A Different Time

Olivia sat on the bench of the quinjet, almost in the same spot she had before Thor, as he'd introduced himself, had stolen Loki. She had her medic bag sitting beside her, having been working on dressing her wound. It truly hadn't been as bad as it had looked, it just bled quite profusely at first. She wasn't sure if it was something to do with Dr. Erskine's experiment, whether the wound had started to heal faster than she anticipated, which made it look better than it had been. She hadn't exactly been injured in the field of battle, so she didn't quite know what her rate of healing was beyond some small experiments done after her procedure. Whatever it was, though, she was grateful, had the wound looked as bad as it appeared to her when she first assessed it, she was sure that Steve would have been beating himself up about it. Not that he wasn't already, but it would have been much worse.

It hadn't taken much of her supplies to treat it, it almost appeared to be something of a deep scratch as opposed to a gaping wound. She had cleaned it, she had covered it with an antibacterial salve, and dressed it with bandages. When she had first seen the wound, she had thought she would need Steve's help to bind it, to wrap a bandage around her middle to hold others in place. But it wasn't as bad as it first appeared and she was able to get by with a patch over her side held there with some quite sturdy medical tape.

She set the supplies back into her bag and looked up to smile at Steve, "See, nothing I can't handle."

The man was standing across from her, watching her so intently she could feel his gaze on her throughout the entire process. He had set himself up there as though a sentinel, tense and alert, ready to lunge forward if the jet moved more than she was anticipating. It was honestly quite sweet.

When they first got onto the jet and she began to try and tend to herself, Steve tried to help her. It was difficult to work on herself with just one hand digging through her pack while holding her side with her other hand. But she kept insisting that she was fine. Given the way the three men had reacted when she had first been wounded, she was more than a little concerned that they might start squabbling among themselves if she gave the impression that the wound was worse than it appeared. It really wasn't that bad, she really could do it herself, she just needed a bit of careful thought on how to proceed.

By tending her wound on her own, she felt it would help the men see that it wasn't a serious injury, it wasn't severe, it didn't warrant their concern to the extent they had displayed. It was just taking more doing than she anticipated. Steve had instantly moved to help her, but he fumbled just a little bit, not quite used to how she had set up her bag. During the war they had both settled into their individual roles quite well, she handled the wounded and he handled the battle. She knew that Steve had some experience with treating smaller wounds, bruises, cuts, since, from what he had told her of his life, he had gotten bullied quite bad and needed to know how to treat himself.

But it was almost as though, over that year, Steve had gotten used to her treating wounds and was a bit rusty after 70 years. That, and she could tell he was quite nervous to have to tend to her. She was important to him, she was someone he never wanted to see hurt in the first place, and having to treat the wound of someone you loved could be a daunting task. She had gotten used to it during the war, she tried to look at it more as seeing the wound and not the person until everything was settled. Steve's hands has been shaking and he seemed so hesitant to press any sort of cleaning solution that could sting to it, so she had reached out and stilled him, taking the few supplies he had gotten from the bag and reassuring him she could handle it just fine.

Of course Steve wouldn't go far, standing there and keeping watch as the whole time to keep any more harm from coming to her.

He gave her a smile in return for her words, but didn't appear able to say anything, so she reached out to take his hand, squeezing it in a reassurance that, despite Tony's words, this was not his fault. She honestly didn't know why Tony had said such a thing.

She glanced up, knowing that Tony was flying in his Iron Man suit along the plane, intending to keep guard should any other Asgardian want to seize Loki. It was likely a good thing, she was getting the idea that keeping Tony and Steve in a small confined space was not going to do anyone much good until they'd cooled off.

She might have said the same thing about having two Asgardians in the same place, but Thor seemed to be keeping true to his word and was keeping a close eye on Loki.

She looked over when Natasha plopped down on the bench beside her, looking up at Steve, "Fury wants a word," she told him, nodding her head towards the front of the jet.

Steve let out a quiet, reluctant noise, not wanting to step away from Olivia, but she squeezed his hand once more and let go, nodding her own head towards the front in a sign that it was fine. He gave her a small smile, leaning forward to drop a kiss on the top of her head before he made his way to the front, sitting down in the pilot's seat Natasha had vacated to speak to Fury.

"You doing alright?" Natasha asked, glancing at Olivia.

Olivia rolled her eyes, having been asked that question too many times already, "I'm fine," she insisted, "Better than I was and healing fast."

Natasha nodded, "Gotta say though, it was surprising, seeing you injured."

"I'm sure it was for Steve too," Olivia offered, "I wasn't injured much during the war."

"Because of a serum."

Olivia gave her an odd look, "Because I was a medic and, more than that, I'm a woman," Natasha looked a little confused, "Women were kept from the front lines during the war, I was only allowed onto the field as a medic if I remained behind the lines."

And it was true, that was the only reason her country had even allowed her onto the battlefield at all was if she kept away from the front lines. The women, while helping with the war effort, were not allowed on the field of battle in the same sense as a soldier was. It had been a very big to-do for her to even step onto the battlefield while the battle was taking place.

Natasha just stared at her.

Olivia shifted slightly under the scrutiny, "Have I said something wrong?"

Natasha opened her mouth one or two times, as though trying to find the words to say what she was thinking, taking a moment longer before she had her thoughts focused, "You never actually fought in the War."

"No," Olivia stated, giving Natasha an odd look and wondering why she didn't seem to know that, "Medics were not meant to engage with the enemy, we got the wounded off the field of battle, we treated them as best we could to stabilize them on the field. We were designated non-combatants."

"Non-combatants" she repeated, "No combat, no fighting, no weapon..."

"Medics were expected to carry weapons," Olivia reassured her, hearing that the woman seemed to be getting a little outraged for some reason, "In case the enemy did try to attack for some reason. Medics were only to use their weapon in defense of the wounded. But it was up to the medic in question whether or not they did carry the weapon or even use it."

"I'm going to take a wild guess and say you never had a weapon," Natasha stated dryly.

"If I was kept from the front lines and far away from the enemy, why would I need a weapon," Olivia stated, what should have been a question was more of a logical explanation.

"Do you even know how to fight?" Natasha asked, shaking her head as she observed Olivia.

It was starting to make sense to her now, the way Olivia seemed to operate around the others. She had been watching closely from the moment Captain America jumped out of the jet in Germany. Steve jumped out first, initiated the attack against the enemy, Olivia followed, staying behind and tending to the people. Loki attacked Steve and, instead of engaging the enemy with him, Olivia focused on getting the civilians away. She could understand that, the more civilians there were the more they could be used as leverage. She hadn't thought much of it at the time. But then came the attack from Thor. Steve immediately jumped out of the plane, with Olivia yes, but from what she knew of how the battle had gone, Olivia had stayed behind to secure Loki while Steve went to confront Thor. Steve engaged in the battle, and Olivia had been going to check on Tony where he had fallen.

It was making so much sense now.

Olivia wasn't the one engaging with the enemy because she didn't know how to fight the enemy in the first place.

"I know the basics," Olivia offered hesitantly, seeming to sense that Natasha was displeased with something she had heard, "When I stayed with the Commandos, they showed me some basic moves."

"Some basic moves," Natasha repeated before falling silent and thoughtful.

Olivia wasn't quite sure what she had said that had led to this, she had just been honest, but Natasha did not appear happy with what she had heard. A few minutes of the silence went by before Olivia tried to ask Natasha what was wrong with what she said, but Steve was already coming back, and Natasha seemed to take it as her cue to return to the pilot's seat.

Steve sat beside her, taking Natasha spot, "We should be there any minute now," he told her.

Olivia nodded and turned to look at him, "Thank you."

Steve gave her an odd look, "For what?"

She could hear it in his voice, that he felt like she should be blaming him for the wound in her side. But she shook her head, giving him a smile, "For this," she reached up with her right hand to tap her chest, where he could see thin chain of the necklace he had given her disappearing beneath her shirt line, and knew she was tapping the objects on the end of it, "I could have been hurt far worse had it not been for these."

He felt himself smiling, despite the fact that he still blamed himself for her getting hurt at all. If he had just been more aware of the situation, if he had just noticed her drop down behind him, he could have maneuvered himself differently so she wouldn't have been hurt. But it meant the world to him to know that she felt like he had done something to keep her safe, even if it was in the form of something that they both joked were good luck charms to each other. She was trying to tell him that she thought the gift he had given her had been enough to keep her from being harmed worse.

Olivia smiled a little more when she saw him starting to grin, and leaned in to kiss his cheek, before resting her head on his shoulder, resting the last few minutes of the flight.

~8~

It was quite the procession, bringing Loki into the SHIELD air base. All those who had taken him in, could not help the feeling of unease that came with it. Even while Loki was in handcuffs and chained on his march through the halls, he was smiling. He looked as though he were inordinately pleased with the situation, not an emotion that they would expect from a prisoner. They were all gathered now in the command center of the ship, close to the Bridge, waiting for Fury to join them. The scepter Loki had been using delivered to the lab, Bruce managing to start running preliminary scans on it before he joined them as well. They were watching on the monitors as Loki was escorted into a holding cell, what look like a cylinder made of glass in the middle of a circular room. A single control panel was set up before it with Fury standing beside it.

They could hear and see everything that was going on in the room, clearly something intentional that Fury had orchestrated.

"In case it's unclear," Fury began to speak to Loki, the Asgardian barely turning in the glass container to face him, not seeming on edge or perturbed with the situation, "You try to escape. You so much as scratch that glass..." Fury pressed a button on the control panel beside him, causing the bottom of the floor, just under the cell, to open up so that the only way to reach it with the pathway from the control panel to the doors of the cell.

They watched as Loki merely meandered his way to the edge of the cell and leaned over as much as he could to look down. From their vantage point they could see it was quite a fall, the base was very high up.

But Loki didn't appear concerned at all.

"Thirty thousand feet, straight down in a steel trap," Fury confirmed, "You get how that works?!" with another push of a button the hatch beneath the cell closed and Fury pointed at Loki, "Ant," and then to the button that would drop the cell through the floor, "Boot."

Loki seemed to be enjoying the threat in Fury's voice, the man merely smirking, "It's an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me."

"Built for something a lot stronger than you."

"Oh, I've heard," Loki looked directly at the camera, speaking as though specifically to them, "The mindless beast makes play he's still a man."

Olivia looked over at Bruce when the man flinched at what Loki said. But that was something she still couldn't understand. Why was he beginning to speak now? He had been in a small confined space with two people who clearly were at odds with each other, and yet he had said nothing to try and turn them against each other. He could have done something while he was in their possession on the way over to free himself, but he hadn't. It was feeling more and more like he'd let himself be captured. And if he had done that then it could only mean he wanted to be here. She didn't know if his plan was to get to Bruce, to upset him, to do exactly as she feared he would do on the jet on a much larger base...or if there was something else here that he wanted for his plans.

"How desperate are you," Loki continued, though his attention drifted back to Fury, "That you call upon such lost creatures to defend you?"

"How desperate am I?" Fury scoffed, "You threaten my world with war. You steal a force you can't hope to control. You talk about peace and you kill`cause it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."

"Ooh..." Loki mocked, "It burns you to come so close. To have the Tesseract, to have power, unlimited power. And for what? A warm light for all mankind to share, and then to be reminded what real power is."

Despite the fact that Loki was clearly trying to rile and taunt him, Fury, to his credit, didn't rise to the bait, but merely smiled at Loki, "Well, you let me know if Real Power wants a magazine or something."

Olivia shifted uncomfortably when they watched the footage of Fury leaving Loki locked in the cage, the Asgardian merely returned his attention back to the camera, smiling as though he knew they were there, watching him. The monitors only remained on for a moment longer before the footage cut off completely.

She looked around the room to see everyone else's reaction. Steve didn't appear much affected by what Loki had said, he was silent though appeared quite serious. Natasha was standing over by Maria Hill, speaking quietly with the woman who kept glancing over at her. Bruce was sitting there, fidgeting slightly, trying to smile, clearly trying to play off just how affected he was. Thor hadn't even bothered watching the footage, merely listening to what was being said and, while she couldn't see his face from that angle, she could tell from his body language that he was tense. He would know better than any of them what Loki was capable of and he was clearly worried about what the man's plans might be.

"He really grows on you, doesn't he?" Bruce asked after a moment, sounding more as though he was just trying to break the obvious tension and seriousness that had descended on them.

"Not quite," Olivia offered in return, giving the man of small smile for his efforts. She looked over at Steve who appeared lost in thought, and nudged him slightly, "He reminds me of Hodge if he actually bothered to use his brain."

Steve snorted at that, jarred out of his serious thoughts. There was something else Loki had in common with Hodge, a man who had been Colonel Phillips choice for Dr. Erskine's experiment, "He's gonna drag this out," he remarked, thinking about how Hodge had not let it go when they had been in basic training, always picking on him, never letting him catch a break. He glanced over at Thor, the man seeming equally as thoughtful, "So, Thor, what's his play?"

Thor shook himself and looked over at the group as they sat around the table, all turning their attention to him, "He has an army called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard or any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."

Olivia blinked at that, "An army...from outer space?"

Steve leaned over, whispering to her, "Surprised yet?"

She leaned back in her chair, turning to face him to reply, "Not very. Michael took Peggy and I to see the Flash Gordon movie once."

Steve chuckled at that, recalling that movie, he and Bucky had seen it too. Space adventures, other planets, aliens, taking that into account aliens attacking Earth wasn't actually all that surprising. He leaned back in his chair again, though reached out to take Olivia's hand in his.

"So he's building another portal," Bruce called out, "That's what he needs Erik Selvig for."

"Selvig?" Thor look up at that, clearly recognizing the name.

"He's an astrophysicist."

"He's a friend."

"Loki has him under some kind of spell," Natasha told him, moving to join them back at the round table they sat at, apparently done speaking to Maria, "Along with one of ours."

"Loki also has knowledge of SHIELD bases, weapons, plans," Olivia warned them all, "He knew about Steve and I and he's not been on Earth long enough to know of us unless someone from SHIELD, one of the compromised agents, told him. And if they could tell Loki about us, there's far more dangerous information they could share."

Natasha looked as though she wanted to argue, wanted to say that Barton would never disclose such confidential information, but held her tongue, because, while he wouldn't under normal circumstances, as a brainwashed soldier there might be not be anything he wouldn't disclose.

"I wanna know why Loki let us take him," Steve offered, "He's not leading an army from here."

"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki," Bruce shrugged, "That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell crazy on him."

"Have care how you speak," Thor warned the man, "Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he's my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days," Natasha informed him.

"...he's adopted?"

"Iridium," Bruce spoke out, seeming to just be voicing his thoughts, "What did they need the Iridium for?"

Before anyone else could answer, a voice spoke from one of the hallways, Tony entering room, "It's a stabilizing agent," he called over to them, before finishing his conversation with Phil as the man entered with him, "I'll fly you there. Keep the love alive," and then turned his attention back to them, "Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at SHIELD," he eyed Thor, "No hard feelings, Point Break. You've got a mean swing," and then turned to Bruce, "Also, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long as Loki wants," he spun around, standing before the main control panel to address the rest of the SHIELD agents, "Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the top sails. That man is playing Galaga!" he spun around, pointing at a man off to the side, "Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did," and then, just as suddenly, covered one of his eyes and tried to look at the machinery and monitors around him, "How does Fury do this?"

Olivia shook her head as she tried to keep up with what Tony was saying. He was changing the person he talked to and the subject he was talking about so often and so quickly she honestly wasn't sure what was going on right now. And she had seen Peggy when she got flustered. It didn't happen often, Peggy was so very composed most of the time, but when she was truly flustered and stressed she could talk a mile a minute with so many conflicting thoughts and too many different topics that she could only just barely keep up. Tony was certainly giving Peggy a run for her money.

"He turns," Maria spoke.

Tony fiddled with the monitors for a moment, looking around at them, even leaning down to examine the wires under the desk portion of it, before standing and sighing, "Well, that sounds exhausting," so he seemed to finally come back around to the iridium, "The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube."

Maria gave Tony the same look as everyone else, "When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?"

Tony shrugged, unperturbed by her skepticism, "Last night," he said simply, looking around at the others, half teasing them, "The packet? Selvig's notes? The Extraction Theory papers? Am I the only one who did the reading?"

"...if you have the packet, how could we do the reading?" Olivia countered.

Tony pointed at her as though she made a very good point.

Steve shook his head, trying to focus on the situation at hand, "Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?"

"He's got to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier," Bruce told them.

But Tony shook his head, "Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect."

"Well, if he could do that he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet."

"Finally, someone who speaks English!"

Steve looked between them, completely confused, before turning to Olivia, "Is that what just happened?"

"Whatever that was, it certainly wasn't the Queen's English," Olivia murmured in response, blinking her eyes rapidly, honestly not following a word that the two men had just said.

Tony just approached Bruce, reaching out to shake his hand, "It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. You're work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

Bruce actually seemed amused by Tony's last remark, looking down as though trying to hide a chuckle, "Thanks."

"Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube," Director Fury called out as he strode into the room and over to Maria's side, standing before the main controls, "I was hoping you might join him," he added to Tony, who nodded.

"Could the scepter help?" Olivia wondered, looking over to the two men, "It works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon, and they were all powered by the Tesseract. Would you be able to use the energy signal from that to find the Tesseract?"

"It might be possible," Bruce began.

Tony let out a hissing noise though, "It's a small enough weapon that it may not have the range to connect to the main Tesseract."

"You two get on examining that scepter," Fury told them, "I want to know how it works, every trick it can do, and how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

"Monkeys?" Thor shook his head, completely confused, "I do not understand."

"I do!" Steve called out, "I understood that reference."

Tony rolled his eyes at the man's outburst, but Steve just looked quite pleased that he finally understood something that was being said about all this.

"I'm not sure I do," Olivia looked around the room, completely lost.

Steve seemed surprised by her remark, "You've never seen 'The Wizard of Oz?'"

"I was supposed to...things just got in the way," Olivia offered, and Steve squeezed her hand harder, knowing what her version of 'things getting in the way' was. Some sort of illness that came up that prevented her from being able to go out and see the movie. If she didn't understand the reference even from the movie, there was also a chance she hadn't read it in the books the movie was based on either.

"They were the puppets, the henchmen, of the villain," Steve explained simply and Olivia nodded.

"Speaking of children's entertainment," Tony cut in, turning to Bruce, "Shall we play, doctor?"

Bruce nodded, "Let's play some," he agreed, turning to walk out of the room with Tony.

"And, speaking of playing," Natasha clasped her hands on the edges of her chair to push herself up, a sly smile on her face as she moved around the table, "Come on Dorothy," she patted Olivia on the shoulder, signaling for her to get up, "You, me, and Hill are taking a little trip to Kansas."

Olivia looked steadily more confused even as she slowly stood up, Steve quickly moving to follow.

"What's the situation in Kansas?" Steve asked, suddenly serious, even though he understood the reference, Natasha clearly knew Olivia didn't so it didn't make sense to him for them to bring up Kansas unless there was some sort of mission involving it, "Has there been some sort of attack, a SHIELD base in jeopardy?"

"Oh no," Natasha shook her head, patting Steve on the chest twice to signal him to stay there, "Girls only."

"If you're taking my partner on a mission..." Steve began, a threat steadily growing in his tone.

He didn't like it when he and Olivia were separated, even less when it was them being on separate missions. He'd had enough of her being pulled away from him during the war, the constant worrying and fear for her while she wasn't with him. And he knew she felt the same way, worrying about him and the Commandos. It was even worse now, they just didn't like being separated and he could already feel a pressure building in his chest at the thought of her not being beside him while they waited on Loki to talk or Bruce and Tony to get more data on the scepter.

"No mission," Maria reassured him, "We are just..."

"Kidnapping her for an hour or two," Natasha answered, "Like I said, girls only."

And, with that, Natasha reached out to gently grab Olivia by the arm, tugging her away from Steve and towards the door. Maria gave Steve a small salute before she followed the woman out, a small smirk on her face.

Steve could only watch them go with a clenched jaw and a hand squeezing his heart when he lost sight of her around a corner. He swallowed hard and shook his head, trying to remind himself that Maria Hill was Fury's right hand woman and Olivia would be in no danger with her around, that Natasha worked for SHIELD and wouldn't hurt her either. He took a deep breath and forced himself to leave the room, he needed to see if there was a training room or a punching bag or something around to distract him till Olivia was back.

A/N: Hmmm…Natasha did not seem pleased with learning more about Olivia's role in the war, and now she AND Hill have 'kidnapped' her? I wonder what for… }:)

But poor Steve, he misses her already :)

Not much Tony-Olivia interaction here, but she's also being whisked away by the women and no boys allowed, even Tony ;)

Some notes on the reviews...

Lol, it did sound a bit old-fashioned near the end :) I take it as Steve and Thor would be old-fashioned just naturally, and Tony sort of wants to irritate Steve so he joins in with the old-fashioned competition going on lol :)

Olivia will have a few lines here and there, she's really going to be talking more as the series goes. I feel like a part of her being quiet recently is that she doesn't really know her role or part to play. Steve is a soldier, he can fight, he'll always be relevant. But she's the medic, there's no war, nor would SHIELD let her go to war, she's not sure what her purpose is anymore. So as she tries to work out where she fits, she sort of falls a bit quiet because she doesn't know whats ok for this era. But it appears Natasha and Maria are about to give her a crash course ;) As for the iced tea, yup! She's sort of like 'any world where people are mad enough to put ice in TEA will make anything possible' :)

Lol, those do sound like very amusing scenes ;)

It's understandable :) I think that's where an interesting contrast between Tony and Steve comes in. Tony makes mistakes and acts before thinking, which creates a lot of his mistakes, he's a bit arrogant at times. I feel like Tony has only recently begun to understand what responsibility is, and it's something Steve, especially living during the war, has always known and grown up with. Steve has to stop and think, because he knows how to act as part of a team and how dangerous rushing in with no plan can be for the other teammates, but Tony has often been a solo act. I also feel like Tony sometimes knows how his actions will affect others, and has affected others, but if he focuses on that, admits to it, lets it affect him, he won't be able to make the choices and decisions he needs to make as Iron Man. He's certainly complicated :/ It's something Olivia is going to note and speak about before this story is over ;)

Olivia does prefer this uniform more than her old one, far more practical :) Olivia, in a modern sense, does make women appear one way, but she's also from the 1940s and she's still trying to find her place in all this and in a new world where women are allowed to do so much more than they were :) As she learns more about our era, she'll certainly grow stronger and more secure :)