A/N Things are about to get more complicated!
Chapter 4
Loki's POV
Loki and Coulson continued walking, encountering more and more clutter as they proceeded, until eventually, after another twenty minutes of silent walking, they found the start of the laid tracks, or rather, the end of them.
"I suppose this is as far as they got before they abandoned the project," Coulson remarked, contemplating the parallel iron bars that stretched ahead of them.
"Though they had obviously intended to lay their tracks further, given the materials we encountered before," Loki countered. Indeed, one side of the tracks appeared to have been just about ready to be hammered into the ground before it was abandoned. Whyever did the miners leave? What could have driven them to cease their endeavors?
"Maybe we'll get lucky and find one of those old handcars," the agent's voice had a twinge of amusement laced through it, though the meaning of his words was lost on Loki.
"A… what?"
"It was a type of mining cart that could move by pumping the handlebars and would travel along railroad tracks, like these. At least.. that's what movies have taught me."
"I see," he replied, trying to picture what the human described; they did not have anything similar in Asgard, though perhaps they did, several hundred thousand years ago.
"How long have you been on Earth?" Coulson asked suddenly.
Loki hesitated for a moment, unsure of whether this was another of the agent's attempts to get more information out of him regarding his child's parentage.
"Just over four and a half months," he finally replied honestly, not finding a reason this information could be used against him.
"Have you gotten around to watching any films yet?"
Loki looked at Coulson like he had grown an extra head. Was the man really asking him if he had seen any human entertainments while he's trying to hide?
"I… I've been busy. Besides, it does not seem wise venturing out to one of your theaters."
Coulson actually had the gall to laugh at him, and Loki couldn't tell whether he was angry or embarrassed or both. Four years ago, before the entire business with Jötunheim, his fall from the Rainbow Bridge, and his time in the Mad Titan's tender care, he would have retaliated against anyone who dared laugh at him. But back then he had been a prince - a despised prince, certainly, friendless and unloved, but an Odinson notwithstanding. He would have been well within his right to silence the human and demand his head on a platter. Now, his shame was evident for all to see, compounded by the hideous truth of his nature. It was like being back then, seven hundred years ago, but worse because of the way his present situation re-colored those past events. The last four years had proven that Loki was a failure beneath everyone, and that he had always been so - never an Odinson, never someone of standing. He deserved mockery, and it angered him as much as it shamed him.
"I didn't mean you should go out to watch a film in a theater," Coulson clarified, "although I don't think you would have attracted as much attention as you seem to think you'd get. I take it you don't have a tv, then?"
"Ah…you mean one of those devices that transmit images and projections?" Loki guessed. "No, I do not have one. I've seen them inside several local businesses," in fact, he recalled seeing one in the little bakery a block from his tenement building. He had begun frequenting the confectionary shop over the past month when he developed some pastry cravings that he couldn't shake. With enough layers, he could hide his pregnancy easily. Besides, he had come to realize that on Midgard, as opposed to Asgard, people tended to ignore those who looked poor and destitute. On Asgard, that kind of thing would have drawn everyone's attention.
"I thought they only displayed your news and weather forecasts," Loki replied, remembering the broadcasts he had glanced at while in line to pay.
Coulson laughed at him again, and Loki felt his face actually redden from embarrassment. It was one thing to be looked down on with pity – which was detestable – but it was another matter entirely to be mocked for being ignorant. Not only was he pathetic, he was also stupid - he had truly had everything, even his pride in his own intellect, taken from him.
Coulson seemed to notice that Loki was upset.
"Hey, I didn't mean to laugh. It's just, it makes sense you'd think that, given that you've only seen them in businesses. They tend to leave the channel on something neutral. But there's more to it than that, though myself, I find I don't have much time for it either."
Fighting monsters and guarding Midgard, Loki's mind supplied, bring a warrior...a hero. A hero who's life he had almost extinguished. Wait, no,... who's life he had extinguished, the agent had confirmed.
"How is it you are alive?" he suddenly blurted out, surprising himself. He was normally a lot more cautious and tactful than that.
"Excuse me?!" he wasn't the only one caught by surprise because of the unexpected question.
"My apologies; I am merely curious as to how this came to be. From the scant memories I have retained from my time on Midgard, I recall… wounding you mortally."
"Damn right, you did." There was a change in the human's voice, though Loki was too curious about the subject to recognize it.
"I did not realize Midgardian medicine had advanced enough to heal such wounds," he continued inquiring.
"It hasn't…" Coulson's words sounded off.
"So… how is it-"
"That's my business, Loki," the hardness in the human's voice finally registered with Loki.
"Forgive me, I did not intend any offense-"
"'Offense' doesn't begin to cover what you've done."
Loki was stunned by the cold bitterness in the agent's voice.
"I'm sorry", Loki whispered, after a moment's hesitation.
The silence that followed was sepulchral, and it scared Loki to no end. The last thing he wanted was to anger the human; he kicked himself mentally for his inappropriateness.
"I just don't like talking about it, ok." Coulson's soft voice broke the silence.
Loki swallowed his apprehension. "I will not bring it up again." he promised.
…
The pair continued in tense silence after that unfortunate mistake on Loki's part, a fact that, Loki was intrigued to discover, actually bothered him. He didn't want to make Coulson angry, not only because he didn't want a bullet to his head, but because, honestly, he felt guilt over what he had been forced to do. Thanos had wormed his will into Loki's mind, breaching his mental defenses and overpowered him. He'd made Loki believe that all of his problems would be solved if he conquered Earth; the bastard actually made him feel needed and important, even though at the same time, a distant part of Loki knew it was all a lie. It was that part of Loki that had been able to marginally surface and twist the mind stone's control into something unmeasured and unpredictable. One result of it, however, had been the death of the human who now walked a couple of paces behind him.
No, Loki had no right to antagonize this man and cause him any more pain.
"Did you notice that Chitauri monster - berserker, you called it - kind of glowed and did a weird... shifty-thing?"
The agent's sudden question snapped Loki out of his morose thoughts. As he considered how to respond, a small voice in his mind whispered that maybe the agent didn't like the tense silence either and was throwing Loki a bone. The sorcerer tried his utmost to squash the voice into metaphorical mental jelly.
"It had the ability to travel interdimensionally," he replied, thankful for the distracting subject change, "It is why the Chitauri and the Other use them to... fetch those who've escaped them. I did not think they would send one for me, but I was clearly mistaken."
"If they can send that thing interdimensionally, why don't they attack in full?"
"The berserkers are naturally capable of interdimensional travel - they don't fully exist in one dimension at any given time. They are a brute species the Chitauri captured and subjugated, but their ability cannot be harnessed to transport an army. For that, they needed a more powerful and controllable source."
"Like the Tesseract."
"Exactly."
"You know, I've been thinking,... that thing, ... the berserker, was almost on top of us when you tried to teleport."
Loki cocked his head, "You theorize this is how my magic was able to transport us this far?"
Loki glanced sideways to where the agent was walking, just to his left. Coulson shrugged.
"Sounds like a plausible explanation, doesn't it?"
The sorcerer considered the theory. So far, he had been assuming that his utter terror at being taken back to Thanos had caused his compromised magic to flare more powerfully than he would normally be able to achieve during this stage of pregnancy. Yet, if the agent's theory was correct, then at the very moment the berserker was preparing to pounce and teleport, Loki's magic had, what? siphoned some of that raw energy into his own teleportation spell? It made as much sense as anything else, he figured.
Then he realized another thing.
"If what you're saying is true, then we are extremely lucky I did not transport us here along with the berserker," he remarked nonchalantly.
A genuine bark of laughter came from the agent.
"Shit! We'd be so screwed if that had happened!" Coulson laughed again, perhaps partly in relief and partly at their absurd situation. Loki wasn't sure, but what he did know was that, bizarrely, he enjoyed the knowledge that he'd made the human laugh.
Over the next hour, the agent and he engaged in casual conversation without any voiced threats or tension between them. For Loki, who had spent the past four and a half months in almost complete solitude, it was a welcome change, and he chided himself for enjoying the other man's company.
He is a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and if and when we find a way out of here, he will be your enemy once again. For once in your life, Loki, could you be less pathetically needy?, he told himself.
He recognized his tendency to become fiercely attached to the wrong individuals. It was a result of the solitary life he had led as a child. Thus, he had followed Thor with that childlike adoration young children tend to have for their older brothers all the stronger for having lacked other friends. It was the same impulse that made him acquiesce to Odin's decrees and cruel punishments for a thousand years: a foolish desire to be accepted. It's the same reason why he had remained with so many of the lovers he had taken throughout the centuries well beyond what sense and reason told him, - even when they hurt him.
You are like a kicked hungry dog begging for a pat on the head! It was one of the aspects he most hated about himself.
Loki continued following the path his thoughts took him just as he followed the straight lines of the tracks before him, until suddenly the tunnel opened up into a larger cavern.
Loki and Coulson came to a stop, not so much because of the size of the cave, but because of what lay ahead of them.
"Well… I think we found the reason for why they abandoned this mining operation," deadpanned Coulson.
Before them spanned a huge underground lake.
It was so large that the light from Coulson's flashlight could not make out the other side. What could be seen, however, was that the tracks they had been following went straight into the water.
"There is no way across," Loki murmured.
"Well… I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to give up this easily."
"What do you propose? Build a boat?" he responded sarcastically.
"That'd be nice, though I wouldn't trust those crates back there. No, I was thinking more along the lines of 'how deep is this?' We might be able to just wade across."
"Surely the miners would not have given up their operation if this could be waded."
"Hmm… ok, let's think. What happened here?" Coulson looked at him intently, encouraging him to focus on the sequence of events that must have led to the miners abandoning the mine instead of on their current predicament.
For the moment, Loki was willing to indulge the agent.
"They clearly laid their tracks across this expanse and further into the tunnel they had dug. At the time, there was no water here."
"Right," agreed Coulson, "which means something happened, probably suddenly since they couldn't go back to get their equipment."
"Something that caused water to suddenly flood this section of the cave." Loki added.
"Something that meant they couldn't return… or that it wasn't profitable to return." Coulson mused.
After a couple of minutes, Loki chimed in. "The miners could have caused a collapse somewhere…. Or it could always have been a natural act, like a quake or a volcano."
"You think? They do have a lot of those in Iceland." The agent agreed, though it sounded a bit farfetched.
"Or some geological activity that caused water from a nearby river or lake or, I suppose, even an ancient glacier, to flood this cavern." Loki added.
"And if there was instability in the area," Coulson speculated, "they might have deemed this place too risky to stay. But look at the tracks and the ground; it's all pretty flat, right? You wouldn't lay down tracks on uneven ground."
"There could be a natural depression further ahead, though. If it were shallow, they could have built a dyke, contained the water, and drained the cave."
"You have a point, although, draining a massive underground lake might have been too difficult for the mid-19th century."
The two contemplated the situation silently.
"Look, ultimately, we have to make a decision," the agent said resolutely.
"We do not even know how far this extends. For all we know, the rest of the tunnel system could be flooded."
"Ok, I think I can help us find out," the human mumbled half to himself.
Loki saw as Coulson flipped the device he held in his hand upside down, making the light it emitted point to the ground. The agent brought the front display to life.
"Now, this isn't an ordinary, run of the mill phone. It's not even a Stark Industries phone. This, my alien companion, was made by the genius minds of Leo Fitz and Jenna Simmons, and one of the neat things they put in was an enhanced flashlight." Loki saw the agent press a tile on the display which caused another image to appear, full of labels and numbers which he then proceeded to press and alter. "Till now, I've only been using the regular flashlight because there was no point in blinding ourselves. But, if we need to see how far this lake extends, then," Coulson aimed the device in front of them and pressed one final button, "let there be light."
The entire cavern was immediately illuminated by a powerful light beam from the small device. It was so unexpectedly bright that it made the both of them have to shield their eyes that had grown accustomed to the half-darkness before.
"I don't know how they did it, but this baby pus out enough light to signal ships off the coastline," said the agent proudly.
Indeed, the light was so bright the scope of the lake could be seen now. What at first seemed insurmountable, turned out to be only incredibly inconvenient.
Loki and Coulson starred across the water.
"Ok… so that's far. But hey, we can see the other shore, so it's not all bad."
"It must be half a mile wide!" Loki exclaimed.
"Yeah… maybe we should give the boat idea a try," Coulson said, sounding uncertain.
Over the next twenty minutes Loki and Coulson emptied several crates and attempted to find one that was sea worthy, but the problem was that the wood was old and rotting, and it could not support their weight. Even just putting their feet inside the crates on hard ground made the wood splinter and warp.
"Alright, boat idea is out," said Coulson finally, noticing that Loki had long given up on the crates and was sitting on the ground looking utterly exhausted.
Loki panted out of breath, head thrown back against the wall, hands cradling the bump in his stomach. He was tired, hungry, filthy, and once again, very achy. Hauling crates and moving boxes full of mining supplies had made the pain in his back and hips flare up.
"Hey," said Coulson, suddenly occupying his field of vision. "How are you feeling?"
"Exceedingly tired," came his curt reply.
"According to my watch, we've been at it for almost two hours since the last break we took. We could do with a rest, but I would advise against a prolonged rest. I mean, we can either cross that thing today and earn a well-deserved rest after, or we can put it off until tomorrow and have to cross it when we'll undoubtedly be even more tired and hungry."
Loki glanced at the lake and back at Coulson.
"I understand… but I can barely stand right now." He wouldn't say just how much it hurt at the moment, but he hoped his words conveyed that impression.
"Loki… I know you must be in pain right now. I shouldn't have asked you to move all this crap. But I really don't think we should stop yet."
Loki sighed angrily. "Just… just give me a moment to recover." The sorcerer winced at the harshness of his words - he had been trying to appease the agent, after all - but his entire lower body was screaming at him, and he didn't feel particularly self-controlled.
Coulson nodded understandingly. "You've got thirty minutes. We could both use a short break."
With that, the agent stepped back and sat against the wall opposite the sorcerer.
Loki decided to lie down in the hope that it would ease some of the pain in his back, and without realizing it, fell asleep in less than a minute.
Coulson's POV
Coulson observed as Loki lay down on the rocky floor and soon succumbed to sleep. He felt a twinge of guilt for pushing the sorcerer; Coulson wasn't fond of working people till they hurt. That's not how he did business.
Loki looked exhausted, but Coulson was worried about how long it would take them to find their way out. Their biggest problem was lack of water and food, though on one of those counts…
The agent spared a glance at Loki to make sure he was asleep and then he got up and walked to the lake, crouching down at the edge of the water.
Please let this be drinkable!
Coulson dipped his hand into the dark water, jerking it away just as quickly when the ice-cold temperature caught him by surprise. He brought his wet hand up to his face and tentatively licked the tips of his fingers.
It tasted wonderful, like clean purified water.
Prepared for the iciness this time, he dipped both hands in, cupping his hands and drawing a larger amount which he then drank from. It was a balm on his parched throat.
Well, at least we won't die of thirst. He thought cynically.
He was worried about what would happen if they couldn't find a way out in the next day or so. They had already been at it for about four hours, and it was six o'clock according to his watch. The lake shouldn't take them too long to cross – hopefully less than an hour if it wasn't too deep – which would have them on the other wide of the lake by about seven thirty or eight.
Coulson wondered when the last time Loki ate was; he himself had had an early lunch and was already hungry. He contemplated eating the powerbar he always kept in his inside jacket pocket, but that seemed like a total dick move. No; he'd save it for when it was absolutely necessary.
Realizing that there was nothing else to be done until Loki woke up, Coulson returned to his spot against the wall opposite the sorcerer's and resigned to keep watch. But, although he was determined to stay awake – for it wouldn't do to put his guard down around the trickster – Coulson's eyes eventually closed too and he fell into a tired sleep.
Author's Note:
Next chapter: The Lake!
What do you guys think so far?
