A new chapter, and the promise of more to come ( hopefully sooner than the last) as I have now finished school forever and so have much more free time!

Thanks also to all those who have followed this. We reached 100 followers recently and as I've never had a fic get to that before I was and am really happy about this. Having readers follow along on this adventure makes writing it all the more rewarding.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.

Enjoy!

After the team had left, the Helicarrier had rippled with a nervous energy. Those on the bridge felt the possibility fizz at their fingers as they typed, the agents in the hold muttered between themselves as they polished the glass and checked the fastenings of the glass dome now being repurposed as a prison cell. As Coraline passed the medical wing on her way back towards the laboratory and the only vaguely familiar face left on the ship, she could see them pouring over paperwork and tapping syringes with a kind of precision that could only be interpreted as ominous.

As soon as she entered the laboratory, however, the nervous energy faded.

The lab was unbelievably, unsettlingly calm. The man in the purple shirt – Dr. Banner as he had been introduced – bumbled around, jotting down calculations and checking instruments. Every one of his moves appeared calculated, as if he was thinking precisely about every footfall, every scribble, every breath.

Coraline coughed from the doorway. He didn't jump, merely looking up with a confused expression which changed to that of recognition when he saw who had interrupted him.

"Dr. Quinn," he managed a small smile. "Come in, come in. I could use a distraction."

"You and me both," Coraline chuckled as she stepping into the room.

"Are S.H.I.E.L.D being as arduous as always?" Bruce said as he gestured for Coraline to perch on one of the tables.

As she sat, cross-legged and watching him, she felt young (with recollections of times in her first year of university where she would hang out with scientific friends in much the same way) and with it vulnerable. She bit her lip to hide the thought. Dr. Banner picked up on it anyway.

"You haven't encountered them before, have you?" He asked as he put the equipment down and met her gaze.

Coraline shook her head. She sighed, before gathering her resolve and opening the pouches on her belt.

"I brought snacks and drinks…" she faded off as she felt Banner's stare continue, unabated.

Coraline's shoulders drooped as she arranged the last of the vending machine scavenged snacks on the table besides her. Then she turned and faced the man standing across from her.

"A month ago I was working in a museum in London, and now I am on a secret agency's flying ship while a glorified nightlight has been stolen and a malevolent Norse god is taking a selection of spies and a 1940s propaganda tool on a goose chase round Germany. S.H.I.E.L.D aren't being arduous, they're just not making any sense."

Bruce looked at the women across from him. After laughing at her own statement, she had cracked open one of the snack and was nibbling on some dried fruit. Even from his position across from her, he could see the fear that lingered in her eyes, the uncertainty that aligned well with the dark shadows under them.

He didn't see himself when he looked at her. In him there was the anger, the anger at being called in and the anger of what had happened to him before and since. With her though, there was no anger, no flash of resentment or niggling for reparations. Instead she just looked tired, and confused, and at least a bit stressed.

"That sounds like S.H.I.E.L.D," he admitted. "What exactly are you doing here, then?"

Coraline laughed.

"How long have you got?" She joked.

Bruce smiled and exaggerated looking at his watch.

"I don't know," he smiled. "I can fit you in between finding the nightlight and chasing a trickster."

Coraline smiled - a proper smile that felt foreign on her features.

"Well," she started…

aAa

Time passed differently on the Helicarrier. It was one of the first things Coraline had learnt when she had been posted to the craft. Even though there were shift rotas and bells rung on the hour, the lack of natural light and the quietness of the ship disorientated all those on board, and allowed for hours to slip by or drag with ease.

It was this disorientation that caused Coraline and Dr. Banner (or Bruce, as he had insisted on being called) to talk about everything and nothing far into the night that had only begun to draw in when the Quinjet had left with the Widow and the Captain.

Their conversation had been stilted at first, with Coraline unwilling to give up too much while Banner still had the stare of a concerned doctor plastered to his face.

By the second hour of round and round conversation about doctoral theses and the climate of Kolkata, the look had gone and been replaced by a genuine interest in what Coraline was saying.

And so they had spent the time, laughing and fiddling with instruments (with Coraline having a surprising amount of success with one piece of machinery that – to her at least – was no more complicated than the farm tractors she had often watched her father fix) up until the interruption of the tinny alarm of her watch, telling her six hours had passed and that she needed to take another tablet.

She shook out the tablet from its foil casing and was searching amidst the snack packets for a water bottle when Banner stopped her.

"What are you taking?"

She paused, and he used the moment to backtrack, unsure if their familiarity had gotten to the stage of asking about medications yet.

"I mean, if you want to say. You don't have to, I am intruding and you get enough of that from S.H.I.E.L.D. Sorry, I'll –"

"It's OK," Coraline pacified as she passed the tablet packaging to him. "It's an anti-nausea pill. Called something unpronounceable, but all it does is keep me balanced and upright while I'm here."

When the doctor raised his eyebrows questioningly, she added; "I get seasick…and airsick. And I'm on a flying boat."

"Ah," He hummed his understanding as he squinted at the writing on the foil packaging. His eyes flashed with something dark, something that completely contradicted the calm, quiet persona Coraline had gotten to know over the past six hours.

She sucked in a breath in apprehension. Banner looked up, brushed the angry expression from his features with ease, and then handed her the package back.

"I'm not your doctor, not really a doctor at all – not a medical one at least, but if I were you, don't take any more of those tablets."

"What, why?" Coraline held the tablets gently, her pulse starting to speed up as she thought of all the pills that she'd already ingested.

"Just a feeling," Banner didn't do a good job of mollifying her. "S.H.I.E.L.D don't usually hand out drugs of their own making without a motive, and no offense but I really don't think you're considered important enough to receive special treatment."

"Touché," Coraline said quietly.

The room quietened as the historian put the tablets back into their pocket untouched, and the scientist fiddled with another of the instruments awkwardly.

Coraline was just about to attempt to break the silence, when he arrived.

The guards flanked him, their helmets and guns unnerving the historian as she watched them through the window. The sounds of their boots raised Dr. Banner from his work, and so the both of them watched from behind the door as the God of Tricks was frogmarched passed.

His hair was lank, and mixed with his complexion it made the man appear almost sickly. That image though didn't reach his eyes, which sparkled with malice as he met the gaze of the two doctors behind the glass.

His gait was even, calculated, confident. The leer of his mouth looked almost as if he was laughing, but the silence other than the stomp of the guards' footsteps meant that what could have been humour was instead translated as hatred, pure and simple.

Loki looked past Coraline without even a passing gaze. Instead his eyes locked on Banner's before he was forced forwards by the guns at his back.

Coraline glanced at Bruce, and watched as he breathed in shakily and removed his glasses to run a hand over his face.

"Are you OK?" She asked.

Bruce jumped in his clearly agitated state.

"Yeah," He forced a smile as he moved towards one of the computers, and the light that was flashing by it.

"Dr. Banner," A voice that Coraline recognised as that of belonging to Deputy Director Hill echoed from the speaker as Banner pressed a button. "Please report to the Bridge immediately. You are required for debriefing."

Coraline laughed as Bruce stifled a groan and dramatically raised his arms in frustration. She liked this version of the doctor far more than the reserved, eerily calm version he seemed to project most of the time.

As if reading her thoughts, Banner's demeanour changed and the smile in his eyes ebbed away. He pushed his glasses back up his nose as he headed towards the door. Coraline saw her chance.

"Are you sure you're OK?" She grabbed his arm as he went passed her, and used her other to tentatively pat his shoulder. "You looked really…I don't know…shaken up, kind of… back there and you've really helped me relax as I certainly wasn't calm when I first came in here so if you're not calm… or maybe need someone to talk too or…"

She faded off as Bruce placed his hands on her shoulders and smiled.

"I am OK, Coraline. Don't worry. I have to go but can you keep an eye on the scan for me. I shouldn't be long."

Coraline let herself smile, as happily and assuredly as she could manage.

"Sure, as long as you are OK?"

"I'm fine," Bruce called out as he paced down the corridor towards the bridge.

"I'm not," Coraline said to herself as she looked at the ID card in her hand, the one with specialist clearance and Bruce's name on the front. "I am going to be in so much trouble."

She bit her lip in a last minute loss on confidence, before she collected herself together, slipped Bruce's pickpocketed ID into her own card holder, and set off in the opposite direction, towards the holding cell and the God smirking inside.

As always, please do tell me what you think of this. All opinions, good or bad, very much appreciated!

Anonymouscsifa: Sorry for making you wait another chapter for all to be revealed about Coraline. Her character definitely develops here though; perhaps she is not as morally good as she has so far been made out? You are definitely not the only one who suspects the pills-I feel that Bruce sees the darker side of S.H.I.E.L.D and so has no qualms about questioning their intentions. Hopefully that came across here. As for Steve/Coraline sparks, none this chapter but in the coming chapters there will be definitely be some flying about! (funnily enough that is also a subtle hint at something else that is to come, but the less said about that the better) Thanks for reading!