7/1/14- WASHINGTON DC

"Don't even attempt to cook while I'm gone, Loki," Bella said to him flatly, "I want to come back to a home after the mission."

"Ha," Loki rolled his eyes, "I wish I still had servants."

"Tough luck," she said, packing up her duffel bag on the bed. She threw in a change of clothes and a few gizmos and weapons that she had kept from SHIELD and one funny looking gun that Loki had given her for her birthday made of broken weapons from the SHIELD weapons vault.

"Why do you have to go so far away?" Loki sat down on the end of the bed and watched her pack her bag, "I thought Anthony had only employed you as a consultant."

"Apparently he needs my expertise," Bella shrugged, "can't imagine why, unless he wants me to blow something up. Latvaria is a dictatorship, so anything's possible."

"It will be dangerous."

"Loki, being married to you is dangerous," her eyes caught his and pierced right through him, "I'm literally waiting for Asgard to fall on me. This, on the other hand, is gonna be a cakewalk."

"I do not see how walking on cake is any way relevant to this discussion," he said simply.

Bella shook her head, "I'll be fine," she insisted, "I have Avengers air support, and the Bird will be with me on the ground."

"You know as well as I that Hawkeye is the most useless of the Avengers."

She smiled, "do I detect a hint of jealousy, my little ice cube?"

"No."

She sat down next to him, "I can tell when you're lying," she looked into his eyes for a moment, "relax, even if I liked Hawk, he's spoken for, and so am I."

Loki sighed, but otherwise smiled at her, "I'll miss you."

"I'll only be gone forty eight hours."

"That doesn't matter."

They shared a kiss before she left for New York on route to Latvaria.

0800- 7/2/14- WASHINGTON DC

It was lucky it was school time, and that Sophia was staying with a friend for a few days. At least he didn't have to worry as much about his workload or poisoning her with his terrible cooking.

He typed slowly with two fingers as he glared intently at the LCD screen before him, researching and typing up a report on one of the Hydra's many heads.

Someone put a glass of coffee on his desk and he looked up from his computer screen with a tired and indignant look in his eyes for he had been working far too long. "I hope that's decaf," he looked up at Coulson.

"Why would I give you caffeine? You're explosive enough," he shrugged, "what have you got on Sin?"

Loki sighed, "Not much, I am afraid," he sipped the coffee out of the mug almost delicately. It was monogrammed with the SHIELD eagle; he had found several of them when he had cleaned out the former junk room, currently his office.

"What do you know?"

"Snakes don't wear bras and eggs don't bounce," Loki replied simply, Coulson cocked his head, clearly not amused, "Sin's German, in the snippets of her voice that I have listened to, I can say that she is likely an East German, perhaps a Berlinner."

"Doughnut?"

"You know what I mean," he snapped, but then he enlarged a picture on his computer screen and turned it around. It was a CCTV picture of the woman escaping from a crime scene in Prague. In this crime, a highly advanced artifact had been taken from a private collection, and this was the only picture of the perpetrator, with a duffel bag under her arm and red hair tied in a tight bun on top of her head. Her face was not visible.

"Is that it?" Coulson asked, "Can you zoom in or something?"

"You know I have trouble operating this infernal machine," Loki bit back; "I may as well be wearing boxing gloves," Coulson smiled at him, "you're imagining that, aren't you?"

"Control plus," he said flatly.

He pressed the two buttons and the picture zoomed in, "oh, right."

"Anything else?"

"I won't know anything about the crime itself unless I can have access to the crime scene investigation files, or examine the crime scene myself," he sighed into his coffee, "it is a red end."

"Dead end," Coulson corrected him, "that doesn't matter. I need you on another mission," he leaned over Loki's shoulder for a moment and pulled up another screen.

"What is it?"

"We don't know," he told Loki, "all we know is that it's big, it's fast, and it just passed Ioh."

"And you want me to figure out what it is?"

"That and how to stop it if it is hostile."

Loki sipped his coffee, "I am on top of it."

He sighed, "I'm not even going to bother correcting you."