the matter to herself for the time being.

“I don’t think we should be focusing on Loki,” Banner chimed in. “That guy’s brain is a bag full of cats - you could smell crazy on him.” Adelina snorted at that.

“Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he’s my brother,” Thor defended, narrowing his eyes at the scientist.

“He killed eighty people in two days,” Romanoff contended.

“He’s adopted.” Thor looked away from the Widow, a sudden childish demeanor taking over, and Adelina bit her lip to keep from laughing.

“I think it’s about the mechanics. Iridium - what did they need iridium for?” Banner ignored the humor of the previous remark, choosing to refocus the group on the more important matters.

“It’s a stabilizing agent.” A new, but familiar, voice entered the conversation. Adelina looked towards the doors as Stark sauntered through with Coulson by his side. “Means the portal won’t collapse on itself, like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D.” He walked past Thor as he continued, gently patting the Asgardian’s bicep. “No hard feelings, Point Break. You’ve got a mean swing.” Although confused by the reference, Adelina’s eyes gleamed with amusement as the warrior looked towards Stark in disbelief. “Also,” he rattled on as he walked towards the edge of the loft and stood in the center of various control panels, “it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long as Loki wants.” A quick pause as he assessed the room below him before - “Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the top sails. That man is playing Galaga! Thought we wouldn’t notice… But we did.” He covered one of his eyes, looking around the room. “How does Fury do this?”

“He turns,” Adelina answered, rolling her eyes at the man’s childish antics as a small smile slipped across her face.

“Well, that sounds exhausting,” he replied, dropping his hand and turning to face Adelina. “Agent Tanase, what a pleasure it is to work with you again. I hope you didn’t miss me too much.” She met his provocative gaze with a sultry look of her own.

“Not even a little bit, Stark,” She jested, catching the quick wink he sent in her direction before he rambled on.

“Anyways, the rest of the raw materials… Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a raw power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube.”

“When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?” Adelina inquired with a raise of her brows.

“Last night. The packet… Selvig’s notes… the Extraction Theory papers… Am I the only one who did the reading?”

“Does Loki need any particular power source?” Rogers asked, his flat tone a striking contrast to the juvenile sarcasm that Stark expressed with pride.

“He needs to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier,” Adelina supplied, sensing several pairs of eyes on her, as if her knowledge of such complex sciences was unexpected of her from a group of people who knew absolutely nothing about her aside from the fact that she had a temperament comparable to that of the Hulk, himself.

“It appears I’m not the only one who did the reading.” Stark chuckled, tilting his head in approval. “That tracks, unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect.”

“Well, if he could, then he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet,” Banner asserted, looking between Stark and Adelina as it seemed that the three of them were the only ones capable of understanding such complexities.

“Finally, another person who speaks English,” Stark exclaimed, looking towards Adelina with a mocking expression of gratitude, before he turned to shake the famed scientist’s hand.

“Is that what just happened?” Rogers muttered, a look of pure confusion swept across his face before fading into mild annoyance.

“It’s good to meet you, Dr. Banner,” Stark spoke, ignoring Rogers’ remark. “Your work on anti-electron collusions is unparalleled. And I’m a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster.”

“Thanks.” Banner nodded with a slight roll of his eyes before he dropped his hand. Adelina straightened as Fury appeared from the entrance, laying his eye on the duo.

“Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube. I was hoping you might join him. Agent Tanase as well.”

“Let’s start with that stick of his,” Rogers proposed. “It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon.”

“I don’t know about that,” Fury replied, “but it is powered by the cube. And I’d like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys.”

“Monkeys? I do not understand,” Thor admitted, a perplexed look across his face.

“Of course you don’t,” Adelina said, releasing a short breath of laughter.

“I do! I understand that reference,” Rogers exclaimed with the excitement of a child who had won his first trophy. Adelina snorted, pressing a hand to her mouth before clapping her hands together, in a slow and mocking manner of praise. Stark rolled his eyes before strutting past Banner towards the exit.

“Shall we play, doctor?”

“Let’s play some.”

As the team dispersed, Adelina followed the two men to the laboratory. She stalled a few paces behind as they discussed something trivial, taking a second to gather her thoughts. The meeting, although tense as it was initially, was a breath of fresh air to her, a chance to ignore the weight of her decisions, both made and unmade, and partake in a discussion that didn’t make her blood boil or her eyes cloud over with amethyst hues. Lately, even before Loki’s arrival through the portal, she had been overwhelmed with how monotonous her life had become, how easily she had allowed herself to be consumed by her duty to S.H.I.E.L.D., and Fury, himself. Now, Loki’s words from earlier were eating at her, a nagging reminder that she had spent the last three years as Nick Fury’s lapdog.

She had taken his deal at face value, committed herself to him in order to fulfill her own ideations without yet realizing who she was dealing with - a master of secrecy, a man of evasion. She had come to this realization four months ago, during the aftermath of a mission that hadn’t quite gone according to plan, that the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. was shockingly talented at compartmentalizing. He knew exactly how to divide and conquer, regardless of the consequences. If he didn’t stand a chance of coming out the victor, he would find another way that ensured he did. Although Adelina respected this philosophy, - because how could she not when her own wasn’t that far off - she realized, then, that she would one day become collateral damage if she continued down that path, continued to do his bidding without question, without holding him accountable for what he still owed her. That was the first time, amid the fallout of that mission, that she had unleashed her rage upon him in such a manner that he had temporarily suspended her from all major assignments, relegating her to the head of a protective detail, and blatantly ignoring her up until two nights ago when the Tesseract began to stir.

He had known that, although she had grown into an intelligent and powerful young woman at the ripe age of twenty, who lost most of the trust she had placed in others, she was still naive enough to give him what little remained of that trust if she believed that he could aid her in her search for answers to questions long-since asked. He took advantage of her desperation and used it to further his own agenda. Adelina realized this much later than she should've - three years wasted in the hands of a man who intended to keep her close if only to prevent her from becoming a threat. She knew this now, though, just as she knew that he was currently withholding the information that she had bargained her services for three years ago, and that he had probably discovered it much earlier than he let on but denied her the knowledge in hopes of prolonging their agreement rather than risk her departure and the possibility that one day she would grow too powerful for him to control. However, what he didn’t realize was that Adelina was no longer that naive child, easy to control and manipulate - she was not some weapon to be wielded when he saw fit. She was a woman of many talents, with an energy residing within her so powerful that it could easily burn through cities if she so desired. She recalled Loki’s words once more, acknowledging the fact that he had recognized that alleged ‘real power’ existed within her, as if he understood her in a way that most people refused to even attempt.

With each passing second that she remained in the hallway, her mind racing as it calculated an assortment of scenarios, an array of outcomes, her choice was becoming more and more clear. She would pull from Fury’s own playbook. Adelina would stay exactly where she was, at Fury’s side, but she would no longer wait for him to follow through with his obligations to her when she was entirely capable of doing it herself. She would get her answers, and she would do it her way this time, regardless of the consequences.