Two and a half weeks of nothing but work. Teagan approached her fourth sunset without sleep at the facility. She couldn't remember what sleep felt like. She was long past the point of exhaustion. She ate, of course. Fueled her body with necessary nutrients and near-fatal amounts of coffee. She even stopped for bathroom breaks. But her mind never stopped working, the gears never stopped turning, and she physically could not quit. She wasn't even sure if her body knew what its brain was doing anymore. After the internal warning bells gave up, she continued on like any of the other scientists.

Erik Selvig worked even harder than she. He was there for the "real" operation. He was there to try to open up the cube. Teagan became somewhat mild-mannered when sleep deprived, having no energy to focus on being ornery and stubborn. She got out of his way when he came up with mathematical theories to test. He was a brilliant physicist. She admired him. So when he prattled off mystical fairy tale nonsense, she was somehow eager to listen. Something about Thor and Bifrost and Asgard and a portal. He hardly seemed to believe the words coming out of his own mouth; why did she take them to heart? Secretly, she came up with impossible concepts that would make even the most imaginative science-fiction novelist laugh in her face. Didn't Selvig say once that his friend, Jane Foster, reminded him science-fiction was a precursor to science fact? Teagan wanted to see if her strange insomnolent ideas had any truth to them at all.

That was her thing, wasn't it? She was all about truth. And pissing people off, but that was just on the fun days. Truth. That was a thing she did. Right. She did truth. And coffee. Coffee was definitely truth.

Somewhere above her, Special Agent Clint Barton grumbled to the director over his headset that these scientists were "acting like little kids hyped up on all the psychedelic drugs in the world," and that he "hadn't slept for four days to keep an eye on them". If he was so tired, why didn't he just sleep? Teagan couldn't grasp the concept that he was here to make sure they didn't hurt themselves in exhaustion.

So when she suddenly walked up to the Tesseract, Clint Barton felt what one would call a twinge of panic. Teagan Hill stumbled up to the cube, held out her hand, and grabbed it. Nothing happened inside the facility. Light bulbs didn't explode, sprinkler systems didn't turn on, ominous blue smoke didn't fill the room. It was like Teagan just touched it and finally keeled over to rest.

She was immersed in something much more satisfying than that.

It was almost as if she was whisked away into another place, another time. It would have been nice to believe. A young girl walked up to Teagan in this strange place. She was maybe twelve years old, furs bundled tight under her chin. She had long braids and bright blue eyes and a maturity about her that reminded Teagan of what grandmothers probably were. There was so much blue in Teagan's peripheral vision. She had a hard time deciding if she was under water, or on snow-covered mountains, or in hot blue fire, or in the girl's eyes themselves. It was a weird sensation. Everything was weird. But still, those internal warning bells were silent.

The little girl smiled sadly and turned away from Teagan. The human padded softly after her, feet sluggish. "Who are you?" Teagan tried to ask. She had a difficult time forming the words in her mouth. The little girl must have heard her, because she dropped the furs from her shoulders and stood, arms outstretched, as tendrils of soft blue eased their way out of her heart.

'We are the universe,' many voices whispered in unison. Some were young, some were old, some male and others female. Even the whispers echoed with other whispers of languages known and unknown.

Teagan saw world upon world layer over themselves, mass amounts of life and light flooding her senses. They all flowed through her at once, but it was all so overwhelming that she was helplessly ignorant to what they were or what it meant.

"What are you?" Teagan tried again.

The girl flashed another sad smile and the brightness faded into shades of night, dark and comforting and remote. Stars glittered above their heads, and below their feet, and inside them, too. 'I am the first,' came just one voice. 'I am the first soul. I am the original.' But the little girl's voice was somehow unsure of itself, as if she couldn't decide if that were really true. 'He calls me Siv.'

And despite everything Teagan disproved over the last decade or so of her life, she was more than willing to believe her. It didn't make sense, and yet, it did. She had so many questions to ask this original soul, but nothing was brave enough to come front and center. The girl knew exactly what she wanted to hear, and took the initiative. The stars came together into one point of light, aiding the girl in explaining her story.

'From deep inside the heart of the very first star came what you call the Tesseract. The Tesseract is pure energy, a life force. The life force of everything in every world in every realm. I was the very first soul it created. When my first vessel died, I found millions upon millions of things to live in, but there was only one of me. So I split myself. And when there were two of me, and our vessels died, we split again into four. And when those vessels died, we split again into eight. But our souls became heavy over time and our vessels could not handle so many memories. We returned to the cube every few lives to empty our burdens, then sought our next vessels. I, the original, was away for so long, split so many times, that it was hard to tell which of me was the true me. In the end, it did not matter; I would come back to empty my memories and keep going.

'I have the most contact with the Tesseract. It was lost for a time, long ago, but when it resurfaced, we established the most direct link. We know everything that has happened since the dawn of life, and can tell you everything that will happen until the end.'

The stars came together and extinguished themselves into total darkness. Teagan flinched.

'That's not to say it's set in stone,' the girl continued. The stars came back one by one, slowly. 'Sometimes a soul will become attached to its vessel and search long and hard for another just like it. Sometimes a soul just wants to wander and observe from outside a vessel. But rarely does a soul act outside what's been predicted. There are more than ten trillion souls inhabiting vessels today. We have come to learn that many interactions are foreseeable, and thus, we can 'see the future'. Rarely does a soul act outside expectations. There is one in particular that I am attached to. I'm trying to stop the war he's put in motion. It was expected that it would happen, but not like this. This was not how it was supposed to happen. Even from his childhood, I knew things were wrong. And I ruined him. My involvement destroyed his sense of self. He is a villain because I thought him a hero. A strange hero, but a hero all the same. In the timeline where my vessel – the body my image now holds – was supposed to be eaten by a wolf, he saved me. And when that vessel died, he continued to look for me. I was foolish. Billions of years should have taught me to stay away, I would only hurt the timeline. But I was thoughtless and sought adventure; I messed up. There will be a war. A great war that will crush all things. The Tesseract will have to start over. Niflheim and Jotunheim are already devoid of life. Soon, Svartalfheim will follow. I must try to stop it. No, not try. I will stop it. Like you will prove the truth.'

"What can I do to help?" Teagan blurted out. Self-preservation was in her nature, but not prevention of war.

The girl smiled sadly yet again. 'My actions have altered even your soul. You would not be offering assistance to me if I had not been close to Loki.'

Teagan opened her mouth to say something, anything, but no words escaped her. In the time where they were most needed, she could not spin them up in an argument against the original soul.

'Sleep now. Your vessel needs it. In a few hours, he will come through the portal. He will be possessed by something that was once of the Tesseract. Prepare yourselves, because he is not one easily stopped.'

And when Teagan awoke four hours later in the hospital ward of the facility, all she could do was gape up at her superiors. She had no words to explain what she had seen. She doubted they would even believe her. When she was able to stand without assistance, the Tesseract swelled with energy. They had no time for further interrogations. Teagan was escorted quickly out of the facility in the first helicopter available – out of range of a potential explosion. Clint Barton had no trouble covering the fact that it was Teagan who had awoken the cube.

That theory helped dissuade itself when a man in green came through and started killing people.

҉

Suddenly, there was a hand on her shoulder. It was rough and calloused, but it was comforting. Protecting. The man attached to that hand was no less so. Teagan looked up at him, her blue eyes wet with fear as she choked down breath after staggering breath. In less than five minutes, Loki's words had brought her down to childish panic.

"Hill. Hill. Teagan, get ahold of yourself," he murmured firmly, shaking her.

"I'm sorry," she struggled out, heaving great gasps of terror. "I'm sorry, you told me not to, I don't know why I did it, I had to find out if it was true. I'm not imagining things, Coulson, I know that now, I know what happened, I can tell you, there's a war coming, we're not ready for it–"

"Slow down," Coulson said. He urged the frantic woman out of the corner of her lab and to her feet. He had expected she would go down to talk to Loki. When Romanoff reported in that she passed Teagan on her way to interrogation, he left Thor in the company of the director and went to her. He hadn't expected to see her as a crumpled mess. She was still just a scared, lonely little kid on the inside. "Tell me what you know. What happened? What happened at the facility?"

"I touched the cube," Teagan whimpered. "It's a living creature. Coulson, it's everything. If there was ever a god, the Tesseract is it. There's a little girl inside, she said he called her Siv. Something about – something about Loki naming her when he was little, maybe? No that's wrong, I don't know, it was hard to focus, a lot of things were happening – She said she's trying to stop the war he started. Coulson, we're all going to die. She said Niflheim and Jotunheim are already dead. I'm pretty sure those are realms in Norse myth. She said Svartalfheim was next. I don't know what that means. It's bigger than us."

Coulson examined her grimly. Whatever she was rattling off, she believed it. Three thousand percent. And Teagan was never one to believe things unless she could prove it. "Give me the facts, Teagan. Tell it to me straight. This isn't like you. You don't go on whims. Just because a cube with a conscience made contact, you don't up and believe it's a god. You don't even believe Thor is a god. Do you?"

Teagan sniffed.

"Do you?" Coulson repeated. Trying to talk sense into her was harder than he imagined.

Teagan lowered her head, shaking the tears out of her eyelashes.

There was a quick knock at the doorframe as Maria Hill entered the lab, breaking up the tense atmosphere. "Sir, we've got a situation," Maria muttered urgently. She raised an eyebrow in surprise at Teagan's disposition, but said nothing to her.

Coulson patted Teagan's shoulder and she drifted off to the sink to wash her face. "What's going on?" he asked.

Hill swallowed. "Director Fury, Romanoff, Rogers, Stark, Banner, and Thor are all gathered in Lab 4. Stark hacked into the mainframe. Rogers broke into the cargo hold. They found out about –" she locked her jaw and shot a grim glance at Teagan "– Phase Two."

"What's Phase Two?" Teagan questioned through her towel.

Coulson and Hill looked at each other. "You don't have clearance for that knowledge," Hill answered.

"Phase Two means S.H.I.E.L.D. is building weapons to protect against other-worldly threats," Coulson explained.

Teagan let out something of a laugh. Her expression did not match the sound she made. "What, we're part of the war, too?" she whispered. Coulson regrettably knew what she meant. He made no attempt to deny it.

Hill turned away for a brief moment, finger to her left ear. "Banner has Loki's weapon," she breathed. Coulson clicked his tongue in dismay and drew the gun from under his blazer. Hill held a finger up to him. "He's put it down, they've found the Tesseract."

Coulson immediately pulled up a holo-monitor and hitched a ride on Banner's screen. The Hills went to his side, examining the map. The three paled in dismay. "Stay here!" Coulson demanded, and he and Maria darted to the cabin. Teagan was left by herself, clinging to anything she could reach as the ship was shaken by an explosion.

҉

"Hill!" Fury grunted through his earpiece.

"External detonation!" she replied immediately, sliding in front of the ship's center controls. "Number three engine is down. We've been hit." She let go of her earpiece. "Can we get it running?" she asked any of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that scurried around her.

"Fire in engine three!" one replied, a good distance away.

"Talk to me," she said, jogging down to him.

"Turbine looks mostly intact, but it's impossible to get out there and make repairs while we're in the air."

"If we lose one more engine, we won't be," Hill muttered. She pressed her finger to her earpiece. "Somebody's got to get outside and patch that engine."

"Stark, you copy that?" Fury called into his earpiece.

"I'm on it," Stark replied.

"Coulson, initiate defensive lockdown position in the detention section then get to the armory," Fury ordered.

Coulson clenched his jaw, grinding his molars. It was a terrible habit of his, brought on by sudden stress. He would do as ordered, but Teagan resided in Lab 9. Lab 9 rested just inside the detention section, which meant she would be stuck down there if Loki got out of his cage and started wrecking the place. She would be dead in a matter of seconds. Phil Coulson, for the first time in a long time, had difficulty complying with his orders.

҉

From his cell, Loki could feel the mortals' fear like a refreshing breeze throughout the ship. The undercarriage shook viciously with the explosion in engine three. It was, after all, very close to where he resided. Everything was going more or less according to plan. The explosion was a signal to the King that his marksman had arrived. The easily-captured Aesir was no longer to play nice with these pathetic creatures. But what was more pleasing than either of those things was the roar of a beast that echoed through the ribs of the undercarriage.

The well-placed explosive caused the floor of Lab 4 to give way, and drop Banner and Romanoff into the loading deck. Romanoff was at the mercy of the doctor as he exploded into his monstrous self. Much to Loki's amusement, there would be no such thing as mercy. Suddenly, the King felt his center of gravity shift steeply to his right side. The marksman had taken down another engine. A slight vertigo tightened his stomach as the ship lost altitude. As chaos consumed the helicarrier, the marksman came down the air coolant shaft. He dropped lightly on his feet, bow in hand.

"What of Thor?" Loki asked.

Barton looked at the cell's control panel for a brief moment. "He was occupying Banner, but not anymore. The Hulk's been thrown out of the sky. Thor will come down to find you soon. Do you need any help, sir? Or can you get out of your birdcage on your own?"

Loki bared his teeth in a low growl, walking through the glass as if it were never even there. "I can," he snarled.

Barton was silent for a moment. "Orders, sir?"

Loki grinned. "Go find your insect, and crush her."

Barton nodded and headed toward the main door. "Spiders are arachnids, sir, not insects," he mentioned casually, and disappeared.

A few tense moments allowed Loki to prepare his escape. Just as Thor opened the cell room door, Loki appeared to be breaking out. "No!" Thor roared, racing to tackle his haunted brother. Loki braced for impact. It was the golden haired prince who should have done so; Thor skidded face first across the cell of the cage floor, door sealing behind him. The Loki seen escaping was no more than a doppelgänger. A trick.

Loki stood in front of the cell, looking on plainly. "Are you ever not going to fall for that?" he questioned.

Thor raised Mjølnir, striking the glass with an angry blow. The cage shuddered and the locks holding it in place loosened dangerously. A web-like crack scored the once pristine surface. Loki grinned.

'The brash prince can never be gentle look how he damages everything he touches he is fueled by petty anger he does not deserve a thing except death even then he would fight it drop him from this height crush him he'll certainly be broken enough to not get back up he cannot cast healing magic he has no stones he is helpless he will die slowly and painfully just like you want open the doors let the fool be killed in his favorite place let Thor die in Midgard if he is so fond of it– '

"The humans think us immortal," Loki chuckled, easing toward the control panel. "Should we test that?"

"Move away, please," came the voice of a tired and balding man. He wielded a strange weapon, unlike anything Loki knew to be Midgardian. It was large and unshapely. Bulky. Uncomfortable, like all other human creations. Loki eyed the weapon skeptically. He backed away slowly. The human stepped forward, unfazed to be in the presence of not one but two gods. "You like this?" he said, adjusting the weapon in his grip. "We started working on the prototype after you sent the Destroyer. Even I don't know what it does."

Loki continued to back away, palms up, lengthening the distance the human so cockily closed.

The balding human powered up the machine. The barrel opened and flared with sudden intense heat. "Do you want to find out?"

But he never had the chance to say another word. Loki held the staff once again in his palms, and shoved it through the back of the human's ribs.

"NO!" Thor screamed in anguish.

The human fell against the wall, blood streaked from his descent. He gasped and sputtered as warm red gushed from his lips. Loki stepped over him as one would step over a floor rug. Thor hounded Loki with a dark glare, feeling his anger surge within him. Loki smiled unapologetically. He motioned to the bloody spear in his hand. It was then Thor realized that this was not Loki he saw, but the staff itself possessing the carcass of what was once his brother. Loki went to the control panel once more, gave Thor one final glance, and pushed the button that sent him down through the clouds.

The silence was somehow unbefitting. Loki was dissatisfied with Thor for not having let out a roar of anger or fear from the drop. The King sighed tersely and flipped closed the air lock switch, turned, walked away. He didn't get very far.

"You're going to lose," the human gurgled softly.

Loki was slightly impressed the man was still alive. Its words, however, irked him. "Am I?"

"It's in your nature." The lights in his eyes were quickly dimming.

"Hmm," Loki mused, disagreeing. "Your heroes are scattered. Your floating fortress falls from the sky. Where is my disadvantage?"

"You lack conviction," Coulson answered.

Loki felt his temper being tried. "I don't think I'm– "

But he didn't get to finish his sentence, as the human had just enough strength to pull the trigger on his gun. Loki was sent flying by a ferocious blast of pure hot fire. He stood, unscathed from the impact, though thoroughly annoyed now. "You pathetic wastes of air will all fall to me in a matter of hours. I will be your new King. And you cannot stop me. I will show you conviction. I will show you what truly lies in my nature."

And with that, Loki fled to the tarmac, where he boarded a quinjet and was flown to someplace he knew they would find him again.

Tony Stark finally revived engine three, stabilizing the descending helicarrier. Nick Fury came to Coulson's side as quickly as he could.

"Sorry, boss," Coulson struggled out. "The god rabbited."

"Just stay awake," Fury ordered, moving the Destroyer model from Coulson's lap. "Eyes on me."

Coulson let out a little sigh. "No, I'm clocking out here."

"Not an option."

"It's okay, boss," Coulson whispered. "This was never gonna work if they didn't have something to. . ."

Fury held his gaze firm, waiting for Coulson to finish his sentence. He never did. A team of nurses from the hospital ward came rushing to Coulson's side. Fury stepped back to allow them room in the tight corridor.

Fury spoke into his earpiece. "Agent Coulson is down."

"A medical team is on its way to your location," an agent replied.

"They're here," Fury responded. "They called it."

Teagan, locked away in Lab 9, did not receive word until Maria came to fetch her twenty minutes after Coulson's passing. The first thing Little Hill did was make herself a cup of coffee. After that, she cried.

23:25

6.4.14