Okay, guys, chapter three. I hope this one will be a little more interesting, but we shall see, shall we?
Disclaimer: refer to chapter 1
"Are we telling Skye about Loki?" May asked, looking at Coulson. The young woman was still loading all her things on the Bus, and this needed to be discussed.
Coulson shook his head. "No," he replied. "She might be a consultant, but she's not S.H.I.E.L.D., and this whole thing has been kept very hush hush. So unless she absolutely has to know, she's staying in the dark."
"And if she finds out?" Ward asked. "We can't guarantee she won't do something stupid like let that megalomaniac out."
"No one's that stupid," Coulson told him. He looked at May. "But just in case... keep an eye on him."
May nodded. "Alright."
X
Simmons looked anxiously over at Coulson before looking back at Fitz. "Maybe you should tell him..." she started.
"I'm not telling him, it was your idea!" Fitz countered.
Simmons frowned, looking for a counter-argument. She and Fitz had talked a bit about this after they'd received the report of an 0-8-4, and while they thought it was somewhat of a good idea, they weren't too sure Coulson would agree.
"What was your idea?" Skye asked from behind them.
Simmons gulped. She knew she couldn't lie, so she looked to Fitz for help. He cleared his throat awkwardly. "To, uh, check over some of our equipment again."
"But he might get annoyed, since we've gone over it several times already," Simmons said quickly, hoping Skye believed her.
"Why don't you just check it?" she asked. "I mean, you guys are the super smart scientists, and it's your equipment."
"B-But he had a specific inventory, and we... want to make sure we didn't forget anything," Fitz said.
"And who better to know than Coulson himself, right?" she asked with an awkward laugh.
Skye raised a brow at them, but said no more. When she walked off, they both sighed with relief.
"So..." Simmons said.
Fitz just shook his head. " No. Your idea, you ask."
Simmons frowned, but realizing the debate had been settled, she walked over to Coulson. "Um... Coulson?" she began, getting his attention.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Well, this is an 0-8-4..." she started, unable to look him in the eye. "And considering the last one was Thor's hammer... I was thinking it might be a good idea if maybe... we brought Loki in on this?"
Coulson's expression hardened. "No," he said with emphasis. "I don't care that he helped a little bit last time, I don't care that Fury gave him to us, any help he's giving us, he's giving us from inside the Cage. And whatever we find, he's not even touching it. The last thing we need is him getting his hands on another alien mind-control staff."
X
Loki had counted the number of tiles in the Cage three times by the time he felt the Bus start to move again. He'd no idea why they'd stopped for a while again, but of course, no one was telling him anything. He briefly wondered if it would always been like this, or if they might eventually at least let him out of this box every once in a while. With Coulson in charge, he doubted it, but a man could dream.
He wondered about that piece of Chitauri metal he'd been told to inspect. He was sure Fitz-Simmons had figured out what that liquid inside was—they certainly appeared capable enough—but he himself had no idea. What could a human use Chitauri metal for, and why would they want to? His first thought, of course, was armor, but the piece he'd been shown didn't look like it couldn't have come from anything of the sort unless it was carefully removed with expert precision. And with Chitauri metal being quite durable, he doubted there were many human tools that could do that. Some, surely, especially if they came from Stark, but few.
The liquid had also looked like nothing he'd ever seen before. It couldn't be Chitauri, so it had to be of human make. But that once again begged the question: what was its use?
The door opened and he once again expected to see Agent May. Instead, he was surprised to see Agent Ward instead. Though he appeared no less hostile than his last visitor.
"Agent Ward," Loki said. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure." Then it clicked. "Ah, Agent May is piloting, is she not?" When Ward didn't answer, he continued, "There must be some reason you've come here other than to just stand there and glower at me. So what do you want? Is my help required again?"
"We don't know," Ward told him. "What kinds of objects do you know of that might end up here on Earth?"
Loki raised a brow. "I'm not quite sure what you mean."
"I mean like Thor's hammer," Ward replied.
"Odin cast Mjolnir here again?" Loki asked. "Well, I can't say I'm surprised, it must be a big disappointment for Thor to return without me."
"The hammer isn't here," the human told him. "But we picked up the signature of another strange object. Thought you might know something about that."
Loki looked at him with a blank expression. "Agent Ward, I'd been missing for months until coming to Midgard, which I tried to invade, and then Thor pleaded with your leader and I've ended up here. Tell me when I would have had time to orchestrate such a thing."
Ward's jaw set in irritation. "Not what I meant. I was asking if you knew about any objects lingering around in space that would end up here one way or another."
"I'm sorry I'm not of much help," Loki said insincerely. "Perhaps if you were to bring it to me to inspect..."
"Not a chance," Ward told him. He strode out without another word.
X
They'd landed without incident, and Coulson had just left to deal with some things outside.
"Are you seeing this?" Fitz asked, showing his readings to Simmons. "It's alive."
Skye looked at the device and backed up a bit. "Wait, like, alive alive?"
"It has a functioning power source," he replied.
"Sleepy's reading radionuclides, but they don't match any known isotope," Simmons said. "It's not like anything we've ever seen before." She frowned a little to herself. "I still think maybe we should have brought Loki in on this one..."
There was a beat of silence before Skye spoke. "Wait, Loki, like... 'Loki of Asgard, burdened with glorious purpose'?"
Simmons looked over at Fitz for help, but he looked just as panicked as she felt. "Oops?"
X
"Tesseract technology?" Skye asked even as she stepped a little further back from the device. "Isn't that the thing that powered Loki's scepter?"
Coulson's eyes flickered toward Fitz-Simmons before looking back at her. "Yes..." he answered, hoping she wasn't going to ask what he felt like she was going to.
"So wouldn't it be a good idea to bring Loki in on this?" Skye asked. "I mean, if he knows Tesseract stuff..."
Fitz-Simmons shrunk back a little at the glare Coulson gave them. "You two, we're talking about this later." He looked at Skye. "You remember when you asked me if I took a bullet?"
"Yeah...?"
"The real hit I took was that Tesseract-powered staff to the back," Coulson replied. "I was only gone for a few seconds, but that doesn't change the fact that that man killed me. We're not using him unless absolutely necessary."
Skye took a moment to absorb the fact that Coulson had actually died. "But something powered by the same thing he used, something that could blow up any minute, isn't absolutely necessary?" When he didn't answer, she frowned. "Okay..."
X
"So what's the deal with Loki being here, really?" Skye asked quietly as she sat down across from Ward. She figured that if she wasn't supposed to know about it, then the men they'd picked up definitely weren't supposed to.
"Thor made a deal with Fury," Ward told her. "We keep Loki instead of sending him up to Asgard, he stays with us for when we need him. I don't know why the director assigned him to us, when he knows Coulson's history with him, but well... he's here to stay now."
"And I wasn't supposed to know because...?"
"You're not officially S.H.I.E.L.D.," he replied. "As far as I know, not even many people in S.H.I.E.L.D. know about this little arrangement."
"So basically, he's another secret you guys are hiding," Skye said. "Where is he, anyway?"
"Why do you wanna know?" Ward asked with a raised brow.
"Just curious."
X
Simmons looked at the monitor, wondering whether or not to turn the speaker on. She knew Coulson wanted to keep Loki far away from this, but...
"It was a direct order, Simmons," Fitz told her, seemingly reading her mind.
She sighed. "I know." She watched the God of Mischief leaning back in the chair, staring at the camera, as though he knew they were watching him. "And I know all the things he did, I do, but... he hasn't really made a move against us since he's been here."
"He hasn't really had a chance to," Fitz replied. "He's either been in there or under May's supervision. But he might still be plotting something. Y'know, for if we let our guard down."
Hearing movement outside the lab, she quickly turned the camera feed off. If it was one of Reyes's men, they weren't supposed to know, and Simmons wasn't going to be the one to blow the horn a second time. Of course, all thoughts of Loki disappeared when the men came in for them.
X
Loki's eyes widened as he felt the plane begin to violently shake. His chair tipped, knocking him to the floor. "What is going on?!" he yelled, knowing full well there was a microphone in the camera they used to watch him. Panic gripped his chest as he realized what was happening.
The Bus was starting to fall.
He was jostled around the room, but kept his focus on the wall opposite him, hoping to chase away any visions of the vast blackness that had claimed him for so many months after his fall from the Bifrost. He didn't want to think about it.
"Consider it a quake," he muttered to himself, even as he was knocked side to side in the room. "Simply the earth moving below." But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't force himself to believe. They were falling. On the bright side, he mused, at least this wouldn't be followed by months of torture.
X
"Ward?" Coulson said when the plane stabilized. "Go check on our little guest. Make sure he hasn't died."
Ward nodded and left.
Skye looked at Coulson curiously. "I thought you didn't care about him."
"I don't," the man replied. "But I also don't want to be the one to tell Thor his little brother died on our watch."
"Oh, good point."
X
Ward's hand went to his gun when he saw that Loki wasn't in the chair. He relaxed, however, when he saw Loki laying on the floor, disheveled and wide eyed. When he heard the door open, the man looked over, staring up at Ward. He made no move to stand.
"What happened?" Loki asked, and Ward noticed that it wasn't his typical bored or taunting tone. If anything, he sounded slightly shaken.
"We got hijacked," Ward said simply. "We blew a hole in the side of the plane."
"Oh." Loki watched him go as the statement sunk in. As the door closed, he exclaimed, "You did what?!"
Another 'clip' chapter. I promise you, the entire story won't be like this. But like I said last week, I don't really want to write out the entire episode when Loki's not in much of it. I think next chapter is going to have a little more involvement, but we'll see. Also, I have a headcanon that the fall from the Bifrost gave Loki a fear of falling from extreme heights. Like the altitude the Bus was at. And as always, big thanks to my beta, pokemon fan 98! (The whole 'first time Loki actually expressed anything besides being a cocky shit or calmly indifferent being when the Bus gets a hole blown in it' was her idea)
See ya on the flipside~ Elisa out~