Disquieting
Orbit of Aakon
2020
The quiet is something Tony will never get used to, no matter how months or years they spend together up here.
Nebula knows this because he is always making some form of noise. Chattering aimlessly to her, thoughts spilling from his brain to his mouth and pooling around them as they fall from his lips. Meaningless small talk and dark topics with light tones. Working on something - for his suit, for the ship, for her body - and making entirely too much of a commotion with tools that, at the beginning of their journey, were totally unfamiliar to him. It hadn't taken him long to learn how to use them, or anything else on the ship. As much as she wants to give him shit, Tony is smart. Intuitive. Adaptive.
When they were doing work on the engine and her arm got zapped out of commission, it had only taken him a couple hours to figure out how to work with her haphazardly thrown together pieces and put her back in working order. And get rid of the tic in her wrist, where the metal kept catching. He had learned how to read the monitors in only a few months. Which would be less impressive if they weren't in a totally alien language and far more advanced than any terran technology. It had taken him only a day to figure out how to work the tools strewn around the ship. A few weeks to figure out, and promptly organize, all of the different power cores and weapons and essentially everything else he came across.
Unless it comes to being quiet. And Nebula would really, for one moment in the two years and two months - twenty six months altogether, crammed in this ship - like him to be quiet. For more than a few moments during the colder hours where everything that's wrong strikes them, or when he's sleeping without getting any rest.
Even now, an entire room away, she can hear him talking. To that stupid helmet making stupid recordings for stupid people who are probably dead or will never hear it anyway because his head is like a briefcase full of literal fecal matter and he can't help but display how insane he is and try to infect her with it like some kind of airborne virus put out through his words. Nebula doesn't get it and normally she would be able to ignore it, or brush it off, but today it grates on her. Pinches at sensitive spots she didn't know she had until just now. Brushing against healed wounds that somehow still feel incredibly tender.
She can't take it. Nebula brings her hands up only to drag them down her face, one lukewarm and the other cold. In the other room, Tony's word are unintelligible. Just a steady stream of vocal cues in his, unfortunately, familiar voice. Despite not being able to make out the words, it's driving her out of her mind. He's been talking - to himself - for at least an hour, though she hasn't kept track of the time.
Something clatters, like it's been dropped, and she can definitely make out almost every curse that tumbles out of his throat. It's the final straw.
Nebula jerks up from her seat like a marionette, limbs stiff from having sat so still for so long. Her boots smack loudly against the floor, emphasized by the near silence of the Benatar. There's no hum of movement and life, or refrigeration units, or music. All of the automatic systems have shut down due to not having enough power to run them. The repairs they've made are sustaining the ship, and them, but it's only a temporary solution. The power cells weren't meant to push through a whole ship, supplying energy to oxygen generations and artificial gravity simulators and temperature regulation and general life support.
They have six months, maybe a little longer, before one (if not all) of the cells collapse and cause an explosion that will kill them without question. Nebula knows that, and she knows Tony does too. It's why he tinkers so often, disassembling anything he can find and trying to build something substantial to save them. Trying to do what, ultimately, is impossible. One year before the convertor fails, because it hasn't been replaced in too long. Only a few months longer than that before everything starts to fail, because the ship hasn't moved or been properly maintained and repaired.
They'll die up here, and Nebula has accepted that even if Tony can't. Whatever hope - as disgusting and misplaced as that word is - that was left after Thanos left them on Titan melted away after their first year stranded out here.
So they'll die up here, and Nebula is okay with that. But she doesn't want to die listening to Tony Stark gabbing to an inanimate object.
Using her metal arm, she yanks angrily at the door to the room the man of the hour has settled himself into. He's hunched over the table, back to her, and she can just make out the Iron Man helm sitting to his left. When the ungodly sound of the metal door scraping on the floor catches Tony's attention he goes still, babbling cut off mid-sentence. Almost sheepishly, he cranes his neck to look over his shoulder at her.
"I'm going to destroy it." Nebula informs him briskly, stepping forward. "I am serious this time."
"You were serious last time." Tony scoffs in return, but he still doesn't turn toward her. Instead he directs a question to his helmet and the light it's projecting fades. "Same time tomorrow?"
"Well," she doesn't have an argument for that. "That was... an intimidation tactic. Clearly you did not take away what you should have from our previous interaction."
He snorts and shifts his shoulders, arms and hands still hidden in front of him. "Are we in a time loop? Is this Groundhog Day but in space? Am I Bill Murray?"
"This is not your earth devouring hog celebration ceremony." Nebula isn't sure what Groundhog Day is nor does she care. Knowing Tony, it could very well be a fake thing made up simply to bamboozle her. She fell for it with the Fruit Loops a week ago, she's sly to his tricks now. "And if you are under the impression of being someone else, then I clearly have not been monitoring your mental stability well enough."
"Aw," Tony grins at her cheekily. "You monitor my mental state? Honey, I'm flattered."
Nebula finds herself caught, for a moment, unsure of whether of not he's fully joking. Of course she monitors his mental health. "Only to ensure you are not a danger to myself."
"Sounds like you're only trying to convince yourself." Tony sing-songs at her lightly.
"Irrelevant -"
"Not really -"
Glowering at him, she aims her metal finger at him in warning. "You are being deliberately avoidant."
"More like thinking about the important parts of what you just said." Tony shrugs, but is careful not to let the movement turn him toward her. "Whatever you prefer, though."
He's acting odd. Nebula hates that she notices this. She really does. But it's unavoidable, becoming familiar, when they've spent all this time cooped up together. Learning about each other. Bonding, as the human would call it. If anyone were to ask, she would adamantly deny any fondness toward him. In reality, it's a little more complicated. Tony Stark is not the man she envisioned him to be, not the man who stopped the invasion on Earth years ago. She's not sure he ever was that man, if that image wasn't a total fallacy built by her father's narrative.
"What's wrong with you?" Nebula creeps closer, noting the way he angles his torso to keep her at his back. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing!" Tony reassures her airily, and she imagines if his hand were free it would be flapping at her. "Seriously, you're hovering. I thought we talked about personal space, okay, I know these concepts can be hard to grasp but I'm going to need you to respect my human need for a little bit of separation."
Doing what is undoubtedly her best impersonation of him, Nebula cocks her head to the side and narrows her dark eyes. "Bullshit." He sputters a laugh that she could swear sounds nervous. "What are you hiding?"
Tony tries to sidestep her as she approaches, repeating himself. "Nothing! Honestly! You don't trust me?"
"No." Nebula confirms unnecessarily.
"Ouch." He grimaces at her. "You know -"
She can't bear to listen to him blow shit out of his mouth any more, so Nebula advances again. Tony makes a noise of offense when she goes to grab his arm, slipping away by a fraction of an inch. She follows, steady and menacing, and he tries to slide away again. His hip bumps the table and the mask settled on it shifts. Tony freezes to look at it, blind panic in his expression. It's painful to see the way he clings to the remains of his suit after all this time. To know that, somehow, he still thinks they can change this.
Nebula shouldn't take advantage of this moment of distraction. It's wrong, and a little insensitive. She shouldn't but she does. Her body reacts with her brain falling behind, arms snapping out and hands taking a firm hold on his arms. Metal fingers curl into the fabric of his borrowed shirt and pull to twist him around. Tony barely has time to resist before her flesh hand is going for his hands, slapping them apart.
"Wait -"
In his hands, cupped to protect it, is a glass tray. And inside of that, an inky black substance. Not a substance, Nebula thinks as a rush of cold runs through her spine, a symbiote. A rare flash of fear makes its way through her system and she raises her metal hand to, more roughly than intended, yank his arm out so that he's holding it over the table.
"Careful!"
"Drop it!" She commands. He doesn't, staring at her in surprise still. "Drop it now -"
"Calm down -"
"That thing will kill you -"
"It's stable!" Tony shouts at her, his empty hand coming to her shoulder. "I tested it!" When her grip slackens in surprise, he wrenches his wrist from her grasp. The other, she's dimly shocked to find, stays on her shoulder.
"You tested it?" Nebula spits, drawing away from his touch. Her gaze doesn't stray from the symbiote, currently throwing itself around in what she can only guess is excitement.
"Of course I tested it." His words cause the cold in her spine to migrate to her chest.
"You moron." She doesn't know how to convey to him just how horrifying that is. "You're a lunatic."
Flabbergasted, the brunette rubs at his wrist. "Says the girl who nearly broke my wrist a second ago."
"With good reason." The response is tart and she only looks at him for a moment before observing the thing in his hand again. "You don't even know what you're playing with."
"I'm not playing." Tony practically whines and she really doubts his words. "Experimenting -"
"On something alien to you -"
"Oh come on you cannot -"
"And dangerous -"
"It's been here almost the whole time it's not dangerous -"
Something clicks much later than it should as the gears in Nebula's head recover from the ice left on them from her shock. The Kariteth Spaceport. Haze Mancer. Two years stuck in orbit of Aakon.
"You."
Nebula advances on him, jaw tight and teeth bared and dark eyes seeming like an abyss of rage. Anger has always come easy to her, they both know that. It's what she's always known, it's what has always worked for her. When she was with the Guardians, and after, and in these two years with him, she's gotten better. Her outbursts are more bark than bite and tired over truly threatening. This is neither of those things. This is pure, unadulterated, violent fury.
She could kill him. She really could. It seriously crosses her mind and she considers literally locking her hands around his throat and throttling him, or sending him out into space, or shooting him straight through the chest - or maybe through the wound she healed, to get poetic about it. Tony would probably appreciate that in his dying moments, Nebula is sure of it.
"Okay, now, listen," Tony backs away from her with one finger raised and the symbiote stubbornly clutched in his other hand. "What have I said about using your words? Let's talk about it, Blue -"
"You want me to use my words?" Nebula interrupts sharply, taking slow steps closer to mirror his retreat. "I'll use my words Tony." Normally, her using his name would be a sign of growth. In this moment, it's condescending and spiteful. "You are an inconceivably stupid human genius and I should eviscerate you where you stand for getting us stranded here with that parasite."
"That's a good start." The man is forced to come to a stop when his heel touches the wall. "So now it's my turn -"
"Your turn ended when you nearly killed us by -" Nebula pauses to nearly growl in her frustration as she corners him. "Playing with a symbiote."
"Symbiote?" Tony glances at the rancorous thing in his hand, thoughtful.
Refusing to even start hearing him out, she sharply throws out her metal arm. Palm up, waiting, while her other hand stays in a tight fist. "Yes. Hand it over."
"Hold on a minute."
"No."
"This symbiote could be our way out of here."
"It's not!" Nebula shouts, and there's a frenzied look in her eyes he doesn't recognize. It crawls through the flesh and bones and muscle in her body that isn't artificial. Panic. Fear. "It will kill us."
Tony looks frustrated. Finally. His calm attempts at being rational are worse than anything else, his inability to grasp what he's messing around with grates at her. "We're going to die out here if we don't do something anyway!"
It's true. They're on limited time. Borrowed hours of, she'll admit, genius craftsmanship and rigging. Nebula knows they won't be able to survive out here forever. If a boulder doesn't crush them like an egg, or damage one of the ports, or send them spiraling out of control, their lack of food will. The reserve power running out will. The temporary repairs eventually failing will. The cold when they lose all heating systems will. Nebula knows it's inevitable, and she's faced death a thousand times, but...
"Not like that." She tells him. "I'd rather suffocate in the reaches of space."
"I wouldn't."
They're at a standstill. Tony is never going to agree with her. In fact, if she were to educate him on the symbiote he would likely only be more inclined toward whatever insane idea he's been building on in their time out here. And if he isn't going to give it up willingly, she has no qualms about taking it with force.
Nebula's flesh hand strikes out for the fabric of his shirt to lock him in place, and he reacts with a speed that surprises her. His arm raises to knock into her's, bone on bone, and when she takes a moment to process this he ducks away to the side. Their time stuck out here has taken its toll on both of them and frankly, she was expecting Tony to be a lot more worn out. Maybe he's on to something, with all of the pacing and moving things around and organizing and arranging, but that's something to dwell on later.
When there isn't a life leeching organism in the same room as her, perhaps. Turning, Nebula goes for him again. This time it's her metal hand that reaches out, and he only manages to avoid it by stumbling backward so quickly he nearly falls on his ass. Tony recovers his footing and moves away again, putting the table between them. Again, she contemplates just putting him out of his misery earlier than intended. She doesn't, of course, giving him a hard stare and and slamming her metal hand on the top of the surface separating them to get his attention.
"This is not a game -" Nebula doesn't get more than those five words out before she's cut off.
Tony raises his free hand and within seconds, small chunks of smooth metal are flying through the air. As the last of his nanites wrap around her hand and lock into the table, Nebula finds herself distantly impressed. She didn't think he'd been able to repair any after the almost-meat-grinder incident in the oxygen convertor. Still, he must know there aren't enough to actually keep her there. Her arm is much stronger than the handful of his inventions left. This is only going to stall her for a minute, maybe two.
"It's our lives." He says, when he's sure she's paused to give him her recognition. "I'm not okay with just dying out here. I don't know how the hell you are."
"I never said I was." Nebula informs him.
Shaking his head, Tony scoffs. "You didn't have to."
"This can be done the easy way, or the hard way."
"We can do this the easy way, or the hard way." The correction is a mindless thing at her attempt to mock him through his attempts at educating her on popular Earth culture and television tropes.
"Whatever." Nebula sneers at him.
"Stop being so hardheaded!" Tony snaps, throwing his empty hand up in his exasperation.
Quick as a whip comes her retort. "Stop being so ignorant."
"Oh, I'm sorry." He quirks a brow. "Are ignorance and resigning yourself to a totally anticlimactic interstellar death the same thing now? Is this another murderous alien thing?"
"When you mistake warnings for encouragements, the misunderstanding is inevitable." She spits.
Tony's response is childish in nature and tone. "As if you're any better."
"Your argument is badly formed." Nebula is tired of justifying it, and him by association, with a serious response. One hard jerk of her arm snaps some of the nanites, the second loosens her enough to get more leverage, and the third rips her arm free from the table.
"Are we done with words now?"
Nebula figures that no response is as good as an actual verbal response, in this situation. Bracing one hand on the table, she gives a swift jump to vault over it and land closer to him. To his credit, Tony does seem to grasp what she's not saying. Picks up what she is physically putting down. He stuffs one hand into his pocket, the other tightening around the glass case and keeping it close to his body. She doesn't take her time this go around, instead taking quick steps to settle the space between them.
When she's a step away from arm's reach, Tony's hand leaves his pocket. She can just catch the glint of the metal in the light before he throws a handful of shock pellets out. They clatter and roll on the floor, vines of electricity connecting them. Nebula has to sidestep to avoid the ones that go further. They wrap around the curve of the table's edge, a curtain of shining grey orbs and flickering electric currents.
Not even giving it a second thought, Nebula raises her arm and watches as the blaster lifts from a section of her arm. The whirring of her limb is paired with the high pitched noise of her weapon heating up. Impatience gets the best of her when she sees Tony going for the exit. She's not sure where he thinks he's going to go, since they're sort of trapped here indefinitely.
She doesn't wait as long as she should, firing off three consecutive shots toward the door. They don't hit Tony, but she wasn't aiming for him. They dent the door instead, causing him to backpedal as she aims at the floor and shoots at the pellets strewn around acting as a blockade. They scatter with the force of the blasts and the floor sports a few holes and new dents for her efforts. Nebula couldn't care less. The ship is nothing more than a metal coffin, now. A graveyard of memories and missing persons.
Making the first move this time, Nebula goes to grab him again. Tony manages to evade her and land a bony elbow into her torso and she grunts at the impact before using his proximity to her advantage. Without a single thought, her left leg gives a sloppy kick and sweeps his feet out from under him. As expected, the man falls. For a moment he's suspended in the air, trying to brace himself.
And for a moment the glass container housing the symbiote is suspended, too.
That moment, as all moments do, passes. Glass crashing against the floor and shattering deafens Nebula, but it doesn't nothing to stop the flow of time. Tony is still trying to get over his disorientation when she raises her arm and sending a flurry of shots off in the direction the small glass case landed. The sound of her weapon firing almost drowns out his objections to her reckless attempts at ridding them of the symbiote. She can see it twisting and tossing around with extraordinary speed, rearranging itself to avoid her shots with an ease that does nothing to quell her panic.
"Hey!" Tony is smart enough to curl in on him, rolling on his side to face her. One thinned arm flies out and his hand latches around her ankle. "Hey! What the fuck! I'm down here!"
Nebula looks down at him briefly and stops shooting. It's all she gives him before looking back up to find her target. She can't see it. She shakes her leg, giving Tony an agitated look as he releases her. She steps over him as he rolls and sits up to gawk at her. It's just gone. Things don't just disappear.
"You nearly shot me!" It's hard to ignore the harsh yell of Tony's words in the newfound silence.
Chest heaving, Nebula turns to face him. "Where did it go?"
"I was a little too busy noticing you shooting at me to keep track." Tony snips as he flops onto his back and reclines his head against the floor.
His lack of concern is horrifying and irritating. Nebula kicks his foot petulantly as she passes by him, ignoring the noise of offense he makes in response. She circles the room four times and comes up with nothing. Which means it's just lurking somewhere in here. With them. If being trapped in space is bad, being trapped in space with a symbiote is the worst case scenario.
"We're paste."
"Toast." Tony breathes out the word, sounding exhausted. "We're toast, is what you mean."
Nebula looks down at him, retracting her gun. "No," her voice is hollow. "I meant paste."
Benhazin System
2020
Setbacks are not uncommon, in fiction or reality. They come up in every story, no matter how large or small, minor inconveniences or immeasurable impasses. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that the remaining Asgardians and Sakaaran rebels face their own within the span of two years. First it was a lack of fuel, something fixed easily enough. Next it was quelling questions of whether or not Earth, a simple Midgardian planet, was the right place to go. Questions of whether or not Thor was alive, and if they knew what they were heading into. And after that it was the raiders.
Remains of the Kallusians from the third planet from the sun: Kallu. A race of purple skinned aliens that are, sort of, humanoid. They have a similar bone structure and scale of height, as well as musculature. But their eyes are all white except for the pupil, their ears are long and pointed, and in place of hair they develop metallic shells. A democratic and courageous people, with advanced interstellar knowledge and technology that could be dangerous if they cared to weaponize it.
There hadn't been many of them left on Kallu. Due to an unfortunate combination of their intergalactic war with the Yirbek and the tough arctic conditions of their planet and the constantly rising water. As a result, when Thanos wiped out half of all life it must have left only a handful of them alive.
There's no telling what drove them to raiding, to abandoning their planet in favor of trying to pillage others, but Loki thinks it must have been bitterness. For all their honesty, perseverance in the face of endless trouble, they received nothing. For all their efforts toward and attempts at intergalactic diplomacy, often trying to act as a common thread between planets with their system of bartering knowledge for camaraderie, they were rewarded with annihilation. Handed a consolation prize of a pitiful number of survivors to carry on their wealth of knowledge and technology. It makes sense that some of them, if not all of them, would lose sight of the point in their ways.
Loki understands why they could have chosen to do what they did, but it didn't earn them any sympathy when they tried to ravage his ship. They fought and they died, as nothing more or less than a setback on a mission much larger than their own lives.
That setback had caused another, along with the realization that they weren't well enough prepared. Without the resources offered to them from their throneworld, they didn't have enough weapons. Didn't have enough technology. Didn't have enough supplies. They need more than meager contribution to the cause in the form of combat trained bodies. Having war in their blood as Asgardians isn't enough. Brunnhilde had argued with him for a week over the idea of purposely bypassing their destination to, as she said, mine trash heaps.
Countless terse discussions and judgments of pros and cons eventually convinced her, as Loki knew they would. He had told her that their new destination, the asteroid belt of Benhazin was close by. In the same galaxy, in fact. Informed her that it would be easy and quick and beneficial in the long run because resources are valuable, and a universal currency. All of those things were, and still are, incredibly true.
And yet, somehow, Loki has spent much more time here than he was planning.
"We've been here for seven months, you know."
Staring absently out of one of the view ports, Loki has been trying to ignore Brunnhilde for the better part of ten minutes. As usual, the Valkyrie is determined to be noticed. She's pacing back and forth in front of his seat, obstructing his view, with both arms tight at her sides. Her hands clench and relax over and over, dark hair whipping around her face wildly as she alternates between directing her words to the floor and to his face. Stopping abruptly, she turns on her left heel to face him and slowly raises her fists before slowly bringing them up one at a time until seven of her fingers are on display.
"Seven."
"Yes," Loki rests his chin on his fist and sighs. "I'm well enough educated to count."
Brunnhilde cocks a brow, umber skin coloring with her frustration. "Not enough to know what the meaning of 'quick' or 'easy' is. Seems about fair to question your general intelligence."
"The vibranium -"
"No." She shakes her head. "I don't want to hear about the vibranium any more."
Frowning, the green eyed man tips his head to one side. "It's -"
"Valuable." Brunnhilde does her best imitation of him, lifting her chin and changing her tone. It's pretty good, he knows she's been getting a lot of practice recently. "I get it. The whole asteroid belt, all vibranium, you love vibranium, you want to permanently bind yourself to vibranium in an extravagant ceremony -"
"Well now you're just being silly." Loki's admonishment is followed by an exaggerated roll of his eyes.
"That doesn't make you any less of a moron." The insult bounces off of him like a rubber pellet and falls, meaningless, between them.
Loki doesn't mind the spiteful comments much. The former Valkyrie might not be the best company, drinking all the booze left on their transport and prodding at him and asking questions she very well knows he won't have an answer to. But no one else is willing to approach him; either discomforted by his presence or simply not trusting him enough to exchange more than a few passing words when they run into him. So, he'll take what he can get. It's not his fault the ungrateful wretches can't see he's trying to do right, for once. It's not like he outdid himself and morphed duplicates to look like their people and then painfully faked his death just to get them to safety or anything like that. If they want to avoid him and have no part in his plans that's their problem and it'll suit him just fine when he reestablishes some form of order and they're all screwed out of it.
"Are you trying to mine the whole asteroid belt?" Brunnhilde asks him and, while she still spits the words, he takes note of the serious question there.
Has he considered trying to mine the whole belt? Absolutely not. It would take way too much time, considering every asteroid is laced and filled with the resource. It's already taken longer than he was hoping to get what they have now. Does Loki put on his most serious face and pretend to consider it, just to step on her nerves? Of course.
"It's not as if we're on a particularly strict schedule." The maker of mischief hums. "Though I'm not sure we have enough storage to carry it all. It's light enough that the extra weight won't prevent a problem, but our limited space will."
Brunnhilde snorts without amusement. "We're not mining the whole asteroid belt."
"We could." Loki continues his charade of pondering the change in plans. "Discard any unnecessary additions to the ship, it would be an impressive haul."
"You are hilarious, you know that?" The dark skinned woman drops herself into the seat beside him, apparently done entertaining his shenanigans. "Do you get pleasure out of causing me strife?
He thinks about it and shrugs. "It passes the time."
Aside from their setbacks, their troublesome encounters, things are boring. There's no Thor to bounce off of. No Odin to give lectures worth taking note of. No Frigga to learn from and listen to. There are no old halls to explore or fields to lay claim to. No portals open nearby to give him leave. There's not a lot of mischief to conjure up while floating through space, either. Turning into another form to trick Brunnhilde had been fun enough for a while, until she got wise to his tricks and started stomping on him or carelessly flinging him aside instead of entertaining him.
Without these distractions, Loki spends most of his time thinking and preparing. About the fate of his brother, about the state of Midgard, about the years where his memory is filled with holes and whispers of bring me the stone, that's all I desire before it's filled with a brutal green giant and nothing but war. He thinks about his disobedience to the Mad Titan, and how he has paid for it. Preparing for the war that has yet to come, and the one they have already lost.
It's nice to pass the time in other ways. Find smaller things to focus on. Things that don't leave him with questions he can't answer.
Maybe that's why they're still here. It's not something he'll ever admit but maybe, just possibly, there's a part of him that wants to stay in the Benhazin System because it's easier. Simpler. There are no questions he doesn't have answers to, no wonders of his brother or the state of the universe. All there is is the asteroid belt and the vibranium and Loki.
Years ago, he would have stayed here. Or gone as far from everything else as he could. Now, though, he can't. He can't because he shouldn't, and he wants to even if he shouldn't, so he doesn't.
"At least we'll have plenty of weapons, after this." Brunnhilde grumbles, more to herself than him.
Loki shakes his head, catching her attention as he sits straight. "We're not here to make weapons, fogl."
"We're not?" She replies flatly, looking very much like she doesn't believe him.
"No." He says slowly, and she scowls at him.
"Don't look at me like that." Comes her tart response. "It's a logical assumption."
Keeping his words slow, because he knows it irks her to be treated like she's behind, he continues: "We're not launching an assault. It's far too late for that."
"Obviously." Brunnhilde looks away from him, out to the cosmos.
For once, she looks worried. The Valkyrie hasn't been one for showcasing her emotions, displaying her thoughts or feelings for anyone. Everything is clipped humor and low tones, aggression and sarcasm her go-to ranges. Sharp looks and practiced expressions a constant on her features. Loki watches her, as her brows crease and her lips pull down and her cheek twitches, tucks away all of the details and nuances like files in an office. It's an unconscious thing, an automatic action, taking a mental inventory of these minute traits and personal tells.
There's no plan to use this against her or tie her down like there was with their initial meeting. Loki can't help but do it nonetheless. Critical green orbs categorize the way her legs shift restlessly, the action of her hand migrating from the holster of her gun to tug at the collar of her shirt. Brunnhilde's brown eyes are still aimed out of the port, likely not even registering what she's actually looking at. Her expression is similar to when he wiggled his fingers into her memories, without the shock.
"Defensive systems." Loki looks away from her, to avoid unwanted suspicion.
Brunnhilde spares him a laugh, tilting her head up and screwing her eyes to the ceiling. "Isn't it a little late for that, too?"
"On the contrary," a smile twitches at the corners of his lips. "I think the timing is superb."