Chapter spoiler: The meanings of the terms from Steve's POV can be found at the bottom note. But if you're too lazy to scroll up and down the page, then you could just Google them as you read. ;)
She's a marvelous teacher, your Lady Thorsdót—
The words return to him over and over, taunting him as he rushes through the metal hallways of SHIELD's floating ship. It was no hardship for him to complete the unfinished word, a word that sent a thrill of excitement and glee and sorrow and fury through him all together.
Thorsdóttir. Thor's daughter. His daughter, his child.
And with her brown locks and fair skin and attractive features, Thor has no doubts as to whom his child's mother could—would—be.
Jane. His lovely, beautiful, brilliant Jane Foster. By the Nine Realms, but never had another mortal bewitched him so—and the best part there was that Jane is no witch. She believed not in magic the way Thor had accepted it eons ago, but he knows that she was well on her way. Every Midgardian morning and night, he would go to the edge of the Bifrost, always when his princely duties could wait, to simply ask Heimdall what was happening with his lovely Jane.
Oh, how he missed her so.
And now a child…
He is suddenly so grateful to his brother and Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. Without them, he would never have learned of the Lady Anna's time-travel, and he would never have thought that it were possible for him to become a fath—
"Oof!"
"Brother!" Loki's voice cries against his shoulder, and Thor couldn't fathom why his brother was grappling with him, forcing him back and away from where the Lady Anna Thorsdóttir is being held. "Brother, stop and think!" Loki hisses into his ear. "You said it yourself—Thanos will misguide us!"
He had said that, hadn't he? Thor remembers as he stopped struggling and looked at Loki. "Do you believe he has misguided us?" Thor asks him, gripping his brother's shoulders and searching his eyes for the answer. Loki hesitates, and that was all Thor needed to see. "We must help her," he declares, pushing Loki away carefully, only for his brother to latch onto his wrist and pull him back.
"I understand," Loki says urgently as the pounding feet of their comrades echoes down the corridor, "but we must inform the others—the director, especially—of her new status before they do something foolish, or worse discover when she comes from. The other mortals may now know of her true lineage, but their leader must not. Stark was right," he adds, "the man will not ask questions. Not at once."
He understands what Loki was implying at once. This invasion is an act of war, and wartime always brought prisoners, such as Thanos's vessels—first Loki, now Lady Anna. The mistake had been letting Nicholas Fury know that Thanos was the mastermind behind the assault, though there was truly no choice there, as it was a necessary truth to clear Loki of the suspicion unfairly cast on him. But if the mortal leader discovers that Thanos's presence inside Lady Anna would allow them to learn of future events, then he would do everything in his power to know what he could. Including…
Well. Thor had fought many a battle over the centuries, and he'd captured many enemy commanders in his campaigns, one of whom had been a Seer Of Things To Come. If Thor continues to act foolishly, then he may just put his daughter in that Seer's position.
The thought is sobering, and it brings him back to his proper senses. "You're right, brother," he allows, relaxing in Loki's hold. "Let us rejoin our allies. I wish to make myself heard." And oh, but how selfish it was of him to refuse the idea of someone so dear to him suffer the way the daughter of another man had suffered under his own hands. If Nicholas Fury were even half the brute he had been during those days…
No. No, he wouldn't dare lay a hand on Lady Anna. Thor would make sure of it.
"And Thor?" Loki adds, squeezing his arm slightly to recapture his attention. Thor turns to him as the others appeared, and his brother whispers his next words in the Old Tongue. "If this is to work, then we must take away the assumption that she is your direct descendant."
…damn. That takes away the strongest of his options. A distant descendant was not something to take lightly, but it was a less powerful statement than that of immediate family members, especially in the eyes of a king like the Allfather.
Then again, Nicholas Fury wasn't a king, and having had no contact with anyone else from the Realm Eternal, then he couldn't have learned of the most intricate practices kept by Asgardian royalty, could he?
"Worry not, brother. I do know how to mislead someone," Thor replies in the same language, clapping a hand over his brother's shoulder. "After all, there is a reason why 'twas you and not I who was blamed for the darker tint of Lady Sif's once-flaxen hair." The shocked disbelief that crosses Loki's face when he finally revealed the most precious of his many secrets is one Thor would treasure for centuries to come.
"Thor!" Loki shouts indignantly as Thor breezes past the others.
"Come, my friends," he says quickly, hurrying away from Loki's wrath. "We have much to discuss."
It had taken him a while, but the purple bastard finally manages to find one of her best-kept weaknesses. Folding her legs, Anna lowers herself to sit beside a young Loki as he learns the art of magic from Odin himself.
She hadn't expected that. Ever since she met him, Odin had been a real asshole to her. He'd commended Uncle Thor's loyalty to his friends, but didn't like that her uncle asked for nothing in return for his kindness. He'd disapproved of his son's adoption of her, but accepted Anna as a member of his household. He'd allowed her to roam to her heart's content, but then locked her into a useless set of Asgardian lessons after she found too many hidden rooms, including Loki's cave underneath the palace. And even though she'd passed his stupid, tiring tests to see if she was worthy of staying in Asgard, he'd kicked her back to Earth for being mortal and refused to let her have one of Idunn's apples to turn her into an immortal.
In her eyes, Odin was a PMS-prone asshole. Period.
So seeing him on the ground beside Loki, teaching him the intricacies of magic…
It's weird.
"There is magic in all of us," Odin clichés, "because there is a soul in all of us. There our magic rests dormant, though it grows as we grow. And as time ages us, its power unfolds and envelops us, helping us determine our part in the universe."
Anna's heard the spiel before. During her time in Asgard, she'd sat in with the other young noblewomen at Odin's insistence, and eventually, the subject captured her attention. She never got to cast any magic though, since the tutor believed that her mortal soul couldn't possibly bear the strain of cosmic energy and succumb to the call of the inky darkness peeking through Yggdrasil's roots.
Ooh, how she'd hated that bitch.
Now though…
"…to conduct the energies of the cosmos through our souls," Odin was saying, moving his right hand over his left in a circling motion, then pulling sparkling lights from the air that turned into the form of a soaring bird above his open left palm.
Loki's eyes widens in delight. "Can I try, father!"
Odin gestures to him. "Of course, my son. Close your eyes." Loki did so, and Anna follows suit. "As you take a breath, feel the magic in it. 'Tis not just air to fill your lungs, it's magic to feed your life-force."
'Well, what do you know?' Anna thinks rhetorically, feeling her lungs tingle as air fills it up.
"Hold that breath," Odin instructs, and Anna obeys. "Feel the magic as it spreads from your lungs—"
The oxygen you take in gets stored in your alveoli, and from there enters your bloodstream.
"—and rushes through your body. It keeps you alive in the subtlest way. This is the easiest magic anyone can do. Now," Odin adds, "feel the magic in your hand. There is energy there."
"I feel it," Loki whispers. Anna agrees with him and hopes she wasn't just imagining things.
"Simply feel it there for now," Odin says. "Savor it. Know it. Recognize how it feels to hold that energy in your palm." And she does—she recognizes it. It's soft and intangible but right there, and god, but learning had never been more amazing. It seems like forever until he spoke again, but when he does, Odin's voice comes soothingly. "Open your eyes."
Anna opens her eyes to the world again, and the first thing she sees is Loki. Her jaw drops, because above Loki's palm is a gold animal, its four legs and the tip of its slowly swishing tail a pale green color.
"How fitting," Odin muses. "A fox for my clever son."
As Loki grins proudly and giggles, large hands grip her wrist, and that's when she realizes that she too had conjured something up. But whatever it was disappears in a whirl of gold and shadowy mist after Thanos grabbed her.
"Very good," Thanos says to her as the memory fades out to be replaced by another. Loki looks older now, but Odin is still his teacher, and as they sat on the same ground, Thanos releases her hand. "Again."
"Can someone explain to me what the hell that was all about?" The big cheese (Fury, Director Fury) demands as everyone takes their seats. "And take it from the top."
"What top?" Thor asks, frowning.
"It means to start from the beginning," Dr. Banner explains.
"Why not just say then?" Thor grumbles, and Steve quietly agrees with him. Although that particular expression was familiar to him, most modern words tend to turn him around, so Thor's exclamation is a sentiment he shares.
"Thor, please," Agent Romanoff cuts in, and Thor nods in acquiescence. "Loki, would you please tell us what happened?"
"Very well," Loki says, lacing his fingers together. "During my…conversation with him, Thanos claimed that his new host is a member of the House of Odin through my brother."
Steve frowns. "What? When did he say that?"
"He called her Thorsdóttir," Mr. Stark (not Howard, never Howard again) answers in his usual nonchalant tone. "Like in Iceland. They don't have surnames like Rogers or Banner there. The surnames come from the father or mother's name, like if you had a son or daughter, their last name would be Stevensson or Stevensdóttir. I guess Asgardians have the same practice?" he adds, looking at the brothers.
"Indeed," Loki nods to Mr. Stark. "I assume Thanos attempted to say this in order to cause us further confusion."
"There is no confusion," Thor declares firmly, staring pointedly at Director Fury. "The Lady Anna has been marked as my descendant, and we shall treat her as such."
"Thor," Loki sighs. "I know we have had our dalliances with mortals in times long past, but we do not know her lineage for certain—"
"Then until we do, we act as if she is!" Thor demands, slamming a fist into the table to make his point. "I will not risk it! Not if she is of my line!"
"Agreed," Mr. Stark nods, shooting a pointed look at Director Fury that has the man snapping his mouth shut and nodding as well.
"Agreed," the director says reluctantly. Thor relaxes and smiles at his brother winningly, as if he hadn't just coerced a powerful man into doing what he wanted.
"That's it?" Steve finds himself asking. "You aren't gonna investigate the claim or…something?"
"How?" Mr. Stark asks dryly. "Take some blood and run a DNA test?" A what-now test? "Anything we can to do investigate requires opening the cage. We don't know what Thanos would do if we do that. Loki can't risk touching him—what if he can go back in him and take over Loki again? Then we'd be back at square one and everything Anna-girl did would be for nothing. Hell, we don't even know if she'd survive an exorcism!"
He's right, of course. "It just feels like we're sitting here and talking about doing something but nothing's actually being done," Steve says to them, because this isn't like the war councils he used to participate in, where they'd give all the facts, lay out a plan and then follow through with it. Here and now? They didn't even know what they wanted to do.
"The situation is complicated, Captain," Director Fury speaks up, as if reading his mind. "Things aren't as cut and dry as World War II. We're talking about an alien invasion—it's unprecedented."
"Alien or not, it's still an invasion," Steve argues, trying to hold back most of his frustration. "We know where they're coming from, we know where they'll be, so let's put people out there to—"
"Die?" Mr. Stark butts in cynically. "Don't be naïve, Cap. We already can't evacuate New York and you want to put more people on ground zero? Do that and Thanos will get what he wants."
"Oh, I suppose you have a plan then?" Steve demands.
Mr. Stark shrugs. "I do."
That takes the wind out of Steve's sails. "You do?"
"Yep."
"Care to share with the class, professor?" Dr. Banner asks.
Mr. Stark points at him. "Professor Stark. I like that. Not as much as Lord Stark, but—"
"Tony," Dr. Banner sighs.
"Fine," Mr. Stark says, "but only because you called me 'Tony.'" He inhales exaggeratedly and begins speaking. "Far as we know, Barton's coming in with a team. I say we let him come in."
"You don't wanna shoot him out of the sky?" Agent Romanoff asks, her voice hard despite her obvious confusion.
"Psh, no," Mr. Stark waves his hand dismissively. "Like I want you to kill me." Agent Romanoff relaxes, looking more amused now as she listens. "Anyway, we stop them from sabotaging us, get Barton, confirm where the Tesseract's going, and head on over there. We're what now? Two hundred miles from the East Coast?"
"Thereabouts," Agent Hill confirms.
"And the carrier can cross that in at least an hour," Mr. Stark continues. "And even if we can't make it back all the way, I can at least fly out in the suit, grab the cube and hightail it out of there before the portal can open. Problem solved."
Steve gapes at him. "You can't seriously expect that plan to go off without a hitch," he protests.
"I don't," Mr. Stark answers, giving him an incredulous look. "That plan isn't a plan—it's an outline. You don't plan for these things, cap, that's unrealistic. An outline's much more useful. Plans are exhaustive."
"Plans are exhaust—" Steve stops right there, half-seething, because good Lord, not even Howard had been this egotistic back in the day. "Son, that plan is all wet and you're—"
"Don't call me 'son.'"
"—going to risk your own life doing that!"
"Exactly."
"Are you actually trying to bump yourself off? Wait, what?" Steve paused, glancing at the others and seeing their surprised faces, so he probably hadn't misheard. "Did you just say—?"
"Yep," Mr. Stark nods, leaning back and linking his fingers behind his head.
Steve takes a moment to process it, and it doesn't quite add up. Unlike Howard, Tony is a vain, self-centered man and Steve had agreed with SHIELD's assessment of him the moment they exchanged more than two words. So where did this sudden willingness to risk his life come from?
"You are trying to get yourself killed. Good Lord, are you insane?"
Mr. Stark rolls his eyes. "I'm not trying to get myself killed, I'm lowering the potential body count you seem keen on escalating."
"I'm not keen on escalating anything like that!"
"Tony," Dr. Banner says, looking warily at Mr. Stark.
It seems to draw SHIELD's attention to him instead. "You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?" Agent Romanoff asks, and it reminds Steve about the withdrawn man's…disposition, as well as Thanos's plan to unleash the Hulk against SHIELD.
Dr. Banner releases a huff of disbelief. "I was in Calcutta," he tells her. "I was pretty well-removed."
"You were," Agent Romanoff agrees. "But now you're here for Thanos to manipulate."
"And you've been doing what, exactly?" Dr. Banner asks, raising an eyebrow.
Agent Romanoff seems to bristle. "You didn't come here because I batted my eyelashes at you."
"Yes, and I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy."
"You," Director Fury says firmly, "need to step away."
"Why shouldn't the guy let off a little steam?"
Steve glares at Mr. Stark, aghast at how easily the man could entertain the idea of putting the whole ship in danger. "You know damn-well why—back off!"
Mr. Stark narrows his eyes at him. "Oh, I'm starting to want you to make me."
That's when Steve remembers how the man fights his battles. "Oh yeah," he mocks, sick of Stark's arrogance when all he really did was hide in a metal suit as he pretends to fight the hard battles. "Big man in a suit of armor." Stark's jaw ticks, and Steve feels a perverse sense of pleasure in causing that reaction. "Take that off and what are you?"
Without missing a beat, Stark replies, "Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist."
From behind Stark, Steve sees Agent Romanoff raise her eyebrows and shrug in agreement. Somehow, it makes him angrier. "I know guys with none of that worth ten of you." Stark doesn't react, so Steve presses on further, aiming to hurt. "And I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play—to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you."
Stark rolls his eyes. "I think I would just cut the wire."
"Always a way out," Steve sneers. "You know you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero."
Stark rises to his feet and looks down at him, and abruptly, Steve remembers Bucky. Whenever his best friend found him lying in the gutters of Brooklyn, he would look down at him with the same assessing gaze, as if wondering why the hell Steve kept doing it to himself even as he leaned down to offer Steve a hand up. Moments like those, Steve had always thought of Bucky as a hero—his hero—and it's so jarring that Stark could mimic the pose so accurately without any effort at all.
It pisses him off.
"A hero? Like you?" Stark's tone is full disdain, and those familiar brown eyes turn icy without a twitch. "You're a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everythingspecial about you came out of a bottle."
Steve inhales sharply, hurt because it's true. Without the serum, he wouldn't be—couldn't be—the hero he had become. Indeed, everything that made him a hero had come from a bottle.
But he fights the ache away and gets up as well. "Put on the suit," he demands, because he's got nothing left to throw but his fists. "Let's go a few rounds."
Thor's laughter cuts of whatever Stark had to say. "You people are so petty," he exclaims, and shame flushes through Steve when he realizes what he'd just said and done. Thor stands up, as if to emphasize his next words. "And tiny."
"Yeah, this is a team," Dr. Banner says sarcastically, once again reminding them of his presence.
"Agent Romanoff," Director Fury sighs, "could you escort Doctor Banner back to his—?"
"Where?" the doctor snaps. "You rented my room."
Director Fury has the grace to look repentant. "The cell was just in case you—"
"In case you needed to kill me," Dr. Banner cuts him off knowingly. "But you can't. I know—I've tried."
Steve hears Stark hiss in displeasure, and when he looks at his old friend's son, there is pained empathy written on his face. Then and there, Steve thinks that maybe Stark wasn't completely a selfish jerk.
"I got low," Dr. Banner explains at the looks the others had given him. "I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out."
Steve lowers his eyes, remembering that mutated as it was, the Hulk was a result of the same serum that made him into what he was now. If he put a bullet to his mouth, would he die? Or would he be…
God, he couldn't be.
"So I moved on," Dr. Banner adds, helping Steve distract himself away from such a horrible thought. "I focused on helping other people. I was good, until you people dragged me back into this freak show, and put everyone here at risk. You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff? You wanna know how I stay calm?"
"This is what he wants," Loki suddenly speaks up. "Look at this—we fight with each other."
The room quiets down as everyone realizes he was right.
Stark sighs loudly, massaging the bridge of his nose. "Let's take a breather," he suggests, and Steve latches onto that idea even as Fury began to protest.
"I agree," he says, earning a surprised look from Stark. He shrugs at the incredulous look he's given. "You were bound to have a good idea soon."
It isn't quite the peace-offering Steve had intended it to be, and Stark understands that because he sneers and pushes away from the table. "I'm heading back to the lab," he tells Dr. Banner, who nods and gets up as well.
"I should go check on the locator anyway," the scientist excuses, pausing to glance at Loki. "Would you like to come, Loki?"
Surprisingly, Loki agrees with a simple, "Yes," and rises gracefully. Wordlessly, Thor pushes away his chair away, and the three of them accompany Stark through the doors.
"Coulson, Romanoff," Fury states, and the two agents get to their feet and hurry after the entourage, leaving Steve alone with the director and Agent Hill. Suddenly, the bridge seems even bigger than it already was, and he felt much too alone as he remains seated at the once-full table.
How was it that he was the one who cares about what happens to the people onboard, and yet it was Stark who everyone follows after? Loki wasn't a surprise—he kept giving the billionaire impressed looks with every word that Stark said, and Thor was clearly happy to have his brother back and stuck to his side like a moll. Even Agent Coulson, whom Agent Romanoff claims is his biggest fan, had seemed eager to join Stark in the lab. And now that he thought of it, even Dr. Banner's instant camaraderie with Stark was a surprise. He was such a mild-mannered man, so how he got along with someone so irritatingly loud…
Then again, now that Steve was really thinking about it, Stark was the only one crazy enough to accept not only the good side, but also the destructive side of Dr. Banner. Steve had welcomed the human side, sure, but that apparently didn't mean anything when he had openly sided with SHIELD's standing about the 'other guy.'
Shame floods him. Of all the people on the ship, he and Dr. Banner had the most in common. Unlike the two gods and the trained operatives of SHIELD and even the genius-born billionaire inventor, he and the doctor had been ordinary men turned extraordinary by science. Both had been members of the army—Steve as a soldier and Dr. Banner as a scientist. Both were superhuman, and thus outcasts of normal society. Both were behind the times, with Steve having been frozen in ice for seventy-years and Dr. Banner being on the lam from the military.
Both were enhanced by Dr. Erskine's serum.
The serum amplifies everything that is inside, Dr. Erskine had told him so long ago. Good becomes great. Bad becomes worse. This is why you were chosen.
The fact that Dr. Banner turns into a destructive monster should be evidence of Dr. Erskine's words. But then why didn't Steve do what Dr. Banner did? Why didn't he turn back into the scrawny little Brooklyn boy trying to prove himself a man?
Perhaps it was the gamma radiation involved. Steve didn't know anything about it other than the fact that it was dangerous to have around, so maybe there was something there, something that allows Dr. Banner to turn back.
But if his bad had become worse, then why wasn't Dr. Banner the 'other guy' all the time? Didn't that mean that there were two parts there? The good and the bad? Or rather, the great and the worse?
A strong man, who has known power all his life, will lose respect for that power, Dr. Erskine had said, and from what Steve had gleaned from his file, Dr. Banner had been a respected scientist whose work contributed greatly to the scientific community, and he had been a very passionate man, especially about his work. And then his accident happened, he went on the run, and now he was a very reticent man, suggesting that his experiences while on the lam had contributed to his reserved persona. But a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion.
A strong man and a weak man. Dr. Banner fit both categories now, and good Lord above, but even if the result of his accident is a green, mutated rage fiend, who was Steve to shun a large part of the man's qualities?
Whatever happens tomorrow, you must promise me one thing—that you will stay who you are: not a perfect soldier, but a good man.
"Captain?" Agent Hill speaks up with a small frown. That's the only time Steve notices that even Fury had left the room, and if Hill had gone with him… "Are you okay?"
No. No, he wasn't. He'd made a seriously huge mistake, one that he had to atone for. But Steve is a man now—a soldier even—and he has to suck it up and act like it. "I'm fine, ma'am," he tells Agent Hill as he got off his chair. "Thank you."
"You know," she says almost kindly, "it won't always be like that."
Goodness, was he that transparent about his thoughts? Giving her a tight smile and a polite nod, he mutters another brief thanks and turns to the doors.
"The gym is on deck three," she adds.
"Thank you," he repeats again. But he hadn't planned on going to the gym. When he approached the director after hearing Dr. Banner and Stark's theory back in the lab, Fury had simply reiterated the reason he'd given to Steve when he recruited him for this mission. It's only thanks to Dr. Banner and Stark's earlier explanation that he realized the man had been lying to him from the get-go.
He should've known, really. Steve had been around Howard Stark long enough to know that the study and creation of new weapons-technology was both his talent and sole interest. If he had been involved in the Tesseract project, then it wasn't to create unlimited sustainable energy—it was to make what he'd always been good at making.
Weapons.
Fury's call to assemble and witness Loki's meeting with Thanos had prevented him for searching for answers, but he wouldn't let anything stop him from finding some now. Because after the chaotic mess their meeting had turned out to be, Steve knows he has a few apologies to make—starting with Dr. Banner and definitely including Tony Stark.
And where else best to start than finding out if both were right about Fury's secrets?
Notes:
Icelandic names: I Googled this, like every other reference in the story. See notes on Chapter 1 ;)
Big cheese: the boss; an important or influential person.
All wet: an erroneous idea or individual.
Moll: a gangster's girl.
Disclaimer: Every term that seems familiar was Googled, and is therefore not mine. Also, the part where the team fights each other verbally on the bridge is from the scene where…well, they all fight each other in the lab. I don't own it. The words, arranged in that order, belong to the screen writers of The Avengers 2012 movie.
Why did I use it? Again, to make it clear that in my AU of The Avengers 2012 movie, everyone stays as in character as I can keep them.
Dr. Erskine's Quotes: Those were taken from the Captain America 2011 movie, so I don't own them either.
The part about oxygen rushing through the blood stream thing? That was me trying to give a bit of focus to Thor's claim (in his 2011 movie) that in Asgard, magic and science are the same. He says this to Jane while they're stargazing.
