It seemed that she wasn't breathing. She wrapped her arms tight around herself and doubled over, her forehead to the cold metal deck and a harsh red colouring creeping over her skin. The metal of the carries groaned and the engines kicked up a gear. Overhead, rolling clouds developed out of an otherwise benign sky.
"Wren, what is it? What's happened?" Thor knelt beside her and put a hand on her back. "Wren! Wren talk to me!"
"Thor," Loki said in warning as the carrier began to spin clockwise very slowly.
"What the hell is going on?" Tony demanded.
"I don't know!" Thor yelled as rain, heavy, driven and violent began to hit the deck. "I've only ever seen her like this once before..." He looked at Loki.
"Well how did you fix it then?" Tony called.
"The Allfather knocked her unconscious for two days!" Thor yelled back.
"Get someone inside, find a medic and get her a sedative!" Tony yelled to the airmen who ran off to do as they were told.
The carrier began to move faster as a maelstrom formed in the water below them. Wren still didn't appear to be breathing, she held herself tight and a high pitched pathetic animal sound came from her throat.
"Release me!" Loki demanded and held out his bound hands.
"Stay back!" Natasha ordered.
"I said release me, or she will drag us all under!"
Thor glanced over and nodded. With a wary look, Natasha let him out of his restraints. Loki ran as best he could on the pitching deck and skidded to his knee's beside her. Without a moment's thought he grabbed her upper arms and shook her hard.
"Who are you!" He screamed in her face.
Wren blinked stupidly at him, and the scream that had hovered behind her lips tore from her throat, broken and raw. Loki shook her hard again.
"I said who are you?"
"I... he's..." She stammered. The carrier slowed but the rain continued to fall making the deck slippery and dangerous.
"You are Cerridwren Battleborn." Loki hissed in her face. "You are the daughter of Tyr Keyturner and you are frightening the children."
She twitched and looked around. The carriers engines were strong enough by then to fight the currant and their course righted. The rain stopped feeling driven and aggressive, it slacked off to a steady pounding downpour. "You are the Queen under the Mountain..." Loki said quietly, having guessed the contents of the birds message.
Wren trembled violently and looked up at him. "He's been gone... for years. 50 years... how could I not know...?"
Loki continued to look at her and for a moment it looked like she might fall against his chest and cry. He pushed himself away and got to his feet. "Because no one saw fit to tell you. Wonderful man, the Allfather..."
"Loki!" Thor put his arm around Wren and tugged her back against his chest while glaring at his brother. "Don't fill he head with nonsense because you are angry with father! Wren, you know he didn't know. He would have told you." He looked down at her over her shoulder, and frowned. She'd begun to sweat profusely and her trembling was even more pronounced. "Ok. It's alright. Come on..." He scooped her up in his arms. "Bind him again."
Thor didn't wait to see if his command had been followed. He carried Wren inside, and the last thing she remembered before blackness and fever took her, was the gentleness of his hands, and the dull grey of the bulkheads.
"I do not wish to leave her." Thor grumbled as he stood in the doorway of the bunk room where he'd lain Wren's sweating body. "She shouldn't wake up alone."
"How likely is another episode like that?" Fury, who hadn't bothered to introduce himself, asked.
Thor glared at him. "As long as no one else dies, fairly unlikely." Fury stared at him and Thor relented "I have only seen her do it once before, when we thought Loki had fallen to his death."
"Right."
"I'll stay with her." Bruce said quietly.
"Excuse me?" Thor looked hard at him. "Who are you?"
Bruce looked up at him and cleaned his glasses nervously. "I'm just somebody who understands losing control... I know how people will look at her when she wakes up..."
When Wren's eyes opened, she was laying on a bunk, with Thor's cloak draped over her. She rolled onto her side and the man sitting on the opposite bunk gave her a small, shy smile.
"Hi... How're you feeling?" He asked.
"Like I haven't slept... ever." She sat up slowly and rubbed her head. "Is everyone alright?"
"A little twitchy is all, but no actual damage." He grabbed a glass of water from the night stand and handed it to her.
"Thank you..." She sipped at it and sighed. "I need to stop doing that."
"Easier said than done?"
"Something like that. I couldn't do anything like that before... well until recently. Then, I guess you could say I had a bit of a shock and...now it runs away with itself sometimes." She smiled shyly back.
"It's OK. Come on, your brother will want to see you. They're ah, trying to work out what to do with the prisoner."
"Joy... what fun."
Wren followed him through the endless twisting corridors to a conference room. Thor moved immediately to her side and hugged her too him. "How do you feel?"
"Stupid, freakish... a little hungry." She smiled up at him and turned her head into his hand when he ruffled her hair.
"Then we shall feed you."
"I want to talk to him..." She said quietly.
"Agent Romanov is in with him now. I can have someone show you the way and you can go in when she's done." Fury said. "Nick Fury."
He offered her his hand and she shook it. "Thank you. She wont hurt him, will she?"
"Just his ego."
She snorted and shook her head. "For Loki the worst pain of all..."
"You don't have to, you know?" Thor said gently.
"Of course I do. Has he said anything?"
"Bluster mostly. You know what he's like."
"It would be a mistake to presume it all bluster, Thor. He has never been your equal in brute strength, but he plays his hand well, and he always has a plan." She said seriously.
"She's right." Thor conceded to the others. "No one knows him better."
"A few months ago I would have agreed with you. Now I think I know him not at all. Can someone take me to see him, please?"
She made the trip in silence, and passed Natasha at the door. She was in a hurry and Wren wondered what was wrong, but she didn't have time to think about it. Inside the room, Loki was being kept in a clear container, like an insect to be studied.
"I wondered if you'd come." He said from were he lay, flat on his back on the single bench seat in the cell. "I wondered if he'd let you."
"Why do you suddenly presume that Thor controls me?" She asked.
"Didn't he always?" Loki sat up and leaned forward wish his hands on his knees. "Didn't he reign you in, just like Odin, with his supposed love. You wanted so badly to be loved you bent yourself to their will gladly for the tiniest hint of affection."
"You decided this was a better way to go? Get people to love you by what? Not giving them any other choice? Love Loki, or die... do you feel like that's working well for you?" She asked sharply.
Loki shook his head. "You're choosing him..."
"Stop it! Stop making every conversation we have about him! This is not a choice between you and Thor, this isn't even a choice!" She shook her head and stared at him where he sat. "Don't you understand, this isn't a choice... it's what is. You came to Earth... you've been killing the children,"
"They are not your children!"
"Yes they are!" She yelled at him. "Odin never understood, nor Frigga, and I know you didn't either but I thought you at least believed. They are my children. They are my responsibility. This isn't a choice to be made, it's what is! I will protect them with my life, I will die for them, I will tear out my own heart and live hollow and empty if that's what you force me to do..." She had moved up to the glass and put her hands against it. "But it's not a choice... I can no more abandon them than I can live without breath..."
Loki stood and moved up to the glass. He put his hands against it opposite hers and almost fooled himself to think that they were touching."We could have ruled this world together," he said quietly.
Wren gave a small sob and tears escaped her eyes. "You have no idea just how true that is..." When he stared at her blankly she shook her head. "I could never stay in Asgard Loki. Didn't you know that? I was always going to have to come back. To take my place here. Thor was supposed to become the Allfather, he was supposed to grow up and rule well and we... you and I, we were supposed to come here. Open the mountain, and my people would love you and bend knee to you because they would see how happy you made me." She let her hands drop. "You were always meant to be King here... with me... but that's impossible now. Don't you understand? We remain to care for the children, to defend them. I can never let you have this world... not now."
The ship rocked and she stumbled slightly. 'Hulk is lose, I repeat the Hulk is lose' said a voice over the intercom.
"I don't... I have to go."
"Don't!" Loki hit the glass with his fist. "Don't go!"
"What? Why?"
"You can't stop it now..."
Wren's eyes widened and she spun on her heel and ran.
