So it goes with saying that only things I own with any connection to MARVEL I bought on Ebay or Etsy. MARVEL COMICS & MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE are their own creatures and I have nothing to do with either of them aside from the fact I enjoy reading or watching them, and am grateful for the ability to play in their world. I claim nothing, and I receive nothing for this, expect the pleasure of putting something out into the world.
You can also find this story on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN under the same title and pen name along with a place to post suggestions.
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DAY THREE
CHAPTER FORTY FIVE
THURSDAY, MAY 3RD 2012
0708 HOURS
SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER
LOCATION UNKNOWN
LOKI
I told her a normal human being could not feel the energy of the Tesseract, but standing above the unconscious form of the man she holds so dear I can not help but smirk as I muse how that is not entirely true. I am sure Agent Barton felt it quite keenly as it drove him out and assumed control of his own limbs.
After I left that room, agreeing to provide her with what she wanted, no matter my personal distaste of the idea, I immediately started searching for the mortal I allowed the honor of her presence. It quickly became a longer task then I thought it would be, much to my annoyance. When a second scan of the faces in the main chamber still did not reveal his I resorted to stopping one of the gun wielding masses and asking.
Fortunately for the mortal, whether he realized it or not, he knew where the man I was looking for had disappeared to. It seems he decided to check on his own healer, the man I put in charge of watching over Barton and Dr. Selvig, keeping them sedated until their vital signs returned to something of a normal state.
I do admit that giving in to that request of her's has set us back a little, with the scientist unconscious the project is being overseen by someone less knowledgeable for now, but the prospect of what humoring her will gain me makes that annoyance much more tolerable.
After I found him walking out of the room, his steps rolling back a little as he noticed the intensity of my approach, a nervous reaction which I can not help but enjoy. I ordered him to find her a bottle of what they pass off as alcohol. The request was just as surprising to him as it had been to me, and I could see his instinct to question it, after all even though I am making it I view it as an act very out of character for me, but I also see him read my expression and think better of questioning me.
His ability to think once again proving that the responsibility I gave him was not misplaced.
I did not waste any time bothering to watch him do as he was told, the sight of him moving out of the corner of my eye as I turned and walked away was sufficient enough proof that he was going to do just that. I had other priorities on my mind now.
While I was away from her I intended to take advantage of the time and see how the construction of the portal apparatus was progressing. I still had a deadline to meet, and while her presence provided me with an unexpected advantage, one I intended to take as much time as necessary to achieve, I still can not delay things too much. Thano's may not truly care about the fate of Midgard one way or another, but even his patience has its limits. My pride my not like to admit it, but I fear the consequences of testing those limits.
It turned out for the best that I did. The man I put in charge, despite his assurance he held a Masters in Astrophysics, was apparently still less knowledgeable than the a Doctor in it. The classifications mortals gave to their education made little sense to me, and after I resisted my desire to just kill the man for his stupidity and correct his mistakes I found myself back in the medical ward.
I intended to give her time for those revelations to start settling themselves securely in her conscious before I burdened her with more. Awakening her is a delicate process, and must be handled with care. It give me an opportunity to do something I have yet to accomplish. Voicing my gratitude.
"Hello Agent Barton." The glowing shift beneath his eyelids is all the answer I need as I nudge the stool closer, ignoring the shrill way the relic cries. The way mortal objects decay so quickly has always been a bit of confusing thing to me. You would think as short as their lives are they would find a way to make their things last longer, instead they spend so much time replacing them.
"You know..." I start to admit as I lower myself to a sitting position, taking the time to adjust the tail of my coat to hang to the floor. "The gratitude of a God is very rare gift. You should be honored that I am giving to you. Not that you are smart enough to be of course."
The eyes shift once more behind the eyelids, this time with what looks like more intensity, which makes me smirk all the more. I know he can hear me in there, an awake consciousness, trapped behind a parasitic one and sealed in a sedated shell of sinew and bone. I am glad he can, let his 'heart' torture him until his usefulness is through.
"I do appreciate how well you took care of her for me." A sound steals away my attention for a moment as one of the machines chime out an irritating note, getting the attention of the doctor who quickly shuts it off and replaces its cause; an empty bag, with one full of liquid. "All of S.H.I.E.L.D's efforts to keep her in the dark have worked marvelously in my favor."
It is not the only thing that has proven beneficial to my plans. They sent this man, their finest assassin to that base in the desert because they noticed the doctor's behavior seemed strange of late, though they never did realize that the cause of it was me. Influencing his thoughts to make my plans progress. If he hadn't arrived, I would have never been able to get her there as well. He looked at the doctor with a suspicious eye, but despite that, when the Astrophysicist suggested that an Asgardian artifact might respond to an Asgardian, Agent Barton was the one who passed that along to his superiors, along with his recommendation that it was 'worth a shot'.
"You even made sure she was available, waiting to be delivered right into my hands." Any levity in my tone fades in the next sentences replaced by a harsh edge as I lean in closer to hiss them in his ear. "The only hands she belongs in." Capping off some of the anger I lean back and rest my hands in my lap with the tug of a smirk threatening to form. "If I did not have plans that required the skills in your's, I'd take them off. But don't worry, I am a compassionate man, I think I will even let her kill you after she wakes up, I am sure you will both enjoy that very much."
THURSDAY, MAY 3RD 2012
0717 HOURS
SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER
LOCATION UNKNOWN
NORA
I let out a hiss, pulling my arm back with a flinch and curling my hand into a ball as I try to shake away the pain. Then I hold it back out, ignoring the way Duncan's brow and lips are lifted in light amusement. "It stings."
We, well really I, ran into a small problem. The small life form now sleeping again in the curve of my other arm. I didn't want to disturb Jareth but I still had a bleeding arm to deal with, and then Duncan offered to do it for me.
He's been great about it, cleaning my wound without actually touching my skin. Not that he hasn't already on a couple occasions, but the consideration is really nice now. The alcohol in the wet wipes is not.
You'd think I'd be used to pain by now, but the truth is, when you're afraid to get close enough to be touched, it's really hard to also get hurt. If anything you go out of your way to avoid those situations just to avoid the possibility of it being so bad someone else has to help you fix it. I may have been stabbed but being hurt is all very new to me.
Instead of going right back to cleaning off the last bit of blood his hand does something else. The one not holding the bloody napkin wraps itself around the base of the bottle and holds it out so I can wrap my own around the next. "Take a drink lil hen. It's your turn anyway."
I let out a little huff of a smile at that before I do as he tells me, and this time the flinch and shake are in my head as the disgusting liquid once again burns on the way down.
I find it sort of amusing that he has dropped the accent when he is alone with me, but he still calls me that. I find it worrisome too, somewhere in the back of my head, because I know what it is. Its a term of endearment. Its the kind of thing that could get him in trouble if it ran into Loki's possessive nature. I want to tell him that, to tell him to stop so he keeps himself safe, but I know he is smarter then making that mistake in front of Loki.
I need to hang onto some faith that the people around me know what they're doing, because I know I don't have a clue anymore.
Its during these depressing musings I notice that he has finished cleaning up the scratches, wadding the cloth into a ball and setting it on the nightstand for now, before coming face to face with the next problem.
"Just go ahead and touch me." The permission seems to surprise him a little, before it impresses him.
"You sure?" I just nod and turn my wrist a little to give him better access, my actions making up for my silence. Taking a sealed sterile gauze pad out of his pocket he makes quick work of tearing the package open before situating over the scratches. Even though I look away I can feel his fingers rest lightly around my skin as he lets his thumb hold the fabric in place while until he pulls out a roll of tape from his pocket.
Confident the gauze won't shift he releases it just long enough to work the end of that tape off the roll and pulls out a stretch before I feel his fingertips against my skin again, this time smoothing and holding the tape over the gauze and securing it to my skin before he quickly wraps it in a circular motion around my wrist until he runs into the other end and smooths out that edge too.
He doesn't judge me when I take another drink at the end of all that to steady myself, but he does pick up his own bottle and join me in the process.
"So will you tell me about France now?" I ask, because I wanted something to talk about that wasn't connected to this insanity I found myself surrounded in, and I remembered him saying something about France. I love France, as much as someone who has only seen pictures of it can at least.
"Yeah, I can tell you." He says with a mixture of a amused huff and a sigh. "But I was there on contract, not a vacation. It wasn't a sightseeing venture lil hen, and it didn't end well."
I sort of remember him saying that too. He said something about almost losing an eye over there, which at first doesn't make sense because he clearly has both of them, and neither are a prosthetic because they both blink and move. Then I remember correctly he didn't actually say anything about losing the eyes, but almost losing sight in one of them.
"What happened?" I ask, expecting the tale he tells me to be at the very least interesting.
"Somebody ran their train into mine." I wasn't exactly expecting that interesting though.
THURSDAY, MAY 3RD 2012
0721 HOURS
SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER
LOCATION UNKNOWN
DUNCAN
The concerns touching, and I do appreciate it, but at the same time the implant that I have no intention of telling her about has been bolted into my skull for almost six years now. It's all old news to me, and I'm used to this reaction, even if I only received it from a chosen few. It's not exactly dinner table conversation.
But because I told her that much that much I'm obligated to tell her more, I just need to censor the story a little. It's a good thing this machine in my head has no audio capabilities, if it did I would be on the receiving end of a hellish headache right now. That bald Honduran is a loyal bastard, but he is loyal to my father not me, which is where the bastard part comes in.
"It was a collection assignment. We had this weapons procurer by the name of Schmidt." I pause for a second to smirk at her reaction, she looks like she just smelled something disgusting, and having met the guy myself I can't say she is far off.
"Yeah I know, it's a terrible name, as bad as Adolf." Hydra may have been a secret organization back in WWII, but nowadays kids learn about it in elementary history class. The names Johann or Schmidt carry just as much bad karma as Adolf or Hitler. Nobody wants to be named after the people responsible for a genocide.
"I don't think his parents liked him much either cause they named him Guenter." Not that he shared that view. The guy was always too proud of himself when he had no reason to be. He was short, not very strong, unless you count the sharp edges of his face, had a terrible flattop haircut that he actually thought looked good, and a pair of glasses that looked like he stole them from Urkel. The only good thing about him was his cooperation deal with S.H.I.E.L.D.
"Anyways, he'd been operating out of the French Riviera since '97..." Which I would have much rather set the rendezvous at. That would have made it a vacation. "...But the idiot let some competition sneak in on him over night, and we ended up having to smuggle him out to Luxemburg. Turns out while we were looking at one group he pissed off, we somehow missed the other one until we ended up in a nose to nose with a runaway train."
She is silent for a moment, just looking at me with a slight tug of her brow. She's probably in a combination of processing the horrible details of that story that I didn't mention, like how I was trapped in the wreckage, and had a beam slowly threatening to crush my head like a melon, while the corner of a window frame pushes its way farther and farther into my eye socket under the weight.
I was lucky I wasn't conscious for any of that. The pain would have been terrible, probably even worse because I know I would have struggled to free myself during the five hours they told me it took them to dig me out. I'm glad I got to skip all that, but I wish I was awake to fight them about the surgery. Dad made that decision for me, because it solved his rebellious son problem and threw all my good intentions out the window on the belief that I would eventually come around. While I did, because I don't want the last thing I feel to be electricity cooking my brain around the edges. I'd like a better death than that.
"Nothing good ever happens to us does it?" Is the question she chooses to break her silence and I'll be damned if that isn't a true statement. S.H.I.E.L.D has got an awesome retirement plan, thing is, even if you live long enough to take it, you never really leave the S.H.I.E.L.D life. All the skeletons, theirs and yours, shadow your steps till the day you die.
She knows the truth of that just as well as I do, my father told me the story about what happened to her parents, and to her after the doors shut to his office that day and I asked if she was the one. But that truth is depressing, and I can see it crushing her under its weight already, so I make an effort to lift it for a bit, because the heaviness is going to come back sooner or later.
"Well, I don't know" I start, letting the words catch her attention while I let my hand wrap itself back around the neck of my bottle and the other start screwing off the cap. "I got some awesome plastic surgery out of the deal." I finish with a smirk that turns into a full blown smile at her slightly shocked and dumbfounded expression, before I drown the chuckle in whiskey.
"Well you do look good." The attempt to drown the chuckle ends up failing pretty uncomfortably with that five word sentence, leaving me in a coughing fit as the booze found its way down the wrong pipe. It doesn't help that her eyes widen like saucers and the mortified way she claps her free hand over her mouth to close it until she gets some control back.
"Oh god, I really said that." She admits after a moment, one in which I finally get my throat back to a semi comfortable state despite the lingering burn.
"That you did lil hen. And don't worry, I know I'm a handsome specimen, but let's just keep that one between us?" I suggest before holding out my bottle, the base of it tilted toward her waiting for her's to meet it in a toast, which it does after she figures out I'm not offering her my bottle.
I had a thought the heaviness would come back sooner or later, but it looks like it's gonna be sooner, and it's gonna be from me despite my intentions. But I honestly don't know how much time I'm gonna have with her this time so it needs to get discussed.
"So I told you about some of my skeletons, its your turn to tell me what's the new addition to your closet now sweetheart."