Chapter Five: Rescue
Phoenix emitted a low growl as she paced her room. As soon as she had gotten back, she had changed out of the dress as soon as she had gotten back to their headquarters, now wearing a pair of cutoff shorts and a white tank. She felt like she was boiling alive in her skin, and was wearing only the bits of clothing now because she didn't know if anyone was going to come in and need her. She was in charge while Loki was away, although her best course of action right now was to follow his plans. While Selvig was finishing his own preparations for the full device needed to conjure up the portal, others were packing up so that they could move. Forces would be sent to New York, while others would come with her and Barton to retrieve Loki from that aircraft.
She was extra hot right now because she was angry. She didn't like the fact that she had to leave Loki behind. Even when she had worked as an agent for S.H.I.E.L.D., she hadn't enjoyed being sneaky. She had to admit that she much preferred running straight into a battle rather than sneaking up and stabbing someone in the back, if only because she enjoyed the look on a person's face when she did. She had been good at her job at S.H.I.E.L.D., but it had been more in an enforcement capacity. People like Barton and Romanov were the more sneaky sneaky, stab stab types.
There was a knock at her door, and she wiped at her sweat drenched skin and yelled, 'Come!" She took a deep breath, wanting to get out of here already, even though they had been told to wait a certain amount of time before coming in, guns ablazing.
Barton walked inside the room. "Selvig is ready to move," he said, his blue glazed eyes gazing forward as if they weren't seeing anything.
"Then have him move for New York," she told him. "That means we can move, too," she said with a grim smile. They could trace Loki by his scepter and the energy it emitted. Barton also knew the layout of the aircraft they were searching for and had explained it to them in detail. They knew where they were likely keeping Loki: in a cell that had originally been made for Dr. Bruce Banner if he decided to get testy.
"Now get out so I can change," she told him, and Barton nodded, leaving without a word. She needed to be dressed for a rescue mission, not a summer day on a lake, even if the tight Kevlar clothing made her naturally sweat even more.
She pulled the sweat drenched clothing from her body, wanting a cold shower but knowing that they didn't have time for one. She changed into her her battle clothing, loading two pistols and strapping them to her sides and them, as an afterthought, grabbing a large hunting knife and strapping it to her thigh. That would be plenty for her, as she could tear most humans to pieces. She'd highly enjoy getting her hands on that Rogers, but she also knew that she shouldn't let herself get side tracked.
Her, Barton, and a few others gathered into a smallish aircraft, staying mostly silent as the plane flew. She kept her eyes on a small screen that was telling them where to go, relaxing inch by tight inch as they drew closer to the little blip on the screen. When they were close, and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s ship filtered into view, she waited as Barton filed a missile at it, taking out one of the engines. She watched as the giant ship lurched in the air, waiting while Barton took care to land on the surface.
As soon as they were landed and she was out of the plane, she shouted orders. She was going to grab Loki's weapon at its location before meeting one of the operatives at his cage. They couldn't just get him, blow a few things up, and leave without the weapon, after all.
Orders given, everyone rushed off in different directions, Phoenix pulling out her pistol and shooting as soon as she saw someone rushing at her, not even bothering to look at a face. This was not a time for killing for fun. It was all business.
When she reached the lab that the scepter was in, she noticed there was a large hole in the floor. Leaping over it nimbly, she grabbed the weapon, taking a moment to admire it in her hand, enjoying the feel of the large scepter before leaping back across the hole. She felt the ship lurch again as another engine failed. This needed to be quick, as the ship wasn't going to be in the air for long now.
Running to the containment area, she found the room that Loki was being kept in. He was already out of the cage, and had apparently trapped his brother, Thor, in it as well, but there was a slight snag in the situation. Someone had a weapon aimed at Loki, keeping him away from the pad that would likely drop the cell out into the sky.
She didn't recognize him from behind, but, when she heard his voice, she knew who it was: Agent Phil Coulson. "You like this? We started working on the prototype after you sent The Destroyer." While no one else was paying attention to her, she saw that Loki spotted her. She wasn't good at sneaking up on people, but now was a time that it was required.
" Even I don't know what it does. Do you wanna find out?" Coulson said, but, before he could pull the trigger on the giant gun, Phoenix got close, using the pointed side of the scepter instead of blasting him with a bolt of the energy, slamming it through his chest from behind.
She smiled at Loki as she heard Thor scream, twisting the scepter a little before pulling it out of Coulson, watching as he fell to the floor. "I like this weapon," she said with relish. "Can I have a weapon like this?" she asked him.
She watched Loki grin, spinning back toward Thor. "I like her, Thor. She's feisty." A look of concern then spread across his face. "I'm sorry, how forgetful of me. I should introduce you to your soon to be sister-in-law, after all."
She turned to Thor and smirked at him. "The future Queen Phoenix, at your service," she said to him with an exaggerated bow, still holding the blood soaked weapon. As she stood back up, she handed the weapon over to Loki.
Shaking, Thor looked the both of them over. "I did not think that you could share power so easily, brother," he said, his voice rumbling with emotion.
"Second, not sharing," she corrected him. "Even a queen has to know her place, after all."
"Another reason why I like her," Loki said to Thor. "She knows true authority." He finished punching in to code to drop the cage. "Goodbye, Thor."
She waved to him as the cage dropped down and out into the sky. She was going to suggest that they get going when she heard Coulson speak again. "You're gonna lose," he wheezed.
They both turned back to face Coulson. "Are we?" Loki asked. Phoenix couldn't help but notice the flutter inside of her when Loki said 'we' instead of just 'I.' When did that start happening?
"It's in your nature," Coulson remarked, a touch of blood starting to drip from his mouth.
Loki looked almost confused by that statement. "You're heroes are scattered, your floating fortress falls from the sky. Where is my disadvantage?" he asked.
"You lack conviction," Coulson told him simply.
"I don't think I..." Loki didn't finish. She didn't catch Coulson's movements for the trigger until the blast, sending Loki flying backward.
"So that's what it does," Coulson said, more to himself, barely seeming to notice as Phoenix kicked the weapon out of his hands before going to Loki, who had been blasted through a wall.
She offered him a hand to help him up. "No offense, but you shouldn't monologue like that. We're not doing Shakespeare here," she told him.
"Who's that?" Loki asked as she helped him off of the ground.
She shook her head. "Don't worry about it. We need to go."
_
They had to leave the ship without Barton. It seemed like a waste, but they were in a hurry and they still had someone who could pilot the aircraft that they were making their getaway in. Phoenix and Loki sat beside one another, mere inches apart, and, after a few moments of relishing in that they weren't on that large airship anymore, she turned to look him over, thinking to look for injuries.
"They didn't hurt you, did they?" she asked, thinking along the lines of torture in order to get information. She knew that S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't exactly follow the Geneva Convention.
He seemed to understand what she meant by that. "They didn't have much time to focus on me before they were turning and sniping at one another," he said to her with a smirk.
She returned his grin. "And I'm sure that you didn't have anything to do with that at all," she said in a light voice. Satisfied that he was alright, she sat back and shut her eyes, cooled a bit by his silken chuckle, even as she had to fight the urge to tear off her suit. It was something of a heat flash that she going through. Too much anger and uselessness to immediately go away with one completed mission.
She felt his chilled fingers against her forehead, suppressing the urge to purr even as she turned her face toward him unconsciously. "You feel feverish," she heard him say softly.
"I always do," she replied.
"More so," he added. His touch was helping, but she still felt unreasonably warm. "My Queen isn't getting ill, is she?"
She had to pull her brain away from focusing too much on how his caresses felt against her face to think to answer. "I get warmer when I'm angry," she said. Even though her eyes weren't open, so she couldn't see his face, the question seemed to hang in the air. Why? "I don't do well at deception games, I suppose. It's...uncomfortable having to watch you surrender like that."
"Only a ruse," he said, his voice barely above a whisper now. His finger slid down her full mouth, brushing against her lips and causing them to part. "Won't need to happen again."
She opened her eyes to look up at him again. "Good. I'm a bit tired of games," she admitted. "Now I want full action," she told him, eyes flashing.
"Soon you'll get all the action that you can stand," he told her.
_
The pilot took them straight to New York, to Stark Tower. This was where they had the proper energy needed to open the portal, and it was just a fun idea to use Stark's own place against him. She had wanted to find some place to sleep, as she knew that tomorrow would be their big day, but Loki seemed to have other plans, taking her by the arm and pulling her into one of the rooms that Stark seemed to have stored art work that hadn't been hung up yet.
"What are we doing here?" she asked, trying to keep a whine out of her voice. After spending so long so tense she wanted to crash into a bed and get some rest.
"I want to show you something." She wondered how many women he had turned to complete butter with that voice in the past. She felt like completely melting and sinking to the floor.
"You've taken me into a room full of art. Desperately interesting," she rumbled. She worried that he might be agitated with her snark, but his look showed that he was just amused.
"No...I want to show you how to do something," he corrected her, moving behind her as he pointed her toward the stacks of art on the floor. "You have the potential for magic. I can sense it inside of you. I also know that you can sense magic around you." She hadn't realized that he had noticed that, but he seemed to notice everything about her. "I think we can use that heat inside of you to your advantage."
His hands slid down her arms, pushing out her hands directly in front of her chest and clasping them together, palms facing out. "Repeat after me," he said huskily in her ear. Anger wasn't the only reason that her temperature went up, and with him pressed up against her and holding her like this, right now it was boiling. He said foreign words in her ear, a language that she wasn't familiar with, so she could only assume that it came from Asgard, although she really had no clue. She repeated the words slowly after him, and, when she said the third and final word, blue flames shot out of her hands, igniting the paintings in front of her.
Her eyes light up at the flames and she laughed, cackling madly as the fire licked up the paintings. Before she could truly relish, though, the sprinkler system above them clicked on, dousing the paintings, her, and Loki in a torrent of water.
Another giggle bubbled forth as she turned around and faced him, realizing that he was practically cradling her in his arms. She turned her head up to the torrent of water and shut her eyes, enjoying the cooling spray for a moment. When she looked back at Loki, she saw a look on his face she didn't quite recognize...pride maybe? "Can I assume that was correct?" she asked him.
"Quite," he said with a nod. "Most are not able to produce results like that on their first try."
A blush crept up on her already heated cheeks. Expelling that fire had seemingly done nothing for the temperature that was boiling inside of her. Even the water, which was going down to a trickle, wasn't doing much. "Only because I had you here to help me," she said back to him. "And the fact that I'm a fucking *furnace*," she grumbled, still resisting the urge to tear her clothing off simply to get some relief. Loki hadn't even given her the chance to change her clothes when they got here, although she wasn't regretting what they did. Now the suit was clinging to her even more, if such a thing were possible.
"Don't speak of that as if it were a bad thing," he said to her, leaning in and nuzzling against her neck in a way that made her dip her head back. "You're so wonderfully heated." What he was doing to her was not helping in the slightest. She could feel his fingers tangling in her hair as he kept himself nestled in her neck. She let out a moan, desperately enjoying the feel of him against her.
When she felt him still, she whined, only to realize that they were no longer alone. She sat up and stepped back from him, starring at the door. One of their mind controlled agents was standing in the doorway. "We heard the sprinklers come on and wanted to check to see if everything was alright."
With a growl, Phoenix thrust her hands out in front of her and repeated the chant that Loki had just taught her, setting the man aflame. "Put out that fire," she snarled at the man on fire. She stepped over the flaming man as others rushed to put him out, now ready to go to her room and take a real shower: a freezing COLD shower.
"Remind me not to anger you," Loki remarked as she walked away. "Or I'm going to regret teaching you to do that."
She looked back on him and smirked. "Oh I'd never do that to you, my King."
As soon as she was out of his direct sight, she had ran across the building, needing to find some private quarters for herself that including a shower. Once she did and was satisfied that she was alone, she unzipped the outfit that she was wearing and tore it off, kicking it away. Walking into the bathroom adjoined to her room, she couldn't help but admire it for a second as she treaded toward the shower. Stark had taste, she had to give him that.
She twisted the knob to the shower, only turning on the cold faucet and stepping inside, shutting the glass door behind herself and shuddering when she felt the frigid spray hit her face and body. Her body was screaming to be touched, but what she truly needed right now was to calm down. When she felt suitably washed and cooled to a normal temperature for her, she shut the faucet off, opening up the glass doors to get out and get a towel, only coming face to face with Loki.
She shrieked in surprise, automatically taking a step back and clutching at her heart. "A knock would have been appreciated," she told him, a laugh escaping her lips.
"Towel?" Loki asked, holding up a fluffy white towel for her to grab.
It was then that she remembered she was nude.
Covering herself with her arms would be worthless at this point, as he had gotten more than an eyeful (and they were technically betrothed). She just took the towel from him with a grateful nod and wrapped it around her body, wringing the water out of her hair before stepping out of the shower. So much for cooling off.
She walked back into the bedroom, feeling him follow her and she felt the need to figure out something to say. "Is there anything I can do for you?" she asked him.
His hand brushed up her arm and she felt the water immediately dry from her skin and hair. That was certainly a neat and useful trick. "I wish to sleep next to you tonight," he said, his hand reaching up and tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. "Spend the night lying next to my Queen before our glorious battle tomorrow."
She smiled. She walked toward the bed, pulling back the blanket and sheet and dropping her towel before sliding into the bed. Taking that as the invitation that it was, she watched him with outward calm (although not inward) as he stripped out of his leather armor, soon as naked as she was, and slid into the bed next to her. She hadn't known what his intentions exactly were, but, when he pulled her down and closer in the bed, she realized that he'd actually meant sleep. Damn.
He seemed to read her mind again and chuckled. "After tomorrow's battle, we celebrate," he purred, lips pressed against her head as his arms tightened around her. She heard him mumbling something as his thumb pressed against her temple. "Tonight we need sleep." She was out before he finished saying 'sleep.'