Trigger warning for this chapter my lovelies xoxo
ROARA
"They're all... useful things. All things you'd need in machinery or military operations. Axels are used in rotating elements of machines, guns are well..."
"Guns?" Loki suggested.
"Yes, and locks..."
"Locks need keys." He looked at me. I nodded. I was the key.
"He must be the big boss. The final level."
"This is not a video game Roara." Fury said through the phone speaker.
"Why did we decided to tell this moron again?" Loki asked me.
I rolled my eyes. "We can trust him. I hope."
"You can agent. I may be an asshole, but as proved many times, I don't betray my team."
I looked pointedly at Loki.
"Fine." He grunted.
"The point is, they're all useful." I said. "They're also part of bigger operations. An axel is just one part of a car, a gun is one item in an armoury, a lock is attached to something that needs protecting. They're not just code names, they're titles."
"So you're saying there might be more than one Axel?" Loki asked.
"I know as much as you." I sighed, and looked again at our papers. "These ex-employees... they've had all but their names wiped from the system. Someone got there before we did but they botched the job. I'm guessing they realised they were out of time, or didn't have the skills, and did what they could to hide their identities. They needed their associates to be able to recognise which names needed completely taking off the systems without the names looking too obvious. These could easily be hidden as last names."
I pinched the bridge of my nose between my forefinger and thumb.
"Something doesn't feel right." Loki said.
"I agree."
"I don't trust the space prince, but I do trust your judgement Woodson." Fury said through the phone. "If you agree, then I'll hear you two out."
"It feels like it was too easy to locate these facilities. You say last you heard Natasha's group was headed off to check out a possible base. It's too fast."
"Funny feelings or not, as I have already said twice in this conversation, you are not going out into the field Agent Woodson. I know you've said that you're completely healed. And I am not having Loki left alone." Fury's usual fed up tone didn't sound any less intimidating through the phone call than it did face to face.
Loki pursed his lips before saying, "I mean, I could always go with her."
"No." Fury and I said together.
"It was just a suggestion."
"No, Loki," I turned to him, "it was a plan of your..." I trailed off, my brain whirring faster than I could catch up to it. 400 years of knowledge sometimes does that to you.
"What?" Loki asked, taking a step towards me.
"They knew I'd have to be left alone. They wanted me vulnerable, and they wanted me to be shot to see how fast I could heal. It was two birds with one stone. Maybe they don't just want me vulnerable. By having so many locations, forcing the avengers to split up, they're making everyone else vulnerable. They work best as a team."
"I think you mean to say we work best as a team." Fury corrected.
"Huh?" I asked, flicking through pages again, and pulling up the map Alina had made for us as a hologram.
"You're an Avenger now Woodson, even if not all of them know it now."
"That's... great." I murmured, not paying any attention. "Fury I'm going to have to call you back."
"Woodson I do not give you permission to-" Loki pressed the red button before Fury could even finish his sentence.
"What are you thinking?" He asked.
"How do you know I'm thinking anything."
"Besides knowing you well, I can read minds. Of course your mind was always slightly harder to read, all chaotic," he winked, "but do correct me if I'm wrong, but you just had sirens going off in your head and big blaring red word: trap."
"I have to call Alina."
I dialled up her number. It rang out.
"Come on Ali." I muttered, ringing again. It rang out. "One more time." I rang it. This time it picked up.
"Hey Ali-"
"Sorry Ro, I can't really talk right now."
"It's really important-"
"I'm in the middle of something, I'm going to have to ring you back."
The phone clicked off. I looked up at Loki, who had a grim expression plastered onto his face.
"If there's one thing I know about that midgardian, it's that she likes to talk." He walked over to me, placing his hands on my shoulders. "I know you're worried, but you can't go out there."
I shrugged his hands off me. "What do you know about being worried about a friend. You abandoned me without looking back once."
"It wasn't like that." He sighed.
"What was it like then?" I felt my temper rising. "Because from where I'm standing it looked a lot like a big fat betrayal."
He stepped forward, a placating hand out in front of him "Now, listen," I took a step back, "it really was far more complicated than it seems."
"No Loki, it was simple. I nearly fucking died after that night, and last I remember was you leaving me as I was shaking on the ground. I watched you get up and turn your back to me. I had blood running out of my ears! If Thor hadn't found me and taken me to Asgard and healed me there, I don't know where I would be now. And the immortal thing? Yeah, that really wasn't funny. I should have died at least 320 years ago. I shouldn't be alive right now. Do you know what a burden that is? Knowing I should be dead!"
The hurt on his face was so clear it nearly made me feel guilty. His mouth was slightly open, his eyes holding a horror I didn't quite understand. "Roara, you are meant to be alive, I don't know how else to put it." He said quietly.
"NO! Loki I'm not! My family died! I watched them waste away, I pretended to be their nurses, or a nun, or whatever it took to be there holding their hands as they took their final breath. My sister, my younger sister, she forgot her name. She was in her eighties when she finally died. Every day I would come in and make her comfortable and she would ask who I was. Every single day. Until right at the end when she said I reminded her of her sister. Her sister who had gone missing years before. Because people were starting to notice Loki, that I hadn't got a single wrinkle on my face. Do you know what a fucking beautiful thing it is to age? I want laughter lines! I want my face to show all the emotions I've lived through. I am not meant to be here. I have great great great great nieces and nephews. That's too many greats! One of them is called Anna. She lives in London. She just won a photography competition for her photo documentary of racism in the work-place. It was beautiful. Do you know how old she is? 46!" I sighed and ran my hand through my hair. I kept forgetting how short it was. I'd never had short hair before.
"Roara, that's not how these things work." His voice was low, smooth, calming. But nothing could calm me down now.
"I am telling you Loki! Do you know, I have this reoccurring nightmare that I lose my powers that you gave me through some freak accident, or a science experiment gone wrong, or it just happens. And suddenly I'm going through 400 years of ageing all at once. Sometime I become dust, sometimes I become a corpse, sometimes I am just in so much pain and I am so old and I can't see and I can't walk. I'm never going to be able to marry someone and share my life with them, because my life will never be shared in its entirety. I will never be able to grow old with anyone. I have attended so many funerals, and so many weddings, knowing I will never have either."
"Roara-"
"DON'T! Don't even say my NAME! You haven't earned the right to speak my name, you haven't earned my trust, my love. You don't get any of it!"
"No, really-"
"What Laufeyson?! Fucking what?!"
He nodded at my hands.
I looked down. They were encased in flames. I gasped, instinctively putting a hand to my mouth, before pulling it away again. Slowly I touched my hands to my arms. The flames didn't hurt. It just felt warm. I put a hand on the metal table to steady me.
"Bad idea." Loki sighed.
I looked down and quickly pulled my hand off. I had melted some of the table.
"Loki!" I started to panic. "What do I do?" I tried to shake my hands, but the flames just grew up my arms as my panic spread. "LOKI!"
"Just calm down, you're overreacting."
"I am on FIRE you complete twat!"
"Seriously, calm down. It'll help."
"I don't think you realise, I AM LITERALLY SMOKING!"
"Mhmm, that's nothing new." He smirked.
I was so shocked by his comment that I stepped forwards towards him. "Excuse me?"
He shrugged.
"Ugh you ass!" I slapped him round the face.
"Help?" He asked, grinning. I looked down at my hands.
"Oh..."
"Yeah."
They were no longer on fire. "You distracted me."
"Well observed."
"You weren't shocked." I noted.
"I may have forgotten to mention, but after you collapsed and had a fit on the floor of Miss Hill's office, you also burst into flames. It was incredibly dramatic."
"And you didn't tell me!"
"Surprise?"
I rubbed my eyes. "Okay, next time someone spontaneously combusts, TELL THEM!"
"Oh but your face when you saw!" He began to laugh, doubling over, a hand on his stomach, "You were so terrified, oh my." He wiped away a tear.
"Alright enough." I grabbed his hair and pulled him up. I wasn't nearly tall enough for this to be impressive though.
"Are you trying to seduce me?" He rasped. I slapped him round the face. "I reiterate my last statement."
I let go of him and stood back. "Didn't you hear a word of what I said? I opened my heart to you... I... I... and you...UGH!" I grabbed his shoulders and kneed him in the groin. He bent double, this time very much not laughing. "I told you things I've never told anybody, things I've held in for so long, and this is the only way you can react?" I spat on the floor in front of him. "I was better off without you."
"You are." He said from behind me. "I never said you weren't."
I stopped in my tracks. "Loki-"
"No, you were better off without me. I put you in this position that night I gave you powers."
I turned around.
"Did you?"
"What?" He frowned, completely confused.
"Did you give me all my powers?"
"Wh- what do you mean, of course I did." He stammered. This was a new feeling of power, making Loki Laufeyson stammer. I liked it.
"Well I didn't just go through a magical puberty did I? But now I can somehow control fire? Care to explain." And suddenly I knew what to do, I flicked my right wrist and a ball of fire was writhing in my palm. I flicked the other and vines wrapped themselves around my wrist. I began walking towards him. He teleported behind me.
"Roara, I honestly don't know." He admitted. "But we can find out."
"How?" I asked, whipping round.
"The Ascendency. They know more about you, about your life, than I do. Than Thor does. They've been researching a lot. They kept a lot of it secret from me. We take down them, we learn more about your powers." Something told me he wasn't lying for once in his life.
I let the vines dissolve and the fire blow into smoke. "Alright then. Fancy a trip to Australia?"