Chapter VI: Seal our Fate

A/N: Apologies on the long wait. You'll find out what happened at the end in this one. And a little cameo as well. Thanks go to Laura for her beta work. Italics are telepathic talking. Enjoy! SSD

"And in this twilight, our choices seal our fate" Mumford and Sons, Broken Crown

"I just need to get through the next couple of days here on Midgard. I can't believe I messed up that badly!" Hanna mentally groaned.

"Stop thinking so loudly. You don't want the fool mortals to find out, do you?" Loki snarled back.

"They aren't that foolish if they managed to beat you!"

"That would not have happened if you and Thor were absent!" Loki shot back.

"Well we weren't absent, and here we are!" Hanna growled.

"You were only just learning how to break mind control weren't you? Why did you even try?" Loki sneered.

"I was the only one available that could break it. Now be quiet!" Hanna hissed back as Bruce entered the room she was in.

Hanna gave him a tight smile, before asking, "What can I do for you Doctor Banner?"

He was looking at her strangely. "Are you sure, you're alright? I may not know much about your people's physiology, but you got several good knocks through walls during your duel with Loki. Even if your bones are as much thicker as I think they are, it still had to hurt."

Hanna brushed off his concern, "I am fine, Doctor Banner. Now let's try some of the meat that Stark will not stop talking about."

To Loki she thought, "Stay where you are. More trouble does not need to be caused, and trust me, I'll know if you start anything."

###

But despite her brushing him off, Bruce still was watching the sorceress. She seemed a bit off at times, it was like she was talking to someone via telepathy.

Turning to Thor, Bruce asked, "Is telepathy one of Hanna's abilities?"

"I'm not the one to ask about that," Thor replied. "Why do you ask though?"

"Just wondering," Bruce went down to one of the undamaged labs to work on a few things.

###

While he was down there, Bruce got to thinking. It was really convenient that Hanna had managed to break the mind control that Loki had been under. The others hadn't bothered to ask her how she pulled it off.

Bruce believed that she had broken the mind control. But there were those times that she'd seemed to have clocked out. Then at some point during those timeframes, her eyes would glow like a Goa'uld on that Stargate show.

In the few science-fiction novels he'd read, mind control had popped up a few times. The breaking of the mind control, if it could be broken, was always a very precise thing, with a narrow margin for error.

Bruce had a horrible thought. He wanted to be wrong about it, because if he was right, it meant that Hanna had screwed the pooch, big time.

###

Tony seemed to be finding one thing out the hard way: The "out-of-town" guests could eat like starving wolves. And that was at every meal. At least breakfast was a meal that didn't eat *as* much during. Bruce had been eating more as well, since the Hulk required a lot of energy.

Tony noticed that Bruce was watching Hanna closely.

"Careful Bruce, she's probably spoken for back home," Tony smirked.

"That's not why I'm watching her. She seems a little… off."

"Those three are already different from us mere mortals," Tony said in reasonable facsimile of Hanna, Loki, and Thor's accents.

Ignoring that, Bruce continued with, "There seems to be something more going on, more than she's telling us."

"If there's a secret that she doesn't want us to know, it'll likely be like pulling teeth from an uncooperative mule," Tony replied.

"Then we will have to catch the secret out."

###

It turned out that having another person in your mind was really draining, especially when that person was Loki.

Hanna had an incredibly bad feeling that Doctor Banner was getting suspicious of her behavior. She'd been going out of her way to avoid him.

"The beast is not *that* clever."

"You're the one who's confined to a room. You don't have to be around them. And they think that I succeeded in breaking the control you were under," Hanna hissed mentally.

"You did succeed," Loki granted before saying, "You just happened to leave out that you did not know how to break it well!"

"Shut up!" Hanna snarled. She was no longer in the mood for talking with him.

"You dare?" The days where Hanna tiptoed around him were long gone.

Forgetting to use the link, Hanna growled, "I do dare, NOW SHUT UP!"

"Am I interrupting something?"

Hanna spun around, eyes wide with horror. Thankfully it was only Bruce.

"No, you're not," she replied tightly.

"Now I've got a working theory. While I believe that you were A) Right about Loki being under some form of mind control, and B) That you broke it, I still think you left something out. You've been acting a little off from what little I know of your personality. You clock out at random intervals, and during those times your eyes flash gold. You also look like you're talking to someone telepathically. And I don't recall you saying that telepathy was one of your abilities." Bruce finished, all his cards out on the table.

"I can explain everything, Doctor Banner," Hanna began before he said, "I'd certainly like to see you try to explain your little outburst."

"I certainly did break the mind control," she continued after the interruption, then she paused for a moment. To Bruce it looked like she was arguing with someone. Bruce had a very bad feeling as to who she was arguing with.

Hanna finished, "But I didn't do it correctly. I should have done it a bit more delicately."

"And the end result?" Bruce asked.

"The link didn't tie off the way it should. It latched onto the nearest available mind."

"Which was yours. And this means?"

It seemed that the Doctor was going to make her say it aloud.

"My mind is now linked with Loki's. And anything that happens to him, such as any kind of punishment, will rebound onto me as well."

Bruce had been afraid of that. It must be driving Hanna crazy.

His musings were interrupted when Hanna pled, "Please don't mention this. All we have to do is get back to Asgard, it'll get dealt with there."

Bruce waved around the room, "SHIELD probably already knows about it. Now, you need to deal with the fallout."

###

And there certainly had been fallout. SHIELD was irate (Hanna suspected that it was more the fact that they couldn't punish Loki the way they wanted rather than their anger at her) and the Avengers were split as to whether she had done this on purpose.

Hanna was not too surprised that both of the SHIELD agents figured she had screwed up on purpose. They'd both had nothing to say to her upon Fury's reveal.

Stark and Rodgers she couldn't quite tell what they were thinking on the matter. When Steve had turned to her with a question on his face, all Hanna had said was, "You only asked me if I could break the control. You did not ask if I could do well."

Hanna was glad that she could always count on Thor for believing her. It did not matter what the others thought. They had not been there in the aftermath on Asgard.

She was also surprised to find another person among the human Avengers that believed her. Bruce believed that she hadn't done this on purpose.

Still, Hanna chose to keep to her room, and if she went out, she would make herself invisible.

Apparently SHIELD wanted to make sure that she was telling the truth. But in the aftermath of the battle, they had no time to check for themselves. So they were bringing in a supposed expert on telepathy.

Hanna doubted severely that there was anyone on Midgard who qualified as a an expert on telepathy. Loki shared her sentiments.

That was before they both felt a presence unlike any they'd felt from a mere mortal.

"Perhaps this is the supposed expert?" Hanna thought towards Loki.

"I will believe that this man is an expert when I see it." Loki scoffed.

There was a knocking on the door. Hanna called out, "Come in."

Hanna thanked the Norns that it was Bruce at the door. Dealing with one of the SHIELD agents was not on her list of things to do today.

###

Loki was already in there waiting, sprawled indecently on the couch. Hanna rolled her eyes before taking a seat on a chair.

She could feel Loki poking around her mental walls. Hanna shoved him away.

While the two were focusing on their mental duel, the entrance of another went unnoticed.

###

Charles Xavier looked at the two beings in front of him. It was hard to believe that these two were well over 1000 years old, which was considered young by their people.

He could also tell that there was a little telepathic scuffle going on. But he would have to be careful. These two were beings of considerable power and likely had the ability to reduce him to a gibbering mess if they so chose.

To get their attention, Charles coughed. They turned their faces towards him, assessing him.

"He is the expert?" Loki was clearly unimpressed.

"Looks can be deceiving," Hanna shot back. Charles could tell that the two of them were on the verge of another argument.

Before things got out of hand, he cut in, "I'm sure you two know why I am here."

Before Loki could speak, Hanna started, "We are. And to make one thing clear, we are both fully capable of dealing with a nosey telepath who goes places he is not welcome."

Loki finished, "It would make anything else you have endured pale in in comparison."

Not surprised by the threats at all, Charles said in his best teacher voice, "I give you my word that I will not go anywhere other than to check out the mind link."

They nodded. Charles went in.

###

Charles wheeled into one of the lower level conference rooms where the others were waiting for him. He was exhausted.

Without waiting for him to speak, Stark blurted, "So… is the link for real and did she do it on purpose?"

"If it's not too much trouble, I need something to drink. Then I will tell you," Charles breathed.

Tony got up and went to the bar, asking, "What's your poison?"

"Calvados if you have it. And leave the bottle." Charles was rubbing his temples.

The Avengers were amazed when the old man poured a generous portion into his glass, and drank it without taking a breath. Once he was finished with the first drink and had poured himself another, Xavier began to speak, "That pair have two of the most convoluted minds that I've ever been in. Minefields would be less dangerous." He paused for another drink.

"But is the link for real?" Natasha asked. She needed to get back to SHEILD.

"Oh the link is very real. It is also well beyond my abilities to break." Turning to face Thor, he asked, "Perhaps someone back home may be able to do it, but the link itself is growing stronger by the hour."

"Did she do it on purpose?" Clint asked.

"The link to Loki was not Hanna's intent. She just wanted to break the prior mind control link, nothing more."

###

Two days later, the Avengers were in a quiet square. The out of town guests were getting ready to use the Tesseract to return home.

It was simple in the end. Thor had promised to return as soon as possible.

The trio disappeared a blaze of blue energy.

###

"Little girl. You have stolen from me. And you will pay the price…"

A/N 2: So… What do you all think? What did you think of the cameo? And who do you think is speaking at the very end?