Voisin emerged from her comforting sleep slowly. It was bright in here, wherever she was. Everything was stark white. Voisin sat up and looked around. She was lying on a hard surface that was jutting out of a pristine white wall. Chains were bolted into the wall and connected to the two corners of the plastic piece, ensuring the stability of the thing. It was a bench, she realized. In the corner of her room was a speaker. To her left was a huge window with glass an inch thick, serving as another wall.
She knew where she was. She was in a maximum security cell in the depths of S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ.
Voisin stood up. Suddenly remembering her fatal injury, she looked down to where the wound was. Nothing was there. Just a hole in the cat suit where the knife had gone through. She looked out of her cell and beyond the window was a narrow corridor with linoleum tiles that were also an unstained white. On the other side of the hallway was a cell identical to the one she was in. Inside, a man with jet black hair and green and gold armor sat on his own bench with his head in his hands.
"Loki?"
She hadn't expected him to hear her, but his head jerked up and he looked over at her. Their eyes met. He rushed to the glass and put his hand to it.
"Carline."
His voice came through the speakers in her cell. S.H.I.E.L.D. must have given them permission to communicate.
"What happened?" she asked as she went to the glass and stood right across from Loki.
He shook his head, pointing to the speakers in his own cell. "S.H.I.E.L.D. can no doubt hear us. They're listening in."
"Let them."
Loki's hand fell from the glass. He sat down cross-legged and Voisin did the same. He was quiet for a minute. Softly, he asked, "Are you all right?"
"I'm okay," she answered. "And you?"
"Is 'okay' Midgardian jargon for 'not all right at all'?"
Voisin laughed humorlessly. "Usually."
"Then I am 'okay' as well."
They sat in stillness as a minute passed between them.
"What happened?" Voisin asked, her voice coming out loud against the silence.
Loki picked at a spot on his leather pants as he spoke. "I healed you. I put you into a deep sleep so that you had the opportunity to recover fully before S.H.I.E.L.D. began pestering you. I was questioned. I have no doubt that you will be questioned just the same in the next hour or so. You have been unconscious for the past day."
Voisin tried to come up with something to say. To thank him for saving her life. Unfortunately, 'thank you' didn't seem like it would be enough, but before she could think of anything sufficient, they heard echoing footsteps coming down the hall. Both Voisin and Loki stood up and backed away from the large window, however Loki made his movements much more natural and less hasty than Voisin's.
A small woman appeared from Voisin's right. She had long brown hair and a S.H.I.E.L.D. lab coat over relatively plain clothing. Her face was set into a mask of determination. It was Doctor Foster. Voisin had seen her a few times before at meetings involving the Avengers Initiative, but for the past few months, she had been in New Mexico.
"Loki," she said. "My name is Dr. Jane Foster—"
"Well, if it isn't my brother's pet," Loki said with a smiling sneer. Voisin was surprised by his abrupt change. "How kind of you to debase yourself so far as to come visit me in my... temporary residence."
She seemed taken off guard by his willingness to talk, maybe even by him knowing who she was. Jane Foster cleared her throat, steeling herself, apparently, and went on. "I've put an energy field around your cell that should negate the energy of your magic. Thor described your powers to me and I—"
"Why are you here, doctor?" Loki asked, sounding simultaneously bored and irritated by her presence. "Did you come here to gloat? To brag? To tell me in person how very clever you are? Well, dear Jane, how certain are you that your little energy field will work?" His voice was becoming dangerously quiet. "How positive can you be that this will hold me?" He took several prowling steps forward and Jane matched them as she retreated. "Yes, you will do well to fear me. I can make your life a nightmare even with my precious brother by your side."
"Loki, stop," Voisin couldn't help but say.
Foster and Loki turned to stare at Voisin. The doctor's gaze was calculating and Loki's was one of surprise. He backed off, stepping away from Jane and clasping his arms behind his back. Doctor Foster turned back to Loki after appraising Voisin, probably not finding anything worth commenting on at the moment. Foster watched Loki for a long, silent minute as he smirked back at her as if he wasn't bothered by anything going on.
"How can you stand yourself?" she asked, dropping her mask of professionalism that Voisin hadn't known she'd put on when she entered. "How can you live with all that you've done?" Her voice grew louder with each accusation she threw at the god. "You abandoned Thor. You abandoned your family, and then you—"
"They abandoned me!" Loki roared, furious. His hands were no longer behind his back in self-restraint. He was pointing behind him as if perhaps just beyond the wall of his cell was his Asgardian family so he could show Foster who really was to blame. "I care not what twisted words your beloved Thor has seduced you with, but I will not stand to hear my story—my own past—relayed back to me by a mere mortal who heard the entire thing from the favored son. You know nothing, Jane Foster, and it would behoove you to act as such."
Foster was speechless. She turned to walk away, pushing hair behind her ear angrily. Before she left, she looked back at him with passionate tears in her eyes. "Screw you." Her footsteps echoed down the hall as she walked away.
Voisin looked at Loki. His hands were behind his back again and he was pacing restlessly. His dark green cape swished behind him regally as he walked. His breathing was heavy and his head was down as he muttered incomprehensible words under his breath. Loki stopped without warning and looked up at the speaker in his cell. He pushed back a lock of dark hair that had fallen into his eyes.
"Thor, I know you're listening. Come speak with me face-to-face. And I want this to be a private discussion. Just you and me, Thunderer."
Silence rang through the rooms and Voisin and Loki lived the next two minutes in anticipation. And then, footsteps. These were much louder than Jane's had been. These were confident and sure. They were the footfalls of Thor.
"What do you want, brother?" he asked in a booming voice before he even came into view.
He was wearing regular clothes: jeans and a white T-shirt. Voisin couldn't help but gape at his appearance; she'd never seen him dressed so normally. Loki smiled hugely when Thor became visible, shedding the anger he had displayed when Foster was talking to him.
"I want to discuss your human," Loki said coolly.
"Jane," Thor said, correcting Loki's vague address of her. "I also wish to speak of her with you."
The two of them remained quiet, both staring into one another's eyes; dark hatred into hopeless love.
"Oh well, I'm waiting for you to begin," Loki whispered dangerously with a malicious glint in his eyes. "Is that not common for the firstborn to always be put ahead of everyone else? But then again, I would not know, since I was never really the younger."
Thor was wounded by the quip. "You did call me brother once," Thor said sadly. "You and I had not been so different."
Voisin saw the look in Thor's eyes. The dead sense of belief was plain on his face. Loki's isolation of himself from Thor must have hurt him beyond words. She felt a pang of sympathy for Thor.
Loki rolled his eyes, shrugging it off easily. "If you think your charm will lull me into trusting every word you speak, it will not. I am not some Midgardian sl—"
"Stop right there, Loki," Thor warned, his finger pointing at the man in green behind the glass threateningly. His sadness was gone and he had straightened up as he filled with protectiveness and anger. "You will never call Jane anything other than her name given to her at birth. You will speak to her with respect—"
"What has she done to earn my respect? Listen to your emotional tales of a brother lost because of his own madness? A story where you are the victim? Something you can tell with your large blue eyes as a tear falls pitifully?" His hands balled into fists and he slammed them against the glass. "I was used!" Loki snarled, his shout causing Voisin's hair to raise on the back of her neck.
"I know. Loki—brother—I know. Father never wanted you to find out the way you did." Contrasting to his brother's raging volume, Thor's tone was softer.
"And how else would I have come to the realization that I was not of Asgard?" Loki snarled. "When I was carted off to Jötunheim in the form of a peace treaty?" Thor seemed to be at a loss for words. Voisin saw Loki's eyes were gleaming with unshed tears. "Get out of my sight," Loki hissed, his voice even despite the emotion he was undeniably feeling.
"Brother—"
"GO!"
Thor stayed a moment longer to gaze upon Loki, but he left before either one could say anything more. When he was gone, Loki sat down on his bench and hid his face behind his hands. Voisin knew he would not want to be bothered, so she sank to the floor and leaned her back against the wall, letting her head fall to the side to rest upon the glass of her cell.
They sat like that for a long time before they heard multiple people approaching. Voisin was too heartless to stand, but Loki got up swiftly and was pacing by the time the five guards arrived at Voisin's door accompanied by an upset Director Nick Fury. He stalked to the end of her cell in his sweeping black trench coat. He typed a string of numbers into a keypad and then removed his black leather glove to press his palm against a print-identifier that Voisin knew would only open to him and a select few others. A section of the glass slid aside and two of the five guards entered her cell. Voisin put her hands in the air, deciding it would be much easier if she just complied.
As she was being escorted out, Voisin caught the eye of Loki. His angry veneer fell away for an instant as he nodded at her supportively. She was shoved forward before she could do anything else.
"Well, Agent Carolyn," Fury said, walking in front of her and the guards, "as you can tell, S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't too damn thrilled by you at the moment."
Voisin was in cuffs and the chain that linked her two wrists together was bolted to a metal hook on the top of a table. She was in a relatively normal-looking investigation room with the one-way mirror and the single table in the center. But Voisin knew that there were guns in hidden cavities along the wall, all cocked and aimed at her should she decide to become dangerous. How strange it was to be on the other end of the questioning procedure.
She was alone in the room, seated facing the one-way mirror and she caught sight of her reflection before she could look away. She didn't look as though she had almost died just twenty-four hours ago, but she'd definitely had better days. Voisin knew that Fury was on the other side of the glass watching her intently, trying to make her squirm. Fortunately, Voisin knew that this process would look like, so she remained still and focused her eyes on the top of the chair across the table from her.
She had been waiting for maybe ten minutes when Fury opened the door and walked in pulling a cart with a television on the top shelf with a DVD player attached. Voisin stared at it. What was the point of that being in here? Fury sat down and brought the TV close so he could operate it from his seat. He turned it on and pressed a button on the DVD player. A familiar scene showed up on the screen.
It was security footage of Voisin seeing Loki for the first time.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. is under the impression that Loki kidnapped you from our base," Fury said as Voisin stared at the screen intently. That was her firing her gun at him as he made his way toward her. And then he was disappearing, but Voisin found that he had not actually ever been there. He had been standing behind her the whole time while a duplicate of himself distracted her. He was threatening her and then threw her into the wall. He tried using his staff to put her under the control of the Tesseract, but Voisin fell unconscious and then Loki threw her over his shoulder and walked out of the screen.
The view cut to the next hallway he strode down with Voisin over his shoulder. Then the next. Then he was in a crowded hallway and blasted everyone back with the power from his scepter. He went over to two men and touched the tip of his blade to their hearts and took control of their minds.
Voisin watched as he used them to take him to the Tesseract in the very bottom of S.H.I.E.L.D. But the part where Loki reached the last floor of S.H.I.E.L.D. base wasn't recorded because the basement had top secret projects in it that not even the heads in Washington knew about.
"That's where Selvig finally went nuts," Fury said as the TV screen was filled with gray static. "Apparently, Loki had the guy under his thumb for a few months before all of this went down. The doc shot me in my leg and then Loki pointed his light saber version two-point-oh at me and tossed me into the wall," the Director said bitterly. "He escaped with you and Dr. Selvig. So, the obvious question that all of us asked ourselves is why? Why just you and the doc?"
Voisin's jaw clenched. She saw what they were doing—they were pigeonholing her. Either she had been brainwashed by Loki prior to being kidnapped by him, or she willingly worked with him. "Director," she said indignantly, "you saw him overpower me. I was not working with Loki. I had never seen him before—"
Fury slammed his hands on the desk. "Then why," he fumed, "do Agent Barton and Dr. Selvig contend that you assisted him during your stay at his headquarters?"
Voisin gaped, at a loss for words. Of course, Barton had suspected her collaboration with Loki toward the end. And she had gone with Selvig on the helicopter to Stark Tower under the pretense of helping Loki.
"What did they say?" Voisin asked, dumbly.
"It doesn't matter what they said," the Director snarled. "The fact is that you have two of the most trustworthy motherfuckers in this business saying that you. Were helping. Loki."
Voisin looked at her cuffed wrists blankly.
"What?" Fury asked after a long moment of silence. "Aren't you going to defend yourself at all? I'm interested in what someone who so easily turns on their own has to say."
She had nothing to say. What could she say? She furrowed her brows in concentration as she kept her eyes on the chain links of her handcuffs. She wanted to cry for some reason. How could she possibly explain herself to Fury? She knew him—he would never understand. In fact, she didn't think anyone would.
"I cannot explain my actions, sir."
Fury pushed away from the table and scrubbed at his face with his hands. "Dammit, Carolyn, I don't want to have to do this to you; you were a good agent. But if you ever posed a threat to S.H.I.E.L.D. while you were with Loki, you'll have to be punished for it."
"I—... understand, sir." She was dead. Voisin knew that Barton could say some things about her, but those could be explained... couldn't they? How much had Loki given away? A large majority of it depended on what Selvig remembered—like her letting him fall victim to the Tesseract again after he'd been knocked out of it.
Shit.
She wished she had just died in the street.
Fury was standing with his back to her, perhaps out of disgust for what she'd done. "I'm going to get official statements from Barton and Selvig. You're going back to your cell in the meantime. Just cooperate and nobody gets hurt."
Voisin was escorted back with guards on all sides of her like she was some kind of time bomb. Loki was pacing when she saw him. He stopped to watch as she was pushed into her room.
She stood facing the back wall for a moment without any idea what to do. When she heard the guards leave, she finally sat down and pulled her knees up to her chest and hid her face in her arms. Two huge tears rolled out of her eyes, and more followed before she could stop them. She choked on a sob.
"Carline?" Loki asked, concern rising in his voice. "Did they hurt you?"
She didn't answer him. She didn't want to talk to him right now. Instead, Voisin held herself tight and let her tears fall freely.
That night, Voisin had terrible nightmares.
She dreamed of the Chitauri and Selvig's blue eyes. She dreamed of the Tesseract and had a quick vision of accidentally misfiring the alien weapon at a group of bystanders. But the worst thing that she dreamed was her father's death.
She was in a small cage that she could only crouch in. It would have normally served as a kennel for a large dog, she thought, but the multiple padlocks and chains on the door gave away its true purpose. Voisin felt as if the walls were collapsing in on her, shrinking around her body and constricting her motions. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Agent Barton in a similar cage and, even though he took up more space, he looked much calmer that Voisin felt.
"Just breathe," he reminded her gently. But that became difficult when their kidnappers walked into the room, holding a man bound in ropes.
When he was taken, he had been wearing a pinstripe suit. Now, the jacket was gone and his tie was loosened around his neck. His shirt was blood-spattered and untucked. The pants had a tear in the knee and the shoes that had been shiny were now scuffed and dirtied.
They pushed him to the floor. Looking past the bruises and cuts and dried blood on his face, Voisin recognized her father.
"Père!" Voisin cried. She pushed to the front of her cage and held on to the bars.
He peered up at her with sad, dark eyes, and then a gun went off. In the next moment, her father was lying on the floor with blood flowing out of his head from a bullet-sized hole above his right eyebrow.
"Carline! Carline, wake up!"
She woke with a gasp, opening her eyes to find her face wet with tears. She took in her surroundings and couldn't control the sob that left her when she recalled she was being held in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s prison. She was pressed up against the side of the plastic bench in her cell, the edge digging into her head sharply.
"It was a dream." That was Loki. "Nothing more."
Voisin looked out of the glass wall into his cell. His hands were pressed to the window and he looked worried. She wiped her eyes, frustrated at how easily her emotions were getting the best of her, but the tears continued without any promise of stopping soon.
"What's going to happen?" she asked like a lost child.
He, finally, seemed unable to speak. "I... don't know."
A door was flung open and armed guards shuffled into view. They stood outside of Loki's cage, awaiting orders from the owner of the last pair of footsteps that were idly making their way down the hall. It was Natasha Romanov, otherwise known as the Black Widow. She was wearing her S.H.I.E.L.D. cat suit and a holster where a firing pistol rested within. She glared at Loki.
"Loki Laufeyson," she said, punching a code in the keypad next to Loki's cell and then pressing her hand onto the print-identifier. "You owe me a long talk."
His face was twisted into a scowl, his eyes narrowed at the redhead. "How nice to finally met you, Agent Romanov," he said, his pleasant words not matching his dangerous expression. "I have heard much about you."
The door to his cell opened and Loki didn't resist the two guards that ran in and gripped either of his arms. He was led out, and Voisin watched with teary eyes as he walked away. He sent her a sidelong glance as he passed and Voisin thought for a moment that he looked nervous. But it couldn't have been.
It felt as though Loki was gone for hours. Voisin reached a point where she couldn't sit any longer and she stood up to pace around in her cell. The sound of him returning sent her to the glass to watch as he was pushed back into his own confinement. Nick Fury was accompanying Loki instead of Agent Romanov this time and once Loki was safely in his cell, Fury began opening Voisin's.
The guards took her arms and their hold was stronger than she remembered. She flinched in their grip, but they only held on tighter. Voisin looked to Fury in order to read his face and she was met by a sad but solemn gaze. That look struck fear in her and she twisted around to see Loki standing in the corner of his cell, pressed against the glass in order to be as close to her as he could.
"I'm sorry."
"What?" she cried, allowing the guards to jerk her forward. To Fury, she shouted, "What are you doing? What's happening?" She was forced through the doors to the prison and Fury raised his voice over hers.
"Just cooperate," Fury said without looking back at Voisin. She halted, stopping her feet in their place for a moment before the guards shoved her into motion again. Where was the "and nobody gets hurt" that always followed that line? Almost every single time "just cooperate" left his mouth, they were followed by "and nobody gets hurt"—a promise of safety.
Where was that now?
"Director, please—"
"I am not your director anymore," he snapped. They reached the room Voisin had been dreading being taken to.
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s torture room.
Voisin dug her heels into the ground and began fighting the guards. "No. No, please." She had heard stories about what happened in the torture room. S.H.I.E.L.D. could usually find someone's greatest weakness and turn it against them. Sometimes in the form of video footage that they forced the criminal to watch over and over until they broke, sometimes it was a fear and they were exposed to darkness, water, fire... S.H.I.E.L.D. was a fan of psychological torture and it showed when the victims were taken out of the room, spluttering and shaking from their experience inside.
Voisin had always wondered what would be waiting for her if she was ever in serious trouble with the agency. Now, she didn't want to find out, but she had an idea of what it was.
She tried twisting out of the men's grasps, but they held her tight. Fury pinched the bridge of his nose. "I don't like this any more than you do." He opened the door and a light switched on automatically. Inside, Voisin could see a dark titanium box that was sitting on top of a table. It was dark black and had holes in the top, large enough to let air in. The reason it was there became clear and Voisin's suspicion of what was in the room was confirmed.
They knew about her fear of claustrophobia and they were finally going to use it against her. All of those occasions when Fury had spared her the torment of getting herself into the kind of positions that would have been nightmarish to anyone with a fear of tight, small spaces just to have her biggest weakness used as a form of torture.
The guards on either side of Voisin used her moment of hesitation to move her through the doors and close them once they were all inside. They held her close again and Fury walked over to face her.
"Carline Voisin, you have been accused of betrayal against S.H.I.E.L.D. and against planet Earth. Convince Loki to agree to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s terms of his surrender and we'll consider dropping the charges and sending you somewhere else instead," he said. "All you have to do is get him to—"
"Surrender?" Voisin repeated, taken aback. "And when he says no?"
"Then we'll encourage you to try harder," Fury said meaningfully. Voisin's eyes darted to the contraption behind him. He nodded. "Exactly."
She tried backing away, but she was locked into place by the guards holding her there. "I can't make him do anything."
Fury seemed disappointed by her response. "Then we're going to have to ask you again—and this time, not as nicely." He motioned to the guards and they lifted Voisin into the air. She writhed and struggled, but their grip was unyielding.
They carried her over to the little metal box and stuffed her inside, none too gently. The edges of the box cut her skin in places where she thrashed. Using brute force, they managed to close the lid over her and Voisin immediately felt like she was losing air.
There was room for her to lie on her back and curl her legs up, but that was it. The lid of the box was a mere three or four inches away from the tip of her nose and she tried to lift off the cover, but it was useless and didn't move at all. The holes were about an inch wide, scattered across the top every few inches. They let streams of light in, but she could only see the white ceiling through them. She banged on the lid with her fists, but only scraped her knuckles on the holes and drew blood.
"Let me out," she whimpered, pitifully. "I don't like this. Please."
"Convince Loki to surrender," Fury's voice came from somewhere outside.
"I can't," she insisted.
She heard retreating footsteps. "Then we'll come back when you think you can."
