Author's note: to my most recent reviewer, yes indeed you are the reason I am posting this chapter today. Thank you for the review! While I will not abandon the story, I admit that reviews do encourage me to move faster. Please, if anyone has thoughts, ponderings or general inquiries, I'd love to hear from you. It helps to motivate me!
Afzal sat with his back to the compound, refusing to grant his enemies the courtesy of acknowledgement for the time being. The mission had proven to be profoundly disappointing, and he tried to keep his own spirits raised as the men readied themselves for the oncoming brawl.
The angle of his body also improved the signal of his communicator, which rested against his wrist. A small green light pulsed in the corner to signify an ongoing call.
He spoke in French, as this was the common language between himself and the one called.
"We attack at midnight," he said. His tone dipped and warped as the words flowed from his lips.
"You seem disappointed, Afzal," the German-tinted voice replied. "You expected more?"
"It was a simple trap - easily predicted. Every one of them came here."
"Yes," said the voice with great satisfaction.
"There is little honor in battling an unwary foe," Afzal said.
"As much as there was in your father's murder, yes?" Afzal pressed his lips together and turned his head. It was a simple, quick reminder, and it worked immediately.
"Yes," he said lowly. "At midnight," he repeated, and pressed the side of the communicator to disconnect from the call.
Loki had learned many things over a long life, and few of these so-called facts were unchangeable. With the most minor manipulations, he could turn many situations to his advantage, and did so without shame. In truth, only one fact remained outside of his grasp, and it was less a fact and more of an unmovable force. Namely, his brother Thor, and his ridiculous attachment to a diminutive mortal woman.
It was this attachment which compelled the trickster to sit before the monitor within Thor's room and allow Jane Foster the privilege of explaining his faults to him. If asked, he would lie and claim that he was truly chastised rather than envisioning her lovey spine mounted on his wall, or perhaps those shining eyes plucked from their sockets to roll across the floor.
He sat with his hands crossed in his lap and listened to her scolding with occasional glances around the side of the monitor, where Thor sat watching him. Loki sighed, rolled his eyes, and began to pay attention once more.
"Yes, I understand that resurrection is a terrible atrocity," he drawled. "It is lucky, then, that this is not what I have done for Amma Lynn."
"She used to be dead and now she's not," Jane said. "There's not too many words for that and they all sound a lot like 'god complex.' You can't just do that, Loki, it's dangerous -"
"I did not," he said, and she ignored his repetition.
"- and it opens too many possibilities. People would want everyone raised up, and who gets to decide?"
"Then you think Lynn Creed should have remained dead?" the trickster asked, leaving a sudden tension following his words. He raised his eyebrows and glanced from Jane's shivering face to Thor's raised eyebrows behind her.
"What?" he asked, annoyed at their apprehension. "It is a valid question."
"You said you didn't resurrect her," Jane said slowly. "What did you mean?"
"The ævi forn was collapsing with her inside of it. I allowed her to escape."
Jane pressed her fingers to her temples. "Loki, that's just another way of saying -"
"She was trapped," he said. Jane looked up and creased her brow. "A paradox was created, where she was both alive and dead, separated only by time. Her body was here, separated from her…" Loki tried to think of the best term.
"Her soul?" Jane asked, and the trickster flinched.
"It will suffice," he said. "Her soul was trapped inside of the ævi forn, alone, while her body was here, preserved by my seiðr. I did nothing beyond allow the two to rejoin."
"She was trapped?" Jane's eyes were wide, and he knew he had her.
"Yes, Miss Foster, and when the time pocket as you call it collapsed, she would be lost forever."
He could see the appeal of the idea across her lovely mortal face, and smiled when he knew he'd won. "So you see," he said, "it had to be done."
"Either way she is raised," Thor said from behind the monitors. Jane sighed and nodded.
"You're right, Thor - water under the bridge, I guess." She chewed at her bottom lip, worrying the poor flesh as she debated another statement. Loki narrowed his eyes and felt his upper lip curling as he prepared for whatever she was about to say.
"I will speak with you on the morrow, Jane." Thor came around the monitors and smiled brightly, banishing her concerns in one fell swoop. Jane beamed at him and waved, promising to be available for his next call before reaching toward the screen. The image dropped away, leaving black space behind. Thor settled his weight against the metal desk, which creaked in protest. Tony had already replaced one, and Thor took greater care with the furniture in his quarters as a result.
"You called her Lynn Creed," Thor said, and Loki leaned back to look up at him.
"It is her name," Loki said with a scowl.
"Indeed," Thor said, "and you have not used it in millenia."
Loki pushed up from the chair, intending to leave. Thor's hand shoved into the center of his chest, forcing him back down into the seat, and the trickster snarled.
"You cannot force me to speak with you," he rasped.
"But I can," said Thor. "I can sit here and wait until you admit the truth."
"Which truth would you like, brother?" Loki was fighting the urge to sulk in the chair, brought on by nothing more than Thor's overbearing presence. "I am full of truths for you. Simply tell me what you would like to hear, and I shall happily oblige."
"You cannot avoid her forever," the thunderer said. Loki tensed, expecting something more, and Thor merely stood and left the room.
The trickster sat in silence, his face blank of all emotion. He blinked once, twice, and looked to the corner of the room where JARVIS' silent eye observed him.
"I suppose even you are upset with my actions," Loki said to the air. "A mortal construct judging the actions of a higher being."
"I could not speak to hierarchy, sir," JARVIS said. "I can, however, say that I agree with Mr. Odinson in his assessment of the situation."
"You are an automaton of Stark's, no better than a slave," Loki hissed.
"I am merely being consistent. When Mr. Stark's health suffered, I suggested he tell Miss Potts the nature of his deterioration."
"Amma Lynn is not my woman," Loki said wearily. He was tired of arguing the point.
"Neither was Miss Potts in a relationship with Mr. Stark at the time," JARVIS said. "They were friends and coworkers, and I felt that she had a right to understand his actions."
Loki drummed his fingers on the metal table. "Very well," he murmured, and stood from the desk. "Into the lion's den."
"Do you think what he did was right?" Bruce asked Natasha. He was peering into a microscope, adjusting the focus with his gloved fingers.
"I can't say I'm sad he did it," Natasha said beside him. She was pipetting a small drop of liquid culture onto a slide. Three others rested on the counter, and she took the earliest prepared, now with a dried sample on top, and passed it over a small open flame three times. "Lynn would still be dead if he hadn't."
"It just doesn't sit right," Bruce said and reached for the slide. He pulled the one currently under observation and tossed it into a sharps container on his left, then slide the next into place. He took up a small glass bottle and unscrewed the cap, which emerged with a thin glass rod on the opposite side of the lid. Beads of oil gathered at the tip, and he pressed the bead to the center of the slide before capping the oil. He adjusted the scope until the lens just touched the oil, then pulled back, using the viscosity to assist in his coarse focusing.
"It's definitely in the gray area," Natasha said. Her smile was hidden behind the mask covering the bottom half of her face. "It's done now, anyway."
"Yeah," Bruce said. "It sure is. Hey, look at this - it's a macrophage. Tell me what you see."
Natasha sidled over and peered into the lenses. "Large thing surrounding small purple thing," she said after a few moments.
"Large thing is the macrophage - the good guys. We like large thing. Purple thing is our strain."
Natasha blinked against the light shining directly into her eyes. "It looks like it's being eaten."
"It is," Bruce said. "That's what we do with other diseases, when our immune system is working right. That's what his is doing, too. But that's not his blood."
Natasha leaned back and looked at Bruce.
"That's yours. The slide at your hand, that's mine. The next one over is Tony. They'll all look the same."
Natasha twisted and settled her rump against the edge of the counter to support her weight. "So it's true."
"It's true," Bruce said. "And it opens up possibilities."
Natasha clenched her jaw. "His is a mutation."
"Right," Bruce said. "Mine is too, maybe, and Steve is questionable. But not you or Tony, or Barton."
"Regular humans with immunity," Natasha said, and Bruce nodded.
"It could take us pretty far," he said. "It could take us all the way to a treatment, a cure. Maybe even a vaccine, but I don't think it's viral."
Natasha nodded. "You'll need more of our blood?"
"Yeah," Bruce said. "I'd say it's up to you, but Nat -"
"There's been almost six thousand deaths," she said quietly. "It's not going to get better."
Bruce nodded and cast his eyes down.
"How quickly morals erode," Natasha said, and again, the mask hid her smile.
Lynn was busy writing in one of several notebooks Tony had provided to her. She had found that the man refused to acknowledge her anger with him by steadfastly ignoring her angry retorts. Dozens of conversations with Pepper over the past several months had taught her that this was Tony's coping mechanism when someone he appeared to care about expressed anger with him: ignore, speak over and force them to move on.
She was too tired to argue anymore, and her chest ached with every breath. She decided to spare herself the indignity of dying angry and just accepted his apology and his gifts. In the end, it turned into a worthwhile decision - he had given her notebooks and an ereader with a charger, which he loaded with various books he'd decided she had to read. He'd loaded her music onto JARVIS' server and given her an earpiece so that she could listen to the others as they moved about the compound and spoke with each other.
He brought her a sandwich, and she'd tossed it into the biohazard container inside of her room when the smell made her sick. He brought her soup, which she sipped at. She couldn't keep the noodles down.
Her eyes were watery, her nose runny. She was dressed in oversized white pajamas which bunched at her wrists and ankles. She felt like a child and wished she had longer limbs so that she wouldn't need to roll up every sleeve and pants leg.
She wondered if these would be the last clothes she ever wore.
"Would you forgive me, if I asked it?"
Lynn didn't look up because she didn't want to see him.
"There's nothing to forgive," she said. Her pen breached the paper and she tore a short line before she stopped herself. "I just forgot where we stood."
She heard his clothing rustle as he crouched across from her, and wondered when she'd come to know his sounds well enough to decipher them.
"Look at me, Amma Lynn."
"No." The pen remained still; he was distracting her. "You made your views clear. You can leave now."
"Please, look at me."
She turned and stared at him, and he noticed that the pen was shaking in her hand.
"You make it hard to be your friend," she said, and looked down. Loki closed his eyes for a moment, then pressed both hands against the plastic barrier.
Loki braced himself. He inhaled, deeply, and opened his mouth to utter the phrase he so despised.
"Amma Lynn," he began, and stopped himself for how it pained him. He licked his lips; she kept her eyes down, and did not see his struggle.
"I am -"
He stopped, tense and anxious. How long since he had spoken an apology and meant it? Did he even mean it now? He could not be certain of his own intentions, save for the ache which persisted the longer she avoided looking at him.
"I am -"
A loud explosion rocked the foundation above them, and chunks of the ceiling tumbled all around them. Lynn screamed, a warbly, broken noise from her damaged lungs, and covered her head with her hands.
Loki ripped the plastic down.
"Loki," she wheezed. She was struggling to breathe; there was too much debris in the air around her, and blood stained her lips and chin as she coughed.
"Loki, don't, the strain -"
"You cannot hurt me," he said. He wrapped his arms underneath her legs and back, hoisting her into the air with bare effort. She felt as light as a small Aesir toddler, and she clung to him as he carried her from the room.
Her blood shone against his leather crest.
"It's Afzal," she was saying, "it's him. He'll take me again. He'll take me." She sounded terrified, and Loki realized that in all the time he had known her, he had never heard such broken sounds from her throat. He had seen her scared and screaming, even broken, but this creature in his arms was torn down not by outside forces, but by invaders within. Her own body weakened her will, and in the onslaught of physical ailment her stubborn, tenacious hope finally failed.
In that moment, he hated the cursed strain coursing through her more than his own dreaded fate, and the repulsion led to sudden clarity.
"It is alright, Amma Lynn," he murmured into her hair. "You will be safe."
"I'm never safe with you," she said, and it was to his shame that he realized how correct the statement was.
Steve fired through the hole blown through the cafeteria ceiling, yelling to Sif beside him.
"They're coming in waves, don't use it all! Thor, Bruce, we need you here!"
"I'm on my way," Thor said through the comms, and a distant roar signified the appearance of the Hulk within the compound.
"Banner, don't destroy the lab -"
A grenade plopped through the hole and both Steve and Sif dove to the sides, covering their heads as the explosion detonated around them. Tables were blown back against the walls, and the hole above them opened a few meters wider in all directions.
"Sif," Steve said, and the Asgardian yelled back that she was alright.
"It's Afzal," Tony called through the comms. "He's got fifty more outside that I can see. I'm handling them."
"Do they have anything big?" Steve asked, as a lean man dropped through the hole and smiled at the two warriors on the floor. His chest was covered in explosives, some with the Stark logo, others with SHIELD and still others with a red, multi-pronged skull.
"Hail Hydra," he said, and pressed the button in the center of his chest.