Chapter 23
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Bruce looked at the progress report whenever Stark wasn’t paying attention.
The billionaire had finally gotten the software to cooperate and the model locked in; Bruce had done his own part, and now there was nothing left to do but go through SHIELD’s comprehensive files on Puente Antiguo for the seventh time. Bruce tried to focus on that, but he couldn’t stop himself looking at the progress report. He fell into a sleep-deprived rhythm of read, check, read, check, until he didn’t even actually look at the percentage on the screen where Stark had left it anymore; it was mostly a habitual reaction to make sure that it was still there. He was in stasis.
So it came as a surprise when he glanced up and the progress bar was gone, replaced by a distorted image of Stark’s tight face through the screen as he swiped through files.
Bruce blinked tiredness away from his eyes. “Is it done?”
“Oh, it’s done, all right,” Stark said, and Bruce realized how angry the other man was.
That was when Nick Fury walked in through the door and brought all of his anger with him.
Stark pushed the screen aside and pulled out his StarkPhone, swiping through it and glancing unconcernedly at Fury, all his anger deftly hidden. “If you need blood pressure medication, I’m afraid I can’t help you, I’m only on antipsychotics.”
“What are you doing, Mr. Stark?” Fury snarled.
Stark raised an eyebrow. “Uh, kinda been wondering the same thing about you.”
Fury’s temple pulsed. Bruce wondered detachedly what the man’s heart rate was, and if his own was getting too high. He took a second to monitor it, decided he was in the clear, and was dragged back to the moment by a scolding about how apparently he and Stark weren’t doing their jobs.
“We are,” Banner said, finding that a lot of his anger was directed at Fury in this moment. “The model’s locked and sweeping for the signature. When we get a hit, we’ll have a location within half a mile.”
“And then you’ll get your cube back, no muss, no fuss,” Stark said, in a dangerously polite tone. His phone dinged and he looked down with a furrowed brow. “Yeah, what is Phase Two?”
Fury’s face tightened alarmingly, but before he could speak, Steve Rogers stepped through the still-open door and dropped a massive and science-fiction-y gun that resembled a handheld cannon on the table.
“Phase Two is SHIELD uses the cube to build energy weapons,” Steve snapped, and glanced at Stark. “Sorry. Computer was moving a little slow.”
“Glad to see you came to your senses,” Stark said dryly.
“Rogers, we gave you everything related to the Tesseract,” Fury said, visibly struggling to stay calm. “That doesn’t mean-”
“I’m sorry, Nick-” Stark spun a screen to face Fury, covered in what Bruce considered fairly damning evidence. He felt his pulse rising and struggled to control it.
Was he imagining a green tinge to his reflection in the window?
“What, were you lying?” Stark said with vicious satisfaction.
“I was wrong, Director,” Steve said quietly. “The world hasn’t changed a bit.”
Lying. They were lying.
Romanoff and Thor marched into the room. The tension palpably escalated.
“You want to think about removing yourself from this environment?” Romanoff asked, stepping toward him.
Bruce glared. “I was in Calcutta; I was fairly well removed.”
“Loki’s manipulating you,” she warned.
He let out a harsh ha . “And you’ve been doing what exactly?”
“Loki’s the one that prompted us to find this lie,” Stark said. “Trying to communicate with us. With me.”
Romanoff froze, then turned to him. “What do you mean?”
A buzzing filled Bruce’s ears, and he missed Tony’s explanation, but Romanoff’s response caught his attention. “He was odd when I spoke to him as well,” she said slowly.
Fury turned on her. “You spoke - I ordered that that containment unit be restricted to anyone but me!”
Romanoff gave him a look that dripped disdain.
“There’s something more going on here,” Tony added.
Bruce was watching Fury still, and he noticed that the man definitely reacted to that statement. With what, he couldn’t tell, but something.
Fury knew more than he was telling. More even than was in the files.
“I’d still like to know why SHIELD is building weapons of mass destruction,” Bruce said, struggling to stay calm. If the conversation stagnated he’d just keep spiraling up.
“Because of him,” Fury half shouted, pointing at Thor.
Everyone shut up.
“Me?” Thor looked equal parts shocked and furious.
“Our first interaction with someone not of Earth revealed that not only are we not alone in this universe, we are hopefully - hilariously - outgunned,” Fury snapped.
Thor glared. “My people want nothing but peace with Midgard.”
“But you’re not the only people out there, are you?” Fury shot back.
“You still shouldn’t have kept it a secret,” Stark snapped.
Bruce was struggling to process all this. He understood Fury’s reasoning. He even halfway agreed with it. But he didn’t trust that those weapons would be used well in the hands of this man in particular. And he was so sick of being lied to and betrayed and used by every authority figure he ever interacted with.
Looking at the faces of Stark and Steve, temporarily united against Fury’s lies, Bruce suspected his teammates felt more or less the same.
“Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to you,” Thor growled.
“So now we’re not even allowed to defend ourselves?” Romanoff said, rounding on him. “We’re supposed to rely on the protection of a monarchy we can’t even contact on our own yet?”
“It was a sign that the Earth was ready for a higher form of war,” Thor insisted.
“War has no higher form,” Steve fired back.
“All of you calm down,” Fury ordered.
Thor rounded on him. “And you. Do you always treat your champions with so little trust? I do not think I wish to work under your command any longer, Director.”
“No more secrets,” Stark snapped. “And I don’t trust you with those weapons.”
“I’m sorry, remind me how you made your fortune?” Fury said.
“And I stopped because I saw the damage weaponry can do in the wrong hands,” Stark rejoined. “I was betrayed by someone I trusted and something that was only supposed to be used for good ended up murdering innocents. So I changed. I thought I’d gotten away from that.” He glanced at Steve. “Looks like we were both wrong.”
The StarkPhone dinged again. Bruce’s ears were still buzzing but he forced himself to pay attention, stay focused-
“Well this is interesting,” Stark said. “Capsicle, remind me - how long did it take them to wake you up?”
“I woke up three weeks ago,” Steve said tightly. “Four days after they pulled me out of the ice.”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Stark said. “Looks like we found another one of Fury’s little lies.” Fury, Bruce noted, was about to burst. “You were in a medically induced coma for fourteen months before they brought you out of it.”
“ What ?” Steve shouted.
“And you know why Fury got you involved?” Stark continued, speaking to Steve but with his eyes locked on Fury. “Because of her.”
Romanoff’s composure was perfect. She arched a single auburn brow as every eye in the room turned to her.
“I am a loyal SHIELD agent,” she said tightly.
“Evidently Captain Eyepatch here has his doubts,” Stark said. “Because Captain America was his trump card in case the Widow ever went rogue.” He glanced down at the phone again. “Oh, so that’s where Coulson is.”
“Coulson,” Bruce said, and Steve looked up as well. “He’s a… a good man.”
“He’s coming back from Fury’s little hidey-hole called Widow watch,” Stark said, every word a bullet, and looked at Romanoff. “Looks like your boss really doesn’t trust you. He has a full-time fully-staffed task force stalking your every move.”
Romanoff looked at Fury.
“You went off the grid,” he snapped. “I got worried. Understandably.”
“Hold up,” Bruce said, thoughts tangling around the one snag in this line of conversation. “You left Captain America in a medical coma. Captain America is on the SHIELD threat watch list?”
“Probably ranked right around a swarm of angry bees,” Stark muttered. “Threatened! I feel threatened! Fury, you let a threat onto your team!”
“This isn’t a team, this is a chemical mixture that does the opposite of teamwork,” Bruce said, because it was the one thing he was sure of right now. Exhaustion was eating away the edges of his rationality and his control, but this he knew. “We’re… we’re a time bomb.”
He became aware that his fists were clenched.
“You need to step away,” Fury warned, hand going to a pistol holster on his hip.
Bruce’s laugh caught in his throat.
“You people are so petty,” Thor mused. “And weak.”
“You didn’t think that when we fought in the woods, Point Break,” Stark sneered.
Thor took a step closer, squaring up. “Remove your metal suit and what do you become?” he challenged.
Stark shrugged, the dismissal in his eyes perfectly calculated to wind Thor up. “Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.”
“Yet I could take you weaponless in naught but my nightclothes,” Thor scoffed.
“Back off,” Steve warned, stepping forward. “We’re on the same side here.”
“And you,” Thor added, rounding on the Captain. “You call yourself a hero of your people? Everything special about you came out of a bottle. ”
“Well, this is fantastic disproof of the idea that Asgardians have higher IQs than we do, because you clearly did not understand the files in the slightest,” Stark mused.
“Enough,” Romanoff warned.
Thor turned his glare on her. Steve and Stark remained shoulder to shoulder. Fury stood to the side. Bruce wanted to laugh. “Yeah, this is a team…”
“Agent Romanoff, escort Dr. Banner to…”
“Where?” he mocked when Fury trailed off. “You rented my room.”
Fury sighed and adopted a patronizing tone. One of Bruce’s major pet peeves. “The cell was just in case-”
“In case you needed to kill me, but you can’t! I know, I’ve tried!” Bruce spat.
A beat of silence took the room.
“I got low,” he continued, wanting to shock them, to make them understand , sleep deprivation shattering the controls he normally kept around both his past and his emotions until he couldn’t stop the words pouring out of his mouth. “I couldn’t see a way out, so I put a bullet in my mouth. The other guy spit it out. So I moved on. I focused on helping people. I was good until you dragged me back into this freak show just to lie to me exactly like Ross did!”
He paused, breathing heavily, and turned to Romanoff, who was visibly unnerved for the first time. Good. Let them see what he really was. “You want to see my secret, Agent? You want to know how I stay in control?”
“Dr. Banner,” Fury said, his voice tightly controlled. “Put down the spear.”
Bruce looked down at his hand.
The gold handle of the staff winked innocently back at him.
Bruce dropped it with a clatter.
The buzzing faded, disappointed, and he was once again himself. Tired, hungry, angry and betrayed, but securely in control.
“Sorry, kids. Guess you don’t get to see my party trick after all,” he said caustically.
The tension in the room was shattered by a beeping computer.
“Got it.” Stark walked over to the screen and started scanning windows. “Readings are consistent. Banner?”
Bruce shook his head, stepped away from the scepter, and pulled up his workstation.
“This is ridiculous. You are all of you beneath me. I’ll go after the Tesseract on my own,” Thor snapped. “Tell me where it is.”
“We go together,” Stark snapped.
Bruce stared at his screen, willing the location to load.
“After this display?” Thor shook his head. “You Midgardians are petty, squabbling creatures. You will only slow my progress. The Tesseract and Loki both belong on Asgard, where they can properly be controlled.”
“Because you’ve done a fantastic job controlling Loki so far,” Steve said.
The blank screen blinked and beeped and spat out a location.
Bruce’s eyes widened. “Guys-”
And explosion shook the helicarrier.
Bruce fell, and fell, and hit a metal catwalk with a crash.
Sensations assaulted him. Thor shouting “I go after Loki!” and Steve saying something about a suit and Fury barking orders; the cold bite of metal into his skin, the ache of new bruises, the taste of acid on his tongue and the thunder of his pulse. The only thing he could think as he looked around and saw an engine room all around with Romanoff trapped next to him was that his heart rate was skyrocketing and he was so angry and so afraid and too tired to control anything, much less himself.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
“If I’d known Midgardian women all looked like you and the illustrious Black Widow, I may have visited this pathetic realm sooner,” Loki mused.
Darcy shrugged. “Well, unfortunately, not everyone can look this awesome. You just got lucky. There’s a disproportionate number of physically attractive people on this flying funhouse. I think they put something in the water.”
Loki blinked blue eyes at her.
Darcy did a clinical scan of his body, head to feet and back up again. “Huh. From what Thor said, I thought you’d be shorter.”
“You know Thor?” he asked, drifting closer.
Darcy sat down in the chair Romanoff had abandoned. “Uh. Yeah. He dated and dumped my best friend.”
“Yet here you are, working with him.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Darcy said, examining the prisoner. He didn’t act like he cared about being locked up, which was worrying in itself. “I’m working for the same people he’s cooperating with.”
Loki half smiled. “A subtle distinction.”
“But important.”
“How long have you been watching, little Midgardian?”
Darcy snorted. “Enough with the condescension. I get plenty of it from Sir Asshole. Are there any Asgardians who wouldn’t make me want to punch them in the face?” She paused. “Oh, and - a while. I hid when I saw the cameras go down.”
Loki was smirking.
“But you knew that, didn’t you,” Darcy said, realizing.
His smirk grew bigger.
“You weren’t sleeping at all when I walked in.”
Loki shrugged gracefully, and then, with a flash of green light, he had a body double lying on the hard metal bench. “I can’t say that I was.”
“Why’d you ask, then?”
“To see if you would lie.” The body double vanished.
“I try not to lie unless there’s something to get from it.”
Loki smiled. “A woman after my own heart.”
Darcy raised an eyebrow and waggled her fingers in his direction. “Doesn’t seem like you’ve got one. Genocidal megalomaniac and all that shit.”
“You do not know me,” Loki said in a hard voice.
Darcy fell silent. She didn’t really know why she was here, or where she was going with this conversation, except that there was something intriguing about him. And obviously she wanted to learn more, like for the sake of the team. Duh.
Nope. Definitely no selfish motives here.
“Tell me about Asgard,” she said at last.
Loki blinked. Clearly he hadn’t been expecting that. Ha. Take that.
“Why do you ask?” he said.
She made a face. “I’m trying to figure you out.”
“Your interrogators already tried.”
“Yeah, but see, they’re stupid. And I’m not. So.” Darcy didn’t actually think that. Mostly. They were well educated and intelligent people, probably, but she suspected they’d been too narrow-minded and too afraid to actually get anything out of Loki. Plus this was her area of expertise.
And also, possibly, a chance to be useful for once in her stupid life.
Darcy shoved away that uncomfortable self-analysis and glared at Loki, waiting.
Impossibly, after a few seconds, he laughed a little. “You are quite a spitfire, did you know that?”
“I’ve been informed,” Darcy muttered. “It’s not usually a compliment.”
“It is from me.”
A warm glow of pride settled in her stomach, and she did her best to shove it away. Bad Darcy , she told herself. Do not take compliments from crazy people!
Loki sat back on the bench. “Asgard,” he mused. “The realm of my youth is very different from Midgard. Our technologies are so far beyond yours that to many Midgardians we might seem as though we do not use technology at all. It is… both wondrous and horrifying, at times. In many ways, it is better than your realm. In others, it is worse.”
Darcy was silent a moment, stilling her heart and telling herself sternly that seeing Asgard was a ridiculous thing to want. “You suck at storytelling.”
“I wasn’t telling a story,” he said with a cruel smile.
“Then tell one.”
“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Nope. Plus bothering people's fun. I’m like a gold-medal pest.”
“Here’s a story,” he said, approaching the glass until he loomed over her. Even though this cage was built for the Hulk, if felt freakily thin, but Darcy refused to stand. It felt too much like chickening out. “There was once a little boy with a heart full of love and ambition, who grew up believing that he would one day sit on a throne. Then one day his eyes were opened, and he realized that he never would, because the people who’d loved him had lied to him all his life. Love turned to bitterness and then to hatred, and ambition untempered by love is a dangerous thing. Now that little boy is a boy no longer, and he's come to make somebody pay."
Darcy looked at him for a long moment, and he looked back.
“Sounds like a story that hasn’t been finished yet,” she said at last.
Loki flinched.
That caught her attention. Darcy squinted at him. A flinch was decidedly against Darcy’s code, and she thought probably against his also, because it revealed far too much to the people around you.
When Loki’s gaze returned to her, something in his face had hardened, those glacial blue eyes turning frozen and cold. “You ought to leave.”
“I think we covered this,” Darcy said, glaring at him. “Gold medal pest, remember?”
That was when the explosion happened.
The world faded in and out.
Darcy blinked and ordered the fuzziness in her eyes to go away. It receded a little, reluctantly, and she sat up even though her body ached all over.
She was lying at the top of the catwalk stairs where Romanoff had come from earlier, crumpled against the cold metal. She’d been thrown when…
Oh. Right. The explosion.
That probably wasn't a good sign.
Darcy raised a hand and felt around gingerly on her scalp. Her fingers found an insanely tender patch on the back, already rising into a bump and damp with blood. “Mother fucker ,” she hissed, and dragged herself to her feet.
Loki.
She spun and almost fell because apparently her balance was shit at the moment and her eyes fastened on Loki stepping out of his cell and she realized that the glass had been doing its job after all, because he was so much more intimidating with nothing but air in between them.
“You could’ve done that all along,” Darcy complained.
He didn’t smile; his face had gone cold and blank. “Yes.”
Feet pounded on the stairs. “ Loki! ” someone shouted.
Darcy knew that voice.
Loki looked at Darcy. “Hide, little Midgardian. If you interfere in the slightest, I will not be permitted to spare you.”
“Permitted?”
Loki’s glare intensified.
Darcy scrambled aside and into the same little room with the one-way window that she’d hidden in before, feeling like she’d just been given a clue to something that she really should be able to grasp but couldn't, yet. It was like looking into a black room and not knowing if it was the size of a closet or a football stadium, and she was holding one of those badass military flashlights, and if she could just turn it on she'd figure things out.
“Loki,” snarled a familiar voice, and when Darcy shoved her hair out of her face and jammed her glasses back up her nose, she saw Thor standing in the doorway, glaring at Loki.
The tension in the room was thick enough to taste.