Story is not abandoned, but my muse was wrestling with the plot direction. I wanted to go into one direction , my muse drew me kicking and screaming in the other direction. I can't tell you how much I dreaded this chapter! You can probably guess why. Changed and edited more than a few hundred times.
Bella was racing down the narrow corridors, tackling other personal running in a frenzy into several directions. She had long given up apologizing. The ground was shaking several times and the sirens were blearing loudly from all speakers in unison with the alarm lights. The normally white neon lights were flickering indicating unstable power cores. Loki could not escape their grasp, or the tesseract would be lost to them. The ground shook again yet this time it was accompanied by an angry roar and Bella's heart stopped and she almost froze mid-step mirroring those around her. SHIT! The Hulk is loose!
That was worrying and was probably exactly what their "captured" God of Mischief had had in mind. I this might happen! SHIT! Damn you Fury!
She caught herself and forced the thought of the loose green monster out of her mind and continued her race to the detention section.
Wind was rushing through the detention area as he was preparing to finally eject his Thunderhead of a brother. His hand hovered over the display having successfully protected himself against the annoying agent who Barton believed to be young Bella's rightful father. Coulson had surprised him. How the man had been able to take out the other guards of the squad to get to detention cell was a mystery to him. But it seemed there was more to him than his mediocre appearance suggested. He had just wanted to knock him out, but the sceptre had taken control and heightened his anger and even recognized that his adversary presented a danger and had to be taken out entirely. Thor was seething and successfully trapped in his round prison. Strategy had never been his forte. All his "brother" was able to do was fight in combat. Why Odin had deemed him worthy to be a king was beyond him. The sceptre was urging him to finally eject his brother, but his hand still hovered over the display. Thor would escape that prison. He had his hammer. But only if he managed to get some control back. It was almost too juicy not to try.
His acute sense of danger prickled, and he could detect the barely audible sound of soft footsteps on metal ground. It was now or never. He swiftly edged his hand closer to the display and quickly jumped to the side when his sceptre reacted. Some small projectile had been aimed to his head, but the sceptre had reacted and built a blue barrier and stopped it mid-air. It could have cost his head! Why had he been distracted? A new wave of pain was lancing through his body in punishment. He growled in anger and looked at the irritating disturbance.
"No!" escaped his lips when he realized who was standing opposite to him with blazing eyes. He wasn't the only one who had protested at seeing her. Thor and Coulson had mumbled the same exclamation. Her gun aimed at his head.
Bella was unnervingly calm and focused as she held her gun at Loki. She had seen her father sitting with his back to the wall, a strange looking weapon at his feet. He looked injured. A seething Thor who looked furiously towards a prowling Loki and who undoubtedly had caused the crack in the glass sell. The young woman was fighting hard against her instinct to run towards her father and help him. No, she wanted to, but if she let the crazy Asgardian out of her sight, then he would attack her as well and she would not be able to help Phil. She needed to make this fight as short as possible and get her father help.
Calmness expanded from her head over her entire being cancelling the noise of the wind around her and the buzzing of the electronics around her.
"You should not be here." The tall dark-haired Asgardian told her locking his blue hypnotizing eyes with her as he almost casually strolled towards her with an amused smile.
"Well, too bad for you. I am. If you think that I'll just let you walk out of here, then you are severely mistaken." Bella countered calmly raising her left eyebrow challengingly.
"Oh, my little mortal. You are the one that is mistaken." He said stopping about three feet away from her. "With your newly awakened gift I have no plan on leaving you behind."
He suddenly vanished in front of her and Bella's neck hair prickled as she could sense him reappear behind her and quickly ducked to the side, putting her gun back in her holster hearing the Asgardian curse when he had been unable to grab her. She quickly recovered, turned around and faced the large Asgardian who was standing not more than a foot away from her. The sceptre pulsating heavily.
She kicked the sceptre further away putting more distance between him and her. Corrected her stance and charged at him, but Loki was fast and blocked every lounge by her hands. He was a crackling manically when he retaliated snarling, and his sceptre made contact with her upper body forcing making her fall a few metres back. Bella gasped as the air was knocked out of her lungs when the cold metal of the ground connected with her back. She held her stomach shortly. Now was no time for pain right now. She built up momentum with her legs and jumped back up again facing her adversary. He was advancing on her again with a malicious smile on his lips. But something was off. Was he transparent? No. Either he wasn't able to perform his "magic" that well, or she could see through it. That advancing Loki wasn't him. But then where was he. She quickly spun around to the terminal and growled angrily. He was standing right there, his hand outstretched. Ready to eject his brother.
"Not bad little mortal." He taunted her. "You have heart. But it won't be enough."
"Yeah? Watch me!" Bella countered pulling a small syringe out of her pocket, next to her gun.
Loki frowned at her in surprise, stumbling and shaking his head as if trying to clear it. He took a deep breath and as if proving to her that he was not so easily subdued. He snarled and snakingly hit the red ejection button on the terminal. The scepter ingulfing Loki in a blue barely visible mist.
"No!" Bella screamed as the round prison cell with one Asguardian God of Thunder was ejected into the groundless pit. She tossed the syringe on the ground, grabbed the heavy hand-gun from her holster again and angrily advanced on Loki.
He was stumbling away from her and blocking her bullets with his staff. But the most curious thing was that the reflected bullets did never reach her for some reason. They were diverted a few centimetres before they reached her. She could faintly hear them hit the walls and the metal floor. She blinked, and Loki was suddenly standing back in front of her and grabbed her right hand. She tried to wiggle out of his cold grip, but it was useless. He was towering over her and was gritting his teeth. She kicked her left foot towards his groin, but he blocked her with his foot. He let go of her hand and when that mysterious thing expanding from her head extended over him. His confused gaze turned green and his face muscles contorted indicating his pain. It radiated pain. This was her chance. With her left hand she slammed it upward under his armpit with all the power she could muster.
Loki howled taking a step away from her clearly not believing that she had been able to land a hurtful hit, but unfortunately still gripping the sceptre tightly. He would not let go of it. He swayed locking his gaze with her. Sweat was gathering on his forehead. Then something was pushing against her invisible barrier and Bella shrieked as she was forced back again. She lost her footing and was tossed several metres away from him and she landed on her back again. She groaned in pain. Bella knew that by the end of the day she would probably not feel it any longer. The blue taking hold of his eyes again. Loki's breath was laboured which Bella mirrored as she fought to stand up again.
"You're gonna lose." A laboured voice interrupted Loki's advancement who stopped in his tracks. He turned towards Coulson. Bella shook his head and crawled towards her father.
"Am I?" Loki asked him gently taking a step closer to them.
"Your heroes are scattered; your floating fortress falls from the sky. Where exactly is my disadvantage?" He smiled at them. Bella wondered. Was her father up to something? He looked drained and weak at the moment. He desperately needed help.
Phil's eyes narrowed determined. "You lack conviction." He must have hit a nerve as Loki's face suddenly changed into an angry glare as he took another threatening step towards them.
"I don't think that I…" but he was interrupted at the sudden appearance of scorching heat that was shooting towards him throwing him backwards burning through the wall. Her father had goaded him towards the line of fire. There was no chance that he would have survived that without any injury. Bella hoped and she didn't care anymore. If he survived something that melted such a wall, there was no chance that she would be able to stop him.
Her priority was getting Phil help.
"That's what it does." Phil murmured with a cheeky smile appearing his head dropping towards the wall behind him.
"Men down in the detention area! I need a medic! I need a medic!" Bella screamed frantically in the com.
No, No, No! I can't lose you too!
She grabbed part of his suit and a knife she had in her boot and cut a piece of cloth from it to clench his wound on her back he could not bleed out behind. Cold sweat was gathering on his front and she could see that he was having trouble breathing and focusing his eyes on her. Her hands were still steady as she forced every thought that she could lose him back down. She had to keep control over her feelings.
"Sorry, Bella." Phil panted perched against the wall.
"You have to stay awake." She ordered him with wavering voice pressing the cloth against his wound with her left hand and grabbing his chin with her right hand. I can't lose control.
"I'm clocking out here." He joked hoarsely smiling warmly at her, and Bella's eyes started to tear. Not loosing control.
"Not an option!" she ground out. "We didn't have enough time to get to know each other as father and daughter. There is so much we still have to do."
He dazedly smiled at her and raised one of his hands to her cheek. It clearly caused him a lot of effort.
"It's alright." He gently wiped an escaped tear away. It caused her to tear up even stronger as her heart constricted, and her breathing became harder.
"I couldn't have wished for a ... better, ...stronger and more beautiful daughter." He whispered while a new wave of tears wracked her body.
"You can't give up. Please." She whispered back.
"Love you. So proud, so proud, …" his hand and his head sank. Bella's breath hitched, tears were streaming down her cheeks, making it difficult for her to see.
"No! No! No! Phil. No!" She shook him as if she could wake him up again. But it was hopeless. Suddenly somebody was pulling her back and she didn't want to leave him here.
She struggled to get free. To stay with her godfather! No, her father. "No!"
"Agent Swan. Please calm down." Fury's strict voice entered her foggy mind and she her body slacked. Crying and barely noticing, how Phil was being carried away.
No. She wanted to stay with him! But Fury didn't let her.
Half an hour later she was silently sitting at the conference table of the carrier in between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, but she couldn't focus on anything. Stark had patted her on the shoulder earlier when he had seen her. It had almost looked as if he had been close to hugging her but had patted her once more. The entire command centre was unnervingly silent as if all the technicians were still trying to process the attack and the fact that they were still alive.
Her mind and sight were blurry, her face felt hot and puffy and her hands were shaking. Her back was throbbing, and her wrist had a nasty green bruise around that was beginning to hurt slightly. She was repeatedly wrecked by a new wave of tears. The white wet paper handkerchiefs were staggering in her lap. It seemed that Nana's worst nightmare had come to pass. Her son had died before her. How should she tell nana about his death? She was an incredibly strong woman, but the loss of her eldest child? Especially, at her now frail physical state. Worst case scenario would be that she became so affected by it, that she would soon follow him.
"These were in Phil Coulson's jacket." Fury's deep voice rose her from her hurtful musings. "Guess, he never did get you to sign them." He addressed Rogers and tossed a batch of them on the table in front of him. Bella's breath hitched at the sight of his little treasure. Now covered with blood. Although she could vaguely smell the metallic scent of salt and copper, the odour did not affect her at all. She watched Rogers pick up one of the cards with serious and thoughtful expression.
"We're dead in the air up here. No communications, no locations of the cube, Hulk, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye." He paused gravely and continued murmuring. "In the end I had it coming."
Bella had to give it to Fury. He did seem to be mourning Phil, but he was probably just sad to have lost one of his closest operatives. Stark turned his chair around that he was facing away from the table, while Rogers put the raised captain America card down again.
"Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the tesseract." Fury conceded slowly moving towards them.
"I never put all my chips on that number though, 'cause I was playing something even riskier." He told them stopping and leaning against the back of an empty chair. Bella frowned knotting all her handkerchiefs into one ball. It all started to sound like the beginning of a confession.
"There was an idea" He edged closer to them. "-Stark knows this- called the Avengers Initiative." He slowly walked behind them.
"The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people." Fury stopped behind her and put his hands on the backrest of her chair. "To see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together, when we needed them to. … Fight the battles, we never could."
He let go of her backrest and moved past Stark and turned towards them again.
"Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea….In heroes. He believed in our responsibility to make the world a better place for those coming after us." Bella gulped, fighting back her tears. It sounded so much like him. He always had put his faith in heroes and she wouldn't be surprised if that idea had originally come from him. After all his mother had done quite the same during WWII with the 107th. Her influence on him must have been very strong. She couldn't sit here any longer. She needed to get out. Apparently, she was not the only one as Tony Stark quickly jumped up from his seat. Took the scene around him in and quickly walked away. Fury observed his leaving and mentioned.
"Well, it is an old-fashioned motion."
That was a dig at Steve Rogers. Fury was using Phil's death to accomplish something. She couldn't stay in here right now. She scrambled to her feet and quickly fled from the command centre.
She had aimlessly meandered through the carrier, which had displayed several stages of disrepair, but something had drawn her back to the now empty prison cell, where her birthfather had died.
It seemed that she wasn't the only one when she could detect Roger's voice.
"Was he married?"
"No." she answered him stepping into the room seeing that he had directed his question towards a motionless Tony Stark. "He was …married to his job, …but he did have a family."
Rogers was casually leaning against the rail with his arms crossed and a deep frown on his face. Both were now focusing on her.
"There was a cellist. I think." Stark added looking in the circular room.
"That's were you know more than me." Bella told him sighing. "He dedicated his life to S.H.I.E.L.D. to make the world a safer place."
"I'm sorry. He sounded like a good man." Rogers said empathically, and Bella nodded fighting back some tears.
"He was." She told him hoarsly.
"He was an idiot." Stark ground out and Bella's anger flared up.
"How dare you!" She growled.
"Why?" Roger asked siding with her. "For believing?"
"For taking on Loki alone!" Stark rebuked huffing turning around the pillar. "He was out of his league. He should have waited. He should have…"
"He was doing his job." Bella defended her father. "We all fell for Loki's trap. Right from the beginning. Everyone was so busy keeping us in the air. He was the only one doing his best to close down the detention area."
Roger stepping down from his stance stepped walked closer to Stark nodding at her. "Sometimes there isn't a way out."
"Right." Stark huffed walking past the two.
"Is this the first time you lost a soldier?" Rogers asked him which clearly enraged the billionaire even more.
"We are not soldiers." Tony angrily reprimanded him. He seemed to struggle holding back emotions himself. Then pointing his hand at Bella he added.
"She just graduated. She should be drinking, partying and enjoying life. Not fighting. Especially, not some crazy alien that that has cut down one of us."
"I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be." Bella answered with clenched teeth stomping her feet. "I have nowhere else to go and as you know I haven an entire species hunting me for my blood. Phil might not have wanted this life for me, but in retrospect. There is no escaping it. We need to find Loki and put an end to this. Fast!"
"I'm not fighting Fury's fight for him." He remarked with clenched teeth.
"Neither do I" Rogers agreed. "He has the same blood on his hands as Loki does. But as Ms. Swan said, we need to put this behind us and get things done."
Stark took a deep breath and spied towards the red spot at the wall which where remnants of Coulson's blood.
"Now, Loki needs a power source. We need to put together a list …" Rogers remembered.
"There is only one power source powerful and stable enough." Bella murmured, but apparently the two men in the room were quarrelling again.
"He made it personal." Stark interrupted him.
"That's not the point." Rogers answered him with annoyance creeping into his voice and turning his gaze towards Bella. It seemed that he had heard her. "Which…"
"That's exactly the point. That's Loki's point. He knows to take us out." Stark insisted.
"Which I have warned you about from the beginning, but none of you testosterone filled hotheads were listening to me." Bella angrily told them.
"Right." Tony nodded at her. "He hit us right where we lived. But why?"
"To tear us apart." Rogers suggested but Stark wasn't entirely convinced.
"Devide and conquers. Great but… He knows he has to take us out, but when…! That's what Loki wants. He wants to beat us. He wants to be seen doing it."
Tony grew excited and stepped past them again. "He wants an audience."
"Like his act in Stuttgart." Bella nodded.
"Yeah. Right. This was just previews. THIS is opening night." He clapped his palms together getting back up the steps. "And Loki is a full-time diva. He wants flowers. He wants parades. He wants a monument built to the skys with his name plast…"
He stopped his train of thought clearly wondering if he still was talking about their enemy.
"Yep, that power source. Took you long enough." Bella remarked nodding.
"Son of a bitch." He cursed walking towards them.
Bella had broken into the weapons storage and got ready for the coming fight strapping several knives, two handguns left and right into her holster, a whole arsenal of clips and other useful things and one weapon that she desperately wished to be banned from the streets. This weapon should only be in hands of military personnel and not some crazy gun fetishists. She even had found a very interesting staff that reminded her of those she had seen in one of the Star Wars Marathon's she had with Jake once. That one would certainly come in handy.
An icy shiver ran down her throbbing back. In whatever fight she had been before. This would be the real thing. There was an army coming and there weren't much of them left. And those civilians owning such a fire-arm were not particularly clever in the use of it and usually quite the cowards. So, if they decided to join the fight, which was in the 0,01% range, she would have to expect "friendly" fire. That's why desperately hoped that Thor and Banner would find their way to New Work. Otherwise they were screwed.
There was no way that she would let them leave her behind. And Stark seemed to be a bit protective about her now. But she would not let Phil have died in vain. She was able to fight. No, she wanted to fight. She was angry. Furious even: At the person controlling Loki, at Fury for not heeding her warning, at her birthfather doing his duty and confronting Loki alone, for her not being faster to prevent him from dying.
She would give them hell. They had to stop he crazy Asgardian or many more lives would get lost. If he was able to get his army of Chitauri through that portal, chances were high that whatever was controlling him would swiftly follow and turn their planet into a wasteland or worse. When she had fought Loki, his eyes had switched steadily between blue and green. Whenever his eyes had turned green he had seemed to pull his punches, but then the blue gaze had taken over again and had fought her mercilessly. She still ached from some of his mean punches, her wrist was unfortunately slightly swollen, and her back was still throbbing she would make due.
But considering that he had levelled a Southern town just to spite his brothers a few month ago, she wasn't sure if perhaps the power controlling him was really directing him that much or just heightened the dangerous parts of his personality. Maybe he was supervised through his sceptre. Would it break the connection if she were able to get it away from him and wacked it hard on his head? It had apparently worked on Barton. She would certainly try.
As she quickly made her way towards the hangar bay she stopped in her tracks. What if she had not only to fight Loki and the Chitaury? The leeches could just lay low waiting for a catastrophe to happen and use it to their advantage. Would she have to fight them too? How exactly should she do that?
"Ready?" Barton asked her as she joined him Rogers and Natasha.
"Ready." She nodded. "Let's kick some asses."
Again sorry for the long wait!
Hope that the next chapter will come sooner than this one.
Constructive reviews are very welcome! Looking forward to reading them.
Sorry, for bothering you with a little tidbit. This is a question for US Citizens.
Perhaps you have some idea how I could help this person:
I have a twitter follower on my personal account, that I barely know, but who appears to live in an abusive household and whom I'm following back because we share the interest in the same fandoms and because she seems to be a very nice sensitive person.
Unfortunately she has disabled her location and she does not want to tell me her zip code. But many of her tweets are either showing depression or suicidal. In June she had a period of time where she actually had outlaid a plan what she needed to do until she would kill herself. She even had set a date for her suicide. I kept contacting her asking her to call the suicide prevention hotline as I assumed from her tweets that she was somewhere from the US. Now I know I was correct about that assumption.
I contacted Twitter, which did not respond for several days and I even contacted the Consulate in Vienna about her as I had no idea how to help her. The consulate sent me the link to the suicide prevention hotline and the report sheet for Twitter, which I had already filled out. A few days before her planned day something must have happened as she wasn't online. Perhaps some intervention. Twitter sending someone to her? Well, at least I hope so. The following weeks she seemed a bit better, but once or twice edging closer to dangerous.
Now I've just seen that she has apparently cut herself yesterday and that she is as she claims to be"alright" now, but literally is not able to go to see the doctor because she is too weak.
I have no idea how I could possible help her or get anyone to help her. I'm not even on the same continent as her and whenever I respond to her tweets she answers within a few minutes. At the moment I was able to convince her to call them again, but she seems to need a more permanent solution. From what I gathered from her tweets is that she lives somewhere remote and has diffficulties getting help. If you have any ideas I'm glad for every suggestion that you could give me, because I'm afraid that one day I won't be able to respond to her in time. Any suggestion that I could forward to her to get her the help that she deserves.
Ok. Sorry for bothering you about it, but I can't look the other way.
