Hello hello! Here out is all escalation and rising intensity; we've met (most) of our players, all the major ones for Bifurcation, and we're ready to rock.
So let's.
Thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, or in some way let me know you're enjoying! It might not look it, but this story is freaking hard to write. :P
5...}
"I've contacted Thor, sir."
"Good. He ever tell us long that would take?"
"No, sir."
Fury snorts. Natasha stays still, arms folded. She and Bruce had arrived that morning, Bruce quickly setting up in one of the spare labs. She watches Fury walk around the bridge and keeps her mind perfectly still. Waiting. Deep deep in the corner of her mind, locked away, are emotions and lists of all the ways she will hurt the one who has stolen Barton.
She will be no use to Barton if she cannot focus.
A long time ago, he saved her. She plans to do the same for him.
There is no 'if' in Natasha's world.
XXXXXX
Even this deep inside the hellicarrier Bruce can hear the storm beginning to gather outside. He tries not to take it as an omen—man of science—but he's had a chance to watch the video of Loki's arrival now and look through what other information SHIELD is willing to give him.
This doesn't feel right.
The Other Guy even agrees. (Not frightened, Bruce doesn't think the Other Guy even knows what fear is, but it's a recognition of something wrong, something to perhaps punch first before it gets the upper hand, or potentially (this is the shocking part) leave alone in favour of punching other things.)
Bruce knows what's driving Loki—in the set of his mouth and how he moves even though he's clearly about to collapse. It's in how he fights, fast and hard and dirty until nothing is left that can threaten him. Knows it the same way he knows that he'll never die, not so long as the Other Guy is around and watching.
Survive.
Cornered animals are always dangerous; this one looks rabid.
It makes Bruce uneasy and the Other Guy rumble low in the back of his mind.
XXXXXX
A storm rolls in. Natasha had asked Steve to go outside to wait on Loki's brother to arrive, and Steve only hopes the storm doesn't make it difficult for him.
It's a nasty storm, sky going pitch black and crackling with a ferocity that reminds him a bit of storms from his distant childhood. It's raining cats and dogs; Steve can hardly see a few feet in front of him.
Then he goes blind.
He doesn't actually go blind, but his eyes certainly are still readjusting after the bolt of lightning that struck just a few yards away. He can hear some of the SHIELD agents around him talking and yelling, and all his hair has frizzed up from being so close to where the lightning touched down.
There's a man standing in the blackened spot on the deck. He's huge—dwarfs Steve easily, which is saying something—dressed in blue and silver armour and a blood red cape. Lightning blue eyes meet Steve's and Steve realizes with a jolt that this is apparently the person Natasha wanted him to wait on.
He is mostly certain that travel by thunderstorm isn't normal.
"Thor?" he asks cautiously.
The possibly-man (how did he survive that landing?) smiles and loops the hammer he is holding into his belt. It is a wide smile and it puts Steve at ease some even though it doesn't quite manage to reach Thor's eyes. Steve holds his hand out and Thor shakes it. Static shocks up Steve's arm and he forces a grin instead of a yelp.
"Steve Rogers. Natasha asked me to come meet you and get you up to speed." The storm is already gone except for a few wisps of dark gray cloud and a light drizzle.
"Well met, Steve, son of Rogers. I am not sure what speed it is you wish to get me to, but if it brings me more quickly to my brother I am more than happy to oblige." And wow it's kind of like Shakespeare but not really. It's the first time Steve has felt less like of a walking anachronism than everyone else. Huh.
"It's just a phrase here," he says quickly, "It means that I'm going to tell you what we know and what's going on." He begins to walk back inside and Thor falls in step with him. "We don't actually know where your brother is right now, but he hasn't left Earth yet from what we can tell." Thor's face doesn't exactly fall, but the smile does vanish. "We've got some really smart people looking for him."
Steve keeps talking as they walk down the corridors and Thor listens quietly—surprising considering how big he is. Steve keeps expecting Thor's voice to boom whenever he stops Steve to ask questions, but it doesn't. It's… strange. Everything about Thor is strange though, so he doesn't let it get to him.
Just keeps talking, explaining what they know, and Thor just keeps listening.
XXXXXX
"Look, you actually find him and I might consider coming in. But until you do, Tony Stark—who, I'd like to remind you, you cannot afford—has things to do and people to see." Tony flips the phone shut before Fury can say anything else, stepping out of the glass elevator and breezing past the secretary at the desk. He's through the office door before she's managed to get out of her chair
Tony shuts the door behind himself, twisting the lock closed with a snick.
"You," he says, turning around and pointing, "are going to give me some answers."
Baldr raises one eyebrow, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands over his stomach. He looks entirely at ease that Tony just burst into his office without any sort of warning or appointment. One blue eye watches Tony as he moves forward; the other is sightless white, surrounded in scar tissue (some childhood accident involving a great deal of mistletoe and one extraordinarily enraged Loki), and Tony will absolutely never admit that it creeps him out.
"Really, Stark, if you needed to talk you could have simply called," he says with a slow smirk. "After all, it's the least I could do since you left the weapons industry for greener pastures."
Tony grins wide and sinks down into one of the office chairs, sprawling out. He always forgets how smooth (by which he means 'oiled snake writhing in butter') Baldr is until he actually has to deal with him.
(It reminds him of Loki at parties, just before a prank came to fruition, and that might be some of why he always feels flat-footed around the cousin.)
(The rest is in his one good eye, which looks so dreamy and kind and open, the kind of look that people trust instinctively.)
"That's a good one. You been saving that one for whenever we met next?"
"Hardly." Baldr's smirk is still firmly in place. "Some of us do not need note cards to be witty."
"That was one time. And I got rid of them," Tony says, playing up faux hurt.
"And then you admitted you to being Iron Man." Baldr smiles broadly, as if he has just scored a point in a game Tony doesn't even know their playing. Maybe he has.
"I'd hardly say that is a point against me. You're just jealous, it's okay, babe. Everyone wants to be me."
Baldr nods slightly; a stupider person, someone who hasn't dealt with him before, might think that he is conceding.
Tony isn't stupid.
(He still remembers the first time he met Baldr and the three government contracts Baldr all but stole from under his nose, smiling and acting star struck by the Stark name.)
(Tony would like to say it was the last time Baldr fooled him.)
Tony shifts in his chair and rests his ankle against his knee, seeing if he can't out-relax Baldr.
"Well, Stark, as delightful as this is, I do have a meeting in," Baldr flicks a look at his wrist, wearing a silver watch probably worth as much as one of Tony's cars (it is a nice watch, though, Tony will give him that), "roughly twenty minutes and you said that you wanted some answers?" He looks back to Tony, all smiles again.
"You mean a bloodbath," Tony corrects. He's been to meetings with Baldr before; they end in exactly thirty minutes (even when booked for hours); the whole room gets left wondering what the hell has happened and everyone walks out thinking they got the best deal. When, point of fact, it's usually the opposite.
"This is why I like you, Stark. You're so very," a brief, just slightly insulting pause (Tony ignores it), "clever. So what, oh what, do I know that the genius of Stark Industries does not?"
"Loki," Tony says (it does not nearly choke him).
Baldr goes entirely rigid. His smile vanishes, and any honesty in his eyes is crushed under a sudden wave of something beneath the surface. He doesn't look disarmingly half-dreaming any more, actually looks awake and aware and other words beginning in 'a' and Tony is growing increasingly cognizant that everything involving the Borson family is incredibly not normal.
Then it's just Baldr again, relaxed into his chair, hands neatly folded on his stomach, even as his one good eye is still glittering dangerously.
"Ah. Yes. Loki."
Tony stares at Baldr from behind his sunglasses, noting every twitch and inflection in the man's posture.
"I will admit I had thought you would not come to ask me anything involving him, what with it having been very nearly a year since Thor suggested you might. I will also admit that you have a knack for not doing as people expect." Baldr's smile is tight.
"So that was Thor, you guys are just one great big family of gods out on vacation."
"Some of us."
(Baldr always dreams comes unbidden to Tony's mind.)
"Right. Then, supposing you're telling the truth, and all of you just aren't having a family-wide psychotic episode, what's that mean when you wake?"
"Thor told you this," and wow Baldr is nearly biting the words out.
"You owe me answers. I left the weapons market wide-open for you, remember?" Tony quips (he's never met anyone else so viscerally affected by mere mention of Loki the way Tony is)(and it makes him wonder about the relationship between the two possibly-gods, because this is much more passion than 'you accidentally put me in a coma you ass' should really warrant).
"Indeed," and there's the familiar curl of lip. "Vacation is a very apt word for it. We wake up and remember and then it fades, gone into the ether unless we make an effort to keep it close. And who would, really? A human life is hardly comparable to that of a god."
"Lie," Tony says softly.
Baldr quirks an eyebrow.
"It's got to be comparable or you wouldn't keep coming back."
"Perhaps," Baldr cedes. Actually cedes, and Tony wishes he were recording this for posterity.
"So it's like a vacation. Some vacations are pretty memorable." Tony stops looking at Baldr and instead focuses on the view through the window. Loki might remember him.
(Might.)
"Some are not."
("I do not know how much he remembers or how he remembers it.")
"Right, thanks." He stands suddenly and heads for the door.
"Stark."
Tony pauses, hand on the newly unlocked door. He looks over his shoulder at Baldr over the top of his sunglasses. Baldr is staring at Tony's left shoulder and ink tattooed in flesh, long since healed, itches even though it's not visible, burns even though there's layers of cloth between Baldr and the ink.
"If I wanted to know if he's still there, wanted to know if it was a memorable vacation..." Baldr smiles vicious and knowing.
Tony doesn't need him to finish the sentence.