The fields of Wakanda mesmerized James Barnes.
They weren't familiar like the cramped, gritty streets of Brooklyn or the brown and bloody warzones of military life. They were thankfully nothing like the harsh, perpetual concrete enclosures of his years with Hydra.
Best not to think of that, though.
Instead, he breathed in the bouquet of green grass, flowering trees, clear air, and radiant sunshine. He always felt as though he was breathing healing winds here.
He chuckled at the thought. Steve would say he was getting soft or embracing Buddhism, or he would just cackle in the teasing way only a best friend could get away with. And James, always Bucky to Steve, would give him a swift punch to the gut, and the super soldiers regressed to super teenagers. Okoye caught them once in an 'I know you are, but what am I' style wrestling match one evening after a particularly solid hit, and she had threatened to toss them outside the Wakandan border if 'they insisted on acting like apes.' Natasha Romanov, enjoying a rare, quiet sunset moment nearby, had actually laughed out loud and accompanied Okoye back to the main complex, trying to get the two men back into the warrior's good graces.
They owed King T'Challa and Wakanda their lives, especially James Barnes. Some said this country held unthinkable magic. He didn't believe in magic, though. Science, sure. He and Steve were testaments to scientific advancements. But magic? Nah.
The whine of an engine caught his ear, and he turned in time to see a jet pulse through the dome-like barrier and head toward the simple flight line that cut a triangle through the endless green grasses.
Speaking of magic, he thought.
Natasha had briefed him on the woman Steve sent Sam to pick up. Doctor Jane Foster, the lauded astrophysicist who dated a God, travelled across the galaxy, and picked up some kind of alien parasite before coming home. Not necessarily in that order. It sounded like a low budget science fiction disaster to him, but Sam had sounded slightly panicked over the radio earlier. He was certainly prone to dramatics, the idiot, but James had four guns and two knives strapped to his person just in case.
It would've been convenient to at least have been given a photograph of this doctor. He tried not to judge a book and all that, but he also hated being unprepared. Unfortunately, database access wasn't granted to reformed war criminals. Steve was the only reason James even had two arms at the moment.
The jet landed smoothly. The whirring of the engines powering down would have drowned out the two arguing voices had he not been the upgraded human he was. He stepped closer to the jet as a dozen warriors, spears high, jogged toward him.
"It's just Sam!" he shouted to the lead woman, but she ignored him. They all did, forming a wide circle around both he and the bird. He shoved down the guilt of his past, never far beneath the surface when he felt the Wakandan distrust. He should be used to it by now. He focused on the voices in the jet to distract himself. They were much louder now.
Rapping a metal knuckle against the door, he stepped back and pulled a pistol from the holster at his thigh. "Come on, Sam. Open up." He swore he heard Sam's groan before the door slowly lowered, and the booming argument shattered the peace around him.
"No. NO! No, I won't untie you. Did I stutter? Damn it! Stop hopping around. I swear-"
"I have to be able to walk, Sam! Where's Captain Rogers? I have to-"
"Have to speak to him. Yes, I heard you the first fifty times you said it. You don't need your hands and feet to talk. Be glad I didn't gag you. I'll do it right now if you don't calm down."
"You absolutely will not! I'm not a captive, and I'm not dangerous!"
"You're not what? You really just said that?! Because I seem to remember you almost breaking my arm and crashing my plane, so yeah, you're wrong and you're dangerous and you're not getting untied."
"Sam, you can't treat me like a prisoner. There's more important things going on!"
"I'm done. I'M DONE! Off duty. Where's Barnes? BARNES!"
James was smirking when he climbed into the cockpit, but his gun remained aimed and ready, his muscles tensed on instinct as he spotted Sam and followed his frowning glance to…
He faltered, lowering his gun slightly. She was…small. That was his first thought. Wrists zip-tied together and held to her heart like she was praying. Her body slumped in the bucket seat, ankles uncomfortably shifting every few seconds. She would have welts from the ties.
"Doctor Foster?" he said, trying and failing to remember, as her eyes met his, that this woman was a potential threat.
Her mouth formed a small 'o,' but no sound came out. She stared hard at him, assessing, learning, memorizing the cut of his jaw, the brown hair brushing his shoulders, the gun in his hand, and the light dancing against his left arm. When her eyes rose to his again, he swore they flashed black.
"Barnes," she stated with recognition in a voice far deeper than he had expected. His confusion struck him speechless, but something else, something unfamiliar, froze his boots to the floor.
Sam shoved by him. "Not that voice again. No way. I'm out of here, wherever here is. Hope she tries to break your arm." He got three stomps out of the jet before a string of profanities hit the air at the sight of the warriors.
But James barely heard him as Jane stood and held her hands out to him, palms up. "You brought us here, right? I remember your voice." she said, her voice higher, pleading. "Mr. Barnes, please, I need to speak to Captain Rogers immediately. I won't hurt anyone or do anything, I promise, but it's so important. We're running out of time."
The beginnings of her tears beckoned him forward, and he allowed himself to notice the creases on her forehead, the swollen skin around her eyes, the way her shoulders caved into her small frame. He had seen exhaustion, and she was beyond it.
"Steve, I mean, Captain Rogers isn't here right now."
Something inside him wanted to apologize for that, for Sam, for everything. Anything to dry her tears as they streaked down her defeated face. He wanted to protect her and hide her away from all the things in this world that could hurt her. He wanted to know about her life and tell her about his and pray to God that she could see past the villain and maybe…
He shook himself, freezing mid-step. Where was his clarity? Why was he thinking about her like that? He didn't know this woman. What were these feelings? It was as if she was creating a world in his head. Making him imagine things he hadn't thought of since…maybe never. Like she held some kind of magic over him.
Magic.
"Doctor Foster," he said, resorting to the formality of a soldier on a mission in order to clear his head. "I can free your ankles so you can walk freely, but I can't untie your hands. And I'll make sure you speak to Steve as soon as he gets back. I'm not exactly important around here, but Steve's like my brother." She nodded, tear tracks still fresh like a line of diamonds against her pale cheeks. He continued toward her. "Please clasp your hands together and hold them straight down."
She followed his orders and watched as he gently wrapped his metal fist around both of her wrists. They were so small his fingers almost touched. He holstered his gun and knelt before her, unafraid but oddly nervous as he looked up into her eyes. They swirled with a black haze, and he was as mesmerized by those eyes as he was by the green fields outside the jet.
"Your eyes…" he whispered, absently rubbing a thumb against her wrist where the ties had left a red line.
She blinked rapidly, then squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head away. "I'm sorry. It's a long story, but I won't hurt you. I'm, um, not exactly human these days."
He pulled a knife from his belt and sliced the bindings on her ankles.
"Not many of us are. You'll fit right in, Doctor Foster."
She sighed heavily, stretching her feet and rotating her ankles. "Thank you. It's just Jane."
He nodded, letting go of her wrists. "James."
A sound like a detonated bomb ripped through the quiet space between them. Jane fell to the side as the ship rocked suddenly, smashing into a paneled wall. James was at her side, his gun held at the ready and an arm slung around her waist to keep her upright.
The Aether within Jane began to sing, and in her confusion, it took full control, tendrils of oily red twisting around them, dissolving the bindings on Jane's wrists, and lifting the pair through the roof of the jet as if the roof never existed. To his credit, James held her tighter but did not say a word as they floated in the open air, both watching an army of Wakandan warriors follow Sam's winged shadow toward a crater in the center of what was once undisturbed nature.
He was here, Jane knew. She could feel him like the beat of her own heart.
"Loki," she whispered and felt James Barnes tighten his grip on her. She looked into his face, at his confused eyes glued to the crater even as smoke billowed from it like a dancing cobra, blocking his view. His gaze found hers and spoke novels. Questions, promises, other things neither could understand.
"I never believed in magic," he whispered.
"It is everywhere, James Barnes." She looked back to the crater. "Loki of Asgard is there. I know him well. He is not a threat to this planet or its inhabitants. Please trust that I will not lie to you, but I cannot take you with us." She did not wait for a response. She glided them to the flight line below, dropping James Barnes lightly on the concrete beside the jet. He was running before his feet hit the ground as Jane soared toward the crater. She hoped that she could explain, perhaps apologize to James some day for her dismissal. Some day when the world was not catching fire.
The warrior women were tensed for attack with Sam in the sky circling the pillar of smoke. Jane waved a hand to clear the pointed spears out of her way and landed softly inches from the crater's edge.
Jane's mortal consciousness caressed the Aether. A plea for help, not a reprimand, and the Aether thrilled that its host was asking to work in tandem. It would be the first time the two existed as one entity with a single goal. Power surged from the mortal's body, and it was cloaked in the same smoke rising from the crater as Jane stepped forward. With the clarity of the Aether's eyes, she saw him easily. Pale. Bloody. Body twisted. Armor ragged. Cape torn.
He was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen.
She stumbled to his side and dropped to her knees, tears flowing freely. Her hands shook from the Aether's push to touch him, feel him, possess him. Adrenaline made her dizzy.
But she hesitated. The mortal within fought for control once more, banishing the unreality around her, and her mind returned to a time before London, before the Aether, before New York when the specter of a broken man appeared to her in the shadowed corner of her lab and changed her entire life. She stripped away the illusions, leaving her exposed to the debilitating fear that this man, this God, this shattered piece of her life might not be lying before her. Too many times seeing only his projection, reaching to touch him and never finding purchase. Only twice had he been real enough to touch, only twice had she seen his porcelain face in person, and he could never stay, no matter the stories his eyes told her.
She dared not touch him now lest he not be real. Because if he wasn't real, what did that mean for her? For earth? For Thanos?
Fingers poised above his cheek, she whispered the same words he had spoken to her at their first meeting so many years ago in that quiet lab.
"Are you real?"
Loki did not answer, chest gently rising and falling, as her senses were bombarded, sights and sounds and scents penetrating her bubble of fear and anxiety. The clatter of spears, very close now. Wind rushing around her, tangling her hair. Footfalls shaking the ground, fast and heavy. The thick scent of smoke almost gagging her. A sizzling, cracking sound like a firework shooting skyward. And shouting. So much shouting.
But none of it mattered as she pressed her hand to Loki's skin. His very real, very cold skin that she remembered so well. She smoothed her fingers across his temple, down his cheek, along his jaw, and lower to rest at his strong, steady pulse pounding against her hand for one, two, three seconds of uninterrupted relief and peace before her name, repeated over and over and louder and louder, finally broke through. She looked up.
"Tony?"
Not Tony. Iron Man. Towering above her with the cloudless blue of the sky at his back, one glowing hand trained on Loki's heart, the other angled toward something to the God's other side.
"Jane, step back."
No teasing voice. No laughter. No nicknames.
"Tony, I-"
"No. I need you to step away from him. Now." The chin of his metallic face raised slightly, looking over her shoulder. "Any closer, Barnes, and I swear on my murdered parents that your buddies will be finding pieces of you on every continent when I'm done."
Jane frowned at the malice, the sickening promise, in Tony Stark's words. "Tony, he's-"
"Kid. One last time. There's a bunch of people around, and you blew up a chunk of my tower not long ago. So, stay calm, and do as I say."
The Aether watched, oddly docile, wondering about this situation. It trusted Tony Stark, but this side of him was new. Fascinating. It tugged on Jane, offering assistance, whispering questions. Why was Tony Stark poised to attack not only her Prince, as was understandable given their history, but James Barnes as well, whose deep voice and haunted eyes intrigued it so?
Through Jane's eyes, the Aether followed the direction of Tony Stark's other arm where a large figure in torn rags sprawled on the charred grass, unmoving save for the rise and fall of his chest. Jane knew this man. Had met him once. But why was his wrist now held in a vicelike grip by Loki of Asgard? How curious.
She turned her head, and there was James. Sam. The men stood apart. James, pale and shaking, gun drawn as he stared over her head. Sam, enormous metal wings extended, guns in both fists and pointed directly at her face. James met her eye, his stare open, questioning, guilty.
There were dozens, maybe hundreds, of men and women surrounding the scene, spears at the ready, muscles tensed and faces grim. Behind them, in the distance, a lone figure was running, a man, lithe and dark with grace almost feline, moving as fast as his body would carry him. He would arrive within one minute.
She faced Tony Stark again and only then noticed the two men standing behind him. A spinning circle of sparking light danced at their backs, warriors poised near it, eyes darting between the light, the two men, Tony Stark, and everything behind her. One of the men the Aether knew from Jane's memories - Bruce Banner, Hulk, missing - but the other… A jolt of recognition burst through Jane's body, her fingers shaking against Loki's pulse. It was well shielded, but the Aether felt it like a forgotten memory found once more. Buried under enchantments and hidden under the man's strange clothing, but still there, calling her, only seven steps away. Jane pushed one foot into the ground, preparing to stand.
"Jane? No, Jane, just calm down. Hey! I won't warn you again, Barnes! Back up!" Tony's voice did nothing to calm the Aether, and Jane pushed and tore at its attempted takeover even as her eyes filled with black and wisps of crimson rose from her shoulders like steam after a summer rain. Her shaking fingers curled into Loki's collar, a lifeline even as he remained still and silent.
Suddenly, overhead, a jet pierced an invisible barrier, and all eyes raised to it. Jane gasped as the Aether violently flared inside and around her, now desperate for something within that jet. Something unbound and free, unlike the hidden one seven steps away.
"No," Jane whispered as it devoured her control, forgot Loki, forgot that the world was in danger, so focused on the power inside the jet and that worn by the man behind Tony. "No! Stop it!"
"Jane!" Tony shouted, the mechanical hum of his suit rearranging and weapons engaging causing more shouts to rise, more weapons to shift. She distantly felt James Barnes step closer.
"Stop," she begged, unwilling to let go of Loki, but it was too much. The Aether was too much. Tony, James, Sam, Bruce Banner. They were all too much. Loki was here. He was here! For her. For Thor. For the entire universe. Not to rule it. Not to enslave it. But to save it. And nothing else mattered.
Nothing. Else. Mattered!
"NO!" Jane screamed, digging her mind into the heart of the Aether and ripping the strings of reality around her. Every sound was silenced. Every light was dimmed. Every breath was stopped. Every hint of movement was extinguished. She existed alone in her reality in that moment, watched with unseeing eyes, and holding tight to the man lying before her.
She pushed her cheek to Loki's heart, wrapping one arm around his waist and the other around his neck, holding him close, offering herself as protector and sacrifice for those who tried to take him from her now that he was actually here. She breathed deeply and listened to each beat of his heart.
Forget the jet, she pleaded with the Aether. Forget the stranger. Forget those things you wish to be near. Forget Tony. Forget James Barnes. Forget Sam and Bruce Banner and the warriors around us and the running figure. Forget this strange land and our exhaustion and confusion. Forget everything in the entire universe. Please! she begged. Please. Please let me have control, full control. Control over my body and my mind and my heart. Let me protect this man. I'm the only one who can. That's why he came to me. I know that now. I have to protect him, but no one will trust me if I'm not myself. Please, she was crying. Please. He's everything.
The pressure in her head lessened, but the draw toward something in that jet, something that man possessed, remained. Jane closed her eyes, letting the constant rhythm of life in Loki's chest sooth her.
Please.
A weight lifted. The noise, the scents, the lights suddenly crashed into her as the illusion broke. No dulling of her senses. No buffer against the harshness of reality. She was truly in control, and she was more vulnerable than she had ever been. She knew she would pay for this later, that the Aether would ask many things of her for this kindness today.
Tony Stark was shouting her name. Again.
"Tony, listen to me."
"Jane! What the hell did you do?"
"Tony, listen."
"Get up, kid!"
"Tony."
"Come on, Jane!"
"TONY, STOP!"
Her cry cut off his words, silenced the shouts around her as effectively as the previous halt in reality, and Tony startled back, arm shaking slightly as he held it aimed at Loki, at Jane.
"Loki's on our side, Tony. We need him."
The Iron Man was stone, hardly recognizable as anything more than an unmanned weapon ready and able to end her life with a second's activation of the charged cannon in his palm.
"Tony, listen to her. She's right."
Tony's head jerked to the side. "Not now, Bruce."
Jane remembered that voice from scientific interviews throughout years of school and years after. She had idolized Bruce Banner, not solely because of his intelligence or his discipline as a scientist, but because of his constant and unapologetic refusal to conform. She respected the man for his absolute gall to ignore the system, ignore the ridicule of his peers, and pursue the wild research he knew could do what science was supposed to do. Just like her. Advance mankind's knowledge. Why Doctor Bruce Banner was here and helping her, why he was agreeing with her about a man he had brutally brought to justice years ago, she didn't know or care, but she owed him her life.
"Take us somewhere secure. Somewhere safe. Anywhere, Tony, and I promise I'll tell you everything. But you can't hurt him, and I won't leave his side."
Tony Stark stared at Jane, at Loki, then at the crowd gathered around them. His gaze stopped and held on a place over her shoulder, a spot she knew the jet would have landed, and his shoulders rose and sunk in what could only be a petulant shrug. A Tony Stark specialty she knew well.
"And I really thought this day couldn't get any worse."
