A/N: I am a giant lying liarpants. I said I'd have this up almost three days ago, only to realise I had left my draft book at school and brought home my Literature book instead... so I've written it up. To make up for my lateness I'll post the next chapter tomorrow (I've gotten really far ahead in writing my chapter drafts!). Thank you all for your lovely reviews and your patience!
It had taken me a few minutes to stand, my bones still aching, but nothing could draw the god's eyes away from me. He stalked silently from one side of his cage to the other, Cheshire grin upon his face. I backed away slowly as I stood, leaning against the nearby railing. It felt as if, were I to look away, he would strike out at me like a venomous snake.
"How long have you been here?" I asked him. I sounded a lot more calm than I felt; I knew the guy was dangerous but he looked like he wasn't worried at all, like he could get out with a flick of his wrist.
"A while, now. I've been getting a few visitors. Your Black Widow," he spat, as if the words were poison. I inched closer to the doorway.
"Yeah," I breathed, looking down at my feet, "she and I don't really get along." Loki stopped in his tracks, turning and stalking towards me, stopped by the glass. The sound of his boots against the floor echoed eerily throughout the empty, spherical room.
"Hmm. She told me a lot about you. A little girl, a child in woman's clothing, playing dress up. Pretending to belong." Part of me wanted to say that Romanov would never openly betray her beliefs to someone like him, but she had been pretty vocal about her distrust of me. The familiar clench in my throat, making it hard to breathe and hard not to cry returned. My biggest weakness was my fear of not belonging; of being a hindrance, of people not liking me. And there's no way they would have wanted me around now; I was nothing compared to them, they were superheroes for Christ sakes! I was just a maintenance girl; it was like the engineering version of a janitor. They must have known how utterly useless I was.
"What threat could you ever be to me, you worthless, vomitous mass? You are barely even on par with the Midgardian rabble, let alone me, or my army." He was leaning forward, almost nosing the glass, glaring down at me as if I were an ant. The look in his eyes alone was enough to bring tears stinging into my eyes.
But I didn't want to cry in front of him; I wanted to be strong, I wanted to be worth something. It would be mortifying to let him win. But I'm sure that, at the time, I would have bawled like a baby if not for the explosion that shook the carrier.
I was thrown across the room by the dangerous rocking of the ship, slamming into the doors, which slid open when I connected with the floor. I groaned, crawling onto my knees, then slowly to my feet, a much more difficult feat than before considering the ship was still wobbling dangerously.
I looked back up at Loki a final time, only to see a smudge of perfect white upon his tear-blurred figure.
'That little fucker's smiling at me.' I furiously whipped my tears away, performed a heel-face-turn, and stormed out into the hallway. Warning sirens blared throughout the ship, directing me towards the centre control room.
"Halt, Hunter!" A voice boomed from down the hall. Rubbing at the remaining tears in my eyes, I tried to calm myself as the source of the voice, this Thor from before, approached. "You vanished moments before the battle began. You are not harmed?" His large hands grasped my arms, holding me still while checking over me for wounds. Almost as if it were being called, the ache in my bones struck up.
"Nothing I can't handle," I winced. "What's the battle plan?"
"The Metal Man and the Captain are to stop the flying ship from falling. Your Woman Warrior is missing, as is the Science Man." In one of his massive hands – the other having grasped the hammer that was once hanging from his belt – he passed me a tiny earpiece. "I was tasked with giving this to you."
'How the hell did he not crush that?' Grabbing the earpiece and shoving it into my ear, I winced at the loud voices hollering at each other over the airwaves.
"Thor!" That was definitely Hill; the same scream I had heard when boarding the Helicarrier, this time unobstructed by powering jet turbines. "Banner's unleashed the Hulk. You're the only one who can take him down, I'll tell you how to get to him." The Asgardian nodded, as if the voice could see him, and turned a final time to me. I was honestly surprised at how concerned he looked.
"You will keep yourself safe?" His hand, giant and warm, rested on my shoulder. It may have been the first conversation I'd ever had with the guy, but he seemed to show more genuine concern for my safety that anyone had in a long time.
'Okay, if I don't get going, I might actually cry. Again.'
"Yeah, I'll be fine," I told him. He patted my arm once, lightly, as if I might break, and took off the way I had come. I pressed the button on my earpiece to activate the microphone.
"Agent Hill?"
"Hunter," her voice sounded terse – less about talking to me, but more with the stress of the situation – but came through clearly, "Go to the crew quarters, on the East side. Bring any stranded crew there to the Control Centre." The connection crackled, but I was still able to hear commands being shouted back and forth through the static.
"Acknowledged." Didn't really seem like a great time to ask which side was the East Side. So I just jogged around a little, looking for a map or a sign or something.
"Shit," I swore, "I'm so lost." I wrung a hand through my hair in frustration. "Fuck."
"Mevrouwtje!" Mr. Rolf, only a few doors away from me, stuck his head out into the hall and waved me closer. Before I could take a step towards him a spray of bullets clattered into the metal wall, sending us both sprawling towards the ground. On my hands and knees, I crawled slowly towards the door, jumping up onto my feet in a crouch as I got closer.
Of course, the intruder shooting at us wasn't just going to give up that easily. So when he rounded the corner, I did what any girl would do in that situation. I kicked him in the balls.
He went down like a rock, dropping his gun, which I hastily took and knocked him out with. Watching as he fell unconscious against the ground, I smirked and leant the butt of the gun against my hip. "Not prepared my ass."
"Mevrouwtje, in here!" Mr. Rolf called again, reached an arm out and pulling me into the room he had taken refuge in – what appeared to be a bedroom, filled wall to wall with bunk-beds and populated by a group of roughly half a dozen SHIELD agents. I sighed, holding out my newly acquired rifle.
"Who can use this?" A tall, dark haired, dark skinned soldier stepped forward, taking the rifle and checking it over with practiced ease. "Okay, and who knows how to get to the control centre from here?" There was a quiet murmuring from the group before a short, curly haired brunette stepped forth, chin held high.
"I know the fastest way."
I gestured for her to exit the room. "You're in the lead then. Let's get out of here."
Gurls, and the guy with the gun, filed out first, checking corners and hallways, while the rest of the group followed closely behind. Mr. Rolf and I pulled up the rear, my hand tucked into his elbow tightly.
The sewn up stump where my ring finger used to be itched something painful.
"It's good to see you unharmed, Mevrouwtje." Mr. Rolf muttered. I tightened my grasp around his arm and gave him the best smile I could manage. A spatter of gunfire sounded in the distance, through the churning for broken metal.
It was like traversing a maze; as soon as Curls grew sure of herself, her path would be blocked by a destroyed hallway, a group of soldiers we had to sneak past, or on a memorable occasion a burst pipe leaking some kind of coolant out into the hallway we were warned by a lab assistant to 'definitely stay away from'.
It was only after we stopped for more than a minute that I actually reacted. "What's the hold up?"
"I found a way through," Curls' voice hovered above the crowd, "but the door is jammed! The keypad won't open it!" I sighed, giving Mr. Rolf an apologetic look, and pushed through the crowd. I nodded Curls out of my way and inspected the keypad. Pulling it off the wall, I look at the collection of wires inside.
"Do all SHIELD bases use the same doors?" I questioned aloud, pulling my penknife – maintenance crew's best friend – from my pocket. "They had the same ones at the last base. They could survive an explosion, but the tiniest knock will lock them up. I'll reset it manually." I shoved the knife deep up into the panel, clicking it into the manual control and turning it to reactivate the doors. The gears churned painfully as they attempted to put the sliding door back on its tracks. Finally, the door crawled open.
Curls, not wasting a moment, crawled through the door as soon as it opened wide enough for her to fit through, the others following at least marginally more calmly until Mr. Rolf and I ended the group, resetting the door in its locked position.
We ended up having to do a whole running-dive manoeuvre to avoid the gunfire of the intruders taking the two side doors; they must have given up on the one we had used, unfamiliar with the system. Luckily I had dived behind a half wall right next to Hill, who spared me a silent glance before firing her sidearm at another intruder.
"They're not getting through here," Fury called quietly to our left, "so what the hell are they-"
An explosion sent a couple of agents flying over a railing; a similar explosion on the other side caused even more injuries. For a moment I swore I saw a third projectile, but no explosion occurred; until I spotted the arrow jutting out of a power socket, electricity crackling up and down the work stations until every screen went black.
I followed the arrows trajectory back. Standing inside a small window, staring down at me with cold, blue, lifeless eyes, was Barton. Fury took a few shots at him, but he was already gone.
'Don't get yourself killed, Clint.'
"It's Barton, he took out our systems, he's headed for the detention level." Fury was trying to contact any agents he could find over the intercom, but Hill was already stomping over to me.
She had a really gross head injury. It somehow made her a lot more human knowing she could bleed, though.
"Someone'll stop Barton. You need to check on Loki." Instantly she was off in another direction, hand on her ear, shouting instructions left and right. I rolled my eyes, clenched my muscles, focused on the room I had been in only minutes before and—
- Promptly face planted into a broken rail.
"Fuck!" I grabbed at the side of my face, covering my numb cheek and my stinging eye and I jumped to my feet. Expecting a fight, I was surprised to find the cage Loki had been in missing; though I had no way of knowing whether Loki had been inside when it was apparently dropped. A large whole had been blown into the wall behind me – the cause of that damn broken rail – and in front of me—
"Phil!" I leapt forward, kneeling at his side, pulling the large gun-thing-whatever-it-was out of his lap. He looked up at me without moving his head, mouth somehow curled into the tiniest grin despite the blood creeping out the corner. I placed one hand over his wound, applying pressure, while the other rested over his heart. As it was, his heartbeat was weak, but stable. Hopefully it would stay that way until help arrived. "What happened?" His suit had a long rip in it; he had been stabbed, not shot.
"Everything's going to be okay, Phil," I hushed. Footsteps sounded behind me ('Finally.') as Fury entered my line of vision, kneeling on Phil's other side and trying to keep his gaze.
"Sorry boss," Phil breathed, "the guy rabbited."
"Just stay awake," Fury claimed, "Eyes on me."
"No, I'm clocking out here.
"Not an option."
"It's okay boss," if I wasn't so close, I wouldn't have known Phil was practically chuckling these words. "This was never gonna work... if they had something to-to-"
And he was gone.
"No!" I screamed, pressing harder against his chest. AN EMT tried to move me but I shrugged him off, giving fury a pleading look.
A beat of silence passed between us. "Take him."
And I did.
"Yeah, the bed she was on is still closed," the patient claimed, raising his arm so the nurse could replace his IV drip. The young nurse rolled her eyes, inserting the drip and hanging the IV.
"You sure it wasn't all in your head, Jose? You were pretty drugged up, mate." She claimed. Jose, gripping his sheets tightly, shook his head.
"No way, Kate, I know what I saw. She was missing a finger, and the nurse came over to stitch it up, and the lady had wrapped it in a pillowcase." Raising a brow, Kate walked about the bed, approaching the curtained off area the Hispanic patient claimed held a teleporting woman. Making her decision she pulled the curtain away, observing the empty bed behind it. Only slightly crinkled, the sheets were practically untouched—
Though the pillowcase had been taken off the pillow and spotted with blood.
Shocked, the nurse tugged the curtain half shut and stepped away. "That doesn't mean she teleported in, mate." She shook her head and reached for the chart clipped to the end of his bed. "I don't know what kind of drugs they were giving you in that American hospital, but we'll fix you up right here, mate. No more hallucinations." Her strong Australian accent added to her apparent nationalism, sending the Hispanic man a wry look before writing a note on the chart and clipping it again.
"Don't worry about it too much, Jose. People don't just appear out of thin air-"
A deafening pull of sound surrounded them, a fwooshp that silenced everything around it, ruffling hair and pulling the curtain the nurse had barely closed inwards.
On top of the curtained off bed sat a ruffled, bleeding, almost dead man in a suit, while beside the bed clung a young woman covered in blood, gasping for breath and clutching the bed's railing with a white knuckled grip.
"It's her," Jose cried, pumping his fist into the air in victory.
"I need two things," the woman gasped, "this man in a stable, living condition, and a mpa of the best hospital in Manhattan."
Kate reached beneath the bed and hit the emergency call button.
A/N: Ugh, by the end of this I was so dizzy I was practically falling out of my chair (that's anaemia for you!) so I totally gave up on looking it over again, so watch out for mistakes. I hope you enjoyed it and would love to hear what you thought!