"Look, here, I'm sorry, it's not like I'm the one who decided to chop all her hair off. Take it. Take it, it's contaminating me with her residual hatred for all humanity." Stark offered the ponytail to Coulson for the sixth time.
Coulson took the hair and dropped it in a wastebasket in a passing office. "How did I know it was going to be you?" he sighed, giving Stark a quiet shake of his head. He was annoyed, but it was already done and over with. Besides, it was just hair. It would grow back. Teagan's decision was her own. He just wished she didn't have to jump to extremes so suddenly. He also wished Stark could learn to shut his mouth occasionally.
"Let me make it up to you somehow. Admit it, she's like your weird adopted daughter. And what do daughters need? Mothers. What about that cellist?"
"Stark, please," Coulson warned.
Stark kept the agent's lengthening stride easily. They neared the helicarrier's cabin.
"I think it's about the mechanics. Iridium. What do they need the iridium for?" came Banner's voice.
"It's a stabilizing agent," Stark answered as he and Coulson entered the room. He lowered his voice. "I'm just saying, pick a weekend, I'll fly you to Portland. Keep love alive."
Coulson pointed to a door beside them, muttering "That's not necessary." He ducked into the closed hallway to gather a few reports.
Stark approached the ragtag group before him. Loki was right – they were a bunch of lost creatures, weren't they? "It means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D." Thor straightened upon seeing Stark's entry. "No hard feelings, Point Break," Stark assured, giving the Aesir's arm a friendly slap. "You've got a mean swing. Also, it means the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants." He passed Agent Hill on his way to the center controls of the helicarrier. She rolled her eyes. "Raise the mizzenmast! Jib the topsails!" Stark called out. He earned several annoyed glances from the agents below him. "That man is playing Galaga!" he announced, pointing out the poor chap. "Thought we wouldn't notice, but we did." Stark covered one eye, staring at the controls again. "How does Fury even see these?"
Hill could easily understand why Stark got on Little Hill's nerves. This man had the attention span of a dog, and was just as obnoxious. "He turns," she responded tersely.
"Sounds exhausting," Stark muttered. He started to play with the controls. "The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. The only major component he still needs is a power source of high-energy density. Something to kick-start the cube."
"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Hill asked, arms folded over her chest.
Stark had to do a double-take to make sure he wasn't seeing his favorite young lab rat. "Last night," he smirked. "The packet. Selvig's notes. The extraction theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?" He purposely left out Teagan's involvement. Stark had done a little more research of his own – clean energy wasn't the only thing she was on the team for. He only had to wait a few hours to find out exactly what flavor of sin she served.
"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Rogers inquired.
Banner paced behind the circular desk, shoulders hunched in on himself. "He would have to heat the cube to 120 million Kelvin just to break through the coulomb barrier."
"Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect," Stark smiled. Again, leaving out Teagan's interference. Selvig was the one doing all the mathematic work, anyway.
"Well, if he could do that, he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet," Banner chuckled.
"Finally, someone who speaks English," Stark grinned, making his way around the desk to shake Banner's hand.
"Is that what just happened?" Rogers asked, looking around for confirmation.
"It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. Your work on antielectron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."
Banner nodded, pursing his lips. "Thanks," he replied.
"Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube," Fury announced, entering the cabin. "I was hoping you might join him."
Stark and Banner looked at each other, shrugging.
"I would start with that stick of his," Rogers suggested. "It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon."
"I don't know about that, but it is powered by the cube. And I would like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys," Fury growled.
"Monkeys?" Thor spoke up from the sidelines. "I do not understand."
"I do," Rogers piped up, thankful to at least recognize one pop culture mention. "I understood that reference."
From behind the captain, Tony Stark rolled his eyes. "Shall we play, Doctor?"
"This way, sir," Banner said quietly, ushering his partner down the hall.
Night had long fallen over the helicarrier and its cargo. From the heart of the airship, Banner and Stark ran test after test on their prize – the staff appropriated from the thief. They wore no gloves, but were exceedingly careful not to touch the glowing rod. Even from its pedestal, it seemed harmful. Caustic. Deathly. They wondered what such a thing was capable of in the wrong hands. As if Loki's hands were any cleaner than their own. They were all enemies to someone.
Banner waved a Geiger counter across the blue gem. "The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports of the Tesseract. But it's going to take weeks to process."
"If we bypass their mainframe and direct route to the Homer cluster, we can clock this in at about 600 teraflops," Stark shrugged, fiddling with the lab's remote control panel.
Banner chuckled to himself. "All I brought was a toothbrush."
"You know, you should come by Stark Tower sometime," Stark suggested, nearing the doctor. "Top ten floors, all R&D, you'd love it, it's Candy Land."
Banner respectfully declined, remembering the last time he visited New York. An unpleasant flavor rose in his throat. Stark shook his head, taking no offense in the rejection. He suddenly jabbed Banner in the side with an electrical rod, examining for any changes. He was pleased to find the doctor unaffected, though a bit shocked. Captain Rogers, however, was not so unbothered.
"Is everything a joke to you?" he growled.
"Funny things," Stark pointed out.
"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny. No offense, Doc," Rogers added quickly.
Stark held his palms up. Banner shook his head. "It's alright, I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things."
"You're tip-toeing big man. You need to strut," Stark said.
"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark." Captain Rogers was thoroughly done with this man's idea of teamwork.
"You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us in? Why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."
Rogers tightened his jaw. "You think Fury's hiding something?"
"He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets." He popped a blueberry in his mouth from a bag he seemingly magicked out of nowhere. "It's bugging him, too, isn't it?"
Banner looked up, suddenly drawn, once again, into a discussion he wanted no part of. "I just want to finish my work here, and –"
"Doctor," Rogers insisted.
Banner shot a guilty glance between the two, taking off his glasses. "'A warm light for all mankind.' Loki's jab at Fury about the cube."
"I heard it," Rogers nodded.
Banner glanced at Stark. "Well, I think that was meant for you." Stark offered him the bag of blueberries, which he shrugged and accepted a handful of. "Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news."
"Stark Tower?" Rogers asked. "That big ugly building in New York?"
Stark shot him a look.
"It's powered by an arc reactor, a self-sustaining energy source," Banner explained. "That building will run itself for, what, a year?"
Stark shrugged. "It's just the prototype. I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now. That's what he's getting at."
"So, why didn't S.H.I.E.L.D. bring him in on the Tesseract project? What are they doing in the energy business in the first place?" Banner asked.
Teagan watched from outside the lab. The three men stood around the staff. It was going to be impossible to intrude without making them suspicious. Stark and Banner edged dangerously close to something she was sure she didn't want hanging over her head. That information was classified and even she didn't know what S.H.I.E.L.D. was really after, despite her involvement. She could only imagine what Selvig knew, potentially still in Loki's control. "Compartmentalization," Director Fury told her once. Every agent had a different mission. And what was hers? What would she be recognized for, after all of this? This was what three years of constant research led to.
The cube wasn't just an energy source. The first time she touched it with her bare hands back in the facility, she knew the truth. She didn't know how she knew, she just did. And that's what bothered her the most. The fact that she could not even begin to describe why or how or prove what she knew. Others tried to touch the cube. They saw nothing, or refused to believe. So why couldn't she? She refused to believe a lot of things. She had seen a lot of strange and seemingly miraculous events while on her trek through the global Parthenon of deities. There were even times where she had sufficient data to accept a god or two. And still, she found a way to break it. There was knowledge inside of her that S.H.I.E.L.D. wanted for their own. Teagan boarded the ship not because she wanted to continue her research, but because she needed to get the Tesseract back. She knew things no one else could have even guessed at.
Teagan swallowed, looking down at her pocket. Coulson no doubt watched her every move, despite letting her roam free. He may have been kind to her, but they were all spies here. Everyone but her and the misfit toys they dragged in to clean up their mess. It was a shame that she trusted him so much. His mission was probably to make sure she didn't walk out with their information.
"I think Loki's trying to wind us up."
Teagan's attention was drawn back to their conversation.
"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."
Teagan shook her head. Loki already started the war. They were all too blind and too late to stop it. And if there was anyone she could trust to tell her the truth, it was the one who lied the most. She ignored the buzzing in her pocket and darted down the hall.
҉
Loki stood in the center of his cage. From here, he could feel each of those fragile human souls scurrying through the halls. Each was more clouded than the last. They all kept terrible secrets inside of themselves. They all shared a similar dark past. They all worked for a mendacious organization on the belief that they were doing good deeds for the world. So much chaos brewed just under the surface of S.H.I.E.L.D.; Loki could see it plainly. He delighted to find these pitiful creatures tricked themselves so many times that even they did not know which words they spoke were truth or false. Tendrils of shadows gripped the entire ship. They knew not what they really were. How much fun would it be to rip off the veil and show them all the truth? The tendrils, like a monster from the deep, would crush them all. Ah, what a lovely rain would fall from the clouds, of blood, and fire, and destruction.
He grinned.
One soul, troubled yet not as filthy as its mates, drew near. It paused where the lights dimmed and the floor sloped downward. Tentatively, it eased down the hall.
"You must think me a fool if I do not know what you come here seeking," he voiced.
The soul stopped.
Loki turned to face the hallway. It stood at the far end, draped in something like a white sheet. A lab coat, perhaps, like his servants wore in Italy. Its figure was slight, stiff, suspecting. There was a coldness about her stance that pleased him. She pretended for her own sake that she feared him not, though the attitude itself denied her bravery.
"What do you think I want?" she tested. She decided she was comfortable enough right where she stood – very far away from him. She reached up to pull on her ponytail, only to rest her hand on the back of her neck, forgetting it was no longer there.
Loki flashed her a dark smile. "You want to know the secret. You want to know what the truth is. In your few days in the facility with the cube, you found something. You were shown something. You saw its heart. You saw the entire universe. And do you want to know what your precious companions are going to do with that power? Once they discover how to crack it open? They are going to use it to build weapons of mass destruction, unlike anything you have ever seen on this tiring planet. They are going to neutralize foreign threats that do not yet exist. They are going to control the realm with nothing more than fear. It will be entirely your fault, little one."
She took a step back. How did he know these things? Did Barton tell him? Was he lying? How did he know what she saw? She swallowed and pushed herself toward him. His probing helped her understand just what she had witnessed. "I did. I saw everything. I saw things people would kill to know. They've been killing for centuries on little less than a guess."
"And does it not terrify you? To know that your entire existence has been a lie?"
"It was never a lie for me. Not if I didn't believe in anything to begin with."
"Ah, I see. You are the martyr of your people, the one who does not shy from what others only wonder about. You will let yourself be the one they hate for the sake of furthering humanity, will you not? You, depraved of praise and respect, seek to destroy yourself to prove a simple truth."
"What about you?" Her voice trembled, but she spoke with fire. "I learned about you, I think. Your girlfriend didn't tell me everything, but she told me a lot. She told me she's trying to clean up the mess you made. Something about you starting a war."
Loki said nothing, only narrowed his eyes.
The mortal was brave enough to straighten her back and stand face to face with him. "She called herself Siv. She said she's trying to put things back the way they were, but she can't do that can she? Not with you in the way. Do you even know what you've done?"
'She puts the blame on you it was all her fault she was the one who led you to ruin she admits she was the one who ruined you the king will never be the same she broke you once she'll do it again destroy her destroy the cube destroy all who stand in your way it is not a war it is a new beginning it is a fresh start you need no fixing it is the universe that needs to be fixed you are the only ruler this place shall ever need you will live forever you will guide them all they will worship you she will stop you she is trying to prevent your rule she– '
"I KNOW DAMN WELL WHAT I HAVE DONE, FILTH. I AM NOT SOME MISCREANT CHILD THAT NEEDS TO BE REPRIMANDED. SHE TRUSTS YOU, DOES SHE? SHE WILL WHISPER ALL OF HER SWEET TRUTHS INTO YOUR EAR? I WILL TEAR DOWN EVERY WALL YOU HAVE EVER BUILT AROUND YOURSELF. I WILL DESTROY YOU, AND THEN I WILL KILL YOU. AND WHAT CAN SHE DO BUT WATCH? SHE WILL NOT STOP ME. YOU MAY THINK HER YOUR SAVIOR. I WILL SHOW YOU SHE WILL STAND BY AND LET ME BURN IT ALL TO THE GROUND. YOU ARE NOTHING, HUMAN. NOTHING. NOT EVEN WORTHY OF ENSLAVEMENT. GET OUT OF MY SIGHT. GO!"
She stumbled back, clinging to the wall for support. Tears welled in her wide blue eyes, a gasp caught somewhere between her tongue and her lips. His words did not frighten her as much as his sudden lividness. The anger exploded out of him like wildfire, and being swept up in it surprised her. She could see his eyes flicker between sickening blue and cloudy green. There was more than hatred inside of him, there was pain and possibly fear. What did he fear? What was there to be afraid of from the cube, that only tried to repair the damage it did to him? These questions didn't matter to her so much as vacating the premises as quickly as possible. She stumbled out of the room, not giving him a second glance as she silenced the sobs that clenched her throat.
What Loki took from the short-lived conversation was not necessarily true. The woman in the lab coat said the Tesseract told her things. That it called itself Siv. But if Siv's soul returned to the Tesseract, its memories of previous lives would have been erased, recycled, and the soul would have been washed clean to start anew. In his own blindness, in the torrent of his troubled mind, Loki found himself unable to see the truth.
He paced fervently across the small, clean cell.
And then he met Natasha.
17:02
4.4.14