Chapter 3: Searching

Keeping Thor as a frog seems to have worked, Steve has to grudgingly admit. Loki's idea was a good one, though over cameras, he doesn't look too happy about locking his brother in a glass cage. Steve wouldn't be either, he supposes, though. (The closest to a brother he's ever had was Bucky and he would never do anything to earn being imprisoned. He wishes he could stop thinking about him, because it hurts so much but Bucky deserves to be thought about and remembered. The world has forgotten him entirely.)

The cell Thor is being held in is someway way over ground, and Fury makes a point of telling him that if the glass is damaged, the mechanism will send him into a thirty-thousand-foot drop.

Thor is still by the door when Fury turns to leave, Loki shadowing a distance behind.

"Loki," Thor calls, and his brother jerks to a stop, looking back at him. "You can't leave me in here."

Loki hesitates, and for a moment, Steve is almost certain he'll intervene, but instead he just walks out.

Steve has so many questions about this. Mostly directed to Loki – he's the only one who seemed to understand most of what's going on here.

It's a few minutes of tense silence before Loki finally walks in. "Do you know what he's playing at?" Steve asks him.

"He seeks to rule Earth and the rest of the Nine Realms. He has an army called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard or any world I've ever known. He'll lead them on your people. It's a mutual benefit, I imagine. Thor claims his throne, and the Chitauri claim the Tesseract."

"An army?" Steve repeats, blinking, trying to keep up with this all, "From outer space?"

"So he's building another portal," Bruce deduces, "That's what he needs Erik Selvig for."

Loki blinks. "Who?"

"He's an astrophysicist," Bruce explains.

"He was working on the project before it went nuclear and Thor brought it down," Natasha adds.

"Can you locate him?"

"We're monitoring everything," Maria Hill replies, arms crossed, "We haven't caught any sightings."

"What about the other one?" Steve inquires, "The one working with Thor? Did anyone else see him?" He looks around the room. Clint is down being looked over – with his concussion, he won't be up for a little while. "Is there a way Thor might be working with some people on Earth?"

World War II was so much easier than this.

Natasha shifts where she's seated at the table. "This assassin Clint told me about," she says, "What did he look like?"

"Didn't get a good look. He was dressed in black. Had a metal arm."

Natasha nods, face thoughtful. "I know who he is," she muses, "Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones who do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years."

"So, he's a ghost story?" Steve clarifies.

"Essentially," she agrees, "I saw him once. A couple of years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me. Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried." She nods to Steve. "So, yeah, he's a ghost story."

That's a lot of assassinations over a long time frame. Sounds like something's missing to Steve.

"What's this about ghosts?" Tony Stark asks, breezing in the door, turning to give a word to Coulson who heads off through another doorway. "Ghosts aren't real."

"It doesn't sound like you mortals –" Everyone in the room looks at him. "Humans," Loki amends, "Are doing well at countering yourselves. No wonder you need my help. Help me find the Tesseract, and I will take it and Thor out of your hands."

Sounds good to Steve. No Tesseract, less problems.

"Sounds good to me," Tony announces, sauntering into the room and making a series of random, irrelevant comments to the crew members.

"I think we're focusing on the wrong things," Bruce speaks up, "What does Thor want with the Tesseract, and what did they take Iridium for?"

"It's a stabilizing agent," Tony answers, "Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at SHIELD. Also, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long as Thor wants. The rest of the raw materials someone can get their hands on pretty easily. What was it you said he was called? Winter ghost?"

"The winter soldier," Natasha interrupts over him.

"Anyway, only major component they still need is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube."

"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Maria Hill asks, arms crossed.

"Last night," Tony answers shortly, "The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?" He talks so much, it's neigh impossible to carry a conversation with him. Maybe under other circumstances, Steve wouldn't find it so aggravating, but his temper is already on a short fuse.

"Thor has a power source," Loki interrupts, "He doesn't need a source from Earth. He can channel it himself."

"What are the chances Thor will make a move to break out?" Steve asks.

"My brother doesn't have patience," Loki answers, "But, if you find a way to find the Cube –"

"You'll get it out of our hair," Natasha agrees, "We got it."

"Dr. Banner is here to track the cube," Fury interrupts, entering the room. "I was hoping Stark might join him."

"I'd start with that axe of his," Steve offers, "It may be magical, but it looks an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon. Even if it's a different color."

"It's partly empowered by an Infinity Stone," Loki says, "They are two totally separate things. The Tesseract is the Space Stone, and Thor's axe has what I believe is the Mind Stone.

"Shall we play, doctor?" Tony asks Bruce.

"Yeah," Bruce agrees, "Let's play some."

Loki shakes himself from whatever he was lost in thought of and takes off after the two. "If you have room for another, I'd like to come."

Tony looks at Bruce, then Loki, and shrugs. "Sure."

Steve watches the three disappear from sight. Until they come up with some sort of lead, he doesn't really have anything to do. Natasha stands from her chair.

"I'm gonna go check on Clint in the meanwhile," she tells Steve, "He got hit pretty good."

Steve trails her, with lack of anywhere else to go, at least out of the room until they're out of everyone's earshot. There's so much to see and hear everywhere, but he doesn't want to get carried away. It's hard to be here alone, anyway.

But Natasha left for a reason, and she just means to tell him.

"You thinking something else?" Steve asks her.

"The Winter Soldier. Thor. Something doesn't make sense. It's like there's someone on Earth helping him. I don't know who'd be doing that or why. Thor wins, everyone loses."

Steve seconds that. All thoughts on his mind, but he's so overwhelmed with it all, he's really not at his best. It's easier being in the fight. He knows what to go after, he knows how to do it. Superweapons? Sure. But aliens? Magic? He doesn't know those things.

"Maybe we need someone to get an eye out on him."

"I'd take Clint on it, but he's down right now, and we can't afford to leave base if Thor breaks out."

"If he gets that portal open, it'll be worse."

"Let's hope the astrophysics whizzes figure out how to find the Cube before then."

**w**

Steve is wondering, really, when he stumbles into the lab where the other three are. Their voices flicker into the hall, Tony asking Loki something about magic and why he can't track the Cube, then swinging wildly into talking to Bruce about Hulk.

Steve enters right when Tony stabs Bruce with an electric prod. His mind jerks right back to what he saw of Hulk. "Hey!" he snaps, "Are you nuts?"

"Stark," Loki interjects, turning away from some computer screen he's poking at, somehow way more adept at it then Steve himself despite having not being from Earth. "Unleashing the Hulk is not a good move."

"What's your secret?" Tony asks Bruce, ignoring them both. "Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?"

"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve asks, irked.

"Funny things are."

"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny." He quickly casts a sideways glance at Bruce. "No offense, Doctor."

"No, it's alright," Bruce objects, "I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things."

Loki approaches them, carefully positioning himself between Steve and Tony before something blows up. Steve appreciates that now, even if he's still angry. If Bruce Hulked out, it could unleash Thor and kill hundreds of people. Tony doesn't understand life. He's not a soldier – that much is obvious. "Look, it's fine," he interjects, "See? No green. Though we'll probably be seeing some of that before all of this is over."

They all look at him.

"Thor's not going to be staying in there forever. His allies need him to power the cube. We don't go to them, or they come to us."

Loki has a good, short, clean-cut view of war. Steve likes that. That's what they need. He misses the Howling Commandos. He tries not to think of them. Tries not to focus on how their voices and laughter whisper in the back of his mind constantly.

They're gone.

Like everything is now.

"Let's hope we can bring the fight to them."

"Uh, if it's here, it can be on our terms," Tony objects, "What's that about strategy or whatever?"

"We need to focus on the problem," Steve points out.

"You think I'm not?" Tony asks, "Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."

"You think Fury's hiding something?"

"He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets." Tony looks at Bruce and Loki, throwing his hands up. "Come on. Don't tell me neither of you have seen anything?"

Yes. Actually, yes, he has, and Steve does think something is wrong, but he doesn't know what. If they start asking questions like this, start distrusting their superior, they won't have time to think on spot in battle. That's something Tony doesn't understand, and probably never will. "Fury didn't have a reason to call us in before there was a threat."

"Few in possession of the Tesseract would not exploit its power," Loki interjects.

Steve can't quite ignore how uneasy that makes him feel. He knows how true it could be, but SHIELD was created by the people who fought to stop HYDRA. He can't believe they'd do the same kind of thing. "You think they were using it for something?" he has to ask anyway.

"Good thing we're about to find out," Tony says cheerfully, "I'll look into that once my decryption programmer finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files."

He –

What?

"I'm sorry, did you say...?"

"Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide," he replies flippantly, before trying to offer everyone blueberries.

As though he'd even have the mind to eat anything right now. "Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around?"

Files are secured for a reason, and while Steve agrees Tony has a point, he knows there are things to question, and places not to be digging in.

"You humans make a great team with how much you trust each other," Loki says dryly, "You have this situation handled quite splendidly."

"You think there's something else we missed?" Steve guesses.

"Well, your idiots," Loki snips, "I suspect you probably missed a lot."

Is he joking? Steve has no idea if he's joking. Still appreciates it more than Tony's type of joke, though. "What do you think Thor's plan is?"

"He can't break the glass without falling. He'll need someone to come and rescue him. Seems normal."

"That's normal for him?"

"Well, without me around, yes. Anyway, it sounds like I should go have a talk with my brother. We still don't know where the army came from. Stark, I'll expect you to keep working while I'm out."

"Uh, excuse me," Tony objects, "How did you get put in charge?"

"I'm over a thousand years old, and I'm a prince. It's the most logical choice."

"Wow," he supplies, "Someone's a little arrogant."

"And you aren't?" Steve can't help asking bluntly even if he doesn't entirely disagree. Loki has a point too, though, if he's telling the truth about how old he is.

"Of all the people in this room, which of us isn't of use?" Tony throws back.

It always would've irked him, but when he's spent days asking himself that same question, every minute since the train and he saw Bucky fall, it stings, burrowing deep in his chest and twisting. "Just find the cube," Steve snaps, rounding on him and leaving the room.

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