The Familiar Taste of Poison

Blinding blue light had me surrounded. I couldn’t see much else other than the smoky wisps of the toxic color. It eventually bled out into unfamiliar constellations and I felt the vacuum of space begin to crush me as I was slowly floating lifelessly away from the blue. The pressure on my throat was great, great enough to where choking itself was impossible. And slowly I saw a face form in front of me, close to my own, and soon it was joined by a body. And as I recognized who was in front of me the background began melting slowly around us.

Loki’s hand gripped my neck tighter as I went limp, suspended in the air by him. My vision was far past blurry, seeing my eyes wanted to pop clear out of my skull, when he dropped me, limp on the concrete floor. I took a deep breath in as blue surrounded my vision again. I heard voices, familiar voices. Those voices belonged to familiar S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Nick Fury’s voice stood out above all else, something about the Tesseract. I looked to where he stood and he was holding a briefcase.

I was in operation P.E.G.A.S.U.S. where S.H.I.E.L.D. kept the Tesseract. And Loki was trying to steal it again. This shouldn’t be happening again. I tried desperately to move but my limbs were mocking me with lifelessness. This wasn’t how things happened, Loki was supposed to steal me, not kill me. And the Tesseract couldn’t be stolen again.

This wasn’t real.

My eyes shot open in a panic. Trying to keep calm and not give away to any potential occupants of the room that I was now awake, I listened intently to my surroundings. I couldn’t tell if anybody was with me in the curtained off room, but when I moved to roll over an incredible stinging swept through my back. With having just woken up and being completely unprepared, I sat up a bit too fast, trying to stifle myself from crying out. But sitting up that fast caused more pain with my stiff joints and sore muscles and Another cry escaped my lips. Along with my back, right arm. and right leg stinging in pain I realized I had been sleeping with broken glass in my flesh.

“Agent?” I heard a voice call out and Agent Barton walked around one of the curtains. Instinctively I reached for my gun before remembering it was laying across the room, if Loki hadn’t moved it. All I could do really was stare, it hurt way too much to try and move so fighting would be stupid of me. But instead of attacking me or anything of the sort, he simply stood there, staring back at me.

“Are you okay?” he asked after a second. I noticed his hand was calmly placed on his belt and I really didn’t know how to react to him. I no longer had Loki’s brainwashing spell but when I did, I was supposed to kill anybody who wasn’t under that spell. But right know agent Barton wasn’t hostile towards me in the least. He genuinely looked worried. “Are you alright, Agent Garett?”

I fell back onto the mattress, unable to keep myself up any longer, the shards digging deeper into my skin. “G-glass…” I began, my voice cracking horribly, “In my back.”

“What did you do last night?” he asked plainly.

I didn’t know how to answer him. I didn’t want him to know what happened last night, I didn’t want to risk him becoming hostile. “I fell…” I half lied as he walked over to me on the bed.

“Uh-huh…” he replied suspiciously as I heard glass crunch underneath his shoes. “Grab onto me,” he bent down over me and I wrapped my arms around his neck and shoulders and he lifted me up from the bed. I noticed that I wasn’t wearing my boots, nor my over shirt or much else. Just my pants and my white tank top. “There’s showers and medical supplies one floor above us,” he continued, carrying me out of the room. “Are your feet cut?”

“I don’t think so,” I told him, my voice hoarse. Barton slowly set me down so I could stand on my swollen feet. I still relied heavily on agent Barton’s help though I was able to stand on my own. There were more people around the place than last night, most likely German soldiers and scientists, but Professor Selvig was still slaving away over the Tesseract. Loki wasn’t hard to miss either, sitting across the way from where Selvig was working, with an almost blank look on his face. But he still noticed us. I didn’t think anything of it until Agent Barton stopped us suddenly, already having walked past Loki, and led us back to the god.

“Taking her to the showers, she fell in some glass last night and isn’t too well off this morning,” he answered Loki without him having said a word to Barton. I didn’t let the confusion show through on my face, surely Loki had some telepathic power over the people he had control of. And because I was free I didn’t want Loki to read me in any way so I didn’t let even the pain I felt show through my face. Loki was silent; he only nodded once in approval before looking to me. He kept his eyes on me as long as he could until Agent Barton pulled us into an elevator and we went up one floor. I couldn’t read anything from Loki the whole time except that he looked pale but he was always pale.

When the elevator doors opened up it looked like we had entered a small hospital, complete with a small waiting room, a nurse station and two exam rooms. Clint left me for a moment as he searched the nurse’s station for gauze, tweezers, rubbing alcohol, and a metal pan. “Come with me,” he walked back to me before helping me down a small hallway, while carrying the items he grabbed, that led to a section of bedrooms and the other was showers, bathroom stalls, and lockers, of which there were no signs differentiating which gender used what.

“Anything in here is free game,” Agent Barton told me, setting the medical supplied he had gathered down on a bench between two rows of lockers. He left me without any further words as I sat on the bench myself. After he was gone, and listening for anybody else, I mustered up enough strength to search the lockers for some towels. After finding a few clean looking ones I carefully stripped myself of my clothes. After I braided my hair to keep it out of my face, before checking my feet to make sure no glass was in them. Finding none I limped over to the showers with the bottle of rubbing alcohol and turned one of the faucets on.

Ice cold water hit me immediately, though the dial was turned all the way to the word “heib”, meaning hot in German. I backed away from the spout, waiting until steam rose from the tiles to reenter, the water now near scalding, though withstand able. Turning the dial back a bit towards “kälte” the water soon reached a tolerable temperature, though the water still stung at my wounds.

I rinsed off as carefully as I could, cleaning my skin of all the dried blood and loose glass. Once I was satisfied I limped over to one of the floor length mirrors and used that to pour the alcohol over my wounds. “Son of a bitch,” I said, cursing every few seconds, my toes and fingers curling in pain as the alcohol stung my immense amount of cuts. It burned but nowhere near as bad as what Loki had done to me last night.

Yeah, the rubbing alcohol was cake compared to what I was put through last night.

After I had finished the torture, I walked back over to the other medical supplies Agent Barton left for me and used the tweezers to get as much glass out of my arm and leg as I could. My back was going to be the hardest part however, seeing as how I couldn’t reach all the pieces and look in all the cuts. I was pondering about using the mirror again, but I still wouldn’t be able to reach all of the shattered glass, when I stood. I couldn’t just sit with fragments of glass in my back. But as I got up I heard faint footsteps. Ceasing all movement I listened intently, quickly judging that the person was ten, maybe fifteen yards away from my position, and they didn’t have a set destination. Whoever it was, they were most likely looking for me. I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around my body quickly while judging the footsteps further. The heaviness and variations of the steps told me they were most likely a taller person, and the weight behind them made me think of a man.

But right as that thought crossed my mind, Loki walked around the corner of a row of lockers. I tensed, seeing him, but I didn’t move from my spot. He stopped in front of me upon finding me, but didn’t stare as before, rather looked past me to the medical supplies I had. “You had me worried…” he began slowly, finally looking me in the eyes. “I couldn’t tell what you would be doing up here for a few hours.

I swallowed before I spoke, choosing my words carefully for him, “Surely digging hundreds of pieces of glass wouldn’t take a few hours.” In the end I couldn’t help but sound sarcastic but the look on Loki’s face was washed away by a seemingly genuine smile.

“Just a horrible judgment of where to fall, I’d say,” Loki replied but I did not find him funny. “How were you expecting to remove them all by yourself?” I remained silent, looking between him and the mirror I had planned to use, before shrugging slightly. “And a proud woman of your stature would surely decline my help?” Loki smirked and I realized he was trying to profile me.

“No,” I answered quickly and he looked interested in my answer. “I understand when I’m in need of help, I’m not that proud. But receiving such help from an enemy is idiotic,” I spoke, trying to sound proper.

“Ah,” he laughed, “You see me as an enemy. Perhaps,” he started and then, as if out of thin air, produced my hand gun I had lost last night. He took it by the barrel in his right hand and extended it, offering it back to me. I slowly reached for it and once I realized he wasn’t tricking me I took it quickly from him, holding it tightly at my side. I couldn’t check without my towel falling or taking my eyes off of Loki but, because my gun wasn’t top heavy and felt weighted, it was still loaded. “Perhaps you could accept this as a token of peace between us,” Loki finished.

“Peace? You kidnapped me, brainwashed me and forced me to do your bidding, then tortured and drugged me-”

“It was in your best interest.”

“My best interest? You said that you wanted to know what would happen.”

“So I did. I had tried it on three German soldiers before you. The first two died, the third survived the process but died of heart failure moments after. That is why I gave you the sedative.”

“Why were you taking your control away over German soldiers?”

Loki remained quiet for a second, not answering me but instead sighing. “Would you accept my truce and let me aide you or not?” he asked me slowly.

I was silent to his question. My final decision was fairly stupid but I set my gun down on the bench anyways. A smile started slowly to creep once again onto Loki’s face, making his eyes sparkle in victory. I shifted my towel so the entire back of my body was exposed, then slowly sat on the bench, watching Loki as long as I could before I turned myself, my back now facing the god in the room with me. I heard Loki move and lightly felt one of his freezing hands on my shoulder as he sat behind me. Using his other hand he moved my nearly dry blonde hair over my opposite shoulder.

“Need I remind you of breathing?” I felt his breath whisper into my bare neck and goose bumps erupted on my skin. I hurriedly took a deep breath in, realizing I hadn’t been breathing in the first place. They continued to flood all down my back as his hands continued to touch me. At first I couldn’t tell the reason for my reaction to him but I soon grew colder to the point where I was physically shivering.

“I’m sorry for the cold but it will help numb your pain,” Loki spoke softly. I saw him reach for the metal pan with a hand full of glass shards and I didn’t even realize he had taken them from my skin.

“Thank you…” I spoke quietly, through chattering teeth.

“The pleasure is all mine darling,” he replied smugly.

“I still don’t understand why you’d want to restore free will to some German soldiers and myself, I said ignoring his statement.

“There is no need for you to understand it, nor has it any of your concern. Your back is bleeding much more than I had expected.”

I reached for the gauze next to the metal pan and handed it back to Loki, which he took and pressed against my wounds. For the first time I felt my back sting, and also warm up from the absence of Loki’s hands.

“I think I got most of the glass for you,” Loki said after another minute, dropping more pieces of broken glass into the pan.

“Thanks,” I said quickly, the pain growing with each second. Suddenly the cold returned tenfold, and though I couldn’t control my shaking, the pain vanished.

“Hold this,” Loki indicated gauze on my shoulder as he stood. A robe magically materialized in his hands and he draped it over my shoulders. I stood with him, putting the robe on with no questions and dropped my towel. Loki picked up the metal pan, tweezers and empty alcohol bottle for me but I had to hold the gauze in place and grabbed my gun with my free hand but I couldn’t grab my clothes or shoes. “I need my clothes,” I alerted Loki as he was walking away.

He stopped to turn back to me, “I was going to get you new ones.” He extended his free hand to me as I started walking forward and slowly he placed his arm around my waist as I passed. I didn’t fight Loki, I was still cautious about angering him. He led the both of us back through to the small hospital room, setting the medical supplies carelessly on the nurse’s station as we passed, walking to the elevator. Loki kept me close to him as I kept my gun close to my side as we entered the elevator. Without any direction from us the elevator slowly started slipping down. I glanced at Loki to see a wide smile on his face so I didn’t bother myself with questioning him.

Unnoticed by the people working on Loki’s Tesseract project we walked through the bottom level of the base. On a workbench near all the hype created by the Tesseract saw a few liters of water and as we passed Loki grabbed one, while leading me back to his curtained room. He lifted one of the heavy curtains letting me inside before handing the unlabeled plastic bottle to me.

I hesitantly took it, remembering what happened the last time I had consumed something that Loki gave me. “You need it. And I haven’t touched what’s inside,” Loki smiled innocently at me.

“I still don’t trust it,” I said, staring at Loki intently. He chuckled, grabbing the bottle back and opening it to drink. “That is dreadful, what is this?” He asked me, staring at the water bottle.

It was my turn to chuckle, realizing what he must have. It wasn’t water exactly, more like a nutrient survival water that was designed to keep soldiers sustained in limited supplies for long periods of time. Essentially one of these will hold over a soldier for a day without them missing any part of their diets, besides fats and of course solid foods. Loki extended the water back to me, and though I took it I still didn’t trust him. “Its pretty much a person’s diet,” I explained and took a small sip, the metallic taste throwing me a bit off for a second. “We used these in the war over in Iraq a few years back.”

Loki’s eyebrows raised as he gained interest, “You’re a army woman then?”

“Not army, the Marines,” I replied but Loki looked indifferent. “It’s a, uh… branch off of the U.S. armed forces,” I explained, but still his indifference persisted.

“You don’t seem to realize, I’m not from around here,” he told me, moving me onto the bed as we sat next to each other.

“Yeah I figured with the teleportation into P.E.G.A.S.U.S. and all, not to mention the freaky stick you’ve got.” Loki outwardly laughed at me, and I smiled in response, sipping from the water some more. “You mind elaborating a bit more? I’m not really familiar with… you.”

“Maybe sometime later after you’re rested, you look like you need it.”

“Fine, but I’m supposed to sleep in this robe?” I asked as Loki stood from the bed, obviously to leave. Suddenly I felt the fabric leave my skin and I quickly jerked, in protest to my back, to cover myself but instead of bare skin I felt lighter fabric. Looking from Loki down to my body to see myself adorned in black sweats and a white tank top.

My arms fell from my chest in a sigh, Loki saying, “Are they not to your liking? I can change them if you wish.”

“No, this is fine… just…” I looked up to him, standing in front of me. “Am I naked?” I felt silly asking because I was very obviously clothed.

“In a sense you are nude, only no one, including both you as well as I, cannot tell. Get some rest,” Loki asked of me, disappearing behind the curtains.