The Familiar Taste of Poison
I
I felt tired. My eyes were dry and sore. My hands ached, along with my feet. My mouth was dry and my tongue felt swollen. To top all this off, I had a strange ache, almost like a burning in the back of my skull. I had been awake, without the urge to sleep for nearly thirty consecutive hours. But I was at ease. I didn’t need sleep. All I needed was to stand outside, holding my gun and to watch for any body who wasn‘t supposed to be here. It was my job to identify whoever wasn’t supposed to be on these premises and I had to shoot them. Like any new soldiers or law enforcement, or people from the agency. But those people from the agency were very bad, seeing they wanted to stop Loki, to stop his greatness and steal his Tesseract. And I absolutely had to make sure I could identify them, specially people like Nick Fury. Though I couldn’t remember why he was bad. I actually can’t remember anything really aside from my job. And my job was to make sure nobody was here outside from the people in Loki‘s operation. I yawned and the action made my dry lips crack just a bit. It was the first time I had done anything in hours, besides blink but I rarely even did that. I felt horrible but I was content, almost happy. My subconscious kept telling me something was very wrong but I felt very, very right.
I heard a door open to my left and as somebody walked outside and I turned my stiff neck to see Agent Barton coming towards me. My eyes were slow to focus on him until he was standing right next to me. We both had this air of carelessness about us, but that had to be normal. “Loki needs you inside,” Agent Barton said to me, his eyes burning with a phantom-like blue glow. He didn’t sound as used up as I’d imagine I would, though I didn’t speak to him. I felt no reply was needed, and instead I nodded once in acceptance, feeling my neck protest violently. Barton turned and led me inside, leaving the few German soldiers that were on watch with me alone.
Inside we immediately entered an elevator and Agent Barton took me to the bottom floor. Down there Professor Selvig was working on something to do with Loki’s Tesseract. In the pit of my stomach fear started to swell, but I wasn’t sure why. Passed all that, Barton led me to a curtain, pulling it back to reveal Loki, sitting on a military style bed in his own separate room divided by thick curtains from the rest of this place, that was mainly void, say for a ton of military stuff and whatever was going on with the Tesseract.
“Leave us,” Loki said and I didn’t even have wonder if he was talking to Barton or myself, like we were connected mentally somehow. However the burning in the back of my skull worsened when he spoke and I felt like I shouldn’t take him any less than seriously. Agent Barton turned and left, the curtain dropping closed behind him. “You don’t need that,” Loki stated and my weary eyes looked down to my gun, which I still had clutched tightly between my hands. My joints screamed with pain when I moved to place my gun back into its holster on my belt. Securing it in place I looked back up but now Loki was suddenly in front of me, holding out a glass of water. It should have startled me, even scared me, that he could move that fast without me noticing because that’s what I was good for, noticing things. That’s exactly why I was outside, so I could notice anyone unwanted and S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents so I could kill them. But instead I was unfazed by him.
“Drink that before you’re sick,” he handed the glass to me, before turning around and placing a metal chair in front of his bed. With no words spoken, and the burning getting slightly worse again, I sat down in the chair, obediently drinking the water. Before I thought I had realized how thirsty I was but the water was gone in seconds, I drank it so fast I barely had time to taste it. In my mind a spark, something like a lighter void of fuel, told me water wasn’t supposed to have that taste. I didn’t pay attention to that though, as Loki sat on his bed in front of me.
“Feeling any better?” he asked, smirking at the empty glass I had in my hands. I really didn’t. I was honestly afraid to lie to him and had no idea how to respond. I was happy but my body felt broken. “I thought so,” he stood again, walking around me. I felt him take the pins out of my hair, letting my golden curls fall around my shoulders. In any other situation I’d find this extremely uncomfortable but right now I didn’t think twice about it.
I heard Loki walk away from me but I stayed seated forward. Loki’s footsteps slowly returned and I felt one of his hands fall on my tense shoulder. Goosebumps flooded my skin as he leaned down, his ice cold breath hitting my neck as he whispered, “I think this may kill you.” The smile was present in his voice but his words didn’t trouble me at all. I was still content and happy. Loki walked back around me, and I saw he was now holding his strange scythe like spear. I looked up at him, standing above me as he pointed the lethal end of the spear at my chest, just above where my heart was. “And,” he added after a second, “I know this is going to hurt you, Agent Garett.” I should be worried but I wasn’t. I just sat in my chair, holding my empty glass and staring up at Loki.
Suddenly, without warning, I felt as if my very soul was being ripped from my body. The glass I was holding fell and shattered on the concrete floor as I tried to scream but my voice was too hoarse and instead just cracked. Every nerve in my body slowly set ablaze, not even to mention the fire in the back of my skull.
After what seemed like an eternity, Loki finally took the spear away from my chest, and I fell out of the chair, onto the small glass fragments on the floor. Compared to what Loki had just done to me, I could barely feel the shards ripping through my clothes and skin. It was painful none the less and when I tried to move out of the fragments my body ignited again and all I accomplished was turning so my back was punctured as well as my right side. Before I could cry out from the slowly worsening sting from the glass my eyes landed on Loki.
“Oh shit,” my voice cracked and weakened with each letter but I was still able to get my point across.
“Hm,” he smiled devilishly, laughing once down at me by his feet. “Surprising.”
Staring up at him, though my nerves were still smoldering, I quickly reached for my gun. But before I could even properly aim at him the gun was kicked violently out of my hands. I cried out again, clutching my hands to my chest as my gun flew across the room away from me. It felt that my hands had been broken but, then again, all of me felt broken.
“I said you wouldn’t need that,” Loki told me, setting his spear on his bed. He took a step forward and crouched down next to me on the floor, glass crunching loudly under his feet, but I rolled over once to get away from him. As I did the glass in my body sunk deeper, if I was any less than a trained spy, I would be crying right now.
“What do you want with me?” I choked out.
“I wanted to know what would happen when I took that enchantment off a mortal,” Loki stated blandly.
“Why me?” I asked. I wanted to get off of the ground but since I had fallen my legs felt useless, like Jell-o.
“Don’t be conceited. And you weren’t important. I’ve got Selvig and Barton as well as an entire German military base. Like I said before, I thought you would die from me taking that enchantment away.”
“So you poisoned me just in case?” I asked. My whole body started slowly to tremble as he spoke to me and, as if I wasn’t tired enough, I wanted very badly just to pass out.
“Just in case yes, I had my doubts but poisoned, no. I wouldn’t need to poison you. The water had a sedative in it.”
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered and gave up, my head falling to the ground. Loki stood up as I did and walked over to me, picking me up before carrying me to the bed and laying me down next to his spear. It was the last thing my consciousness could grasp before I lost myself to sleep.
