Sara's eyes slowly opened. She found herself lying face down on the tiled floor, her arms covering her head attempting to grant her darkness form the bright lights. She went to push herself up but hissed in pain when she put any pressure on her left hand. She rolled over, and sat up looking at her hand. The skin felt tight and feverish when she touched it. Every moment she made with it hurt and felt like she was grating her already torn flesh against sand paper. She began to unwrap the dress lining she'd put over it as a makeshift bandage, but found that the material was stuck to the dry blood and puss of the wound. Alright, she thought, well that's not going anywhere. She wrapped the lining back around it, choosing to not worry about it at the moment. She then touched her mouth, feeling a cut that had split her lip and was still swollen from when Moriarty had bitch slapped her yesterday, like the Queen he truly was.
She raised her right hand and gently pressed it against the back of her head, a small tender bump was there from when Loki had released her so suddenly after she'd...she didn't want to think about that.
Out of every enemy the Avengers had why did it have to be him? The one villain she'd been overly fascinated with. She'd forced ever detail she could about him out of Natasha. His story was a sad and twisted one. The moment her clearance to access the SHIELD computer base passed she'd spent far too much time researching Loki, his past and present. She was the sad lonely library who loved the stories about the Norse legends and had a bleeding heart for mislead and mistreated being. Loki was a product of his surroundings and misconceptions of his world. But regardless of all of this, he was still evil. He was one of the bad guys. He'd killed so many people and she'd let him...
She fought back tears.
This wasn't what was supposed to happen. She was supposed to be the boring archivist who dreamt of being a superhero or spy; not being thrown into the filed with the limited knowledge she had. She was supposed to sit behind a desk dreaming of the mysterious eyes of the Trickster god, spending her time thinking of her dark obsession; not being kidnapped by him.
Had this been only a few months ago she'd have broken down the minute she was taken, crying and pleading for her captor to not kill her—yet here she was, charading as a witty, composed smart ass. She wanted to scream, wanted to cry, but she had to keep the mask on, not letting anyone know who she really was, not until she was saved or dead.
She needed something else to think about. These thoughts were only going to make her sick and twisted inside. What else was there—other than the frustration and regret. She thought for a moment and realized she was very nearly dying of thirst. She looked to the door and saw a silver glass and plate that were covered. As temped as she was to drink and eat whatever was under the cover, she remembered Natasha had told her to never eat or drink anything given to her, seeing as you never knew what could be in them; poison, drugs, toxins, too many possibilities.
The thirst, hunger, pain and confusion finally got to her. Tears streaming down her cheeks she ran over to the food and threw it across the room kicking the glass, watching as the water flowed slowly down one of the drains. She sank back down to the floor when all the damage she could cause was done. Nothing to do but wait and see what happens next.
The Doctor grinned at Laurel, rocking back and forth on his heels. "Sherlock, must you give away all my secrets? But yes, Laurel, I am in fact an alien. I'm definitely not from around here! I do like it around here, though. Earth is just too much fun in almost every time period I've visited so far. Enough about me, we need to figure this out!" He suddenly clapped his hands together, rubbing them feverishly as he spoke, eyes fixed on the security pad. Sherlock appeared unimpressed with The Doctor's enthusiasm, but contributed to the conversation anyways.
"Haven't you got some sort of gadget we can use to override this thing? Would your screwdriver there do the trick?"
"'Fraid not, my deductive friend, it doesn't do DNA all that well. Although..." An idea seemed to pop into his head, and he began patting at his trouser pockets and rummaging through the inside layer of his suit, searching for something. "Aha!" he held out a small, flat, rectangular object, which Laurel thought was made of metal, but there was something about it that made her think she was wrong. "Knew I'd picked this up from the future NHS headquarters for a reason! It just seemed like a fun party trick at the time." he turned to Laurel, a questioning look in his eyes. "Have you got anything that Sara uses regularly in your bag there? A hairbrush or makeup, something like that?"
"Actually, I just stole her mini-brush off her yesterday. I haven't even used it yet." Digging into her oversized, patchwork purse, she produced a small folding hair brush, still full of Sara's hair, shining white-blonde in the light. Sherlock wrinkled his nose at it. "I hope you were going to clean that out before using it."
"It's a good thing she didn't," the doctor observed, "or else I couldn't do this!" with a flourish, he plucked a hair from the brush, and, pressing on some invisible switch on the rectangle, opened it wide, like a makeup compact or cigarette case. Inside was a black, iridescent, gooey substance, which the doctor pressed the hair into. Snapping the contraption shut, he ran a finger along one side and banged it against the wall a few times, making both Sherlock and Laurel jump. The object began to emit a series of beeps and boops, and the doctor began fiddling with it even more. "This is a portable digi-scan; doctors designed it so they could diagnose any problem a patient was having with just a DNA sample and a few parameters. It's actually a living organism, if you can believe that, one tailored to processing DNA and not much else. You should see the goo I have to feed it, it's wild. Can you tell me Sara's birthday and where she was born, please?" As Laurel provided the information, the doctor seemed to press at random spots on the digi-scan, shaking it occasionally and listening for the next noise it made. After a few moments, it suddenly emitted a flash of light, which resolved into a projection of an eyeball.
"Is that the party trick?" Laurel asked, peering curiously at the projection, reaching out to poke at it. The image wavered as her fingers passed through it, but resolved when she pulled them away.
"No, the party trick is feeding the thing. It makes the most hilarious noises!"
The doctor held the scanner flat in his hand, the projection out in front of him. Approaching the security pad, he presented the holographic eye to the scanner, which shot a laser at the disembodied eye before beeping and asking for fingerprints. Slapping the digi-scan to one hand, the Doctor seemed to stretch the contraption over his fingertips and his palm, confirming to Laurel that the scanner was indeed not made of any ordinary sort of metal. Pressing his now-coated hand to the scanner, they all waited a few tense moments before the unit beeped again, smoothly welcoming Sara to the Archives.
"That was amazing!" Laurel exclaimed. "Well now, don't get too excited, I don't have a gadget for every problem," the Doctor replied. Grinning again, he wiped the digi-scan with a handkerchief from his breast pocket before stowing away in his suit once again. "I do have lots of fun toys though!" All three of them turned to look into the next passageway that the door had slid open to reveal. Sherlock stalked through first, followed by the Doctor; he waggled his eyebrows at Laurel, and then went quickly behind the detective. Laurel stood, blinking for a moment, before gathering herself and also slipping through the door. It slid shut behind them, she noticed with forboding. I hope that opens again when we need it to.
Sara startled awake yet again a few hours later to the sound of the door swinging and squealing its way open. Loki picked his way around the mess she had made of her tray of food, quirking an eyebrow at her as he did so. "I'm sorry, did you find the chicken sandwich offensive? To be fair, I did too. Then again I can't stand the taste of any of your disgusting Midgardian slime except for alcohol. At least you lowly creatures got one thing right down here."
Sara sat up, glaring at him, then wincing as she once again put pressure on her hand. He noticed her grimace. "We can fix that for you, you know. Might be a good idea, considering how we need you to do some work for us before this is all over."
"I won't take anything you give me. I doubt you'll try to heal me, seeing as I obviously refuse to do anything for you."
"Well, not everything, eh Sara? Some things you seem quite willing to do, and without even questioning me." He chuckled in an ugly tone as she blushed from her neck up to the tops of her ears. Prick, she thought savagely. I can't wait to see you in chains again at the end of all this.
He strode up to her, pulling her to her feet by her bad hand, making her cry out loudly and tear up. He smiled wickedly at her reaction. "Now then, dear girl, I need your help, believe it or not. It would seem that our dear director Fury has safeguarded all of his busy little worker bees such as yourself ever so well; you're my only contact to the archives. And I want into those archives. You're going to go in and get all the TARDIS files you possibly can for me. Considering how surprisingly difficult you were to get a hold of, I plan to put you to excellent use. The Director does have such clever ways of disguising who is truly working for him."
Sara gulped audibly, but managed to blink back her tears and straighten her spine before answering. "Why not just break in yourself? I'm sure you're much more powerful than to need me alive. If you only need my access codes, why not just torture them out of me? I'm sure a sick fuck like you would enjoy that. Not that I'll tell you anything, of course, but hey, anything to give the Avengers more time to track your sorry ass down."
Loki sneered at her. "What makes you think they even know you're gone? That Sherlock creature is obviously much too proud to ask for anybody's help, and your little friend is so in love with him that she probably hasn't even told the police you're missing. Besides, I need you alive for your eyes and fingers as well; apparently the technology down here is sufficiently complex as to not let me use disembodied bits anymore. So unfortunate; I do so love the contraption I used the last time I needed someone's eye."
Sara had heard all about the incident in Germany. Thank god the security forces had learned from that. She resisted the urge to twitch her hands and rub her eye that came with thinking about the pictures she had seen of Loki's eye-scan victim in the archives. Steeling herself, she glared defiantly at Loki. "Like I said, you'll have to kill me before I do anything for you."
"Have you heard of the Octavius report, Sara?"
Sara suddenly felt a cold trickle of dread go down her spine.
"Ah, yes, I can see that you have. You're familiar then with all the wonderful research that was done on that strange Doctor's brain and spine after the NYPD were done with his body. How S.H.I.E.L.D got a hold that research and let Doctor Banner go wild on it, with help from that brat Stark. I have all the information from that report, dear little spy. Count yourself lucky I didn't have to kill you to get a hold of it; the last colleague of yours I had didn't last nearly as long as you have. He bored me. Never a good tactic."
A voice crackled over what sounded like an ancient PA system suddenly, echoing off the walls of the dingy showers. "Your Excellency, a... issue has arisen, could we have your assistance in the control room?" Loki sighed in agitation, running a hand through his hair and he spun on his heel, making his way towards the door. "We'll discuss this more later. Do try not to starve yourself to the point where I have you hooked up to an IV under sedation, I have plenty of doctors who are willing to do so for me." With that, he disappeared once again.
How the hell am I gonna get out of this one? Sara thought dejectedly. Am I going to have to... distract him? Her thoughts started churning madly. Perhaps 'fucking her way out of this one' was precisely what was going to save her...