Chapter 22
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Natasha picked her words carefully. “Like I said, I have a… specific skill set,” she said at last. “I didn’t care who I used it for. Or on.” Carefully, carefully, she let traces of vulnerability show on her face. “I got on SHIELD’s radar in a bad way. Fury sent Barton to kill me. He made a different call.”
“What will you do if I vow to spare his beau?” Loki murmured.
Natasha let her lips quirk. “Not let you out.”
“Ah, but I like this,” Loki breathed, standing. “A world hanging in the balance, and you bargain for the life of one woman for whom you feel indifference at best.”
Natasha shrugged, knowing she had to give him something. “Regimes fall every day. I tend not to weep about it; I’m Russian. Or I was.” Now I’m nothing. Woman without country .
“What is it you want?” Loki asked.
“I thought I made that clear.”
Loki shook his head. “You bargain for your Hill’s life for another reason.”
Shit. Natasha hadn’t wanted to go here, but there it was. One way to keep him on her string. “It’s really not that simple. I’ve got red in my ledger, and I’d like to wipe it out.”
“Can you?” Loki said, stepping forward, and here was the predator; here was the vicious thing she’d expected from Thor’s stores, reveling in the opportunity to tear her apart. “Can you wipe out that much red ? Drakov’s daughter?”
Oh.
“Sao Paulo?”
No no no
“The hospital fire?”
How does he know this?
“Hill told me everything.” Loki was watching her closely, drinking in every second of the torment that Natasha deliberately allowed to show on her face. She thanked her stars that she’d had the forethought to turn off the cameras in here. “Your ledger is dripping , gushing red, and you think doing a favor for a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything? This is the basest sentimentality! This is a child at prayer, pathetic ! You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that separates you from the horrors, but they are a part of you and they will never go away.”
You think I don’t know that? Natasha wanted to snarl. You think I’m so naive? You think you’re so brilliant, but what you haven’t noticed is that I like this goddamn life.
But she couldn’t.
There was a tiny part of the girl she’d once been so long ago that she barely remembered it, a tiny fragment of a person long dead but not entirely exorcised, and it screamed and sobbed and trembled at his words, at the memories they woke. Natasha had long since made her peace with what she was and what she’d done. But now she used that half-forgotten shrieking fragment to turn herself into a trembling wide-eyed mess. The image of a shattered woman on the verge of falling apart.
And Loki bought it.
“You’re a monster,” she gasped out, turning away.
His smile was so many shades of cruel. “Oh, no. You brought the monster here.”
There it was.
Natasha straightened and turned back to him, all traces of the little-girl-Natasha fading away. “So. Banner. That’s your play.”
Loki’s smile fell away.
“Loki plans to release the Hulk,” Natasha said, pressing down on her earpiece to activate it and speaking directly to Fury’s shadow, Agent Lang. “Keep Banner in his lab, I’m on my way. Get Fury and Thor there as well.”
She looked back at Loki once, intending to revel in his shock, but surprise was only one of the things on his face. She saw respect and… satisfaction?
That made no sense.
Tucking away the odd observation to peruse later, Natasha dipped her head once. “Thank you for your cooperation.”
And she left.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
Aprill 2011
Secure Storage 10-C
Steve frowned at the words. He’d already searched the other two “Secure Storage” units, and gotten nothing for his pains: weapons storage, mostly, and data; some chemical and scientific stuff that he didn’t entirely understand beyond the “DANGER” and “BIOHAZARD” labels. He wasn’t even sure why he was doing this, really. Fury was his commanding officer, and that alone demanded respect.
But he couldn’t deny that the arrogant, narcissistic Tony Stark (so similar and so different from his father that it disoriented Steve whenever he looked at the man) had a point about Fury. He couldn’t say that the scientists’ suspicions were unfounded.
Captain America wouldn’t have broken his orders like this. But Captain America was dead, and Steve thought he liked himself better as Steve Rogers anyway. Captain America was too trusting, and Steve Rogers - well, he could make Steve Rogers whoever he wanted.
Steve grabbed the door and hauled it open against its will.
Secure Storage 10-C didn’t look particularly different from its siblings 10-A and 10-B, except that the cases in here were all locked with much fancier-looking computerized locks.
This modern world gave Steve headaches way too often.
He crept through the shadows, vaulted up a level, and landed in a crouch, wincing at the clang his heavy military boots elicited from the catwalk. After several seconds, he concluded that the noise hadn’t drawn any attention, and slipped silently along. Steve didn’t really know what he was looking for, except that it would probably be near the back. People liked to keep their secrets hidden. Fury liked to keep his buried under eight layers of protection.
Steve made it to the back third of the storage bay before he noticed that all these boxes and compartments were labeled Phase 2.
He picked a drawer at random, listened carefully to check that he was still alone, and broke the lock off with two kicks.
The compartment released its secrets with a hiss, and Steve stared at its contents, first in shock and then in growing anger.
Impossibly, infuriatingly, Stark had been right.
And once again, Steve had been betrayed.
He knew how Captain America would’ve reacted: some anger, a discussion with his CO, and then a return to order-following.
Steve gritted his teeth and heaved the biggest piece of the betrayal out of the drawer.
He wasn’t Captain America anymore, and he would not stay loyal to the people who lied to him time and again.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Something about this whole situation was not right.
Darcy’s mind was spinning like a top, trying to fit all the pieces together. She didn’t know why no one else was seeing it - well, okay, she understood that some of them were just stupid, but that wasn’t her problem - and she couldn’t quite piece it together, but she knew something was off. Like that time Stacy Cratton kept saying she hated James Mason but dropped comments about him and never accounted for her absentee evenings, and it turned out they’d been dating on the fly for a year but couldn’t tell anyone because of James’ parents’ religion and his uncle who was one of the faculty. Well, obviously not exactly like that, but still.
Darcy watched Loki pace from her hiding place in the observation room.
Somehow, SHIELD had made the wall look like a wall on the other side but a window from this one. She hadn’t known that was possible, but honestly she was way past her shock quota after the last couple years, and anyway she’d been creeping past the sleeping Loki and when she saw the cameras shut down she’d immediately ducked into the nearest unlocked door. It turned out that she was in a secret observation room the size of a closet. And then Natasha Romanoff walked in, and she discovered the speakers that relayed everything from the containment unit into her little spy closet, and this whole debacle got way more interesting.
And Darcy definitely did not mind getting to check out Alien Number Two without him knowing, because yeah, Thor was attractive, but his megalomaniacal younger brother was something else.
Heh. He was out of this world attractive.
Darcy had never expected to be able to use that pun in real life.
Even imagining what he looked like under all that complicated armor couldn’t distract her for long from the more serious thoughts that ran around her brain like rabbits on crack, which was annoying because Darcy had been enjoying those mental images, but she couldn’t deny that there was something serious to be contemplated and she was apparently the only person around ready to contemplate it. So she thought about the security footage she may or may not have hacked from a StarkPad on the way down here and Loki’s comment “a warm light for all mankind” and how Stark hadn’t been brought in on the Tesseract until Fury had no other option and how Loki hadn’t looked upset at all when Natasha figured out his plan. Darcy figured there were two likely interpretations of that information: either Loki was winding all of them up, or.
Or.
Darcy pulled out her StarkPad, issued when she joined the PR team, and placed a call.
“Lang? This is Darcy Lewis.”
“How did you get this number?” the agent on the other end snapped.
“Director Fury,” Darcy lied. “Can you patch me through to Thor?”
Irritating stick-in-the-mud. Darcy’s least favorite kind of person. “I’m on task for public relations. There was some footage of him and I need to ask him a few questions just so I can handle the press.”
“Ms. Lewis-”
“Look, don’t shoot the messenger,” she sighed, putting fake weariness in her voice. “I know you’re super busy and this is so not a good use of your time, and I’m sorry, but I really need to speak with him?”
A pause.
“Fine. We’ve issued him a StarkPhone and taught him how to answer calls. I’ll send you his number.”
“Thanks so much,” Darcy said, dripping fake gratitude, and Lang said “No problem” in a considerably warmer tone than he’d started with, and a message chimed through a few seconds after she hung up with Thor’s intranetwork number and a smiley face.
“In your nasty-ass dreams, Agent Lonely,” she muttered, and called the number.
Thor’s voice rumbled through the line. “Who calls the Son of Odin?”
Oh my fucking God, has no one taught him just to say “hello”? “It’s Darcy.”
“Lady Darcy,” Thor said. “I did not get the impression, when last we spoke, that you wished to continue our friendship.”
“Sorry for any, um, miscommunication,” Darcy said. “And sorry to bother you, but if no one’s mentioned it I work with Stark’s Public Relations team and I need to ask you a few questions to handle the press. People tend to freak out a little when aliens with magic hammers named myeuh-myeuh show up.”
“Of course,” Thor said. “What information do you require?”
“Um.” Darcy scrambled. “First of all, just so I have it on record that you’ve stated this, do you mean any harm to anyone on Earth?”
“No!” Thor sounded offended.
“Okay, sorry,” Darcy said hurriedly. “I had to ask. Um. Next is… What tipped you off that Loki had come to Midgard?”
“Heimdall alerted Odin to a disturbance regarding Loki, although Loki himself remains concealed from Heimdall’s sight,” Thor said. “I was dispatched to capture Loki and set Midgard to rights.”
“Mmm. And why do you think Loki is doing this?” Darcy asked.
Thor paused. “Vengeance. He loathes me and Odin with a passion unmatched by any I have ever seen. There is no pain can prize his need from him.”
“So he’ll never stop unless he is stopped?”
“I would expect not.”
“Awesome,” Darcy muttered, and moved into the more important questions. “Do you think he has a chance of conquering Midgard?”
“I do not know,” Thor said. “Heimdall has yet to discover what Loki’s forces might be, or where he has been in the time since he fell from the Bifrost. However, he is not to be underestimated. Loki is a brilliant strategist both with politics and military campaigns. His mind is unmatched among Midgardians.”
Oh, Darcy so wanted to rip into him right then for his condescending attitude, but she held herself in check. She needed info. “So you still have no clue where he might’ve been all this time.”
“Some clues, but they would mean nothing to Midgardians.”
He’s really asking for it. Deep breaths, Darce .
“I don’t remember anything about the mind-controller nightstick thing. Has Loki used that before?”
Thor paused. “No.”
“And have you ever heard of something with its power before?”
“No,” Thor said, drawing out the word.
“Is it possible it could be used on an Asgardian?”
“Fear not, Lady Darcy, I do not intend to allow Loki to use it on me,” Thor said.
That’s not where I was going, but okay. “Answer the question.”
“It is possible,” Thor admitted reluctantly.
Time to move on . “Okay. Uhhh… they also want me to ask if you think you can take Loki in a fight.”
“He is not trained nearly as well as I,” Thor said, pride ringing through the phone. “Loki has always disdained the use of weaponry, and his seidr - what you might call magic - is ill-suited for combat. Yes, I believe I can do so with ease.”
Darcy tapped a finger against her thigh, annoyed, and decided to bring out the big guns. She’d make him so mad he would never think to consider her important questions. “And do you feel any remaining filial attachment to Loki?”
Silence.
Excellent.
“No,” Thor said at last. “He has lied and murdered and betrayed me too many times.”
“Would you be willing to kill him?” Darcy asked innocently.
There was another weighty hesitation, and then Thor said “Yes… if it came to it.”
“What about torture?”
“What?” The Asgardian sounded shocked, offended.
Darcy smirked, even though he couldn’t see her. “Like, to get the information of the Tesseract from him before his plan goes through. Could you do that?”
“I do not know how things are done here on Midgard,” Thor seethed, “but on Asgard we are above such cowardly and ignoble tactics! I would never stoop so low! I-”
“Wonderful,” Darcy said, her voice as chipper as she could make it, “that’s all I needed to know. Thanks!”
She hung up on him.
Her tactic had worked perfectly. Hiding her real questions, like those about the scepter, in the middle of emotionally charged other inquiries was a surefire way to get people to forget everything but what made them sad or pissed. And she knew Thor well enough to know exactly how to fire him up.
The brunette woman cracked her knuckles and looked out at the containment unit. Loki was pacing circles around it, and the cameras were still down - looked like Natasha hadn’t turned them back on in her rush to go keep Banner’s skin the same color.
That was good. Because Darcy smelled something off here, something about the appearance of the scepter and Loki’s unknown possible army and the look on his face as he’d watched Natasha leave, and she wanted to talk to him in person.
She straightened decisively, gauged her fear (low) and her anticipation (high), and stepped out of the closet.
Loki’s eyes fastened on her.