Lexxiechan- Here you are!
Chocoegg333- There is lots of Lea and Loki in this chapter ;)
ILove2Write13- You are so sweet to me omg c:
Counting Sinful Stars- I hate men. Most of the time I think to myself, "should I go for the vagina" and then I think that's gross too and I go back to dreaming about Tom Hiddleston.
I'm so sorry this took so long. You wouldn't believe the homework I've been weighed down with, and then now I have a job, and forensics practice to boot. It's been really insane.
Sorry that this is a little bit of a shorter chapter. The next one will be longer, I promise.
Thanks to fabulous Sarah for always looking over my chapters and putting up with my crap.
Please Enjoy.
V
S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier
Unknown Location
Detention Center
8:00 AM
Loki straightened up and turned around to find Lea Stark walking to his cell. He smiled to himself as she crossed her arms over her chest and raised her eyebrows irritably.
"Well?"
The dark haired god peered steadily back at her.
"Well?" he echoed.
"I literally just rolled out of bed, you asshole. I woke up this morning to Phil Coulson banging on my damn door to tell me that you were 'requesting my presence'. You called me here. What is it?"
"You don't even want to chat?" Loki chuckled, impressed by her snappy attitude. "Always in a rush. Must there be a point to our conversation?"
"May I remind you that this is barely our second one, bucko. There better be on otherwise you are wasting my valuable time. I'm trying to clean up your mess," Lea retorted, her lip curling slightly.
"Is this loathing, Amelia Stark?" Loki questioned.
"Something like that."
Lea crossed the front of the cell, the Asgardian pacing along side her from inside of his cage with a smirk.
"Why did you even come then?" Loki asked as Lea brushed her jeans off.
Lea, brutally honest as always, said, "Because Fury made me. It wasn't like I wanted to, hot stuff. If it was up to me, I'd be numerous millions of feet away from you. I'd rather be up in the lab."
"Now now, we can't always get what we want."
Lea gestured to the cell. "Obviously."
Loki raised his eyebrows. "Are you so sure about that?"
The blonde stepped right up to the glass, his words hitting a nerve.
"Is this some kind of amusement for you? To talk me in circles with your silver tongue?"
"Why?" Loki inquired innocently. "Is it working?"
"Working, no. Not even remotely. Annoying the hell out of me? Yes. So you going to tell me why you summoned me and they listened or are we going to banter like we're in a bad sitcom?"
"I do not know what a magazine is, so this will have to do for the time being."
Lea rolled her eyes. "Great. Can I leave now?"
Loki tsked. "I'd rather you not. I have to say, I am starting to enjoy your company. I have one question for you, though. Why on Midgard did you leave me up alone on the ridge? Any sensible person wouldn't have dared."
"I trusted you enough to do so. Either you listened or were too entertained by watching us fight."
"I was enthralled, yes. But I am certainly someone you should not be trusting."
Lea gazed at him for a long moment as the silence hung between them. She blinked and then laughed as if she didn't believe in whatever she was thinking.
"For some crazy reason I do. I'm probably going to regret it immensely later, but I trust you."
Loki hated himself for it and the piece of the Other in his brain chided him, but Loki trusted her too.
Loki watched as Lea checked some odd device on her wrist and sighed.
"I'm gonna leave and head back to the lab now."
Loki frowned. "Is that so?"
Lea held up her pointer finger. "But I won't. On one condition."
Loki inclined and eyebrow. "I'm listening."
The blonde winked at him and sat down and crossed her legs, waving for Loki to do the same.
"We play a game. I ask you a question, you ask me a question, and we both have to answer. We each get three passes if we don't want to answer one. You in?"
Loki shrugged, pretending to only be mildly interested. "Why not?"
"I feel like I'm back in Girl Scouts. Either that, or we're in a chick flick. How fun is this?"
"Your definition of fun is far different from mine."
"Cheer up, hot stuff. Let's get this camp fire stared, shall we?"
"Ladies first," Loki offered.
"Hmmm...okay...What's your favorite color?"
"Green," he answered simply. "Yours?"
"I like green too," she replied. "But not bright green. More like a...a forest green. And I like red also. Not hot pink, not rose, just a nice crimson red. What's your favorite thing to do when you're not plotting world domination?"
Loki grinned slightly at that comment. "Read."
"I like reading too," Lea said with a nod. "I really love working and building, though."
"How is your little group?"
"Swell, thank you," Lea answered. "What's Asgard like?"
"Big. Glorious, to a point."
The super solider gave him a funny look but went on. "So what's the issue with you and your brother?"
"Pass," Loki spat swiftly.
"Sorry," Lea muttered under her breath.
The god of mischief took a breath and thought for a moment. "Where did you grow up?"
Lea shrugged. "A bunch of places, but mostly Malibu. I went where Tony went."
"And did you like that?"
"Not your turn," Lea scolded. "But...but no...I didn't."
The Lab
9:24 AM
Lea, dressed in a black AC/DC shirt, dark skinny jeans, and black combat boots, walked into the laboratory as she whipped her hair up into a ponytail and took a bite of her breakfast sandwich. She watched as Tony completed an algorithm on his screen and Dr. Banner was looking at different levels.
"Hey," Lea greeted as she moved to read Tony's screen. She pressed a few buttons and pulled up some information, then flicking it toward Mini who caught the data on it's own screen. The blonde then started some research of her own.
"Hi, kiddo. Sleep well?"
"Yeah."
"How's our esteemed guest?" Tony questioned calmly.
Lea rolled her eyes. Tony had gotten into an arguing match with Fury about her going, but Fury overruled his protests.
"He's fine. He's ego is too fine."
"Maybe you should be meaner next time."
"I'll have to try that, Tony. We played a game of twenty questions. It's was interesting," Lea filled in. "Dr. Banner, how are you?"
"I'm fine. The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take weeks to process," Banner said.
"If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops."
Bruce shook his head with a grin. "And all I packed was a toothbrush."
"You know, you should come by Stark Tower sometime. Top ten floors, all R&D. You'd love it," Tony insisted.
"It's candy land," Lea added.
"Thanks, but last time I was in New York I kind of broke..." Bruce trailed off sheepishly. "Harlem."
While Bruce wasn't looking, Tony grabbed a miniature electrical prod and tossed Lea his back of blueberries. She caught it while looking at her screen.
"Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension. No surprises."
Suddenly, Tony poked Banner with the prod in the side.
"Ow!"
Lea shook her head with a smile.
The doors of the lab flew open and Steve walked in, still in uniform, and glared at Tony.
"Nothing?" Tony asked, looking at Banner closely who laughed.
"Hey!" Steve snapped. "Are you nuts?"
"You really have got a lid on it, haven't you?" Tony was impressed, his hand held out as Lea tossed the blueberries back to him. "What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?"
Bruce grinned.
"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve chastised.
"Funny things are," Tony replied.
"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny. No offense, doctor."
"No, it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things," Bruce explained as he continued to work.
"You're tiptoeing, big man. You need to strut."
"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark," Steve said.
Lea raised her eyebrows as they bickered. She moved up to Tony's screen and studied the graphs he had there before completing a few equations for him.
"You think I'm not?" Tony questioned. "Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."
"You think he's hiding something?" Steve inquired.
"He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets." Tony pointed to Banner. "It's bugging him too, isn't it?"
Lea opened a few files Jarvis had managed to unlock for Tony. "FA1," she uttered.
"Uh...I just wanna finish my work here and..." Bruce said, bobbling his worlds as he spoke.
Steve gazed at him. "Doctor?"
Banner took off his glasses and rubbed them on his shirt with a sigh.
"'A warm light for all mankind', Loki's jab at Fury about the cube."
"I heard it," Steve assured.
Bruce pointed at Tony. "Well, I think that was meant for you. Even if Barton didn't post that all over the news."
"The Stark Tower?" Steve scoffed. "That big ugly–"
Both Tony and Lea shot the war veteran a look.
"...building in New York?"
"It's powered by Stark Reactors, self-sustaining energy source," Bruce said. "That building will run itself for what, a year?"
"That's just the prototype," Tony expounded proudly. "We're kind of the only name in clean energy right now."
"So, why didn't S.H.I.E.L.D bring him in on the Tesseract project? I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?" Bruce went on, referring to Tony.
"I should probably look into that once my decryption programmer finishes breaking into all of S.H.I.E.L.D's secure photos," Tony pointed out.
Steve was taken aback. "I'm sorry, did you say...?"
"Jarvis has been running it since Tony hit the bridge. In a few hours, we'll know every dirty secret S.H.I.E.L.D has been trying to hide," Lea broke in. Everyone started at her for a moment as if surprised she was still there. "What?"
"Blueberry?" Tony offered to Steve.
"Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around?" Steve jabbed at Tony.
"And intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not possible," Tony said.
Steve ran a gloved hand through his blond hair. "I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We have orders, we should follow them."
"Following is not really my style." Tony shrugged.
Steve smiled bitterly. "And you're all about style, aren't you?"
Tony's eye twitched as Steve hit a nerve. "Of the people in this room, which one is; A. wearing a spangly outfit, and B. not of use?"
"Steve," Bruce vocalized, "tell me none of this smells a little funky to you."
Steve took in the possibility, but as an obedient solider, he shook it off.
"Just find the cube."
Steve strode angrily out of the lab. Lea set Mini and her meal down on the table and started to follow him.
"Lea, where are you going?" Tony interrogated.
"I found something. I'm going to go with Steve," Lea said. "I'll be right back."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait. Stay in the lab."
Bruce looked up from his work.
Lea's eyebrows knitted together. "Why?"
"Because...because I said so."
Lea put her hands on her hips. "Because you said so? What are you, my father?"
"So maybe you have some daddy issues like the next person," Tony said. "But I kinda raised you, kiddo."
"Then you should know well enough you taught me to stick it to the man."
Lea spun around and headed out of the lab with her ponytail swinging sassily.
"Dammit," Tony yelled after her. "Dammit! I've created a monster! A monster that needs to take some Midol!"
Lea pivoted, winked, and then stepped out of the lab.
"Hey! Steve! Wait up!"
Steve, who had been heading towards the hull of the ship, stopped in his tracks and craned his head around to see Lea sprinting down the hall. She skidded to a halt and smiled.
"FA1," she said to Steve's confusion. "In some of the files Jarvis plucked from Fury's files, there was an encrypted file."
Steve blushed slightly. "I don't know what that–"
"Shit, sorry," Lea apologized. "I mean, crap. Uhm, sorry. I promised I would keep it minimal. Anyway, it means on the computer, when a file is encrypted, think of it being in an extremely heavily guarded and locked safe, okay?"
Steve nodded and Lea went on as they walked.
"Well, I used Mini, which is a tablet–you know what a tablet is right? Okay, good. So, using an app, which is a type of program on an electronic device, that I invented I broke through the walls of the encryption and opened the files for a few split seconds which was all I needed to download the files onto my device and a few names came up including a room of the ship in the storage compound called FA1. You still with me?"
"Mostly," Steve said with an embarrassed nod. "Sorry, it's just–"
Lea patted his back. "I understand completely. Don't be sorry, this is a different time. If I was sent back in time to the 1940's, I'd be lost too. I'll do my best to speak English for you, okay?"
"Thank you."
"I want to check FA1 out. Whatever is in that room will either prove or decline our suspicions. You in?"
Steve swallowed. "Yes. Lead the way."
Lea grinned. "Steve, I believe this is the beginning of a very great and beautiful friendship."
~Illumini