[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Steve caught Stark by the shoulder instinctively when the ship lurched. He watched Natasha and Banner fall, lunged for the scientist and was too slow.
"I go after Loki!" Thor bellowed, and dashed out the door.
Fury barked orders into his earpiece. "Has Coulson landed yet?"
"Put on the suit," Steve snapped.
Thank God Stark didn't argue, just said "Yep," and bolted out of the lab. Steve was right on his heels.
"Meet me at the downed turbine!" Stark yelled over his shoulder, running.
Steve shoved aside his misgivings about the man, which had been assuaged somewhat by the fact that they were both pissed at Fury, and shouted "Got it!" before taking off in the direction of the engine.
His earpiece crackled into life a few seconds later, spilling chatter into his ear. He ignored it until a familiar name caught his attention.
"Coulson! Initiate initial lockdown on the detention center, then get to the bridge," ordered Fury.
"Copy that, sir."
Relief washed over Steve as he ran. Coulson was a good man. It was nice to know he was alive.
"Rogers! Where are you going?"
Fury. Steve shoved aside his anger. "What turbine is down?"
"Turbine one."
"Stark and I'll get it back up."
"On the double."
"Yes, sir," Steve said, although he didn't know if Fury really deserved to be called "sir" anymore.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Natasha couldn't remember ever being this afraid.
Not the first day she'd walked into the Red Room. Not the day before her graduation. Not the day of her first mission, or her last. Not even when she'd watched her Soldier vanish into the bowels of KGB neural programming, away from her. Every time in her past, her fear had been tempered by the conviction that she could overcome all the terrors she faced.
This was different.
This was an enemy that she knew very well she might not escape.
And she was trapped not ten feet from it.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
"Get me a status report!" Fury bellowed.
Clint left that to some other agent and swept the upper bastions of the bridge carefully. They'd been boarded, that much was clear, and if Hill was with them they'd know exactly how to penetrate their -
Gunfire split the air.
Barton dropped, rolled, and came up shooting, sticking to his sidearm - in close-quarters fights, shooting arrows was basically handing your enemy gift-wrapped improv knives. Two men in tactical gear fell just inside the door. Fury dropped the next with a neat throat chop, grabbed his automatic rifle, and sprayed a burst into the hall.
He glanced at Clint. "They are not getting through that door, so what-"
Clint spun and raised his bow in one motion, firing at a flicker of motion almost without aiming. His arrow sailed through empty space a millisecond after Agent Hill vanished from the viewing window.
It was a few seconds before Clint realized she'd dropped something, and it was giving the tech guys fits.
That was when the lights went out.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
"Loki, this is madness," Thor growled.
Loki stopped just outside the containment cell, that insufferable smirk on his face. "You tend to define 'madness' as anything with which you do not agree, brother ."
"I have disagreed with you many times in the past and never called you mad," Thor snapped back. "This is too far."
Loki glared, and Thor didn't recognize anyone he knew in the disguised Jotun's face.
"This is as far as you have driven me," Loki hissed.
Thor's free hand clenched into a fist, and he tightened his grip on Mjolnir. He couldn't believe the audacity. Loki had a duty to the throne of Asgard, to Odin and to Thor, and here he was abandoning it to attack a realm under Thor's protection. "You should not have chosen the realm I care about!"
Loki laughed. "Splendid job you've done. The Midgardians slaughter each other in droves while you watch from Asgard and congratulate yourself for your benevolence. I mean to rule them as a god, to bring them to heel."
"I will not permit it," Thor snapped. "I am the Crown Prince of Asgard, and you will obey!"
"And I am the heir to the Jotun throne," Loki snarled back. "All I ever wanted was to be your equal, and now I am. I do not bow to you or any other as my liege. No longer."
Rage darkened Thor's vision, and he flung himself at his one-time brother with a roar.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
There were shadows, and there was his prey.
He was crouching behind a metal cylinder, panting, orienting himself.
He was scenting a female, very close. The one who'd manipulated him, the one who worked for the man who'd lied and lied and lied.
He was hunting.
She was running.
He liked when his prey tried to escape.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
"Stark!" Steve shouted.
There was no reply.
He tried to quell the doubts - to not let himself wonder if Stark had slacked, or skipped out, or-
"I'm here. We're on a private comm channel."
He spun and saw Stark in his Iron Man suit soaring up to the engine by the debris. Two SHIELD techs in oxygen masks and bearing fire extinguishers paused their work to watch him approach. Steve waved them back inside. One of them offered him a mask, but he pushed it away, knowing from experience that he wouldn't need it and it would only impair his vision.
"I've gotta get the superconducting cooling system back online," Stark said. It sounded like he was mostly talking to himself. "Then I can get in and dislodge the debris from the rotors."
"What can I do?" Steve asked, trying not to get annoyed. Scientists were terrible in crises.
"Get to the engine control panel and tell me which relays are in overload position," Stark said.
Steve almost asked how to find the control panel, but then he saw a big red sign across the howling gap that had been torn in the engine control room saying "ENGINE CONTROL PANEL." With one leap, he cleared the distance, steadied himself by the panel, and waited.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
"EMP!" someone shouted.
The bridge was chaos. Clint heard screams and the telltale whine of an engine powering down. The helicarrier listed perilously to the side.
"Stark! Get that engine online, NOW!" Fury bellowed into his earpiece.
Clint fought his way through to the man. "I'm going after Hill," he shouted, and bolted before Fury could order him back. His earpiece crackled to life before he got five steps away, and he tore it out and shoved it in his pocket. Fury could bark orders all he liked, but Clint was not going to let Maria get out of here. He'd already failed her once; it had been his request that Fury replace him with her on babysitting duty for Selvig and his flying monkeys. He'd been trying to get on active duty so Fury wouldn't have as much time to grill Clint about Tasha's whereabouts. It was his fault.
Clint had spent enough time on this ship by now to know its secret ways. He vaulted up three stories through the rafters and support beams near the hull of the bridge rather than run a hundred meters down to the stairwell, and came out on the maintenance catwalk that accessed the viewing portals Maria had used.
It was silent. Empty.
Clint narrowed his eyes. It was dark up here, and silent. All these catwalks echoed and rattled with the slightest footstep, unless it was Tasha's footstep, in which case they were silent. But Tasha wasn't up here; she would be off helping someone else, and it was Maria he needed.
Clint crept along the catwalk.
A flicker of motion was his only warning. He barely had time to flex his abs before a pair of boots slammed into his stomach and sent him flying back along the catwalk. He flipped and was back on his feet in seconds, in time to block a flurry of vicious blows.
Maria disengaged and danced backwards, away from his counterstrike.
For a charged moment, he met her eyes across the feet between them. Glacial blue, not their normal warm dark brown. Just like the color of the gem in the scepter.
"Maria," he said.
He had just enough time to register the utter lack of recognition on her face before she attacked him, moving like she meant to kill.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
The first blow punched a hole in the wall.
Mjolnir (Darcy could pronounce the name just fine, but did it wrong on purpose just to piss Thor off) swung right for Loki's head. Darcy's heart jumped to her throat but Loki dodged and the hammer smashed through three inches of steel without pause.
Loki spun and lashed out with a knife pulled from somewhere in his armor, but Thor dodgec with a speed that seemed unnatural for his size and caught the blade on the metal thing covering his forearm.
They fought faster than Darcy's eyes could follow, exchanging blows that would send any normal man to the ground.
And neither of them was obviously winning.
Darcy squinted at Loki. She was no fighting expert but it seemed like he had some kind of plan - like he was leading Thor somewhere.
She tensed, ready to fling herself out of the viewing room, but Loki's words came back to her: "I won't be permitted to spare you if you interfere. "
Permitted. But whose orders could he possibly be taking?
Darcy realized she was biting her lip and made herself stop. She wanted to help Thor - she knew Loki couldn't go free - but she also knew she'd probably die if she went out there. And Darcy Lewis was many things, but suicidal was not one of them.
That was when she looked up and realized the cameras were still off.
Shit. No one would be coming.
And… no one was watching, either.
Darcy realized she was the only record of what was happening here, and so she pressed close to the window, focusing intently on the combatants.
A male voice rang through the room. "Enough!"
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Lungs burning, heart pounding, Natasha fled through the bowels of the helicarrier.
The Hulk followed, roaring, destroying everything in his path. She sprinted a set of stairs, swung off halfway up, and bolted in a crouch along a maintenance aisle. Its panels crumpled and smashed in her wake as she barely evaded one strike after another.
"This is Romanoff! Hulk in pursuit! I need backup!" she gasped into her comm.
No response.
"This is Romanoff. I need Hulk backup now. Does anybody cop-"
The floor gave way beneath her feet.
Natasha caught a support pipe on the way down and swung. She hurled herself to the side as the Hulk rammed a vicious chunk of rebar into the space she'd occupied less than a second before, displaying a speed incongruous with his size. Her feet hit the top of a boiler and she sprang from one to the next, slipping through the shadows close to the ceiling.
A hundred meters away, she paused and did an inventory.
The sounds of the Hulk were distant. Her pulse was faster than it should be for the level of exertion she'd just needed - likely from fear. She was bruised and her ankle was not happy; there were cuts on her left forearm from shattered glass and another one on the left side of her neck, but all were shallow and superficial. She'd been in far worse shape in her lifetime.
Her earpiece crackled. "Romanoff, you there?"
Fury.
She reached up and tapped out a message in Morse code on the earpiece, knowing it would transmit the impacts as bursts of static. It was an old-school trick, but she didn't dare speak out loud.
Blr rm. Hulk smwhere near, hunting. Need bckup now.
His voice came through a second later. "Can you draw him up to the wishbone? Tap once for yes, twice for no."
She envisioned the route she'd have to take as she crept through the shadows, pistol in hand and heart hammering. Then tapped once.
"I'll send one of the escort pilots to meet you. Get him to a window and get out of the way."
Copy , she tapped out, and braced both hands on her weapon.
The only sounds in the ship's guts were the rattle of machinery and the hiss of her breathing.
Natasha steadied her lungs and heart, forcing the fear away. If nothing else, she had to survive, because she was so close to finding her Soldier. Weeks away from the first concrete lead in decades.
You will survive this. You will see him again.
She bent, tugged a knife out of her boot - they wouldn't do much good on the Hulk's skin anyway - and threw it as hard as she could to her left.
Its ping was devastatingly loud.
An answering roar came from deep inside the hull.
Natasha moved swiftly away from the sound, knowing she'd have to draw him after her but stay hidden long enough to find her way out. She and Clint had spent enough time scrambling through the secret spaces of the helicarrier that she knew more or less where she was -
There . A familiar control panel, followed by a glassed-in walkway, designed as a protected exit in case of fire.
She took a deep breath.
The Hulk lunged out of the pipes to her left.
Natasha fired three times - the rounds did nothing but anger him - and ran for her life, and her Soldier's.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Tony lasered a chunk of debris in half and wrapped his gauntlets around it.
"How do those relays look?"
"Well, they seem to run on some form of electricity," Steve said, sounding exasperated.
Tony snorted. "Well, you're not wrong."
He had JARVIS talk the Captain through checking the relays while Tony focused on kicking debris out of the way. The largest chunk was wedged between the rotor and the edge of the turbine. He oriented himself above it, disengaged all thrusters, and fell boots-first onto the sheet metal; it tore free with a screech that was audible even over the wind and tumbled toward the coast below. Fury had managed to swing them toward the ocean, then. Tony just hoped he could get this turbine going before they belly-flopped into the water.
"Okay, the relays are intact. What now?" Steve asked.
"Uh…"
Tony examined the rotors, using facial cues to flick through his HUD. The results were not promising.
"This thing won't get going again without a jump-start. I'm gonna have to get in there and push."
"Stark, you'll get shredded."
"They ought to rename you Captain Obvious," Tony said irritably. "I know that. Which is why I need you to stay in the control unit and reverse polarity long enough to disengage mag-lev boosting power-"
"Speak English!" Steve snapped.
Tony flicked a blueprint of the gutted engine room over his screen. Thank God the lever was still there. "There should be a red lever a level up from the relays. When I say, pull it; it'll slow the rotors down long enough for me to get out." He paused, scanning the calculations done by JARVIS. "Probably. There's a fifty-two percent chance it'll work."
"That's too low."
"So is this ship! I'm the one risking my skin here. Get to the goddamn lever!" Tony snapped.
"On it." Steve paused. "Stark. I was wrong about you."
"Lots of people are." Tony swiveled his palms, adjusted thruster output, and swung into position against one of the massive turbine blades. "Ready… and… initiating. All power to ventral thrusters, JARVIS."
The pressure by his feet increased with a roar, and Tony bared his teeth as the rotor groaned into motion.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Clint had four inches and forty pounds at least on Maria, but he was losing this fight.
The biggest problem was that he was limited to nonlethal strikes, while she was clearly out for blood.
His hand was bleeding from a bite she'd given him; his throat throbbed from an incompletely blocked trachea chop that might have crushed his windpipe with a little more force. Maria had bounced back and was waiting, calm and sure of her victory.
Tasha's voice came back to Clint in a rush. "What do you do when you're losing a fight?"
"What?" he'd asked.
She'd smiled. " Make them think you're done."
Maria sprang.
Clint was a little too slow, a little too late, as she got him in a vicious lock, weight leveraged brutally against the railing.
He gritted his teeth and prayed the doctors would be able to fix this.
Clint struggled, struggled, and pretended to go limp.
Maria's grip loosened a fraction.
He swung his hand up and back and smashed it into her temple. She fell away from his back instantly, hitting her head against the railing on the way down.
Clint paused, breathing hard, and watched her struggle to her knees.
Maria turned and looked at him, and the woman he knew was back in her face as she breathed, "Clint?"
Her eyes were glacial blue.
Clint lashed out with all the speed he could muster and clocked her on the temple again.
Maria collapsed.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
"Get out of the way," Thor advised Coulson, not daring to remove his eyes from Loki. "We have been allies in the past, Son of Coul, but I cannot guarantee your safety."
Loki paused, dividing his attention between Thor and the Midgardian male with the glowing projectile weapon. So crude and ignoble, these people and their "guns". Better to fight with an honest blade or hammer.
"Thor. We're on the same side," Coulson said. "My name is Agent Coulson."
"Coulson," Loki repeated. "You were in the facility with Selvig. He thinks highly of you."
"And I of him," the Midgardian replied tightly. "I'd like him back, please."
Loki smirked. "Unfortunately, that is not possible at present. I need him, you see."
"Then I'll settle for you back in that cage," Coulson said.
"No," Thor ordered. "Loki comes with me, to Asgard, where he belongs."
"Sorry," Coulson said, not sounding very apologetic. "We still need him."
"The Tesseract?" Thor mocked. "Tis an object of immense power with the potential to destroy worlds. Midgardians have no place near it. You will yield it to me along with this criminal, and your realm will be at peace."
"No," Coulson insisted, pointing the weapon at Loki. "Step back in the glass, please."
Loki considered the weapon and took a slow step toward the containment unit.
" Stop ," Thor ordered, taking a step toward Coulson.
The Midgardian tensed and moved away, keeping the weapon trained on Loki but his eyes on Thor.
"Coulson, do as I say," Thor snapped. This was ridiculous. He was Crown Prince of Asgard, and only trying to protect them! Why couldn't any of the imbecilic Midgardians recognize that they would be far better off leaving the Tesseract and Loki to Asgard's more advanced society?
Coulson glanced at Loki then looked back at Thor. "I do not take orders from you, Thor. You're a guest but you are no part of the internal hierarchy of my organization. Technically, I outrank you . I need you to step away."
"By the Norns," Thor snapped. He'd have to take care of this himself.
He had fought Stark and Rogers, who were both enhanced and could at least hold out for some time against an Asgardian warrior, but a typical Midgardian? Pah. Slow and useless. He'd be able to eliminate Coulson in one blow.
Thor tensed, readied himself, and struck.
Coulson spun and shot his weapon with deadly accuracy.
Rage burst through Thor - this once-ally had dared fire upon a Prince of Asgard! - as he deflected the shot deftly with Mjolnir, sprang, and shoved Coulson backward.
The man flew through the air, twisting to catch himself against the wall, and slammed into a shattered metal beam left from an earlier hammer blow.
The metal punctured his chest.
Coulson's mouth gaped wide and soundless, blood appearing at the corner of his lips. Thor stared.
"That's… not…" he muttered, unsure who he was speaking to.
Loki's dark chuckle brought him to attention.
"Bravo, brother ," he sneered. "Now you've killed your ally. Pinned to the wall like the Midgardians do to insects. I believe they call that irony."
"He's not dead," Thor protested.
Loki rolled his eyes, still standing near the Midgardians' flimsy cage. "He will be. After the chaos I've created, it will be long past his expiration before anyone thinks to send a medical team." His eyes slid off to the side at one of the walls to Thor's left, opposite Coulson.
Thor's rage eclipsed that oddity. "I will not stand for this!" he bellowed, and charged at Loki.
His brother crouched to meet the rush. Thor placed his feet with the ease of centuries of experience in combat, positioned perfectly to take Loki down and pin his arms-
He flew headfirst through the illusion and skidded through the glass cage. The door hissed shut behind him.
"Are you ever not going to fall for that?" Loki asked, sounding genuinely disappointed.
"Loki!" Thor howled, barely aware that he was spitting as he shouted.
Loki was standing with a smirk by the control unit. "Director Fury explained how this system works," he said pensively. "It's interesting, really. One press of a button…" He traced the outline of the glass screen. "You'll fall… fifty thousand? Feet, yes, the Midgardian measuring system used in this nation. Although I believe it to be about half that; we've been dropping for some time now. Two engines are not enough to keep this craft aloft."
"What have you done?" Thor growled.
Loki shrugged gracefully. "What I must." Had he glanced at the wall - no, that door in the corner. An escape route, perhaps.
Loki and Thor regarded one another for a long moment through the glass. Thor felt every year of their shared history swimming between them: an idyllic childhood; the chasm that grew as Loki pursued seidr and Thor the title Warrior Prince, as Loki became Odin's spy and diplomat while Thor was the future king and the noble warrior. Loki's talents were useful, to be sure, but Thor found them distasteful. War should be fought bloody and up-close and with all the honest strength of a warrior, not with magic or Loki's strange slashing fighting style, and definitely not avoided with useless treaties that would only be broken at some point in the future. Better to crush an opponent than make peace, and do it nobly.
And now this. They'd once been as close as brothers, until the truth of Loki's heritage came out.
"Show me," Thor said suddenly.
Loki blinked, his hand halting its slow path toward the button. "What?"
"You are a Jotun, correct?" Thor demanded. "I want to see what you look like."
Loki cocked his head. "And why, precisely, would I acquiesce to any of your desires?"
Thor struggled for words. At last, he growled, "As a favor to the vanquished."
It tasted bitter in his mouth. But he was not vanquished, and he could compromise a bit of his pride if it meant he would finally get to see the truth for himself.
Loki smirked, as Thor knew he would. His little brother had always been too proud and too arrogant for his own good. "Very well."
And with a flicker of seidr , his skin began to change.
Pale flesh-tones cooled to shades of blue; the intricate epidermal traceries that marked Frost Giants' skin spiderwebbed out from Loki's hands and eyes to cover all his skin that was visible to Thor. And, Norns, his eyes . They changed from blue to a vicious, monstrous red.
Thor recoiled in disgust.
Loki's face darkened and he pulled the guise of the pale Asgardian prince over his features once again. "Now you see," he said distantly. "I am one of the monsters you once swore to slay."
"Jotun," Thor spat. "You've failed. This fall will not kill me. This cage will not contain me."
Loki's eyes were colder than they'd ever been, and blue once more. "The Midgardians think us immortal," he mused. "Shall we test that?"
He pressed the button, and Thor fell.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
"Fury, you better have that escort ready!" Natasha shouted.
Her earpiece crackled. She almost missed his reply in the chaos of smashing and crashing that accompanied the furious Hulk on her heels. "He's waiting."
"Almost there."
Natasha was so close. Up this hall, turn right, bolt out into the common room by the windows-
She tripped and went down.
The Hulk roared victory and attacked with blinding speed. Natasha barely dodged one devastating blow, then another, desperately trying to get past him and back on track.
Natasha screamed, a rough and visceral sound that tore her throat, and charged the Hulk.
He hesitated for the barest second, caught off guard by the absolute stupidity of the move. It was enough. Natasha dove and slid past his ankles, nailing his Achilles tendon with her widow cuffs on the way by.
The Hulk bellowed again and smashed at the floor. Natasha rolled aside, scrambled to her feet, and started running again. Her left side was one massive ache and there was blood dripping down her neck; her ankle howled with every step.
She hurled herself around the corner, rebounding off the opposite wall of the new corridor rather than slow down. The impact jarred her shoulder and her aching left ribs but she ignored the pain and kept running. The swinging doors to the common room were ahead of her, the Hulk's thundering footsteps behind.
Natasha slammed through the doors and flung herself across the common room's slick floor.
Machine gun fire shattered the broad windows.
She watched in disbelief from off to the side as the Hulk spun, distracted, and bellowed at the escort hovering in the wishbone.
"Romanoff! Status?"
"Alive," Natasha said.
The Hulk roared again, hand raised, and charged the escort. The windows were gone, and he leaped in one impossibly powerful spring onto the plane. The escort spun out of control, spitting bullets across the inside of the wishbone, and vanished beneath the helicarrier.
Natasha took what felt like her first breath in a long time.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Steve clung to the wall near the red lever, apprehension twisting like a snake in his stomach.
He'd been wrong to think Stark was nothing but an arrogant, narcissistic playboy. And now the man might die.
Steve swallowed his anger. As far as he was concerned, this chaos was in part Fury's fault. If the man hadn't been keeping secrets, the team would've been on alert and more ready for an attack.
Save it. Right now you have bigger problems.
If there was anything Steve hated, it was feeling helpless, but right now there was nothing he could do for Stark, although the plan seemed to be working: the whine of the rotor was increasing, and the helicarrier had stopped listing so dangerously.
Distantly, over the wind, he heard the pressure door hiss open. Three of Loki's men with face masks, machine guns, and body armor stepped out into the exposed remains of the engine room.
Steve hesitated. They hadn't seen him yet; if he could just get enough time to-
One of the men pulled something off his body armor and chucked it at the engine.
Steve reacted on instinct. He sprang up and over the railing and launched himself across the open space, swatting the grenade away with one hand and slamming into the shattered catwalk on the other side. The explosion took one of the men with him, tumbling into the void of sky and sea below.
The other two opened fire with their rifles.
Steve thought words that would've made his mom wash his mouth out with soap when he was a little kid. Bullets pinged and ricocheted around him as he ducked and dodged his way along the catwalk.
Two left. One by the door, another over by the lever.
Steve flung himself back across the catwalk. A bullet rebounded off his reinforced chest plate; another grazed his left arm and tore the fabric. Then he slammed into the soldier with a crunch of bone - not Steve's - and the man went limp.
More bullets.
Steve rolled blindly away from the onslaught, ready to stand - he was so close -
but there was no ground beneath his feet.
Steve's stomach twisted sickeningly as the world fell away and he began to drop.
With one hand, he lashed out and caught a trailing metal cable. The wind slammed him against the outer hull of the helicarrier. Debris from the ruined edge of the engine room dug into his body. Bullets pinged off the metal near his feet and Steve hauled himself up one torturous foot, then another -
and suddenly, he was on a train, looking at another man clinging to a piece of twisted metal above a deadly fall.
No.
"Cap," Stark said. "Need the lever."
He sounded urgent.
"Need a minute here," Steve ground out, forcing himself to focus on the here and now.
"Lever," Stark warned, even more intense. "Now ."
There was a pause. The lever mocked Steve, six feet out of his reach.
Then an ominous "Uh-oh," came through the comms.
Steve yelled as he hauled himself up hand over hand, feeling another bullet burn its way past his right thigh, and collapsed on the catwalk. The metal below his feet offered some protection but it was rapidly becoming too porous to provide proper cover as nonstop machine gun fire tore it to pieces.
Steve got a hand on the lever and jerked it ninety degrees down.
Seconds later, the very battered Iron Man flew in with an anemic mechanical whine and slammed into the soldier below.
The bullets stopped, and Steve pushed himself to his feet with a groan, making his way down to where Stark lay.
The suit was so damaged that Stark didn't appear able to move, or perhaps he was injured. Steve fell to a knee next to the fallen scientist's side. "Stark, can you hear me?"
"Yeah," Stark groaned. "Gimme a sec - uh. Can you thump me on the chest? Right on the glowy light."
Steve gave the arc reactor in Stark's chest a single hard overhead blow.
The blueish glow immediately brightened, and Stark's helmet fell apart with a hiss seconds later, releasing his skull. Steve did a soldier's injury scan and noted several cuts and bruises leaving blood and shadowed patches all over Stark's head.
"Guess fifty-two percent was enough," he said with a manic grin.
Steve couldn't resist an exhausted chuckle.
He might've lost Bucky, but it seemed there were other decent battle partners in the world.
[Classified Location], SHIELD Helicarrier
April 2011
Darcy's glasses were slipping down her face, but she didn't dare move.
Thor was gone. Coulson was injured. And Loki was - there was something off...
She felt like she was trying to dredge up the memory of a dream. It wasn't working well.
She chalked the weird feeling up to déjà vu of watching Thor fight in Puente Antiguo.
Darcy remembered Coulson from Puente Antiguo, too. He was a good man, pragmatic and logical but also kind. And he had a good sense of humor when he wanted to. She'd learned that in the weeks Jane worked with SHIELD after the Destroyer played patty cake with buildings. Darcy liked him a hell of a lot better than Fury, that was for sure.
And now Thor had made him into a fucking shish kebab.
Loki turned away from the console and started for the door.
"You're gonna lose."
Both Darcy and Loki snapped their heads over at Coulson. His words were faint but clear; his eyes were open and fixed on Loki.
Loki sneered. "Your heroes are scattered. Your floating fortress falls from the sky. Tell me, where is my disadvantage?"
"You lack conviction."
Darcy couldn't see Loki's face very well; he was turned mostly away from her. But she still caught the twitch that ever-so-briefly crossed his face.
"I don't think I lack conviction," he snapped defensively.
Coulson just smiled and closed his eyes.
Loki reached abruptly for the man, but then Darcy saw a tremor shake his limbs, and he turned and practically ran from the room.
"What the fuck?" she asked the empty viewing closet.