Vanessa had shawarma once before, and she'd liked it. It tasted even better this time, after the long struggle ー almost as good as victory itself.

What I wouldn't give to add a coconut milk tea, she thought wistfully. Oh, or coffee. Please, coffee.

She had her share of caffeine on the Helicarrier, but considering she'd been running on only adrenaline and who-knows-what-else for the past 24 hours, she would have really appreciated some more.

The famished Avengers sat quietly around a table, fixated on their food. The sound of the Shawarma Palace owner sweeping up broken glass seemed almost deafening in the silence.

Vanessa took a sip from her drink, feeling a strong signature make its way onto her radar. It was evocative of Stark's Iron Man suit, humming with steely energy. Stark had mentioned earlier that he had a friend on their way, so perhaps this was him.

After waiting for about thirty seconds with lapsed actions, Vanessa turned her head to see a dark gray suit of armour clank into the restaurant. The owner glanced up briefly from his sweeping, unfazed by the rattling metal suit.

"Rhodes!" Stark greeted happily, waving a hand at the new arrival. "Pull up a chair!"

Vanessa and the rest of the team watched as the newcomer removed his helmet and stepped out of his amour, revealing a smiling, dark-skinned man. "My name is James Rhodes. It's an honour to meet you all, heroes of New York."

"That what they call us now?" asked Romanoff, quirking an eyebrow. "'Heroes of New York?'"

"Yeah, well, we're actually called the Avengers," quipped Stark, rolling his eyes. "The media always gets things wrong."

Steve cracked a smile. "They do, don't they? Let's introduce ourselves to this gentleman."

Barton started, since he was the closest to the man. "Clint Barton," he said briskly. "SHIELD Operative."

The circle decided to turn clockwise, moving onto Romanoff. "Natasha Romanoff, SHIELD Operative."

"Vanessa Liang, SHIELD Operative," she said on her turn, feeling almost like she was being uncreative, so she added, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rhodes."

Rhodes gave her a nod. "You as well."

"Steve Rogers," said Steve. Then, an embarrassed expression came onto his face. "What's my occupation supposed to be? Captain America?"

Stark immediately burst into peals of laughter and was soon joined in by the rest of the table. The levity of the scene, following such an event, almost made Vanessa cry as she tried to pretend that they were only tears of laughter.

"You could have gone for 'soldier,'" she muttered to him, under the din.

He only gave an exaggerated sigh in return.

"I am Thor, god of thunder," said the Asgardian, after the last of the giggles had died down. "It is an honour, James Rhodes. What do you call yourself? 'Steel Man'?"

He seemed to swallow a snort of laughter with difficulty. "It's 'War Machine,' actually."

Thor nodded approvingly. "A fearsome name. Superior to 'Iron Man.'"

"And I'm Bruce Banner," finished the doctor, before Stark could begin his witty retort. He extended a hand that Rhodes shook.

Vanessa felt a vibration in her jacket pocket.

"I'm just going to take a call," she told the rest of the team, and made her way outside before swiping right on the screen.

"You liar," were the first words she heard when she picked up the phone. "You were on Manhattan. I saw the footage! The whole world saw the footage!"

"What footage?" she asked, feigning innocence. Of course there was footage already. Darn the media. "The situation only just cleared up."

"Turn on a TV and that's all you'll see," William snapped, still sounding irritated. "Were you wearing silver contacts or something?"

Vanessa swallowed. "About that. Just don't tell anyone that's me."

The frown he likely wore seemed almost audible. "Why not? Everyone who knows you, well, knows it's you."

"I'd rather not have my name released to the public yet," she explained. "They're trying to figure out who I am, right?"

"Well, duh." Suddenly, it was Cordelia on the phone instead, evident in her chirpy tone. "You're even more of a badass than I thought you were."

"Why, thank you." Vanessa took the compliment with a grin. "But trust me, everyone else is stealing the spotlight."

"That's true." Her friends seemed to be passing the device around, because this time, it was Ryan's level voice. "There were only a few shots of you. The coverage was mostly Iron Man and Captain America."

"I prefer it that way," she said with a shrug, despite the fact that the other party couldn't see her. "Anyway, just don't tell anyone that's me. SHIELD is going to release our codenames instead."

"You have a codename?"

"Not yet. I'll have to discuss that with my superiors. I'll talk to you guys later, okay? I need to finish my shawarma."

Vanessa felt weird walking through the ruined streets carrying Loki's scepter. Thankfully, the area was still marked off-limits and was free of reporters and cameras (for now), as far as she could tell.

"So that's where it was!" Agent Coulson's exasperated voice greeted her as she arrived at the foot of the ruined Stark Tower, where a number of SHIELD agents were milling around and picking through rubble. "We've been looking for that thing for an hour."

"Sorry, the only place we could trust was with us," she apologized, handing him the weapon. It hummed slightly as it left her grasp, as if reluctant to be handed off. "Where's the prisoner?"

"We locked him in the basement." Coulson tilted his head towards the tower. "He didn't seem keen on coming with us, and I highly doubt his brother would appreciate it if we made off with him to HQ."

"Thor would not," she agreed. "What sort of precautions have been taken?"

At this, the older agent pursed his lips. "Just cuffs, for now. It doesn't look like he plans on escaping, and Stark's tower has some pretty good security."

"Has he said anything?" Vanessa asked.

"Of course not," said Coulson. "We've done a little interrogation, and I have to say, he's stubborn."

Vanessa took in the statement and surveyed the scene, all of it caused by the vengeful god. Several SHIELD agents and Damage Control workers were hauling away Chitauri carcasses in carts, and she couldn't even begin to imagine how they were going to clean up the Leviathans.

A question then occurred to her. The Chitauri didn't appear particularly intelligent during their fight. In fact, they seemed to be a hive mind, evident when all of the remaining aliens lost their heads when the portal closed off their connection to what was likely their command centre. Thor had speculated that Loki had made a bargain with the Chitauri, but unless they had some sort of superior overlord or commander of sort, there was no way those things could have come up with the idea on their own.

And since that supreme Chitauri ruler was still out there somewhere, the threat wasn't over.

Looks like I'll have to pay Loki another visit.

"Can I talk to him?" she asked Coulson, who turned to face her with a strange expression.

"Are you sure you still wanna go near that guy?" he asked skeptically.

"No," she admitted, nudging aside a piece of destroyed road – proof of what Loki was capable of – with her toe. "But there are still things we don't know.

"Like?"

"His motivations, the Chitauri's motivations… heck, all we really know for sure is that this whole thing happened."

Reluctantly, Coulson nodded. "Fine. I'll let you in."

She followed him into the lobby of Stark Tower, which was remarkably clean for having been the centre of the battle. But then again, most of the fighting took place near the top of the tower.

"You've been codenamed 'Sterling,' by the way," he informed her as they headed down the concrete stairwell that lead to the basement of the building. "That should be okay, right?"

"'Sterling,'" she rolled the word over on her tongue as if judging it. "Doesn't sound quite as intimidating as 'Black Widow' or 'Hawkeye.'"

Coulson snorted. "That's because you aren't as intimidating as Black Widow or Hawkeye."

At the bottom of the staircase, there was a scanning device in front of which Coulson flashed his card. With a beep, a heavy iron door slid open. "Be careful in there," he warned her. "I'll watch, just in case. Even in cuffs, that guy's dangerous."

"I will," she assured him, setting a tentative foot into the cold room. It was cold, she realized, not only because it was a basement but also because Loki's chilly presence filled the place, emanating from a figure huddled against the wall.

He glanced up wordlessly as she approached, Hulk-induced wounds decorating his angular face. Even in defeat, his eyes were still as sharp and alert as ever.

With a jolt, Vanessa registered that they were green, not blue.

And not the type of green that was easily confused with blue, but a startling emerald.

But that wasn't right ー she saw with her own silver eyes that they were blue, like the sky. The image was perfectly ingrained into her memory; she could not possibly be wrong if she saw them through her ability.

"To what do I owe this visit?" he inquired loftily, shaking her from her shock. He managed to sound proud and regal, despite being shackled and stripped of his armour and helmet. His gaze flitted to her face briefly, locking on dark irises in perplexity and then realization. "Don't you despise me?"

The question was easy to answer, so she decided to tackle it before going back to doubting her eyesight's reliability.

"Of course I despise you," she said, her voice echoing in the empty basement, making it sound even more hollow than it already was. "But for the sake of accomplishing something, I'll reserve judgement for after I've heard your side of the story."

She had no shortage of insults for him, the one who ravaged her home, killed and injured hundreds, and made her a murderer.

But she knew better than anyone that the most important part of an interrogation was composure.

"Wouldn't it be easier to just hate me?" he taunted.

"Oh, I'd probably hate you regardless," Vanessa answered, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. It worked, much to her gratification. "It's how much I do that might change. But what I'm here for is about more than you and me. More than both our realms."

His eyes flashed in understanding. "You want to know more about the Chitauri."

"As quick on the uptake as ever," she quipped wryly, not feeling nearly as kind as she did during their first exchange. So much had changed since then, and she wasn't quite sure yet how it applied to her. "Why would they want the Tesseract?"

The Asgardian just laughed. "The cube can open rifts in the universe and render the concept of space meaningless. Why wouldn't they want the Tesseract?"

Vanessa recognized the omission and activated her ability, a wordless warning to him that he should refrain from lying further. As her vision sharpened, she noticed that his irises were still undeniably green.

Then why was she so sure that she had seen blue in the cell? And on the tower?

"You're a defeated prisoner," she said lowly, hoping that her voice betrayed none of her uneasiness and confusion. "Are you in any place to be withholding information from me?"

"And you're a mortal," Loki retorted, holding his chin up high. He was goading her, his frosty aura seeming to ensnare her, to tell her to strike. "Are you in any place to be questioning a god?"

"A god, long since fallen from grace," she ground out, his provoking energy pushing her into lashing out, although the remark probably would still have come easily without it. With a sort of fierce satisfaction that she never thought herself capable of, she saw the words clearly hit a nerve.

Loki glowered at her in irritation. However, his reaction only lasted a brief moment, before he burst into a laugh.

"So now you've given up all pretense of compassion, of sympathy, haven't you?" he jeered. "Finally dropped the act from the cell?"

"That wasn't an act," she said, before even realizing what had just rolled off her tongue in response to his inciting comment. The carelessness of her own words was shocking, but something about his accusation seemed to pull the disclosure from her.

The god of mischief stiffened against the concrete wall, tense in the knowledge that she was telling the truth.

"What?" he asked anyway.

"It… it wasn't an act," she repeated, now that it was too late to take back her words. The awkward silence left her fumbling for something else to say. "I was serious about giving you coffee if you had a cup."

At this, Loki snorted. "That, I can believe you were genuine about. It was just a moment of frivolity for you."

As if the first confession had opened up some sort of floodgate, the next words tumbled out like a stream of water, and about as coherently. "Everything I said on the Helicarrier was serious. I was serious about just wanting to talk. Sure, I got information from it, but that was just a byproduct."

"A byproduct of what, exactly?" The trickster's eyes were narrowed in incredulity, as if he couldn't possibly believe that someone was being genuine to him. The fact almost made her temporarily forget that she was face to face with a murderer.

"Of trying to understand," she said. "I never really did."

He scoffed, "You will never be able to."

"And if I told you I could, if you were more forthcoming about it?" she posed the same question she did on the Helicarrier.

"I still wouldn't tell you."

Frustration was rising inside her, and Vanessa noted with no small amount of internal panic how wildly out of control she was allowing her emotions to run. The first time talking to him, maintaining composure wasn't effortless, but it was doable. Confusion and sympathy, the leading feelings of their previous meeting, were more easily hidden than anger and hatred, their replacements. Now, the conflict between wanting to scream insults at him and needing to keep her situation a calm interrogation was grating at her insides.

"Why not?" she asked, settling for some sort of combination between the two ー a tad aggressive-sounding but still controlled and level. "What is there for you to gain by hiding the identity of whoever you bargained with?"

"See?" Loki rolled his eyes again, quite infuriatingly. "Your question proves that you do not understand."

"That's because you haven't told me anything, Loki." It was her first time saying his name aloud to him, and it felt weird ー she had only ever referred to him as 'you,' and on one occasion, 'sir'. From the brief look that crossed his face, he felt similarly about it.

Luckily for her, he didn't bring it up directly, but his voice was dripping with contempt when he flouted, "You're the one with the eyes, Midgardian. Why don't you tell me something?"

"Your mortal mind wouldn't be able to fathom it," he had lashed out. She didn't flinch, but she could not deny that the look in his eyes in that moment terrified her.

They were haunted.

She was going to tell him something, and she knew he would not like it.

"You're scared."

"Ridiculous," he growled, slowly getting to his feet but quick to contradict her. He towered over her easily, standing nearly a foot taller than the SHIELD agent. She stood her ground as his shackles clinked ominously, meeting his angered glare with her own.

"Liang, I think it's a good time to get out of there," Coulson's voice came over her radio. She ignored it.

"You're scared," Vanessa reiterated, taking a precautionary step back. "I see it. You're not the first. I've seen the same expression in other people before."

She had. The terrorists, spies, and arms dealers brought into the Triskelion for her to interrogate ー almost all of them wore the same expression Loki did now, albeit not as well concealed. An mask of composure and bravado to hide the fact that they were scared to be in the questioning room of the most influential intelligence agency in the world.

But she was certain that Loki was scared of something else entirely.

"And what do you know about me?" he asked dangerously. "I am no ordinary criminal in one of your interrogation rooms, girl."

"You aren't," she agreed, her heart rate rising rapidly with the tension. "But the fear is the same. Widened eyes, accelerated breathing ー you might be better at hiding it than the others were, but in front of me, that hardly matters."

"I am a god. What have I to fear?" The words still bristled with aggression, hissed through bared teeth. "You should cease your baseless claims, Midgardian. I may be chained but I believe this is still more than enough to silence you."

Loki's ambience, usually crisp and wintry, cooled into something frigid that seemed to almost sting Vanessa's bare skin. A little voice in her head, probably her rationality, was yelling at her to make a dash for the exit, but instinct or maybe intuition kept her planted to the floor.

"Stop lying," she said softly, as if trying soothe a frightened animal. It almost seemed to work ー his freezing power withdrew some of its spikes, still hovering threateningly in the air. "What do you get out of this?"

"Nothing," he responded briskly, still wearing a deep scowl. "But nothing is far better than something undesirable."

"Something undesirable?" she saw the opportunity and challenged it, taking care to make sure she didn't appear too prying or eager. "What would that be? Whatever they promised to do to you in the event that you fail to present them with the Tesseract?"

Loki's jaw tightened visibly before he let out a bitter laugh. "They? The Chitauri? You yourself must have worked this out by now ー they aren't particularly intelligent. What can they do to me?"

"Then whoever's in charge of them," Vanessa revised her statement. "You had to have struck a bargain with someone."

"What makes you think that I've struck a bargain?" he asked, looking more troubled than angered. "They were dumb enough just to follow me here."

It was a blatantly obvious lie that he made no move to salvage. Vanessa pushed on. "Then you should have nothing to fear in defeat," she pointed out. "What do I have to do to convince you to just tell me?"

At this, the Asgardian abruptly flashed her a wolfish smile that showed an unsettling amount of teeth. "Finally, you realize that information isn't free," he said lightly. "Why don't you make an offer?"

"There isn't much I can offer you," said Vanessa, glancing up to meet his scrutiny. She briefly contemplated telling him to name a price, but she had a sneaking suspicion that letting the god of mischief set the rules wasn't a great idea. She needed some time to think about it, so she instead opted to say, "Let me give you a raincheck for that."

He looked at her blankly. "A raincheck?"

She realized he wouldn't recognize the term and smiled briefly, mildly amused by the thought. "A raincheck is a Midgardian word that refers to an offer that can be postponed for later use."

"Oh, no, it's much more interesting if you bargain with something," he scoffed after her explanation. "Besides, it's highly improbable that I will ever have the chance."

Vanessa took in his casual statement, which barely concealed his acridity at the idea of facing whatever 'Asgardian justice' was going to be. She fished around in her jacket pocket to find a folded card and handed it to him. "Here," she said.

"What is this?" He frowned at the white slip of paper as if she was giving him a dirty tissue, but took it nonetheless, straightening it out.

"My business card," she replied. It bore the seal of SHIELD and Vanessa's name, role, and phone number in navy blue. "I'm not sure if you have telephones on Asgard, so you might not be able to call me. But if you ever get the chance to come back, you'll know how to find me."

His expression was unreadable, even with her eyesight, as he scrutinized the small card in his hand before smirking and tucking it away into the folds of his leather coat. "SHIELD Liaison," he said, sounding almost entertained. "What an understatement."

The corners of Vanessa's mouth couldn't help but twitch upwards slightly. "So what do you think? Do we have a deal?"

"For now," he said. "I never could resist an intellectual gamble."

The unexpected similarity to their first encounter brought another tentative grin to Vanessa's face, which she wiped away almost immediately. She had to stop forgetting that the man before her was a power-hungry, homicidal god. There was to be no room for that sort of mirth.

"May I start?" she asked.

He inclined his head in what she assumed to be a 'yes.'

"Thor said that you made a deal with the Chitauri," she began. "The Tesseract for the Earth. Is that true?"

"It is," he said, without hesitating. The sudden shift in his tone from closed off to forthcoming was suspicious, but she wasn't about to point that out yet.

"Why do they want the Tesseract?" she went on, before adding, "What do they seek to do using the cube?"

Loki dragged his tongue across his teeth, as if savouring his next words. "If I told you, you would wish that I hadn't."

"I'm no stranger to regret."

"Carnage," he said simply, as if the fact was self-evident. And to Vanessa, it almost was ー what could be worse than an alien race taking over the Earth? An alien race obliterating the Earth. "On a massive scale. They'll need more than just the cube to -" He paused, studying her closely. "You don't seem surprised."

"You aren't making it sound very surprising," she countered, trying to figure out how exactly she felt about the situation. She knew she should have been scared, but it was like her brain hadn't quite yet processed the gravity of the truth. "You know what? Finish your sentence."

He did as told. "They'll need more than just the cube to do so."

"Your scepter," she realized. "That has something to do with it, right?"

"Perhaps." He inclined his head. "But that isn't something that I want to divulge at present."

That brought yet another question to Vanessa's mind ー what exactly was he willing to tell her? He hadn't yet been promised any reward, so whatever he was telling her, it had to also benefit him in some way.

She could only hope that she wasn't losing anything in the meantime.

"Fine," she conceded. "And I don't suppose you'll be telling me who's out there, wanting to kill everyone."

"No, I won't be," he acquiesced, his tone declaring the conversation closed, much to Vanessa's disappointment. But she couldn't argue with it, not when he's already given her information for free. "Be grateful for what you get, mortal. This is your reward for your clarity of sight."

Something about that last sentence prompted her lips briefly twist into a smile. "Was that praise?"

"Of course not," Loki said dismissively, but he wore the ghost of an answering smirk. "Now, are you going to leave, or not? You have what you came for."

The SHIELD agent wasn't completely satisfied, but she was in no place to press for more ー not when she was the one who set the conditions of their deal. But there was one more thing she wanted to know, and perhaps he would be willing to discuss it. "I have another question. It's not related to the Tesseract or the Chitarui anymore."

"Go ahead. You may not get an answer, but I welcome you to try."

"Are your eyes supposed to be green or blue?"

He frowned; the subject clearly something unexpected. "Green, why?"

"I'm sure that they were blue… oh."

A faint memory of two combined ambiences. A sudden, unwelcome image of Loki's mind-controlled soldier. He had blue irises that glowed faintly like - "It was the scepter, wasn't it? It influenced you."

"What?" The trickster looked mystified. He was clearly unaware of the connection.

"I think you were under the influence of the scepter, because your eyes were blue the first time I saw you," Vanessa explained quickly, not knowing whether or not she needed to also expound her sensory abilities. "But they're green now."

Loki's mouth twitched as he took in that information. "Well, isn't that an interesting development," he said, sounding bored when he was clearly thinking hard about it. "It does not make me innocent."

"No, it doesn't," she assented. "But it changes things, if only a little."

"How so?"

"It makes me want to believe that something forced your hand. Or at least, influenced it." She admitted, "It's a foolish thought, I suppose."

"You're correct about it being foolish," he scoffed, but something about his voice seemed to almost soften. "It's useless sentiment. Why would you think that when it's so easy to just hate me?"

She thought about his question, which had actually been posed several times in this one conversation alone. Why did she think so, when she could easily despise him and act accordingly?

She remembered her first conversation with the god of mischief, which now seemed like nearly a lifetime ago.

It was difficult to hate someone so hurt.

"My job is in dealing with people," she said, feeling almost as cryptic as Fury often was. "So I try not to form any opinions about them at all. It interferes with this line of work."

Loki's eyes flickered to her in disbelief ー he knew that there was more, but Vanessa was grateful that he chose not to pursue it.

"If this confession is some ploy to get me to reveal more information, don't count on it," he broke the silence, surprising her with the levity behind the words. "The door is over there."

"Are you sure you have nothing more to tell me?" she tried one last time. He grinned sharply, and this time, his row of even, white teeth looked less threatening than simply amused.

"Quite positive," he assured her.

With a muted puff of exhalation from her nose, she turned away, accepting what information she had managed to extract.

And as Vanessa made for the door, she felt hope yet for the broken god who sent her off with a soft laugh.