Hello! A new chapter and potentially another before the week is out as I'm trying to write enough before moving to a new city for university that I'll have enough to post for a while should life get more hectic!
Thanks to all who reviewed or followed – I will be sending PMs to all those that have accounts and any guests will have responses at the bottom.
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!
She made it all of two paces before she was forced up against the corridor wall by a whirlwind toned in red.
"What the hell were you thinking?" Natasha 's hands dug into Cora's shoulders as she seethed.
Coraline was in two minds about how to respond. On the one hand, she was still feeling the residual sassiness from her encounter with the God, and so would have happily snapped back with just as much fire in her eyes. On the other hand though, she had heard the rumours and watched the way the Widow walked, and neither of those things suggested it be a good idea to tangle with the assassin when there wasn't barrier between them.
"You have jeopardised everyone on board. Do you understand? Every single person in danger because you couldn't help but break into the only place secure enough to keep the prisoner. You hold no authority, have no skills or purpose as part of this crew, and you have just threatened the lives of hundreds of innocent people who do. Have you any idea how irresponsible you are?"
Coraline snapped. With Loki she was the 8 year old chasing shadows in tunnels: curious, snarky, but still mindful and cautious of monsters lying in wait. Now though, now she was fire.
Her eyes narrowed. Her body tensed.
"I didn't ask for a character analysis Romanoff, but seeing as you have so generously offered one, now you can kindly let me go, before I make you."
Natasha raised an eyebrow incredulously, before accompanying her reponse with another shove of the historian against the wall.
"That's an empty threat and you know it, Quinn. Stand. Down."
"Or what?" Coraline retorted, almost shouting as she pushed back against the spy's grip. "You'll lock me up against my will? I'm on a flying ship in the middle of the sea, and the only way out I've been offered is a transfer to another, probably heavy security, base. Experiment on me and mess with my memories? I'm only kidding myself that it hasn't happened and am just hoping whatever I'm repressing isn't as awful as I worry it could be. Will you alter my way of living so things will never be the same again?"
Coraline pushed, and the force of her anger made the assassin skid backwards slightly before she regained her balance. Coraline didn't let her get close again, standing firm with hands momentarily raised in front of her before she lowered them and continued, her tone dejected now rather than fierce.
"Your organisation turned my life upside down a month ago when they came to me in a museum about a defrosted comic book character with shell shock and a shield. I was ripped from everything I knew and everything that was safe, and nothing, nothing you could threaten me could be worse than that."
The corridor was silent. Natasha regarded the historian with schooled caution. She watched as Cora took a few seconds to compose herself
"You have an interrogation to be getting to. Loki was manipulated by a third party and has been backed into a bad deal. For some that would incite some form of sympathy, but I really don't think that's S.H.I.E.L.D's style, do you?"
Cora didn't wait for a response. Natasha didn't stop her as she turned and walked away.
aAa
Steve hadn't bothered with pleasantries as he had left the lab. Even though this new Coraline seemed to be able to hold her own, the cell breach warning had meant the video of her had been cut off, and in that time, his frenzied mind supplied, anything could have happened.
The blaring alarms and red lights of the corridors had turned off by the time he reached the cell level. Indeed the corridors were quiet as he paced down them, his stomach filled with unease.
He heard Coraline before he saw her. She hissing in pain, and after rushing the last corner Steve found the source of the noise to be correlating whenever the woman prodded the knuckles of her right hand.
On hearing Steve's audible intake of breath, Coraline looked up and pushed away from the wall she had been leaning against.
"Hi," She said softly.
Steve was in her personal space before she'd finished talking. He took her bruised hand in his and watched as she winced. After dropping that he looked her up and down, before taking her cheek in his hand and turned her head to look into her eyes.
"Hey," She objected, before pushing him away with as much force as she could manage.
"Are you alright? Did he hurt you? What did he do?" Steve's flurry of questions bombarded the historian as she tried to keep up.
"I'm fine, what are you talking about?" Realisation dawned in her eyes. "Oh…you saw that?"
"Saw it? Cora the whole ship saw you chatting away to that psychopath," Steve exclaimed, before softening his voice as he asked: "What were you thinking?"
Coraline flinched at the familiar question. Steve, of course, noticed and was almost rushing back towards her, but was stopped by Cora's outstretched arms.
"Steve, stop –" the historian lowered her arms – "Loki didn't do anything to me, in fact out of everyone on this ship he is one of a select number that haven't harmed, threatened or psychologically damaged me in some way."
"No," Steve shook his head in disbelief. "He must have done something, manipulated you or tricked you or something."
Cora crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.
"And why would you think that?"
"Because of this," Steve gestured to her posture, "You're acting differently, you're…you're…"
"Confident?" Coraline lowered her arms, her voice soft again.
She sighed as she saw Steve's expression, resolute but with confusion ebbing at the edges. Being careful of her still smarting knuckles, she took his hands in hers.
"This is me, Steve, "She squeezed her hands in his as he made eye contact. "I am talkative and inquisitive and sometimes reckless. It's why I explored the bunker when I was eight, and it was why I talked to Loki now, at twenty five."
Steve made to interject, but Cora didn't let him.
"I know that, for the most part, the version of me that you have gotten to know isn't that person. I have been meek and shy and scared of my own shadow since the day in the museum where I was plucked from my life and set down to spin away in a different one. And when I get scared, I tend to go on autopilot."
She pauses, bites her lip. "It…uh…it has happened before. Someone noticed then and got me help so I could cope with it, the fear I mean. And I had been coping, excelling really, but all the change, and the guns and all the rest, it… it scared me again."
Looking down, Cora realised that Steve had twisted their hands, so now his were clutching hers.
"Are you alright now?" He asked, gently.
Cora nodded.
"Yeah, I just, I don't know I just snapped out of it." Her brow furrowed.
"I was talking to Dr. Banner and once he had to go I just felt…" She paused in thought, before her eyes opened wide in a mix of realisation and horror. "Son of a –"
She extracted her hands from Steve's so that she could reach into her utility belt. Steve watched as she opened a pocket and scrunched the tablet box into her palm.
When she looked back at Steve, her face was pale but her eyes were burning.
"I really, really hate this organisation," She dropped the crumpled cardboard into Steve's palm, and his own eyes widened before narrowing in fury.
"Come on," He grabbed her arm and began to walk, no, march, back down the corridor.
"What? Where are we going?" Coraline jogged to keep up, remembering the first time they had walked arm in arm back when sneaking out of the Triquetra was the most dangerous thing she had considered doing.
"Fury wouldn't know honesty if it punched him in the face," Steve slowed so that Coraline could catch up. "I've never liked bullies and I hate liars."
"So…"
"So we're going to find the answers to our questions, and hope that there is enough of S.H.I.E.L.D standing after we do to resolve the threats they'll have no doubt caused."
Coraline looked at the man in front of her, at the determination in his eyes and the anger that stiffened his stance. Slowly, she moved her arm away from his grip, and when he released it self-consciously, she took his hand and squeezed reassuringly.
"Lead the way, Captain Rogers," She said with a conspiratorial smile.
aAa
Coraline had slipped into the lab with about as much subtlety as an elephant. In her defence, she was trying to sneak past two geniuses and a super spy, which was probably why she managed all of two steps before she was noticed.
"You're supposed to be locating the Tesseract. And you –" He turned to catch Coraline mid sideways step and pointed at her accusingly "– you are meant to be keeping out of the way with your mouth shut."
"Bite me," Cora muttered to the chagrin of Stark and shock of Banner. The physicist recovered quickly though, and interrupted Fury before he could retaliate.
"We are locating the Tesseract. The model's locked and we're sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we'll have the location within half a mile.
"You'll get your cube back, no muss, no fuss." Tony added as he drew his gaze from the historian now sitting cross legged on a spare lab bench, and instead to the monitor flashing in front of him.
"What is PHASE 2?"
Steve nodded to Coraline as he entered the lab. They had found the weapons together, more because that was where Steve was going than because she was actually useful to the effort. Upon their discovery, his ragged breathing and poorly concealed clenched fists had been all Cora had needed to see. She had touched his shoulder, smiled sadly when he looked up, and then gave him his space.
Apparently he hadn't needed much. The weapon clattered as it was dropped onto the nearest table.
"PHASE 2 is S.H.I.E.L.D uses the cube to make weapons," Steve clipped as he turned to Stark.
"Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow."
Fury stalled.
"Rogers, we collected everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean that we're..."
Coraline scoffed from her position.
"No archiving, no labels, no system of organisation. Collection my ass."
"Perhaps you should stop interfering with things beyond your skillset, Miss Quinn," Fury retorted.
He turned back to Steve.
"We felt it pertinent to analyse all aspects of Tesseract technology, in case we are faced with it should Loki use it for the same purposes."
"I'm sorry, Nick," Tony swivelled the computer screen in the director's direction. "What were you lying?"
Coraline gasped as she watched the animation for a missile run on the screen. Steve appeared to echo her horror.
"I was wrong, director," He bit out. "The world hasn't changed a bit."
The tension had shifted, but not dissipated, upon the arrival of Agent Romanoff. She was accompanied by a man Coraline had not met. His frame filled the doorway, and his regal attire was unmissable. The historian titled her head in interest, but was cut off from asking for introductions by a tablet close to her position emitting a beep.
As she looked at the tablet screen, the conversation happening around her faded into the background.
"Did you know about this?"
Her name was at the top of the screen.
"You want to think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?"
Below it was a number. A long one. One that was not her National Insurance Number, Student I.D or museum entry code.
"I was in Calcutta, I was pretty well removed."
Coraline scrolled. Her date of birth, her parents' names, her family address and her own came next.
"Loki's manipulating you."
Then, a date she recognised only from the whiteboard of the ward she had woken up in at eight years old. Below it was a link.
"And you've been doing what exactly?"
Schematics appeared once the link had loaded. Coraline realised she was looking at X-rays – her X-rays. She recognised the metal that had had been placed to stick her back together. She'd been shown those photos multiple times during her recovery, and at every airport the same image had shown up every time she had gone through a scanner.
That had always been odd, because even at that stage in medical procedure, the metal implanted was not usually meant to set off scanners. The next page of information apparently solved that decade long mystery.
"You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you."
X-Rays and even an MRI scan Coraline didn't remember having filled the screen. With a finger beginning to shake she traced the metal from her leg upwards, across her hip and then down the other. She gulped.
"Yes, and I'm not leaving because you suddenly get a little twitchy. I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction."
The next image showed a spine, her spine she presumed as the pit in her stomach grew. Like train tracks, fine wires could be seen climbing up the spine of the eight year old version of the historian. The Coraline in the present rolled her shoulders, but as she hadn't for the past 18 years, she felt nothing.
She skipped the image showing the wires continuing upwards. To think of anything being in her head was enough to raise the bile in her throat.
The final image showed the pin in the arm she was expected, but also one in the other. The nausea rose as the room quietened.
"Because of him."
Coraline was brought from her horror filled little world by the unfamiliar voice of the new man.
"Me?" Thor exclaimed as Coraline tried, and failed, to catch up with the conversation.
"Last year earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that levelled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned."
Coraline tried to concentrate on Fury's words, but the screen in front of her beeped again, and despite her dread, she turned her gaze back to it.
"My people want nothing but peace with your planet."
Cora tuned out the argument ensuing entirely as she read.
Below all the X-rays and sickeningly confusing scans was a very official looking form. Cora recognised her parents' signatures at the bottom, but really wished she didn't as she read what they had signed. Whatever had been done to her, they had known. Her parents, the Mummy and Daddy of the broken eight year old, had agreed to a covertly offered procedure, and had never once even hinted anything about it. That perhaps she could have forgiven them for. Perhaps it was due to cost, or perhaps the explosion had done more damage than she had ever been told. Perhaps, perhaps…
Except all of those musings were cut short by the logo emblazoned at the top of the document. The very familiar bird logo…
"… You're a lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle."
As the conversation around her faded back into focus, Coraline only partially recognised the sound of something breaking.
Bruce was the first to look up. Rogers and Stark took longer to break from staring each other down, and by the time they did they only need follow the line of the physicist's concerned gaze to see the cause of it.
Cora's pupils were blown wide as her eyes darted from person to person. The tablet was smashed at her feet.
Her feet crunched the glass as she staggered backwards. Her hands shook. When Bruce took a cautious step towards her, what would have been a whimper changed to a strangled gasp.
"Is she unwell?" Thor questioned as Bruce asked: "Coraline, what's wrong?"
Inside the historian's head, any sense of calm had been replaced with alarms bells tolling. S.H.I.E.L.D had been in her life, had been inside her, for far longer than the month she had spent with them. Fury, the man across from her with the blank expression, must know this. Romanoff seemed clued in to most, if not all, that went on on the ship, so surely she knew too. She didn't know about the newest, caped member of the motley crew, but Banner had dealt with S.H.I.E.L.D before, so what's to say he hadn't again. That left Steve. And if Steve knew…
"I'm going to be sick," Coraline blurted.
No one moved, but no one stopped her as she skittered from her position and fled the room.
Steve watched her leave with the anguish in his eyes that indicated he was about to follow. IN fact, he was already stepping towards the door when the voice of one Tony Stark made him freeze in position.
"You got any more psychopathic dictators hidden on board Fury?" Stark quipped. "If so, I'd tell your agents to man the doors a bit better this time."
Steve's worry boiled to anger as he turned back to the inventor and bit out:
"Put on the suit…
aAa
Coraline hadn't been sick. She'd dashed to the nearest open and empty room and had retched over a waste paper basket, but with the realisation that she hadn't eaten enough to bring back up, also came the realisation that she was no longer nauseous
She leant back again the wall and tried to calm her breathing. Her throat was sore from retching and her knuckles still smarted. That amount of pain though acted as an anchor which she clung to as she talked her thoughts into staying still.
Something had been done to her when she was a child. Something else had presumably been done to her in the time she had been missing. Since then, something S.H.I.E.L.D had been giving her had been keeping her meek. And for all she knew everyone she had come into contact with since being swept up by the organisation could be involved.
"Woah there Cora, put down the tin foil hat," She muttered to herself.
Even in her own mind she sounded like a conspiracy theorist, and while there was definitely evidence to support her somewhat crazy theory, there was also an element of rationality that she couldn't just ignore.
Slowly, she got to her feet. She was going to smooth down her shirt, find some water to wash her mouth out with, and then go back to the lab and confront the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Whatever argument that had been going on would surely have dialled down by now. She could get the answers from the man in the black trench coat and if he tried to lie his way out of she could use the evidence that presumably Tony Stark had dug up to catch him out.
The corridor disoriented her momentarily as she stepped out into it. She couldn't remember how far she'd ran to get out of the room, and it was only when she heard now familiar voices once again being raised that she found the door to the lab, only a few metres from where she had fled to.
"The Tesseract belongs on Asgard; no human is a match for it."
"You're not going alone!"
"You gonna stop me?"
"Put on the suit, let's find out."
"I'm not afraid to hit an old man."
"Put on the suit."
Cora reached the doorway, to find the scene almost identical as to how she had left it. Stark and Steve were still arguing, Fury and Natasha were still bearing unreadable looks, the man in the cape was standing over all of them, Banner was looking at a beeping screen.
"Oh, my God!" The tone of the physicist made Coraline look at him more closely. The alarm in his voice was evident, and the beeping was getting louder until -
To most people the sound of an explosion would be an unfamiliar noise, so much so that they might not even register an explosion at all until the floor disappears under them or walls rise up to meet them. For those inside the room, even recognising the noise for what it was would not have given them enough time to brace for impact.
For Coraline however, in the split second before she was thrown backwards, she recognised the noise from her dredged up memories. As her head made impact with the rear wall of the corridor, the smell of wet grass and cobweb dust accompanied her fade to darkness.
Thank you, as always for reading, reviewing, following and all in all making my day whenever a message appears in my inbox!
Anonymouscsifan: I'm glad you enjoyed seeing the various relationships start to form and blossom, this chapter didn't hold so much interaction between Bruce, Tony and Coraline but hopefully her conversations with Steve makes up for that. Thank you for being such a consistent reviewer, your comments are always encouraging and very helpful for seeing what works and doesn't.
