Some Promises are Meant to be Broken

Chapter 4—Dream of waking

Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers. They belong to Marvel/Disney. The Doctor belongs to the BBC.

From a prompt on avengerkink: "Canton and Husband adopt baby Phil Coulson and raise him. After Phil is killed by Loki in the Avengers movie

Canton and Husband ask the Doctor to save his life, a la Lake Silencio. Up to you whether there's a pairing involved, or fixed points, or aliens. It's just a springboard, really."

The Doctor got out his sonic, used it on the cruiser's door.

"Captain Rogers, you're in charge of Loki," he said. "Get him out of the car and follow me."

Rogers didn't have time to say anything, he did as he was told, pulling Loki from the car and onto his feet, thanking God he was handcuffed.

"Do you know me?" he asked.

"Unfortunately, yes," Rogers said. "Keep your mouth shut or you will regret it."

"What is my name?"

"Loki," Rogers answered.

"That's a strange sort of name," Loki said.

"You're not exactly normal," Rogers snapped, looking for the Doctor.

"Run!" he yelled, and the bullets started flying. And Rogers, he was going to damn himself for it later, but he shielded Loki, taking a bullet in the shoulder, then half-dragged, half-carried him toward the TARDIS. Once inside, he dumped Loki in the ground.

"What the hell is going on?" Banner asked, then he noticed Loki. "What is he doing here?'

"I have no idea," Rogers said, holding his injured shoulder.

"Want me to take a look at that?" Banner said.

"It'll heal," Rogers said. "Loki, what were you doing in that alley?"

"I don't know," Loki said. "I don't remember anything before that moment."

The Doctor listened to the exchange, to busy trying to get the TARDIS away and someplace safe so he could sort everything out. Loki showing up the way he had—coincidence or something else? The Doctor knew he was telling the truth about not remembering—he could sense Loki was different, stripped of his powers but not completely without protection. And now the conversation was taking a turn for the worse.

"We have to contact Fury," Banner said.

"What then?" Rogers said. "We turn Loki over and he faces our brand of justice? What good will that do when he says he doesn't remember anything?"

"He's telling the truth," the Doctor said. "His memory has been wiped and his powers are bound. He's not much of a threat right now. I think as long as we keep him away from the scepter we won't have a problem. Speaking of the scepter, Bruce, how secure is that lab of yours?"

"It's safe enough for now, I guess," Banner said.

"Good," the Doctor said. "The Tesseract is sentient. The shard contained in the scepter is essentially her child, made self-aware much too soon. The cubes are powerful, and I thought most of them were lost or locked away. I was wrong."

"There are more of those things out there?" Banner asked.

"Yes, but I don't know how many," the Doctor said. "My people tended to steer clear of them when we could, or we tried to keep them out of the wrong hands. Not an easy task. Most races weren't aware of what they were dealing with and ended up destroying themselves and their cube in the process."

Something Time Lords feared, well, not really feared, but gave a healthy respect. . .maybe fear was the right word. Caution? No. Fear worked. The cubes like the Tesseract were ancient, and far beyond the understanding of even the inhabitants of Gallifrey, so they dealt with them only when they had to. Usually they were left cleaning up the aftermath. The Doctor wasn't going to tell the two humans with him just how lucky they were. Maybe they knew, but he knew his two companions were not people to take anything for granted, given their circumstances.

Then there was Loki. What was he going to do with him? Loki was bound by Asgardian magic. Science he could deal with, but this. . .the universe was definitely misbehaving. Oh, wait, he could fix that maybe once he found out who was trying to use a cosmic cube for their own purposes. They were going to have a little sit-down once he found out their identity. However, possibly it would not come to that. Maybe he could just fix things like Canton wanted, and it would take care of everything. It wasn't going to come down to the death of one man making that much of a difference, was it? If so, someone had some serious explaining to do.

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Clint Barton woke, dressed quickly, heeding the call that hadn't quite left him, no matter what his friends and colleagues thought. The link between himself and the scepter was still there, and it was calling him, and he could not deny it. He walked down several corridors until he was at Banner's lab, entering. Closing the distance between himself and the scepter, he picked it up and seconds later, disappeared in a flash of blue light.