Loki never mentioned that night or their conversation on the stairs. He was back to his usual snarky self in no time, leaving Laurel to wonder why else was buried beneath the exterior, behind the mask that he always wore. She never brought it up, figuring that if he wanted to talk about it, he would. Eventually.
For now, though, she had plenty of other mysteries to solve. Sitting onboard the Quinjet, Laurel and the others were learning everything they could about a rogue cult leader who had begun a standoff in the Midwest. He and his followers, at first, seemed like a normal cult, if there could be such a thing. Preaching tolerance but practicing violence, he had drawn the attention of the FBI and the DEA, who alerted S.H.I.E.L.D. when they realized the weapons he had been collecting were not made on Earth.
"Basic weapons raid," Steve outlined, bringing up the schematics of the compound with Tony's help. "We've got to isolate the leader, get that cache of weapons out of there, and make sure everyone comes out alive."
"We need those weapons to come back with us, no matter whose boots we have to step on," Tony added, looking to all of them. "I want to break some of them down and see what we're dealing with. This could be just one part of a galactic weapons trafficking ring. Let's rock and roll."
Laurel nodded, standing as they descended and assembled at the door of the jet. Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She had a brief second to check it as they landed, seeing that the text was from Loki, who was still at the Avengers Facility, still on house arrest. Good luck. Be careful.
Thanks. Don't get into too much trouble without me.
I'll try my best.
Stowing her phone safely back in her pocket, Laurel glanced at Steve, who stood beside her as they opened the door. They were greeted by a swarm of DEA agents on the ground, but they had already gone over the plan a dozen times on the jet. As Tony went to monitor the situation from the air, Laurel and Steve split off from the rest of the group, heading for the side of the building, where they knew a door led directly to the cult leader's quarters. It was the weakest point in the facility, and they would be breaking in just as the others led an assault on the front doors.
"We're in position," Steve radioed, the others confirming their positions one by one. Bruce, who was stationed by the DEA command center, started a countdown as a SWAT team moved in to follow in their wake. A half-second before the countdown reached zero, Laurel unbolted the door, wrenching it off of its hinges with a wave of her hand. Steve ran ahead of her, barreling into the building as the rest of their team barged in through the front door. "Go left!" Steve called, Laurel turning just as an explosion rocked the ground.
Instinctively, she threw up a forcefield around the two of them, watching as dust fell from the ceiling. "That'll start a fire for sure. Widow's leading the SWAT guys to Weapons Storage, and the others are getting people out," Laurel reported, listening in on the comms line. Something moved in the darkness to her right. "Cap, I've got him!"
Before the man could react, she threw a box of glowing light around him. Although he protested, she passed by him, heading for the concealed door that he had very nearly been able to grab. Pulling the door open, she found a small room, glittering with weapons that she had never seen before. Some of them looked like conventional, earthly weapons that had been repaired with strange metals. Others were like nothing she had ever seen, ray guns and blasters that could only have been designed by alien species. "I'll radio Nat and Tony," Steve said, jogging up behind her after making sure the rest of the room was clear. "What's that noise?"
There was an almost imperceptible ticking coming from a small box on one of the shelves. It looked like any other cardboard box, but they were both hesitant to approach it. Casting a forcefield around it, Laurel cautiously stepped forward. "It looks like a grenade or something… he must have set it off before we got him. You wouldn't happen to know how to disable one of these, would you?"
Steve shook his head. "I have no clue… it's not any kind of grenade I've ever seen."
"Good luck with that one," their captive chuckled from his box. "You breathe too hard in there, and in a couple of seconds, we'll all be dust."
The two of them exchanged a glance, Laurel's eyes flooding with a revelation. "That's an L-9-37 grenade. They're manufactured on a planet light years away from here," she whispered, careful not to move. "Tony told me about them a while back, when we brought in a cache of weapons from a collector over in Asia. They're incredibly powerful, and you can't hold them well, even with my abilities."
"What do you suggest we do? If we wait for much longer, the team's going to come in here and set it off." Steve's eyes were locked onto the grenade. "If we try and run, we won't make it."
"I have something that might work. I can't hold it for long, but I can try." She took a deep breath, stretching out her hand as slowly as she could. A glowing blue sphere encased the box, Laurel feeling it draining her already. "Go. It's safe. Take him and run. Get everyone out of here."
"Laurel -"
"Go!" She gritted her teeth, watching as he dashed past her. The waiting was agonizing. She held out as long as she could before letting the grenade detonate, the force of the blast sending her flying across the room. The sphere had held, though. Leaning against the wall for support, she stood up. There was a weight in her stomach, a bottomless pit that made her more dizzy than she had ever felt before.
She sat down again, remembering Loki's warning about Asgardian magic. It had saved the entire compound, but it took a hell of a lot out of her. Even the small force fields that they had practiced generating on the roof would make her tired, but this was bigger than anything she had ever casted before. Steve came back a moment later, Laurel finally letting the shields drop. "Everyone got out," he told her, offering her his hand. :aurel stood up gingerly, wincing with every step she took. "Good job."
Back at the base camp, Laurel dropped into a chair, watching as the others went back and forth, bringing out weapons and talking with the DEA agents in charge. "We've got to figure out if this was an isolated thing or if he's been working with a smuggling ring," one of them said, talking to Steve and Tony. "We have no way of knowing for sure. He's not talking."
"I can get him to talk," Laurel coughed, the three of them coming over by her. "I can get him to talk. I just need a space to do it. I can make him talk to me." Clutching Steve's shoulder, she insisted that she would be fine. "Just give me a few minutes. And some water, if you have any."
On the rare occasion that she would overextend her magic, Loki would sit down with her, conjuring a glass of water and usually some form of sugary food. His favorite was anything covered in chocolate, so that's what they would usually end up with. They would sit together and eat, Loki marveling at the will of this curious Midgardian sorceress, at how she would gladly practice magic until she could do no more, and even then insist that she learn more the next day.
Steve and Tony shared a look, but they allowed her to follow one of the DEA agents to where they were holding the cult leader. Laurel took a deep breath, heading into the room to find him handcuffed to a chair. "Are you part of a smuggling ring, or are you operating on your own? Where did you get those weapons?" she pressed, extending her magic to reach into his mind, pulling for the truth.
This one was strong, though. He fought back, spitting, "What makes you think I'll tell you?"
"This." Without hesitation, she reached forward, channeling the Asgardian magic she had been taught. Immediately, it felt like she was being stabbed, this time the pain growing in her head. It seemed like whatever she channeled, there the pain would be. Blocking something that would have ripped them all to shreds felt like she had been punched in the gut. Pulling memories out of someone else's brain felt like her own brain was being unraveled. But she had to try, or they could be facing serious danger. "Now tell me, were you alone?"
"Yes," he whimpered, his face changing quickly as she bored into the recesses of his mind. "I found the first one, and then I traded for the rest. People sell them online. They have no idea what they are, but when I cracked one of those swords open and found out what was inside -" The words came tumbling out of his mouth now, as she compelled him to talk. "That's why they followed me, they gave me their life savings to buy them so we could lead a revolution when the time came, when the sun set on-"
Laurel crumpled to her knees, having learned what she needed to. She had to let go of her hold on his mind. It was just too painful. Steve came in, putting an arm around her and helping her get up. She closed her eyes, only opening them when they were back on the jet. "Steve…" she reached out for him, Steve leaving the discussion he was having with the others to join her where she was lying in the back of the plane.
"You're alive," he wondered aloud. "You passed out back there, and Nat got you stabilized enough to move. You're going to be out of commission for a while."
"Can you make Tony turn down the lights back here? I've got the worst migraine imaginable. I'll be fine. I just need to rest," she whispered, laying her arm across her eyes.
"Sure, not a problem."
They reached home as the sun was going down, Laurel immediately going to shower and lie down. Bruce stopped by to leave her dinner, but she was hardly able to eat. It hurt to move, it hurt to think, it hurt to just lie there in the dark. Her phone buzzed as the night got later, but it hurt too much to look at the light, even for a second or two. It was Loki, she was sure of it. She knew it was far later than when she would usually head to the library, but she could hardly type a letter or two before having to close her eyes, so she set her phone aside, thinking that she would explain it all to him in the morning. Or whenever her migraine subsided.
Half an hour later, there was a soft knock on her door. It sounded more like a battering ram to her, but it was, in all reality, so quiet that Steve, her closest neighbor, heard nothing from his rooms. "Come in, it's open," she croaked, rolling over in bed. The sliver of light in the hall was too painful to look at, even indirectly.
The door closed softly, Laurel rolling over again to watch the figure that had walked in. She could hardly see, but smiled a bit when he held up his hand, creating a glowing ball of green light. Somehow, it didn't hurt to look at. "You Midgardians can be so weak," Loki remarked as he came over to her. "I warned you about overextending yourself with Asgardian magic. Too much more and you would have died," he said in an annoyed, but still melodious, voice. He sat down next to her anyway, Laurel looking up at him as much as she could. It hurt to even move her eyes. "It really is pathetic."
He laid a cool hand on her forehead, mumbling a few words under his breath. She couldn't understand them, but almost immediately, the pain in her head began to subside, to dull down enough to where she could open her eyes and look up at him in the green light. "You know what's pathetic? The fact that you were so compelled to find me when I didn't turn up on time."
"You refused to answer your phone," Loki shrugged, running his hand through her hair. "I heard Stark talking to my brother about you when I went to get dinner. They sounded worried, so I volunteered to check up on you."
"You volunteered, or you crept over here when you were done listening in on them?" she mumbled.
"Hmm, a bit of both," he admitted. "That, and I got curious. You never showed up, and I know only something like this would have kept you from me."
"Kept me from you? How self-important -"
"Ssh," he chided, stroking her hair and saying, "I will admit, I was curious. And then I heard them talking and knew exactly what you had done. I can use my magic to help you somewhat, but the only thing that will really help is rest."
"You're helping already," she mumbled, leaning against him and watching the glowing lights he had thrown into the air. "Do me a favor and don't get up until I fall asleep."
"Should I bother being so kind?" he asked, Laurel already closing her eyes. "Mayhaps I will be." He added something else in what she could only assume was Old Norse, contemplating why and how he had ended up there.
"What does that mean?"
"Nothing of importance," he lied, looking down at her. "Nothing at all."
