Author's Note: so here's chapter 3, where things start to pick up a little. I'm not one-hundred percent sure when this fic ends (I know the plotline, but I'm not sure how many words it will take to believably get to the end) so grab the popcorn. =) Huggles!

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Chapter Three
The Sleeper

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It took Alex six days to translate the entirety of the words from the photographs of the Cube. More than a couple of those days ended with her falling asleep at her desk. Coulson or her dad always checked in on her before going to bed themselves, and every time she'd dropped off in front of the computer, she'd woken later already in bed.

The final night before she finished, jostling nudged her out of a heavy sleep. She would've let herself drop off again, but the lilting trill of her computer shutting down woke her more fully. Alex blinked up at the bleary figure of Nick Fury as he lifted her out of her chair and started to carry her.

"Daddy?" Alex mumbled. The fingers of her good hand curled in the thick material of Nick's black sweater. "Wha's goin' on?"

"Nothing, Rory," he murmured. Irritation was a swift needle-prick at the back of her neck. That wasn't her name anymore. But she was too tired to really protest."You fell asleep at your desk, that's all. Here, hang on to me for a second."

She obliged by wrapping her arms around her father's neck. He moved several picture books off her bed and drew back the blankets. Then he set her on the bed and covered her with the black knit blanket. He perched on the edge of the mattress, making it dip beneath his weight.

"Working hard on those Cube translations, huh?"

She curled up beneath the blanket. Her bad leg stuck out at a funny angle, but she was used to that by now. She tucked her stiff hand against her chest and closed her eyes.

"Somethin' to do," she slurred, tiredness already whispering to her. Beneath the sweetness of the lavendar fabric softener scenting her sheets, Alex could smell the familiar scents of her father's leather duster and his cologne. For just a second, she was three years old again, instead of twenty-three, and her father could keep her safe, and her parents were still married, and everything was still simple and easy and peaceful. "M'not bored."

"You wouldn't be bored if you went outside," Nick said softly.

Alex scrunched up under the covers and sighed quietly, pretending she was too sleepy to respond to Nick's not-so-subtle suggestion. The moment of being a little girl again was broken. She wasn't three-year-old Rory anymore. Now she was twenty-three-year-old Alex Fury, and she wasn't going outside. She had no reason to. There was nothing outside of S.H.I.E.L.D. Underground that she wanted, except for the stuff in her rooms on the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier.

Her father sighed. The mattress creaked as he got to his feet. His boots made muffled thumps against the ratty shag carpet of her room as he made his way to her bedroom door.

"Good night, Aurora," she heard Nick murmur. The door clicked shut.

After several moments of near-silence in the murky dimness of her room, that silence broken only by the hum of the generators powering S.H.I.E.L.D. Underground and the shadows lit only by the soft glow of a few night-lights, Alex whispered, "Good night, Daddy."

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Loki waited until the Midgardian warrior had left his daughter's room and the mortal girl was truly asleep before taking a seat at her desk and waking her computer. After nearly a month on Midgard, and after a week of watching the human girl use the machine, Loki knew enough about how it operated to use it effectively. To help ensure the girl didn't awaken, he unplugged her speakers. The quiet buzz of the computer coming to life mingled with the low humming of the machines that powered this underground fortress.

While the computer booted up, Loki turned his attention to the items on the girl's desk. He'd watched her off and on during her translation of the tesseract's strange and seemingly incomprehensible messages; when focusing on that task, it was like watching some dedicated scholar pursuing some philosophical theory or other. She'd been intensely focused on the task at hand, to the exclusion of nearly all else. Sometimes she'd even forgotten to eat.

The clutter scattered across her workspace was completely at odds with such dedication to her goal. Various commercial novels and illustrated storybooks clearly intended for Midgardian children; a squishy, translucent pink ball that lit up when thumped against a hard surface; a stack of thin plastic cases holding metal disks that Loki knew played instrumental music when inserted into her computer; a crimson plastic bag full of multi-colored, pea-sized little beans the girl would sometimes chew when thinking hard; a few metallic blue aluminum cylinders filled with some sort of beverage, the cans adorned with a strange red and blue circle—the Midgardian would drink from one when it grew late into the night.

As the computer screen lit up, Loki noticed something else, something he'd seen the mortal stare at for long periods of time before beginning the translations: a music box. Atop the silver-gilt white device stood a tiny porcelain figurine in a short, pale violet shift, its arms over its head and one leg bent at a strange angle. A dancer of some kind. The human girl had more than two dozen such music boxes, but the rest she kept in a locked glass case in her closet.

Loki's natural curiosity, his need to know everything about the world around him and the people he intended to use for his plans, had forced him to try and get as much information about the Midgardian girl as possible. It had been surprisingly difficult thus far.

He entered the necessary passwords when the computer demanded them. He'd only needed to spy on her entering them once to memorize them, though the pseudo-Asgardian couldn't figure out as to what they pertained: passwords such as Ladder-Locks and Beauty Asleep. He found her translation files easily. Their password seemed more pertinent: Black Bear. Reading the translations took less time than he'd originally anticipated—she'd laid everything out in a way that was very easy to understand. Storing the information in his memory, he closed the files.

A folder at the bottom of the screen caught Loki's eye. K155TH12. Thin, pale lips quirked into a smirk at the corners.

"Kiss this," he thought. Midgardian defensive sarcasm. How charming. He remembered that the program the girl had used to hack S.H.I.E.L.D.'s personnel database had a similar name. Without a moment's hesitation, Loki clicked on the folder. Perhaps there was something useful inside.

Immediately a window popped up demanding a password. He'd never seen the human access this folder before, so he had no idea what the password for this one might have been. He closed the folder.

Another bit of information to ferret out. It wasn't as if he didn't have the time. He certainly did. He could wait until the girl accessed the folder. After all, if it was coded against being read by anyone without clearance, it was something important, and she'd more than likely need to look at it again. Perhaps even sometime soon.

Since he had what he'd come for, Loki shut the computer down once more and plugged the speakers back in. Then, using a bit of magic, he let himself be whisked out of the Midgardian realm to the between place he'd decided to use as his temporary camp.

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Steve didn't know what to do with the folder that someone—he had more than a sneaking suspicion it was Rory-Call-Me-Alex—had left on his bunk. Now he knew that Peggy, his Peggy, was alive. Alive and well. But old. He didn't know what age had done to her features, how time had changed her. He couldn't bring himself to look at the printed photograph of her as she was now. Why had Rory given this to him?

That's just what I'm going to ask her, Steve told himself when he spotted Rory limping down the corridor.

"Miss Rory," Steve called. Rory stopped walking, rocking back on her heel to pivot so she faced him. Her expression was carefully neutral, with just a touch of polite expectation. The Army captain jogged over to her. "Miss Rory—"

"Alex," she said. "My name is Alex. And drop the 'miss,' please. Makes me feel old."

After a moment, Steve said, "If you tell me how you get 'Alex' out of 'Rory,' I'll call you Alex."

Hazel eyes darkened for a minute, then Rory inclined her head. "Okay. Fine. My name is Aurora Alexandra. Rory is a nickname for Aurora. I don't go by that name anymore. I consider it bad luck. So I go by Alexandra, but that's crazy-long, so I just have people call me Alex. Only my mom and dad call me Rory."

"Your parents are here, in S.H.I.E.L.D. Underground?"

"Captain, my mother is the S.H.I.E.L.D. director's second-in-command, Special Agent Maria Hill."

Steve blinked. "Oh. I've met Agent Hill, she's—"

"She's great, I know. Was that all you wanted to know, why I go by Alex?"

For some reason Steve couldn't quite pinpoint, he didn't want to just demand why the young woman had left him the folder with Peggy's information. So he cast about for some other topic to interrogate Rory—Alex, he thought. I agreed to call her Alex—to interrogate Alex about. Unfortunately, the first thing that popped out of his mouth was, "What happened to your leg?"

Alex noticeably stiffened. After a moment, she muttered, "Car accident."

"Your hand, too?"

She closed her eyes and nodded curtly. "Yeah."

The silence that built after her answer pushed past awkward to straight-up uncomfortable after only a few moments. Steve ran a hand through his short, sandy hair and asked, "Did you leave that folder on my bunk? The one with—"

"With Agent Carter's information in it? Yeah, I did."

"Why?"

Alex raised an eyebrow. "Your picture was out of date."

Steve's glare was positively frigid. "That's not funny." She didn't even glance away. Just kept looking back at him, her blue eyes empty of anything except a tightness that might've been impatience or pain or anything else. "Why did you give me that information?"

"Because Fury's whole thing about you moving on is stupid," she snapped. Steve blinked. "It's your right to forget or remember as you choose. I was ticked off that he made me parrot that S.H.I.E.L.D. crud about forgetting and whatever, since I don't believe a word of it, and neither should you. It's up to you to decide if you want to move on and forget your life before the ice or not. Fury doesn't believe that; well, forget him. I gave you the option of moving on...or holding on."

She turned away and began to limp down the corridor, her silver crutch clanking against the metal flooring. She was about to turn the corner out of sight when Steve called, "Wait!" Alex paused, but didn't turn back to him. She cocked her head as if listening. "Why do you care if I forget or not?"

Now she turned to him. Even across the dozen feet that separated them, he could see that her dark blue eyes weren't empty now. They smoldered with something he couldn't quite define.

"Why do I care? Because I know what it's like to wake up one day and everything's different. Everything you ever had has changed or it's gone, and you're not sure which is worse. Because sometimes it's easier to forget, but sometimes all you can do is remember. I know what that's like. Fury knew that. That's why he had me talk to you. He thought we'd connect. I told him he was an idiot." And she crutched away around the corner.

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Alex expertly shuffled the pages of translations one-handed as she limped through the hall that night on her way to her father's office. He hadn't expected her to finish this quickly, she was pretty sure. Even though she had, it didn't mean much, anyway. She had the translations but she didn't know what they meant. Whether the Cube was trying to communicate with them or something. How it had picked up Swedish and German.

The German translations had been a pain in the butt because of the grammar. Alex spoke Swedish fluently—it had actually been her first language; she'd been born in Sweden while her mother was stationed there, and only several years in other countries during her youth had all but erased her accent—but she'd only spent a couple years in Germany as a kid and had never mastered the complex language.

She understood where the Cube might've picked up German; Steve Rogers had reported that Johann Schmidt had touched the thing with his bare hands...right before being disintegrated. Maybe it had picked up something from the Hydra operative. But Swedish? As far as Alex knew, and as far as her dad and Coulson had said, no one else but Schmidt had touched the Cube since it'd supposedly enjoyed a lengthy stay in Odin's treasure room or something. Everyone in S.H.I.E.L.D. thought that theory just a bit ridiculous. And anyway, if it had belonged to a Norse god, wouldn't it have been spouting Norwegian or Icelandic?

Lost in thought, Alex nearly tripped when she overheard her father's voice and realized she was right outside his door. Nick hardly ever told her anything; eavesdropping had become a necessity of life for her. So the twenty-three-year-old immediately ducked out of sight of the small window in the office door and listened to the conversation taking place inside.

"...I don't like this, Nick. Why's the council so insistent about phase 2?"

That's Uncle Phil, Alex realized when she heard Coulson's voice. Dad's doing something he doesn't like? What council? We have a council? She pressed the smoothness of the thin stack of paper to her chest. It was still slightly warm from the printer and smelled of fresh ink.

"Because of the hostile alien tech that attacked us in New Mexico," Nick Fury said. There was the creak of a chair. Alex imagined him slumping down in exasperated exhaustion behind his desk. "They think we need something on par with that kind of firepower."

"You don't agree."

"Of course I don't agree," Nick retorted. "But it's not my decision. And frankly, I've got plenty of other things to worry about other than whether we should or shouldn't be working toward an alternative to nuclear weapons."

Alex frowned. What could her father possibly be worrying about? As far as she knew, the Cube was his biggest priority, and while that wasn't going exactly well, per se, it wasn't going badly, either.

"Look, Nick, I know you're worried about Alex—"

"Coulson," the S.H.I.E.L.D. director snapped, "for the last time, her name's Aurora!" Something slammed hard against Nick's metal desk. Alex jumped. Her right temple began to throb. She squeezed her eyes shut and willed the pain to go away. "I don't get it. She wakes up, and she's Rory for the first couple months or so. Then suddenly she decides she's going to go by her middle name and she changes everything about herself. She won't even tell me why!"

"Maybe because she's not the same person she was when she fell into that coma, Boss. And maybe she just hasn't found someone she can talk to."

"She can talk to me! I'm her father."

There was a moment of silence before Coulson said, "Maybe that's why she feels she can't talk to you."

"There's something wrong, Coulson," Nick muttered. "I don't know what it is, but something's wrong with her. Hill feels the same way. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And we've got phase 2 going on and we're still technically on phase 1 with the Cube and..."

Alex had heard enough. As quietly as she could, she went back to the Reverse-Tower. The elevator took her back to her rooms. Dropping the stack of translations on her bed, she took a seat at the computer and turned it on. After it booted up, Alex closed her eyes and pressed the fingers of her good hand to her throbbing temple.

"Computer, access desktop folder kay-one-five-five-tee-aych-one-two. Password: Ivory Tower. Open new Microsoft Word document. Save under 'Journal dash four-six-one-zero.' Begin typing as follows."

She began to speak as the words came to her—recording her conversation with Steve earlier that day, what of the conversation she'd overheard between Coulson and her father only a few minutes ago. What she'd been doing with the translations. Then she rambled about the books she'd been rereading lately and the things she'd taken rain-checks for, like the movie and pizza with Coulson.

Finally she concluded with, "I need to do this more often, or Dr. Hopper won't be happy and he'll tell my dad. Not that he doesn't tell my dad practically everything, but...but when it's important," she added, vainly flexing the stiff fingers of her bad hand, "he knows how to keep a secret. Still, can't risk it this time. Seems like my dad's got enough to deal with right now. Computer, save all progress and encode document. Password..." Something caught in her throat. Alex swallowed it and gritted from between clenched teeth, "Password is 'Fair Rosalinda.' Close document. Close folder. Shut down computer."

Alex leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. A cold tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away. Then she got up, got ready for bed, and flopped down to sleep. It took longer than she wanted, but sleep eventually came.

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Loki studied the sleeping girl for several long minutes. Tears gleamed wetly beneath the dim glow of several small lights scattered around her room. Faint wrinkles furrowed the space between her thin, dark brows. He glanced to the stack of papers that held the final translations from the Cube, as well as the human girl's notes. Then he glanced at the silent and dark computer before turning once again to the girl.

This was the woman he'd seen in Nick Fury's thoughts. The happy child, dancing amongst the autumn leaves, had been the girl's younger self. Loki wondered idly how that laughing little girl had become this empty shell of a person. Midgardians were such a weak species. It probably hadn't taken very much to break this one's spirit, just as it likely hadn't taken much to break her body, leaving her this crippled wreck. But that wasn't Loki's purpose in watching her. He was merely killing time until he could be certain she slept deeply enough for him to activate her computer again.

When he was certain, he went to the machine and turned it on. Once he'd gotten past her pitiful attempts at safeguarding and reached the desktop, he clicked on the folder K155TH12 and then clicked on the very first document, "Journal—10-12-09." When it asked for the password, he entered what he thought to be the proper one: Fair Rosalinda. How unimaginative, that the girl used the same password for all of the documents in this folder.

Emerald eyes flicked to the first line.

I can't tell my father. I don't know what he'll do to Uncle Phil if I do. Dad already blames him for what happened to me before the coma. He'd kill him if he found this out, too. I'm only writing about it here because Dr. Hopper says I need to write out how I'm feeling or I have to start going to therapy twice a week instead of once every two weeks. I don't want that. I don't want to talk about what's going on here, in this place, with all these people that I should know, but don't.

There's a new guy here who might understand. Steven. Steve Rogers. A man outside of time. He's been asleep for a long time, too. Almost seventy years. I've only been asleep for six. Asleep. Like the princess in the fairy tale. Like Sleeping Beauty. The original Sleeping Beauty, not the Disney one. Most people don't know about her. Or Rapunzel in her tower. Like Fair Rosalinda. I don't want to be Fair Rosalinda. Anyone but her.

A soft cry from the bed grabbed Loki's attention before he could read anymore of the whining drivel this girl had written in her so-called journal. The girl thrashed and moaned on the bed. He quickly shut down the computer again, leaving the room dimmer without the glow from the screen. Drawing a cloak of shadows about him, he stood by and waited to see if the Midgardian would awaken. If she fell back into undisturbed sleep, Loki could return to reviewing her files in the hopes that something in her journals would provide him with some clues about the girl that didn't involve an inane, childish desire to be a princess.

Because he stood half in shadow, cloaked with magic, he could see flickers of the dream flashing behind the mortal's eyes. A flash of crimson and the screech of abused metal. The retort of gunfire. Loki knew a little about firearms. A maiden's terrified screams echoed in his ears. And then...

Something dragged his consciousness into the nightmare. He struggled against it, twisting and hurling magic and power at it in an attempt to break its hold, but to no avail. Blood stung, sour and copper in his mouth. The stench of a woman's fear pervaded his nostrils. He caught a glimpse of the girl's face, pale as death, her eyes terrified and so darkly blue they were nearly black. A trembling hand reached out to him.

"Black bear," the girl whispered. She strained to reach him and for some reason he couldn't fathom, his fingers twitched toward her."Black bear. Black wolf. Don't let me drown. Help me, please. Don't make me go to sleep again."

A brilliant flash of electric blue exploded before his eyes, blinding him.

Then whatever link existed between them snapped, and Loki was flung from the dream hard enough his head spun. A spike of pain lanced his right temple. The sweat was icy on his forehead and the back of his neck. He stared at the girl.

She'd sat bolt-upright in bed, unable to see him beyond the shield of darkness and invisibility he'd pulled about himself. Tears mingled with the sweat on her cheeks. She swiped at them with the back of one hand. Then she threw back the twisted covers and, reaching for and slipping on the arm-braced crutch she used to walk, got to her feet and headed for her bedroom door.

Curious, still shaken by whatever had just happened, Loki followed behind her like a shadow.

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Alex ignored Clint Barton and the scientists working on the Cube. They didn't look up as she strode by them, so obviously her father had said she could be there. Although it was a little strange that no one noticed she was in her pajamas. Whatever. She had to get to the Cube and see if it had changed. After that dream, she just had to.

When she got to the containment unit for the Cube, she paused in front of it. Nick and Coulson both had drilled it into her head countless times over the last few days, as had Dr. Selvig: she was allowed to look at the Cube; she was not allowed, under any circumstances, to touch it.

She didn't have to.

Even as she watched the cracked and crackling surface of the mazzarine device, words appeared in Swedish on the surface. Alex's mouth dropped open and she stepped back from the Cube as the meaning of the words penetrated.

You are the Sleeper. The black wolf watches you now.

TBC

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Author's Note: reviews are loves! =)