Back on schedule! :-) Thanks for bearing with me, guys!
The Avengers had spent a week and a half on their toes.
After Tony and Bruce had shared the photographs with everybody else – including Pepper – there was a rush throughout the tower over the course of the next couple of days. Clint had never left his bow further away than an arm's reach, a quiver of arrows perpetually slung across his back. Tony had spent far too many hours with his suits, upgrading and testing them obsessively. Steve had gone unusually quiet, Bruce had disappeared for almost entire days, Natasha had slept with a knife under her pillow, and Pepper had put work to the side so as to just be with the others.
The first few days had been terse, but everyone had gradually loosened up. So now, after a week and a half since their acquisition of the pictures, life had almost gone back to normal, everybody writing the images off as a sort of hoax – a prank gone very wrong, though they kept their eyes open.
Elizabeth, however, had holed herself up inside her room. Nobody knew what she was doing, as she never opened the door or admitted visitors. She only showed up for meals, and even those were tense, silent, and quick. They had seen next to nothing of her since she had analyzed the photographs.
One night, when the moon had long hung in the sky, overlooking the city like a god, Steve found himself sitting up in bed, completely awake. He had been lying there for a long while, waiting for sleep to come, and he had grown sick of waiting, listening to his own heart beat in his ears to fuel his anxiety that had slipped under wraps when everyone else seemed to calm down. Frustrated, he got out of bed and left his room, thinking that a small change of scenery would help.
The living room was dark, and he only flicked on a small table lamp to chase away the heaviest of shadows. Collapsing onto the sofa, he ran a hand over his face, wishing that the tension would somehow leave his muscles alone for a night and let him get some sleep.
He closed his eyes heavily and drew a deep breath. When he opened them again, exhaling, he caught a glimpse of something outside on the balcony. The image was partially shrouded in darkness and partially obscured by the glare from the lamp, so Steve hauled himself up from the couch and moved over to the glass door, sliding it open smoothly.
Elizabeth sat by the railing, legs hanging over the edge, tempting gravity. Her dark hair fell to her shoulder blades, looking slightly less meticulous than usual, the color blending almost perfectly with the night that surrounded them.
She did not look at him as he took a seat beside her, opting not to dangle his legs as she did. He glanced furtively at her profile, eyes adjusting to the dark. She seemed exhausted and frenzied at the same time, something Steve felt too. Mutual ground.
After a moment, she tilted her head, glancing at him. She didn't speak, but her face spoke plainly enough. Why are you here?
"Couldn't sleep," he replied as though she had actually spoken.
Ah.
"You?"
She gave him a look that ached with derision, eyelids hanging over most of her eyes, lips drawn. Why do you think?
"Couldn't sleep either?" he asked.
"I actually came out here to take in the silence," she said with a shrug; she turned back to the cityscape, watching the stars with an almost empirical interest.
Steve hadn't expected this, but he made to get up anyway, saying, "I can leave, if you'd like."
"No, please, stay," she drawled. "I find you a delightful and entirely welcome distraction."
He settled back into his position once more, following her gaze upwards. There was nothing special about the sky, he noted. It looked the same as it did every other night. Her fascination with it was curious to him, though, so he kept looking.
"You know," she murmured, voice hinging on a whisper, "your sky is the only one to feature these constellations."
At this, his gaze shifted abruptly to her, trying to read the blank expression on her face, but to no avail. "Have you seen other skies?" he asked, choosing his question carefully in the hopes that she might answer rather than evade.
She smiled at him – a gesture from teacher to student – and said, "Many others. In many seasons. These are unique to yours." She pointed to the stars for emphasis. Her eyes took on a peculiar haze as she continued, tracing out the shapes in the sky as she spoke. "I know all the constellations of your sky. I have tracked their changes across the course of one of your years. I think your sky possesses the largest array of stars that I have ever seen. It is amazing to me that they must change with the seasons in order to give every star its time."
The way she said "your sky" and "your stars" would have made Steve balk in the conversation if he had been anyone else. But he was a soldier who had seen far too many obscure and foreign things to be put off by a simple pronoun. Instead, he leaned forward in interest, trying to name the constellations as she drew them in the inky sky, her pale finger easy to follow.
"People in long-past times devised stories about the stars," she muttered, casting him a glance from the corner of her eye. "Would you believe it if I told you that there was some truth to them after all?" she asked, lips curving up in a small smirk.
Steve met her half-gaze, almost surprised at the chuckle that escaped his lips. "I think it wouldn't astonish me at all. I recently had a run-in with two Norse gods and an alien army."
She snorted softly, saying, "There is still much that you have not learned."
"That may be, but I'm better off than before," he responded, offering her a grin. "I didn't used to believe in other species living out there." He gestured broadly to the sky as a whole.
Far away, lightning forked through the sky. A low rumble of thunder followed shortly in its wake, and Steve marveled at how comforting a sound it was when it was kept distant. Yet, somewhere close to the noise, children probably scrambled to crawl beneath their covers, eyes wide and hearts rapid.
"Are they all like Loki?"
The words found their way up Steve's throat before he realized that he had even thought them. When Elizabeth looked curiously at him, he motioned again to the sky, indicating every other being out there, beyond the bounds of earth.
The thunder rolled again, closer this time, though it didn't seem like rain was accompanying it. Elizabeth's brow creased as she focused hard in the direction of the storm. "Like Loki?" she repeated absently, drawing Steve's attention away from her face and where she looked. "How do you mean?"
He shrugged. Describing Loki was a difficult thing. "Bent on world domination?" He had meant for it to come out as more of a statement, but the wind was picking up, distracting him.
Elizabeth sat silently for a moment, watching the distant storm. Her hair was dancing in the air around her face, but that was the extent of its effect on them. Still, she regarded it warily, as though it might soon become dangerous, and then she blinked and replied carefully, "Every realm has those who hunger for power beyond their grasp—even Midgard. But you've misjudged Loki if you think that his only goal was power and domination." She looked at him curiously. "You might even have more in common with him than you think."
If it had been in Steve's nature, he would have scoffed. Instead, he just said dryly, "Somehow, I have trouble believing that."
Elizabeth rested her chin in her hand, turning her head toward him. "You very well may be right, but, if you don't mind my asking, what were you like before you became a super soldier?"
"I was a scrawny little nobody from Brooklyn," Steve answered, far too readily.
"What was that like?" He arched an eyebrow at her, and she replied, "Humor me."
With a sigh, Steve recounted it all. "I got picked on a lot, I never got the girls, and I didn't quite fit in with the guys. I guess I was kind of alone." He remembered vividly many an occasion in many an alley, his whole body aching from being hit so many times, though he still stood on his skinny legs and taunted anybody who had stuck around, saying that he could take them (though he would have been a fool to actually believe it).
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows at his description of himself. "Looking at you now, one would never know it," she said. A wide flash of lightning lit her face a bit, and he could see honesty there.
"That serum really changed a lot," Steve agreed.
She was quiet for a beat, and then she said, "It may surprise you to hear it, but Loki's childhood was very similar to yours."
He looked at her straight on now; she had his attention.
"He was always small for his age—small in the way in which Thor is large. He never quite meshed into the culture of Asgard, being a sorcerer in a largely un-magical realm. Asgard values brawn of body and fierceness of spirit, and the only proper place in which to display such traits is in combat or on a battlefield. Success in battle means everything. Finesse and a clever mind are far less treasured—scorned, even, if they come at the cost of ineptitude in the training ring." Thunder rolled, and she turned forward again, propping her elbows on her knees and lacing her fingers under her chin. "I suppose you could say that, despite his magical prowess and razor-wit, he was always the little guy."
As much as he empathized, something about the image didn't want to fall into place in Steve's mind. He imagined Loki, all black leather armor and shining golden horned helmet above a scowl that could boil water. "I'm having a hard time seeing him as a victim," he told her, and Elizabeth nodded once.
"Most do," she said. "A fact which has always served to make his life more merciless. People look at what he is now—what he's become over time—and think that that is all there ever was. The truth of it is, he's been knocked around more than his fair share. All simply because he was an easy target who stood out from among the general populace."
Steve felt himself nodding as his eyes roved out over the cityscape and his mind struggled to grasp what Elizabeth had just told him. He drew up the image of Loki again, this time looking more closely. There were very faint frown lines in the forehead, a false, mask-like feeling to the smirk on the lips, and the same depth in the eyes that Steve had noticed in his own on occasion. He tried to imagine what Loki looked like when he was younger—hundreds of years ago, he reminded himself—and, all at once, he saw exactly what Elizabeth had described. The sort of face that looked incomplete without innocence in the eyes; the sort of body that wore bruises so well that they often went unnoticed.
"What a transformation," he said.
"Indeed." She stared out at the storm for a long moment, and Steve noticed for the first time that it had been gradually coming closer and closer the longer they had sat in conversation. Now, the thick, dark clouds hovered at about half of the distance between the tower and their starting location. Thunder growled more noisily; lightning glinted more brightly.
"How do you know so much about Loki?" Steve heard himself ask. The question had been on his mind, yes, but he had tried to tell himself to ignore it. Besides sounding impertinent, it was also the sort of question to which he wasn't sure he wanted the answer.
Elizabeth didn't look affronted, though, instead only knitting her brow at the storm for a second before answering, "Diplomacy between realms allowed me to see a great deal of both him and his brother as they grew. I could tell you as much about Thor also; I know a fair bit about both Asgardian princes."
The wind was growing stronger, just stepping beyond comfortable and into the bounds of an annoyance. Steve tried to ignore it, but it was getting more difficult by the minute. "Did he and Thor always hate each other?" he asked, raising his voice a little to speak over the sound of wind rushing over buildings.
Elizabeth shook her head. "Not exactly," she said. "There was always a brotherly rivalry between them, but it grew more pronounced as they aged." A loud clap of thunder stopped her from elaborating, though Steve wanted to know so much more.
"What happened to make them like they are now?" He was practically yelling, but he didn't care. If there was even a slim chance that Elizabeth would tell him more of the story, he would take it.
Lightning bit the sky dangerously close to Stark Tower, and Elizabeth hastily got to her feet, Steve scrambling after her. She didn't answer him, instead watching as charcoal-colored clouds settled over the tower, the fierce gale whipping her hair in every direction, making the sleeves of Steve's shirt ripple. Her face appeared almost as dark as the sky, a flash of anger like none he had ever seen before in her eyes as she stared at the storm clouds. It lasted half a second and then disappeared.
Steve squinted as the wind cut across his eyes, trying to see whatever Elizabeth saw in this freak hurricane. When she took a step back, he followed, dividing his glances between the clouds and her face.
A massive peal of thunder rent the air around them, and the clouds formed a crude funnel. Steve would have been nervous, but Elizabeth seemed to be relatively calm, like she had seen this before. He wondered briefly if this was something from out there – a phenomenon from another place in space that he had never witnessed.
The funnel touched the balcony, not six feet from them, and Steve had visions of a scene from the beginning of The Wizard of Oz. This wasn't like that tornado, though. It didn't pull him in with the sheer force of it. It raged overhead, fumed all the way to the concrete under his shoes, but it did nothing more than that. Like a child having a tantrum.
"Get back!" Elizabeth yelled. He could barely hear her over the storm, but she had accompanied the command with a wave of the arm, so he immediately understood and obeyed.
He moved out of the way just in time, for the funnel had built up so much energy that it blew outwards, vanishing entirely. The clouds, thunder, and lightning seemed to follow, leaving them in the same peaceful night from which they had started only moments before.
Except for the man standing before them, wavering on his feet from the storm's power, his long blonde hair settling around his face as the last of the wind gusted away in a breeze. He dropped a hammer larger than his head on the floor of the balcony, extending an arm and a smile to Steve.
"Captain!" Thor exclaimed, pulling Steve into a very manly embrace. He stepped back, holding Steve at arm's length, a thick hand on either shoulder. "It has been far too long."
Steve smiled in return, sneaking a glance over his shoulder for Elizabeth.
She was gone.