Falling rain, orange and deadly, accompanying something as deadly as a falling sun. All hope is lost, so even with the war unfolding like a crimson palette around you, you stare at the approaching doom, for a moment forgetting your fatigue, your open wounds, your obligations that involves the protection of the planet earth as you awe at the beauty of the fiery carcass of what was supposed to be your way out. Words leave your mouth, but you can't hear them. The furious roar of the flames lock everything else out. It is just you, and the falling rain, orange and deadly, becoming one as darkness envelopes everything. And that... is the end.


He woke up with a start, I could see as much. Mr. Agent Phillip Jason Coulson. I counted the names and titles on my fingers, the number taking up my hand, studied a rather nasty flesh wound on my index finger that was getting infected and by now was attaining a rather sickening green yellow hue. Attaining. What a nice word. I really ought to write something using that word one time. Attaining... as for the flesh wound, most of my fingers had them. It was the unfortunate side effect of having my fingernails forcibly removed. The man groaned where he lay in the only bed in the room, was clearly just realising that he was in pain, soon also realising that he probably didn't have the faintest idea where he was.

I moved my gaze to the index finger again. Would the wise thing to do in this case be to press out the questionable looking liquid, or leave it be and hope for the best? Had the circumstances been optimal I would of course have gone for the former, but with our shared accommodations in their current state...

"Wha.. Where.. WHERE AM I?!" the man exclaimed, falling out of the bed in his hurried attempt to get out of it. I sighed.

"You are here." I replied, a mumble that may seem to be more of a loud thought than a statement meant to be heard by others. It still served a purpose, however, as it made him jump and whir around from his awkward sprawl. Thusly he was sitting up, eyes roaming his new scenery, likely the only one he would get in a good while. Cold concrete floors, polished to perfection upon a time, though now displaying a variety of questionable stains, dust bunnies, and less dust-related things generally smaller than an average grape. Our wonderful walls were no warmer, stealing even more heat away, and were adorned with rusting shackles all around, two sets per wall. My wrists were beautifully embellished by one set, long since chafing away all skin beneath them. The walls were rock, telling of our underground position, roughly carved and giving our surroundings a cavey feel, a feature the roof shared. Even so, the room had a sort of rectangular shape, and was exit-able through a heavy looking metal door, the exit-able part of it being contestable since it was locked shut from the outside. So here he was, Mr. Agent Phillip Jason Coulson, sitting by a hospital bed that upon closer inspection would show clear signs of use, in a room only lit up by an old-schooly lantern better fit in the 1800s, accompanied by me, his beautiful haven't-washed-myself-or-brushed-my-hair-in-weeks roommate. At least I hoped it to be weeks. Time tended to run along with no clear signs of the sun to be detected anywhere, along with my lovely concierge Lukas, the guard currently guarding the very heavy door, and that never seemed to learn the concept of time-keeping with his clearly irregular visitations to check up on me.

"Can you hear me?" I zoned back to my new company, who by now had retorted to using slow and overly clear words.

"I'm not retarded, so you can leave that tone at the door." I commented dryly, my brows creeping closer to my eyes in indignation. He blinked at that, perhaps taken aback, but I felt that I had the upper right to feel insulted with the tone he sported just before.

"Where are we?" he asked then, switching his question from singular to plural in a clear attempt to appease me. Ah. Appease. Appease was a good word too. The letter A was really having a blast today.

"I already told you, you are here." I repeated. He was clearly not satisfied with the answer, but at the moment I had little else to provide. If here was Seattle, Bahamas, Beijing or Svartalfheim was currently beyond me.

"Are you alright?" I asked when he seemed to deflate ever so slightly. He was wondrously unharmed, the poor thing, at least from what I could see. Dressed in a suit more fit at a funeral than in a cell, only decorated by a fading yellowish purple handprint around his neck. All his fingernails remained where they were supposed to be, possibly even manicured a little. I would have to wait at least a few weeks before I even had anything to manicure, that depending on whether I got to keep my next set of nails in the first place. A manicure was definitely on my bucket list, though. He was looking at me oddly. Why was he looking at me oddly?

"How many are keeping us here?" he asked. Again with the "we".

"How many?" I cocked my head to the side, moved my legs so I sat in an impromptu lotus.

"Do you know?" he continued.

"No." I replied honestly.

"What kind of place is this then?" he inquired further.

"Are you sure you want to continue asking questions?" I asked back.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean, if I never get to finish answering, and you only keep on asking, then I'll start forgetting what you want to know, and the information may be quite valuable." I explained.

"Finish answering? I thought you said you didn't know how many people are keeping us here." he smiled slightly, perhaps to be polite or perhaps because I amused him.

"As for the kind of place this is, you do not want to know. You only need to know that they are no allies of SHIELD." I said.

"How do you know about..."

"And here I thought I told you to stop asking so many questions, Mr. Agent Phillip Jason Coulson." I interrupted him.

"How do you..?" he tried again.

"Because the question you asked was the numbers of guards present at this facility, though the question you really wanted answered is: are there many enough?" I interrupted him again, allowed some leeway between this statement and the next in case he wanted to say something about my deduction. Instead he was eyeing me patiently, finally realising that silence would earn him his reward.

"And the answer to that question isn't a tally, but rather a two-sided choice, like heads or tails. Yes, I do believe there is an impressive amount of captors, but no, not enough." my face split up in a diabolical grin.

"Not nearly enough."