I'm updating earlier than planned because I am going to be busy all weekend.
Warning for this chapter: Arianna has a nightmare about her past assault
Chapter Twelve
Arianna didn't sleep that night even if she was physically exhausted. She kept going over everything that had happened from the time the first dart had hit her in the back. There had been so much pain, more than she had ever felt before. The pain wasn't the worst thing about it, though. The worst thing had been the complete helplessness she'd felt.
Her life and her comfort had been in the hands of two psychopaths. She'd had no control and she couldn't not be in control. No control meant she could hurt people – kill people.
She knew everyone else saw it as self-defense, and she did too, to a certain extent, and she was even glad she never had to worry about these guys again, but she wasn't happy about her part in hurting Blondie.
The two from earlier had been shot in the head, which wasn't her fault. Tony had blasted them to knock them out, and someone had come in after them to finish the job.
She would rather have had them locked up. At least that way they would have been useful. They would have had information she and the others might need. Who they worked for being the most important, and she didn't mean SHIELD. She wanted a specific name, the one or ones who had hired them.
She guessed that couldn't be helped now. They were dead and that was that.
Loki was having trouble sleeping as well, and for the same reason.
Guilt wasn't new to him, but having it affect him so was. Had he not mentioned wanting to go out he knew Arianna wouldn't have been out there even if she'd wanted to be. She'd only done it because of him. Before then she'd only gone outside to do her job.
Loki hadn't known that the tower had been being watched. He never would've suggested going out if he'd known. It wasn't like he could protect her, not now. If he'd had his magic, or even just his Asgardian strength, he could have kept her from being taken. The dart never would have even pierced his skin, and the men wouldn't have been allowed to get their hands on her.
When she'd been brought back, she'd been bruised and unconscious. Loki didn't know what pain she'd been through, but he did know pain. He never would have wished it on her or any of his new friends – if he could call them friends.
The way she'd reacted when he'd touched her . . . she'd yelled, and she never yelled, not even when she was furious. She'd been afraid – only for a few seconds, only until she'd realized what she'd done. It made him remember when she'd been angry at Tony for snooping into her past. She'd gotten over it rather quickly, but she had been angry for a short time. From her anger Loki had realized there was something she was hiding.
Her reaction to him touching her made him think he knew what she'd been hiding. He wasn't certain, but there wasn't very much doubt. The man she'd killed had deserved to die if he'd done what Loki thought he'd done.
On Asgard if a man forced himself on a woman, he was disgraced if caught. Sometimes the man was thrown into exile, cut off from everyone and everything he'd ever known. If he was allowed to stay, he was shunned, treated as a pariah by others.
And Loki hadn't been able to protect her. He would have fought for her. He would have done whatever had been necessary to keep Arianna from further pain, but he'd been completely defenseless against their weapons. If he was being completely honest, he was defenseless against this whole mortal world, and he hated it.
He'd finally found a place he could belong – or at least feel like he wasn't living under someone else's shadow – and he'd found a home, made real potential friends, and he was most likely going to see them die. He would most likely die along with them because he would fight alongside them as long as they were protecting Arianna.
He didn't know how he felt about any of it. He just knew he wanted Arianna safe.
While Loki and Arianna were in their rooms everyone else was in the workshop with Tony. He was both grateful and annoyed, if such a combination could be accomplished.
Bruce was always welcome, of course, and he was the one running the tests for Arianna. He suspected blood poisoning that could lead to a serious infection. It was good they had caught it so early.
Natasha was sprawled out on a rolly chair, legs spread wide, pants back on. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her head was tilted back against the chair. Clint was standing beside her, and Steve as there as well in a resting parade stance, ever the soldier.
They were all worried about Aries, about her mental state since being rescued, and about someone else coming for her. And there was nothing they could do but wait for it.
Jarvis had been keeping an eye on Arianna's vitals. She had a low-grade fever, but she was otherwise showing no symptoms of an infection. She'd finally fallen into a fitful sleep. Nightmares were to be expected, but Tony was more worried about monitoring her temperature.
"Are the antibiotics she'll need in ready supply?" Tony asked.
Bruce nodded. "It's not a problem. I can make them here if I need to."
That was good news at least. Something had gone right.
While Tony was still theorizing about how best to make body armor for the others, he received a call from Fury. Two phone calls in one night . . . had to be their record.
"Yes?"
"One of the scientists came forward to talk. There is apparently a league of agents who banned together when Arianna chose to show mercy to . . . the Asgardian. They all seem to think that Agent Grace could be a threat if she chose to be."
"Is the guy giving you names?"
"In return for protection, he's given us quite a few names. They hired outside help to get her, which is why her capture was handled so sloppily. Since they didn't kill her right away, we have to assume they were only the delivery system."
"Great." Tony sighed. "And you didn't send her any pictures showcasing how those two guys were taken care of?"
"No. My intention was to arrest them, not to kill them."
Basically everyone in the room was at attention now. Natasha was still seated but sitting upright and tense. Clint was standing stiffly beside her. Steve was still in his resting parade stance, but Tony could tell that he was more alert now. Bruce seemed unaffected aside from what this information probably meant for Arianna.
Tony imagined if Bruce was around when these people came around next time – if there was a next time – Bruce might go into Hulk-smash mode in under five seconds.
"What are you doing with the scientists?"
"Locking them up. They may have information. To my knowledge, the ones I'm locking up haven't hurt anyone or actively gone after Agent Grace, so given the proper incentive they will probably talk."
The proper incentive being threats and torture. Things Arianna wouldn't approve of.
Tony was glad that he was only technically and not legally working with SHIELD. He didn't agree with their methods even on their best day, but he understood the necessity for it.
"Keep us posted."
Like they didn't have enough to worry about. As long as Arianna stayed in the tower she would be fine, but that couldn't be the long-term plan because whoever was after her would eventually get tired of waiting.
"Can you pull the security feed from around the café they went to?" Natasha asked.
"Sure."
He'd been going to do that anyway. He just hadn't had time. He could take a break and watch the playback, see what they could see.
Loki still hadn't made it to sleep when Arianna came tapping at his door. The sound wasn't loud enough to be considered a knock. She obviously hadn't wanted to risk waking him had he been asleep.
When he opened the door the first thing he noticed was the flush in her cheeks. He then saw the weakness she was feeling, weakness from the poison or venom or whatever they had injected her with and the pain that had followed.
"Arianna?"
He was surprised, to say the least, that she had come to visit at however late it was in the morning.
"I wasn't sleeping very well. Can I come in?"
"Of course."
Arianna moved sluggishly and Loki kept close beside her until she made it to the bed. At least she hadn't fallen over. She sat at the edge of the bed and Loki, not knowing whether he should sit beside her or not, just stood beside her until she grabbed his hand to pull him down so he could sit.
"It's your bed. You don't have to stand."
Loki's gaze focused on where their hands connected. Her skin was warmer than it normally was. Add in the flush in her cheeks and Loki knew she probably had a fever.
"Does Stark know your temperature is higher than it should be?"
"Jarvis is keeping track of my vitals. Last check I was at 101. 98.6 is the norm."
"If it gets higher?"
"Then I will feel worse."
"Hm. May I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"Next time you are being watched or followed, will you let me know? I can't do much, but I would have been better prepared had I known."
"I thought with Happy there, and Natasha . . . But yes, I will let you know."
Arianna laid back as gracefully as she could and seemed to relax a little once she was against the mattress. Loki's hand, having still been in hers, landed on her stomach. She shivered when he caressed the skin with his thumb.
"Your hand is cold."
"No, you're just warm."
Her eyes closed and she brought his hand to her head, where her skin was even warmer. She sighed even as she covered his hand to keep it against her.
"How are you alive?" she asked, eyes still closed. "Not healthy to be this cold."
He had no clue what she was talking about because he wasn't even a little bit chilly. She was just overheated. He knew Banner was deciding what medicine would be best to give her, but Loki might have to ask him to hurry that up a bit.
Loki allowed her to use his hand as a human ice package until the heat began to bother him. He pulled his hand from hers and his eyes widened. There was a bluish tint to his skin.
He scanned Arianna's face for anything that shouldn't have been there – like ice or frost burn. Nothing. If anything, she seemed slightly better. The fever flush was gone from her cheeks. Her eyes were still closed, but Loki knew she wasn't sleeping.
He quickly placed his hand under his leg in case she decided to look at him. Loki wasn't sure how much Arianna knew about him, didn't know if she even knew what a Frost Giant was, if she knew what monsters they could be and that he was one of them.
He hadn't thought he'd ever need to worry about it since becoming mortal, and he hadn't worried about it until just then. Who knew he'd be able to access his Frost Giant ability? He was lucky he hadn't given her frost burn or that he hadn't turned her to ice.
Arianna sat up then and leaned her head against his shoulder.
"Why couldn't you sleep?" she asked.
"I suspect for the same reason that you could not sleep."
Loki clenched his fist under his thigh. He could feel the chill slowly making its way up his arm now that he was focusing on it. Fortunately, he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt.
Loki knew his skin didn't always feel cold. He'd hugged Thor many times and his body temperature had never been an issue. Thor would have mentioned it had he ever noticed a major difference between them. His body only turned blue and cold when he called on his Jotun form, but now that he was mortal, he apparently had no control over it. He'd been reacting to her warmth, was still reacting to her warmth.
He needed to get Arianna away from him before the skin she'd be able to see turned blue, before the patterns etched themselves into his skin, before his green eyes turned red . . . Before he turned into a monster.
Arianna was breathing quietly against his shoulder, half-asleep. She was resting, finally resting, and he had to move her.
"Arianna, you cannot fall asleep here," he said, gently jostling her into a straight-up position.
"Mm. Not sleeping." Her speech was slurred from exhaustion.
"You will be in about two minutes." He forced a coldness into his voice that hadn't been there for months. "I think you should leave now."
"I – I . . . uh, okay."
Loki could tell he'd hurt her and confused her, but she got up anyway. She was still shaky and weak.
"I don't want anyone to think ill of you, Arianna," he said, trying to ease the pain he saw on her face. "Spending the night with me wouldn't be proper."
That had been the wrong thing to say apparently because Arianna became tense.
"Since when do you care about being proper?"
She went to the door and opened it. She slammed it on the way out.
Arianna stalked into her room, or stalked as much as she could considering how weak she was. She did not slam her own door, though she did close it.
She vaguely wondered if she'd overreacted by storming out of Loki's room. For all she knew, he really was looking after her reputation. Maybe on Asgard it was a big no-no to sleep in the same room unless you were married. He had never tried to get her to let him into her room. He had never been inside until she'd asked him in earlier to help her.
Whatever the reason, she had sought him for comfort and he had turned her away. She'd needed him, had showed that she needed him, and he'd rejected her. Why? It made no sense. Loki liked affection, no matter what he might claim, and he especially liked being affectionate with her. He'd seemed accepting enough when she'd first arrived, though he had seemed to have been uncertain whether his presence would be welcome on the bed.
Something had made him shut down and shut her out. Maybe he was getting sick; he had been a little cold. And they both were exhausted. Maybe things would be better in the morning – or seeing as to how it was almost four in the morning, later that day.
Down in the lab, Natasha and Clint were identifying the two guys that had taken Aries. It turned out they were not the same guys that had been stalking the Tower. It had been easy to identify them once Tony pulled up the security feed from inside the café and from the surrounding areas.
Once again, Tony had to make a call to Fury to explain the situation.
"The agents posted outside the Tower are mine. I put them there after the first kidnapping attempt."
"Oh, that – that would've have been nice to know," Tony said. "Where were they when the café was attacked?"
"I assumed she was safe during the day. I assumed she was safe with Agent Romanoff. I wasn't expecting someone to have stolen tech to use against anyone."
"I told you they were trained," Natasha said. "Do we have any information on the woman driving the getaway car?"
"Not as of yet," Tony said.
"What if this was just a trial run?" Clint said. "What if they didn't care if they got caught? Maybe they just wanted to see if the serum would work on Arianna."
Tony had an idea. He'd hacked into SHIELD's database to find out about Arianna a few weeks ago. It wouldn't be too hard to do it again, only this time he decided to check out the recent files uploaded to the science and weapons department.
"Director Fury, you have incoming." He began tapping the keys on his computer. "In three, two, one . . ."
"Stark –"
"Bye."
After only a few seconds, he had access to what he wanted.
"And there it is," he grumbled.
PROJECT ARIES, in black and white. The file was encrypted, but Tony had no problem accessing it.
"They've been working on this serum on and off for decades, it looks like."
Tony quickly scanned the file. Research for the serum began right around the time Steve Rogers became Captain America, the first super soldier.
"Probably a contingency plan in case you decided to go rogue. No one really knew what would happen to you once you became Captain America."
They didn't start thinking of weaponizing the serum until the 80s when a bunch of mutants popped up. X-Men – mutant humans, people with abilities.
Research picked up even more when Bruce ended up being changed by another serum. That was when they really began trying to make a dart that could make you feel pain everywhere to the point of incapacitation.
The real thing had started because of Steve. Due to the name, however, Arianna seemed to be their new target, and Clint had been right. This had been a trial run.
"They just wanted to see if it would work. If it would incapacitate her."
"And they wouldn't risk trying it on me," Bruce said. "Cowards."
"The scientists, the ones who made this, made the original one because I could have been a loose cannon," Steve said. "Now they're just using it because people are different. Not bad, just different."
"Yup. These mutants are the unknown. People don't like or trust what they don't know."
"But Aries is just about the nicest person I've ever met," Natasha said. "These people just want a way to control her."
"It's a line of defense," Tony said. "There's stuff about Thor and Loki in here too. Not sure if the dart would even pierce Thor's skin. Not that we need to worry about that."
Everyone knew SHIELD had been housing the Tesseract to build weapons strong enough to take on more-than-human enemies. Now they were going after people who were very much human but also enhanced with more-than-human abilities.
"This all started when she was . . . released from duty," Steve said. "But they've had this on standby the whole time she worked for SHIELD."
"She was never shy in making it known that she wasn't the biggest fan of SHIELD's methods," Natasha said. "It was probably a security measure in case she turned rogue."
"Had she ever given them reason to believe she would?"
"No," Clint said. "She was never called in for the battles. She always took care of the aftermath of the fights. She would've done that with or without SHIELDs help."
Upstairs, in her room, Arianna was having a nightmare. She was in an alleyway. She was seventeen, still considered a minor, and she wasn't as strong as she would be one day.
She didn't dream about being attacked and assaulted much anymore, but when something bad happened like it had that night it could bring everything back and it would cause the dreams to happen.
She'd been hurt, tortured, made to feel helpless, so of course it would bring the memories and nightmares again.
The night David had raped her had started out innocently enough. She'd been walking to her friend's house after having had dinner with her parents. It was only a few minutes away and she'd felt safe walking it, but she hadn't been safe at all.
She'd had no way of knowing that David had been keeping tabs on her, had decided to follow her and give into the temptation he'd been feeling towards her.
David had grabbed her, started kissing her, had surprised her into complete stillness until she'd realized what was happening. Then came the struggling and the roughness. She hadn't even known who she'd been fighting against at first.
She had screamed and pleaded and yelled for help that wasn't going to come. She had cried and David had hit her more than once.
She'd wanted him to stop – had never wanted him to start to begin with – and had wanted the pain to stop. She still remembered the pain she'd felt when he'd taken her even though she'd said no, even though she'd fought to push him away.
Some time after he'd pushed into her was when she'd tapped into her powers for the first time. He'd been in so much pain he'd pulled away from her. She'd crawled away, huddled against the wall of the alley even as David continued to be crushed by nothing or by air or however that worked.
He died and she was alone, bottom half of her body almost completely naked, bleeding from his rough treatment. She'd slipped away into her own mind and didn't fade back into complete consciousness until a policeman found her.
Arianna jerked awake, aware of someone screaming bloody murder. Were they under attack again? Why couldn't they just leave her alone? But no, she wasn't under attack. She had, however, been the one screaming.
She slapped a hand over her mouth and then grimaced as she agitated the wounds already there.
She curled herself into a tight ball as tears burned her eyes.
"Jarvis, I need Tash." Her voice came out as a strained croak. "I need Tash."
Loki heard Arianna scream and wanted to go to her. If she had been in danger he would have, but Jarvis had assured him that she'd only been having a nightmare. It must've been a terrible one considering she'd been screaming, but that was all it had been.
After Arianna left earlier, Loki's skin had continued to turn blue. Now he was in his true form. Why couldn't he have just gotten his power back? Why did this side have to appear first? He didn't want anyone seeing him this way. He wouldn't be able to face anyone until he could get this under control.
"Is someone seeing to Arianna? Someone needs to check on her."
"Her vitals are normal and within a healthy range. Agent Romanoff is on her way. Agent Grace asked for her."
"Good."
Now Loki could try to figure out what he could do about his new problem.