Temptation

She didn't know how long she stared at the destruction below. Too long, probably. Giant monsters snaked from the sky and joined the grey figures. It was hard to tell if anyone was fighting back, but it didn't look like it. Until an army arrived, the invaders would keep winning.

This was Loki's plan. Wherever the grey soldiers—aliens, she guessed—were coming from, he'd brought them here. He controlled them. It wasn't hard to extrapolate his goal from that: seize power. Not just in New York, for it was too small a territory. The United States were too small a territory. He was god; he wouldn't settle for less than the world.

Somewhere out in that world, she had a family. She'd forgotten to tell Coulson what she'd learned from Loki, but maybe even a first name wouldn't help. Besides, who was to say SHIELD hadn't known all along who she was, but kept her hidden because of her connection to men who called themselves gods? SHIELD had clearly encountered Thor last year, not long before Coulson first came to meet her. Loki wasn't the only god that walked this world, and a god of thunder was as capable of wreaking this kind of damage as a god of chaos. No wonder SHIELD wanted to hang onto her, even if she still had no idea what her true connection to them was, or how she'd ended up abandoned in the desert with her mind stripped clean.

She had a name—Alexandra—and she had a destination—England—and now, she had opportunity. One chance to escape those who would use her until she was of no more use, then cast her aside. One chance to find a family: the woman who'd spoken to her of shooting stars, the dancing girls in the garden. There were people out there who cared about her, and she would find them. She'd shed the identity, thin as it was, of Asta, and rediscover Alexandra.

She had to find a way out of here. No more relying on others. She could only rely on herself from now on.

Her search of the room had determined there were no other exits than the door. Even the back of the closet seemed real enough—no passage to Narnia through there, just solid plasterboard. She had to get the door open, one way or another. It was solid wood, but people kicked doors down on T.V. all the time. She did have a sturdy pair of SHIELD-issued boots on her feet. Kicking the handle would probably result in broken toes, but kicking next to it might work.

Her first attempt felt like she'd earned the broken toes anyway, and she limped away to the bed before trying again, taking a run up to try and put all her body weight behind it. The door didn't so much as creak.

Okay, so brute force wasn't working. She could always put off bodily injury until she'd tried other things. The popular culture she'd been exposed to had people using two things to open lock doors: credit cards and hair pins. She lacked a hair pin, but she had something close to a credit card in her pocket. She knelt, taking the phone out, but it was too thick for the crack between the door and the frame. Brute force was beginning to look like the only option. There weren't even coat hangers in the closet that she could use in place of a hair pin.

Well, it taken her a while to realise she had the phone. Maybe there was something else in her ensemble that would help. She pulled the boots off to examine them—leather and rubber, solid soles, and though the zip was metal, it wasn't going to be useful. Her pants, it turned out, had three pockets, but turning all of them inside out didn't yield any joy. Her t-shirt was just cloth and thread, leaving her standing in her bra while she checked it for secret linings.

Her bra. Her underwire.

The bra was disturbingly easy to destroy, and when she held the wire between her fingers she expected to need to fumble around with the lock, relying on luck for this to work. Instead, this felt familiar. She slid it in at this angle, and wiggled the wire that way, and waited for the click. She'd done this before. Hanging around with a god of mischief had probably taught her a few skills.

The handle bowed beneath her fingers, the door pulling toward her, but she paused. Down the corridor a fight was occurring—crashing, growling, the splintering of stone. She couldn't see it but she could hear it. Here was safety. If she ventured out, she didn't know what she'd find.

Or the fight could mask her escape. If it was Loki out there he'd be watching for her, but if he was too busy saving his own skin she could reach the stairs and be away. And she'd have to take the stairs, all the way down—the elevator wasn't going to be an option.

Now or never. She didn't want it to be never.

She eased the door open and stepped out. The noise had stopped, and she kept to the wall as she crept along the corridor. The doorway to the stairs was level with the end. She'd need to be very sure the room was empty, or that all occupants were looking another way, before she went for it.

Mere feet away, she heard footsteps ahead, and she pressed herself into the closest doorframe. The stairwell door swung open and a black-clad figure swept out, gun in hand. Asta couldn't see her face, but the red hair was too distinctive. Agent Romanoff. She didn't glance in Asta's direction. Instead, she looked across the room, smirked at something, and crossed to a set of doors that led outside.

If Romanoff hadn't been apprehended, Asta guessed this was as good a time as any to run for it. She bolted for the door, slipping through without looking behind, but before she could head down, she felt a gust of air as the door opened again.

"Asta!" She paused and turned. Romanoff stood holding Loki's sceptre. "Coulson told me you were here somewhere, that Loki had you locked up."

Asta gestured to the wire she still held in her fingers. "I escaped."

Romanoff took the wire from her and raised an eyebrow. "I'm impressed." Whatever she was feeling was probably closer to suspicion. "Come on, we need to go up."

Whatever Romanoff did or didn't suspect, she didn't show it. She just waited for Asta to head up the stairs ahead of her, back to the rooftop.

The noise hit her first—the din echoing around the building: thunder, gunfire, collapsing buildings. They were, for the most part, far above it, but it was still overwhelming. Far below, Grand Central was in ruins, its stone facade spilled across the surrounding roads. Chunks had been taken out of other buildings, leaving steelwork and interiors exposed, and there was so much glass strewn over the asphalt that the streets seemed to glitter in the light of the many fires.

The contraption Selvig had been working on soon drew her attention away from the ruins of Manhattan. Now it whirled, separate sections spinning in opposite directions, and a beam of light shot out of the top, pulsing its way into the sky. At the end of the light-stream, the clouds had been pierced, another sky appearing in the hole it created. The invaders spilled from the gash, ever more of them falling through and heading to join the battle below.

Romanoff followed Asta's gaze. "It's a wormhole, to another part of space."

"So they really are aliens."

"They're called the Chitauri. Loki made a deal with them so he could rule Earth."

"I figured that's what he wanted."

Selvig himself stood next to the device, but the blue was gone from his eyes. Romanoff had found a way to release him from Loki's spell. "We can stop it, with the sceptre."

Romanoff gripped it grimly. "Stand back," she ordered, and Asta crossed back to the stairwell, ready to flee if the opportunity presented itself. Romanoff pushed forward with the sceptre, and a barrier threw itself up around the contraption, a bubble of cyan light. The sceptre pierced it and Romanoff manoeuvred the sharp tip to graze the glowing cube at its centre.

"It's the cube, isn't it," Asta murmured to Selvig. "That's what's powering this."

He nodded. "It's called the Tesseract. It's frighteningly powerful—and clever. I never thought I'd meet an inanimate object with so much intelligence. It knows what you wants and shows you how to get it."

Romanoff released the staff with a yelp, falling backwards, as the barrier around the machine blazed crimson. The staff stayed poised in mid-air, as if held in place by the energy around it. "What the hell?" She jumped back to her feet, but maintained a wary distance. "Selvig, this isn't working."

"I don't understand," he said. "What's it doing?"

Asta stared at the centre of the machine, where the blade met the cube.

"It's my blood," she said. "Look at the colour—that's because my blood was still on the tip."

Romanoff and Selvig gave her curious looks. Of course, only three people had been present for that incident.

"Loki cut me with it, by accident. He healed me, but I don't think he cleaned it afterwards."

"But blood is nothing special," said Selvig. "Not in this kind of science. It's just water and iron and a few other compounds—nothing that would cause a reaction like this."

"I don't think we're just dealing with science," Romanoff said. "Not science we know, at least."

"Magic," Asta whispered.

"Perhaps. That doesn't help us understand what we need to do to shut it down. There's a nuke about to blow on the other side of that wormhole, and if we don't close it, the fallout will leak over Manhattan."

"More blood," said Asta.

"What?" Asta was already pulling the staff free of the bubble, and despite her obvious doubt, Romanoff didn't stop her. Asta held the sharp edge back to her palm and slashed across, letting the blood drip over it. Oh god, it stung, heat blooming around the wound while she bit her lip to suppress any whimpers. Selvig was protesting beside her, but she tuned him out. This had to work. If blood was the problem, then blood had to be the solution.

She pushed the sceptre forward and the red in the barrier deepened, but the blade was allowed to pass. It clinked as it connected with the cube, and suddenly she was connected too. She could feel the stream of energy above, burning skyward, and she could feel the pull of the cube, its need for more.

Her hand, blood still dripping, was inside the barrier before either Romanoff or Selvig could act, and with stiff fingers she touched the Tesseract, lifting it from its cradle. The barrier dropped and the energy stream abruptly cut out. The world paused, suspended in the cube's thirst for her blood.

"Asta, you shouldn't touch that bare-handed—"

That was Selvig. She could barely hear him over the noises in her head. From Romanoff, she could just make out the clink of metal—a gun, probably, or a blade, ready to persuade her to drop the Tesseract. Asta knew she'd have to do that anyway, but it had no intention of letting her go, not as it drew all that power back to to itself, the rushing of the closing wormhole like the roar of the ocean in her head. It was more than a sound, a pressure pushing against her, all that energy pouring back home, and she was in its way. She couldn't move. The cube liked being connected to life in this way. It wouldn't be greedy—it would fill her up, just as it was going to be filled, the power of the wormhole flooding through the both of them. So what if her body wouldn't be able to contain such a thing? It whispered to her, promised her the universe, if she just opened herself up. It could give her everything, make her everything, and she'd never be a broken, hollow thing again. All her memories, all the knowledge under the stars, delivered to her in exchange for the sweetness of her blood.

She stared at the sky, trapped in this split-second before the wave reached her, and despite all her awe and fear, she refused. It could kill her, but she didn't want any of that power for herself. Power was corruption. It had offered the same thing to so many before her, and they'd all paid for it in the end. She only wanted freedom.

With strength she didn't know she had, she released the Tesseract, letting it fall from her fingers, but pain blazed in her head anyway. She dropped as inelegantly as the cube, down into oblivion.