This pseudo-prologue is a sort of flash forward, before we get into the meat of the story. Certain scenes in the future will be the reason this is rated M, but warnings will appear at the beginnings of those chapters. Please please please review, I don't want to beat the OFCxLoki pair to death if nobody is going to read and enjoy. Spelling/grammatical/other errors are entirely my own fault, please let me know if I need to make corrections. Oh, and I brought Coulson back. Because I can't bear to think he really died. Thanks, and happy reading!
Prologue
The rattle of the door handle and the cold of the metal didn't do much to ease her nerves. Debriefing was, without a doubt, Agent Zara Shade's least favorite part of working for S.H.I.E.L.D. She removed the earbuds from her ears as she entered the room; she had been listening to "Knights of Cydonia" by Muse on her iPod to get herself as pumped up as she could (which wasn't really pumped up at all) before she had to word-vomit the last four months of her life to government tape recorders. As she pulled a chair out from the table, its legs grated mercilessly against the floor, and she grimaced. Sitting with her legs wipe apart in spectacular masculine fashion, she crossed her arms and slumped against the back of the chair as she looked across the table at Coulson.
"Agent Shade, thank you for meeting with me," said Agent Phil Coulson, as he punched the "record" buttons on an old-fashioned Cassette recorder about the size of a brick, and two smaller digital recorders. This debriefing was not one S.H.I.E.L.D. ever wanted to lose.
C'mon, Phil. Drop the formalities, for Pete's sake. You know I would rather go through Basic Training again, 100 times, before sitting in this chair. She very nearly rolled her eyes at him, and would have were it not for the two "hidden" cameras mounted in the corners of the room opposite her seat at the table. Their power cords were neatly taped to the all-glass walls of the room, having been quickly set up to record this interview. Zara knew the glass was soundproof to humans, but she felt even more on display than usual, skin prickling with the feeling, because of who was on the outside of the glass.
Coulson spoke slightly louder than normal and very clearly to the room and the recording devices, "Agent Phil Coulson, S.H.I.E.L.D., October thirteenth, nine thirty a.m., debriefing…" and then to Zara, "Agent, please state your name and position."
Had you bet her a million dollars, or even ten million dollars, four months ago, that she would be sitting here, across from her colleague and friend, being interviewed about this, she would have sunk her right elbow into your jaw. "Agent Zara Shade, S.H.I.E.L.D., Level Seven and Lead P.R.O.T.E.C.T.O.R." She leaned forward slightly as she told the room who she was, her hand going to her copper-blonde hair, the tell Coulson read, correctly, that she felt acutely uncomfortable with what was coming next.
"… on her return from the alien planet… realm… of Asgard." She had never heard him so excited as when he completed that sentence. "Excited" for Phil would have looked somewhat like "fairly amused" did on her, but then she had never been one to hide her feelings very well. On her test to become a Field Agent, she had scored in the 100th percentile on protective instincts (literally; she made the highest score S.H.I.E.L.D. had ever recorded, before or since), in the upper eightieth on combat tactics and strategy, and in the low fifties on espionage; she wasn't good at being anybody but herself. Coulson's eyes glimmered just a little, and the left corner of his mouth turned up as he implored, "Please recount your mission, from the beginning."
"As the Chitauri attack on New York City was coming to a close, S.H.I.E.L.D. Directory Fury assigned me, in capacity of P.R.O.T.E.C.T.O.R., to bring in the alien god, Loki. He has since been confirmed as the… reason… behind the attack. We were winning against the Chitauri, and Fury deemed it time to capture him as a war criminal." Some of the color seeped from her already fair face, then, as she thought back on that day. Metal, glass, shreds of paper, shreds of people, littered the streets and sidewalks like so many leaves littered the yard of her childhood home at the end of Autumn. Civilian vehicles, taxis, and alien aircraft, all horrifyingly mangled, clogged the streets so much it could have been rush hour, except no sounds of honking or screeching tires echoed off the glass and concrete of the buildings, just deep rumblings and booms from adjacent streets and blocks.
She continued, "I was deployed to the second highest level of Stark Tower, the platform he lands on when he's in the Iron Man suit, where the target was supposed to be. Once I located him, I realized he was… out of commission. Conscious, able to move, but clearly worn out from the battle." A look through the glass into a pair of aquamarine eyes sent a shiver through her insides, and she looked away and brought a hand to her eyes, sighing. It had been a long four months since that day. "Banner did a good job beating the shit… I mean, beating him up, but I managed to get the target to the top of the tower, where Agent Romanoff was executing emergency medical aid on Dr. Selvig. The tesseract, and its cradle, were still holding open the hole in the sky, but the nuclear missile was already on course for the city. Stark, Iron Man, had been in pursuit for about a minute, then, I think. Apparently, the enemy could sense the tide turning… a huge brute of a Chitauri broke off from the main column as he came through the portal, and made a bee line for Stark Tower."
All the years of training, the hours spent on the reconnaissance missions, literally staring death in the face and learning how to block it out, save herself and her targets, tore from her mind then. This "guy" had been almost twice the size of a regular Chitauri, and his helmet crested over the crown of his skull instead of fitting snugly like the others'. Even without the bright coloring of what looked like blood drawn in grizzly patterns all over his armor and flyer, she could tell he was a Commanding Officer, in U.S. Military terms.
"He drew his weapon and fired, but not at the target or me, at first. The weapon was different from the other Chitauri guns… the blue glow of the gun was a lighter shade, and sharper… hard to look at directly. And the metal was brighter. It almost looked like the ugly, smaller cousin of the scepter that Romanoff used to shut down the space portal, actually." She blinked purposefully, twice, and took a breath, not noticing how Phil's blood pressure had spiked or how his posture straightened at her mention of the scepter-like weapon. "He shot at the tesseract, which, of course, didn't accomplish anything. The only option I had was to get the target out of the way, but the instant I made contact with the target to drag him out of the way, the Chitauri turned on us, let out a bark of laughter, and fired." Phantom pain flared in her left hip on the word "fired".
After a pause, Coulson gently prompted her. "Do you remember anything else, Agent? It's understandable if you don't, but any information could be a game changer later, as I'm sure you know."
She knew he threw in the sympathy because they had a bit of a history together, dozens of missions working with one another; any other operative would have gotten an unemotional, upfront command to continue. She smiled warmly at the thought.
"The blast, it hit both of us. Myself and Loki. In my left side, and I believe the right side of his chest. Either way… I couldn't see, but I could hear, the Chitauri leave the rooftop on his aircraft; I would guess he wanted to detach the tesseract from the machine, and when that didn't work, figured revenge against Loki was a better consolation than nothing. Agent Romanoff must have left Dr. Selvig, and came to check if we were still alive. Right before I blacked out, I registered that Stark had made contact with the nuke and was headed for the hole in the sky, and that Romanoff was scared shitless… sorry, she was taken aback, because… my wounds weren't bleeding. She'd have to tell you what it looked like, but it felt like my whole left side from my knee to my elbow had been run through with lightning bolts… then I passed out."
"And the target, Loki?" asked Coulson. "Where was he during all of that?" Phil's eyes had softened when hearing Zara recount the attack, but had grown wide at the promise of information on the infamous would-be ruler of Earth, the jackass who had stabbed him in the back and nearly killed him.
She chuckled too softly for even for the recording devices to hear, and answered, "Shot up just as badly as I was, right next to me. The heel of his boot came down square on my shin," making for a total of 47 bones broken in a single second, she finished the thought to herself.
Over three more hours, Agent Zara Shade told what she could, everything she remembered; she answered Coulson's questions and never grew tired of his promptings or requests for more detail. This debriefing hadn't been half so bad as she thought it would, if you didn't count that first part. Phil had even paused the interview to let a S.H.I.E.L.D. intern in with lunch (toasted ,smoked turkey wraps, one of her favorites). He had known she wasn't crazy about debriefing in the first place, and this would be one of the longest and the most detailed he had ever had to get. He decided that ten minutes of rustling sandwich paper in the background of the recording was a fair price for her willing cooperation, and for that small, delicious decision, she was thankful.
"One last question, Agent Shade," said Coulson, the trash from their lunch cold and stale near the edge of the table. She nodded.
"I understand that Odin, the political leader, King of Asgard, requested that you accompany his sons, Prince Thor and the war criminal Prince Loki, to their home…realm. I also understand that the tesseract provided the energy needed to transport the three of you across the galaxy. But didn't you say that Odin removed the tesseract from Thor's possession immediately, and he placed it in what you describe as a… 'weapons vault slash treasure chest'…", he grinned when he said "slash" aloud, "for safekeeping? Never to be used again?".
"Yes," she responded simply, knowing what was coming next and already smiling widely at the thought of explaining it.
Coulson regarded her with a level look before asking his "one last" question. "How did you get back home?"
At this, she again met the pair of aquamarine eyes that belonged to one of the main characters of her story, of her life, now. Loki had been pacing outside the glass room almost the entire time, sitting on a bench against an outside wall only to eat his lunch. For those nearly four hours, he had silently been reacting to her retelling. His guilty, furtive glances at the spoken parts; the dark looks as his face flushed at the untold moments, had thrilled Zara to no end. To get any reaction out of him over so short a time was an accomplishment she did not begrudge herself, and to see color like that rise in his cheeks… There were two sides of the story here: the official one, full of military jargon, that she spewed, honestly and nearly completely, to Coulson for S.H.I.E.L.D.'s records, and the infinitely more intimate one that only she and Loki had lived. Loki met her clear, gray eyes, and smiled with her, as she answered.
What did you think? Yes? No? Maybe? Stay tuned, we'll learn more about our heroine (and her job title!) and everyone's favorite God of Mischief in the next chapter (hopefully- please let me know if you like it!)